Ethics and Leadership: The Role of Prevention and Promotion Oriented Approaches to Leadership

Introduction

In the current business environment, leadership and ethics continue to be important areas of research. This is particularly relevant given the frequency of Enron, Fannie Mae, and J. P. Morgan & Company-like corporate scandals that have continued to occur throughout the beginning of the 21^st century. Despite the prevalence of such scandals, a recent review by Brown and Trevino (2006) concluded “ethical leadership remains largely unexplored” (p. 595). Existing research focuses on identified contexts, attitudes, and environments relating to unethical leader behavior and its impact on employees. Creating or fostering ethical leadership received less emphasis, revealing a conspicuous disparity between highlighting negative aspects of unethical leadership and incomplete discussion on the application of positive, ethical leadership. The work presented here is intended to help scholars and practitioners gain insights into why the positive strengths of ethical leadership matter (Luthans & Youssef, 2007) and the precipitating factors that account for its emergence compared to that of transformational and servant leadership styles.