Ethical Leadership in Italy - a preliminary study

A recent review paper of leadership (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009) formulates ethical leadership as the "demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers" (page 424). In line with this definition, emerging research suggest that ethical leaders are characterized as honest, caring, and principled individuals who make fair and balanced decisions (Brown & Treviño, 2006). Given prominent ethical scandals in virtually every type of organization, the importance of an ethical dimension of leadership seems obvious. There is an increasing realization today that business leaders need to become more responsible, not just to their stockholders but also to their other stakeholders - consumers, employees, suppliers, the government, and local communities. Prentice-Hall conducted a survey in 1990, of which it was revealed that 68 % of the employees believed that executives' unethical behaviour resulted in decline of business standards, productivity and success (Bass & Bass, 2008). Most employees justified their own malingering as a consequence of their perception of executives' unethical behaviour. It is no reason to believe that this association should be different now, 22 years later. Although no one will deny that a business must be profitable, the sole preoccupation with profit to the exclusion or neglect of other considerations is no longer acceptable (Mendonca & Kanungo, 2007). Thus, without a consideration of ethics, understanding of leadership is incomplete. The 4 presentations of this symposium about ethical leadership represent different perspectives or challenges to the understanding of the phenomenon. In paper no. 1, entitled “The two faces of ethical leadership regarding employee deviance and OCB”, Jeroen Stouten presents 3 studies, using different methodologies and within 3 nations, to demonstrate that deviance is lower at higher level of ethical leadership. The first challenge in the symposium concerns the issue that high levels of ethical leadership may constitute some kind of drawback. Stouten reveals in his paper that ethical leadership may have a curvilinear relationship with voluntarily cooperative behaviors. Stouten suggest that organizations face a dilemma between rooting out unethical behavior and promoting positive, cooperative behaviors. Another challenge that can be linked to ethical leadership concerns the issue of courage. In paper no. 2, Wim Vandekerckhove and Suzan Langenberg, with their paper “Ethical leadership: Courage and procedures for speaking and hearing critique”, links ethical leadership to organizational critique and whistleblowing. The paper pays attention to the procedural aspect of providing necessary organizational critique. The authors argue that whereas procedures can lower the required level of courage for the speaker of concern, they do not lower the required level of courage of the listener of concern, those in leadership positions. Parrhesia or “fearless speech” is a term borrowed from the French philosopher Foucault (Langenberg, 2010; Mansbach, 2011), and is applied to build an interpretative model of courage required for both speaker and listener of courage. Three cases are presented, applying the “fearless speech” paradigm. Whistleblowing procedures in line makes organizational critique expected and intended, whereas courage is required for the unexpected and unintended, anticipating the groundlessness of the organization, Vandekerckhove and Langenberg argue. The third challenge to be presented in the symposium is to illuminate some of the work processes that seem to be associated with ethical leadership. In paper no. 3, with the title “Ethical leadership within a demand resource model framework”, Stig Berge Matthiesen and Lars Glasø investigate ethical leadership from a stress perspective, conducting a survey study. The Job demands- job resources model of Bakker and Demerouti (2007), with its flexible suggestions of possible job demands and job resources, was applied, with job engagement as the outcome variable. Job demands were e.g. job pace and role conflict, whereas some of the job resources were job variation and skill utilization. It is argued that also ethical leadership may constitute a job resource. In the paper no. 3 study it was found that ethical leadership may mediate the relationship between job demands, job resources, and job engagement. Thus, ethical leadership may constitute a difference within a job context pertaining widespread work stress. This type of leader conduct may however also facilitate positive job resources. The fourth challenge that we in our symposium can link to ethical leadership covers the cultural issue. The last presentation, entitled “Ethical leadership in Italy: A preliminary study”, by Andrea Bobbio, Cecilia Venezia and Stig Berge Matthiesen, presents Italian survey data on the ethical leadership subject. Italy is perhaps amongst the countries most people would not immediately associate with ethical leadership, as many leadership scandals in this country have recently gained widespread media coverage, also internationally. The paper refers to the GLOBE leadership project, with its finding about the Latin Europe leadership cultural cluster, which seems to be characterized by a comparatively lower value placed on the humane orientation (e.g. being fair, altruistic and supportive to others), also with a low score on the societal collective orientation (institutional collectivism). Therefore, the paper highlights the fact that the ethical leadership model indicates a standard for leadership that appears to be distant from the ideal one within this cluster and, consequently, addresses the question if this model may be useful or not in order to properly interpret leadership dynamics within Latin Europe. In this preliminary study, Italian data were compared with Norwegian findings, applying the same scale on ethical leadership. The Italian employees evaluated their immediate superiors more negatively than did the Norwegian counterparts, in terms of ethical leadership, and this gave support to the hypothesis of cultural differences in the display and perception of ethical leadership behaviors. However, the study also demonstrated a link between ethical leadership and some outcome measures (e.g. trust, commitment and job engagement), underlining the importance of ethical leadership within the Italian framework, and leaving several options open both for research and management development programs. REFERENCES Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O., & Weber, T. J. (2009). Leadership: Current theories, research and future directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 421-449. Bakker, A. B., & demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands- resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22. Bass, B. M., & Bass, R. (2008). Handbook of leadership: Theory, research & management applications (4th ed.). 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