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Ethical Leadership Style and Its Impact on Decision-Making

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DOI: 10.1002/jls.21523

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 S Y M P O S I U M

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP STYLE

AND ITS IMPACT
ON DECISIONMAKING

MICHAEL C. CHIKELEZE AND WALTER R. BAEHREND JR.

The ethical failures of organizational leaders have led to the development of instruments seeking
to measure ethical leadership. These instruments have primarily focused on followers’ evaluation of
ethical leadership attributes of their leaders. Often leaders find themselves faced with making chal-
lenging ethical decisions. In the current article, we present a validated leadership self-assessment
tool that measures leader’s preferred ethical leadership style. The current article concludes that,
when faced with making a decision addressing an ethical dilemma, leaders prefer a particular eth-
ical leadership style. Knowledge of ethical leadership style is beneficial for leaders to understand the
process they utilize when faced with difficult choices. This tool may be useful in developing and
educating leaders, teams, and organizations to make better decisions, thereby reducing incidents
of poor ethical choices.

Over the past decade, the ethical failures of organiza-
tional leaders have led to interest in promoting eth-
ical conduct and developing ethical leaders. To address
these concerns, researchers developed assessment instru-
ments seeking to measure the ethical leadership of orga-
nizational leaders. For example, Brown, Trevino, and
Harrison ( 2005 ) developed the Ethical Leadership
Scale (ELS) by using literature analysis to conclude
that ethical leaders’ behavior demonstrates (role model)
and promotes ethical conduct. Later, Kalshoven, Den
Hartog, and De Hoogh (2011) developed the Ethical
Leadership Work Questionnaire (ELWQ) by defining
seven ethical leader behaviors. Most recently, Yukl,
Mahsud, Hassan, and Prussia (2013) developed the
Ethical Leadership Questionnaire (ELQ) by reviewing
literature about ethical leadership behaviors. Research in
ethical leadership has expanded based on these measure-
ments, and has formed the basis of insightful empirical
studies. However, these instruments are limited in that
they request external feedback from followers about
their perceptions of their leader’s ethical behaviors,
rather than allow the leader to self-assess their consid-
erations when faced with making a decision about an
ethical dilemma. Researchers have discussed the need
for such ethical consideration in the decision-making
process (Berry, 2007; Monahan, 2012), and recent

JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Volume 11, Number 2, 2017

© 2017 University of Phoenix
View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com • DOI:10.1002/jls.21523 45
 S Y M P O S I U M
large corporate scandals have renewed the focus on
decreasing unethical conduct by examining how leaders
make decisions when faced with ethical dilemmas.
For example, recent unethical decisions and prac-
tices at Wells Fargo and Volkswagen have been highly
publicized in the press (Carucci, 2016; Lynch, 2016;
Ochs, 2016).
The current article contends that, rather than focus
on an external assessment of whether followers per-
ceive a leader’s behavior as ethical, an internal self-
assessment of a leader’s ethical leadership orientation
can shed light on understanding leaders’ decision-
making. According to Baehrend (2016), a validated
instrument to assess ethical leadership style is useful
in understanding the role of the moral reasoning of
leaders in organizations. “If such moral reasoning can
be identified and measured, then it could be a use-
ful tool for a broad range of applications and orga-
nizations” (p. 7). For example, what is the leader’s
moral reasoning? Does a leader view ethics primarily as
behavior that is just and fair? Or does the leader view
ethics as being able to perform his or her duty to the
organization? These orientations will likely help drive
the decision the leader will make when faced with an
ethical dilemma.
The current article presents a validated instrument,
the Ethical Leadership Style Questionnaire (ELSQ),
that can help determine primary and secondary eth-
ical leadership style. The ELSQ is a 45-question leader
self-assessment instrument that measures the leader’s
perspective on how they themselves deal with eth-
ical dilemmas. It presents the respondent with orga-
nizational ethical dilemma vignettes and responsive
prompts, requiring the leader to make a decision. The
ELSQ’s prompts were developed based on six ethics
orientations. The ethical orientations (and prompts
are): (a) Duty ethics (I would do what is right);
(b) Utilitarianism ethics (I would do what benefits
the most people); (c) Virtue ethics (I would do what a
good person would do); (d) Caring ethics (I would do
what shows that I care about my close personal relation-
ships); (e) Egoism ethics (I would do what benefits me
the most); (f ) Justice ethics (I would do what is fair).
For example, one of the ELSQ’s situation and decision
prompts are as follows:
46 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 11 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
“You are setting up production processes for your
company. You can set these up to make your group’s
work easier than other groups’ work. What would you
do in this situation?
1. I would do my duty or
2. I would do what a good person would do.”
Based on an individual’s responses, the ELSQ iden-
tifies a leader’s primary and secondary ethical leadership
styles. By comparing the scores for each of the ethical
perspectives, the respondent can get an understanding
of his or her priorities when addressing an ethical con-
cern. A high score on, for example, virtue ethics (i.e., I
would do what a good person would do) would indi-
cate that the leader acts primarily out of integrity and is
faithful to their principles of goodness. Consequently,
a lower score would indicate that the leader gives less
priority to that ethical perspective.
Data from two empirical studies have validated and
refined the ELSQ, and confirmed that when faced with
making a decision about an ethical dilemma, leaders
have a preference toward a particular ethical leader-
ship style. For example, Chikeleze (2014) found that
the ELSQ was able to determine a primary ethical
leadership style in over 90% of the business managers
who completed the survey. Similarly, Baehrend (2016)
concluded that the ELSQ identified primary ethical
leadership styles for nearly 90% of the managers who
took the survey. Both studies consistently predicted
ethical leadership styles in the leaders, showing pri-
mary ethical leadership styles of virtue, distributive jus-
tice and duty, with secondary ethical leadership styles
of utilitarianism, egoism, or caring. Further research
is encouraged in this area, particularly with leaders
in other sectors, and across larger and more diverse
populations.
As discussed, a knowledge and understanding of a
leader’s ethical leadership style is important to leader and
leader development, and can be beneficial in an organi-
zational context. An understanding of ethical leadership
style provides opportunities for leaders to understand
the process they go about when they must make diffi-
cult choices. With the challenges of ethical and moral
conduct of today’s leaders, their ethical orientation and
the question of how these leaders respond to ethical
 S Y M P O S I U M
situations is important. As our research suggests, primary
ethical leadership style can be measured, and that style
influences the major concerns a leader has when faced
with making a decision regarding an ethical dilemma.
The ELSQ provides a simple, easy-to-use self-
assessment tool for leaders to understand their ethical
leadership decision-making preferences and orientation
when faced with an ethical dilemma. This under-
standing may allow them to understand to which
perspectives they naturally and instinctively gravitate,
and others that they might miss or underestimate. In
addition, this information may give additional insight
into situations where team members disagree on what
action they should take, or offer insights into team
dynamics. Lastly, organizations can use it to assist in
training, developing, and educating leaders, teams,
and organizations to make better decisions, thereby
reducing incidents of poor ethical choices. Leaders
can take the ELSQ self-assessment survey at www.
leaderdecisionmakingsurvey.com.
References
Berry, G. R. (2007). Adding ethical consideration to the decision-
making process: A leadership challenge . Journal of Leadership
Studies, 1, 45–50.
Baehrend, W. R. (2016). Refinement of the ethical leadership style
questionnaire (Doctoral dissertation). Benedictine University, Lisle,
IL. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database.
(Order No. 10255065).
Brown, M. E., Trevino, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical
leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development
and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,
97(2), 117–134.
Carucci, R. (2016). Why ethical people make unethical choices.
Harvard Business Review , 12 . Retrieved from https://hbr.
org/2016/12/why-ethical-people-make-unethical-choices
Chikeleze , M. C. ( 2014 ). Validation of the Ethical Leadership
Style Questionnaire (ELSQ) (Doctoral dissertation). Benedictine
University, Lisle, IL. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and
Theses database. (Order No. 3584797).
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 11 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
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Kalshoven, K., Den Hartog, D. N., & De Hoogh, A. H. (2011).
Ethical leadership at work questionnaire (ELW): Development and
validation of a multidimensional measure. The Leadership Quarterly,
22(1), 51–69.
Lynch, L. J. (2016, October 15). Volkswagen lax ethical and emissions
standards. Washington Post.
Monahan, K. (2012). A review of the literature concerning ethical
leadership in organizations. Emerging Leadership Journeys, 5(1),
56–66.
Ochs, S. M. (2016). The leadership blind spots at Wells Fargo. Har-
vard Business Review, 10. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/10/
the-leadership-blind-spots-at-wells-fargo
Yukl, G., Mahsud, R., Hassan, S., & Prussia, G. E. (2013). An
improved measure of ethical leadership. Journal of Leadership &
Organizational Studies, 20(1), 38–48.
Michael C. Chikeleze, PhD, JD, MBA, has more than
20 years of leadership experience in higher education
administration, private industry, and law practice in
the United States. His research interests include business
ethics, law and ethical leadership. Currently, he serves
as Associate Professor and Chair of the Department
of Leadership Studies at Louisiana State University
in Shreveport, LA. Dr. Chikeleze received his PhD in
Values-Driven Leadership at Benedictine University, and
JD and MBA degrees from the Washington University in
St. Louis. Communications can be directed to michael.
chikeleze@lsus.edu.
Walter R. Baehrend, Jr., PhD, MBA, has more than
30 years of private industry experience, bringing Bell Labs
technological innovations to market in the United States.
His research interests include philosophy, business ethics,
and ethical leadership. Currently, he serves as Global
Services Network Implementation Product Manager at
Nokia in Chicago, IL. Dr. Baehrend received his PhD in
Values-Driven Leadership at Benedictine University, and
an MBA degree with honors from University of Chicago.
Email walter.baehrend@gmail.com.
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