Ethical Leadership with Both 'Moral Person' and 'Moral Manager' Aspects: Scale Development and Cross-Cultural Validation

摘要

The importance of ethical leadership in organizations has been increasingly recognized, especially as a shield against unethical employee behaviors and corporate misconducts. Ethical leadership has been theorized to include two aspects: "moral person" and "moral manager." This conceptualization resonates well with Chinese teachings of Confucius on leadership and management-namely xiuji (cultivating oneself) and anren (bringing the good to others). Based on the theoretical framework of ethical leadership, we develop and validate a new ethical leadership measure (ELM). Through qualitative studies (i.e., face-to-face interviews, open-ended surveys, and literature review) and five quantitative studies, we establish the reliability and convergent, discriminant, and predictive validities of the ELM in a Chinese context. In addition, using a US sample, we find that the ELM has partial measurement invariance across Chinese and American contexts.