Good ethical behavior continues to be an issue that employees and leaders are faced with. Competition, cutbacks, and productivity are leading causes of why members of organizations feel pressured to take shortcuts, break the rules, and use other forms of questionable methods (Robbins & Judge, 2009). The ethical issues are prevalent in many organizations and range from a variety of unethical practices such as: officials padding their own bank accounts, engagement in bribes, inflation of profits to increase and cash in stock options, to name a few. The excuses provided for these unethical behaviors are “everyone does it” or “you have to seize ever advantage nowadays” (p. 26). Unethical actions can lead to decrease in employee morale, lack of trust, employees mimicking the same unethical behaviors, loss of productivity and employee turn-over. With these types of attitudes, it has become increasingly more difficult for managers to create ethical climates for employees. For these reasons, this paper seeks examines how ethical leader behaviors manifest in employee behavior and affect the organization.
Rational For Topic The increase of unethical behaviors has led to leaders’ implementation of creating ethically healthy climates with the use of ethical codes, guides to assist employees with faced with dilemmas, and training. Personal achievement, in many cases, seems to overpower ethical behavior leaving companies with a lack of stewardship over leaders. Ethical motivation is on the decline, leaving employees questioning what the benefits of doing the right thing are. The role of leaders is more than just a role to promote ethical employee behavior, it is now a role of creating employee perceptions of leaders’ behavior to determine employee outcome or, in simpler terms, to create a link between leadership behaviors and individual trust and commitment to the organization.
Elements of Thought The intent of this paper is to address the