Introduction
The present work critically appraises the article ‘A Review of the Literature Concerning Ethical Leadership in Organizations’ by Kelly Manahan. The article is available in the journal Emerging Leadership Journeys and covers significantly critical leadership aspects. Article review accomplishes several essential purposes academically. Nowadays, scholars investigate all subjects while publishing them in various journals for different reasons. However, not all publications pass the test, as confirmed by critical review processes. The global research platform is cooperative and collaborative, meaning that academic researchers almost always advance knowledge related to other peers’ findings or thoughts. The aspect informs the role of literature review and background sections in research reports. Thus, it is necessary that researchers vet peers’ articles to prove their reliability, authority, validity, and applicability. The present work targets to perform this valuation task on Manahan’s work. The article contains crucial sentiments concerning an emergent leadership topic that many organizations and administration researchers esteem. The subject connects directly to human resources management and productivity, which firms aim to utilize for competitive benefits. Equally, Manahan’s work provides vital arguments supporting an organization’s moral existence as required by the global community. Thus, its reliability assessment is extremely important. The review summarizes the article, briefly analyses the structure’s effectiveness, and investigates the setting out of the information and its accessibility. Moreover, the review critiques the article and evaluates its authority, accuracy, currency, objectivity, and reportage. Lastly, the appraisal analyzes graphs and judges the article’s credibility. The editorial is generally well-written, clear, reliable, and pertinent.
Review of Literature
Ethical leadership (EL) attracts substantial attention from multiple parties due to several aspects, including the new facet’s significant promise to solve critical organizational issues. However, the concept remains highly shadowy, with scholars failing to even give a standard definition. Therefore, what Monahan (2012) covers is critical and can serve as the basis of multiple other scholarly inquiries on leadership. Most articles covering the idea investigate its potential to promote organizational performance (Özsungur, 2019). For example, Saha et al.’s (2019) findings show that ethical leadership nurtures particular personal values that promote CSR endeavors and the performance of a firm. Thus, ethical leadership is a genuine research agenda with practical application in organizations and worth every bit of research for clear understanding.
Ethical leadership exhibits noteworthy association with employees’ performance and organizational citizenship conduct. Alshehhi et al. (2020) observe that ethical leaders have generally acceptable traits that workers emulate, thus improving their output. Moreover, Zang et al. (2019) argue that ethical administrators promote interactional justice, which boosts the workforce’s sense of belonging and commitment. The scholars’ observation rhymes with Adnan et al.’s (2020) finding that integrity-conscious managers impact workers’ performance positively. Kim et al. (2022) purport that many organizations face trust challenges that threaten their existence, something that can be solved through virtuous governance practices. The scholarly claims by the various researchers in support of ethical leadership prove the subject’s necessity as a research topic and organizational transformation tool.
Ethical leadership remains a tale to many organizational leaders and researchers. To make EL more practical, Shakeel et al. (2020) suggest the need to establish specific, measurable constructs justifying the model’s existence. The concern receives support from Argyropoulou and Spyridakis (2022), who note that without precise measurement tools, the matter remains hypothetical. Lastly, Derfler-Rozina and Park (2022) and Magalhães et al. (2019) reiterate the need to shift from studying ethical leadership from the consequences’ perspective since that makes the realization of causal factors hard. Therefore, ethical leadership-related topics remain broiling, with investigators interested in shaping organizational management transformation having a significant chance to realize their dream by investigating the emergent theme.
Article Summary
The present article covers the ethical leadership topic and its relevance in the contemporary organizational setting. Monahan (2012)’s piece is a review of keenly selected literature covering the subject matter. The editorial has four distinct sections covering unique issues about EL. The first segment handles the definition controversy, where Monahan (2012) combines various sources’ explanations of the management idea. The scholar describes virtuous management as leaders’ possession of blameless personality and the correct standards or being an individual of resilient charisma. Thus, the ability to serve others, make decisions based on inward virtues, exhibit moral constructs within the leadership line, and influence oneself and others to do the correct thing define an ethical leader.
Personal integrity, followers’ influence, and issues affecting ethical headship are the other aspects covered by the work. Monahan (2012) insists that facing hardships orients humans toward ethicalness. The work quotes scriptures to support this argument, where Paul says that suffering yields endurance, which then nurtures character (Monahan, 2012). Another vital element necessary for administrators to become moral is interrogating and reviewing beliefs and views, according to Monahan (2012). Notably, the scholar reiterates that being ethical as a leader is a calling instead of a process. He justifies this by noting that many corrupt leaders know ethics and values. Thus, investigating ethical leadership deeply promises to answer several pertinent questions about the subject and shade more light on further investigations and understanding of the matter and its applicability.
Article Structure
Coherence is a highly important aspect of an investigation report. The aspect results mainly from the scholar’s presentation of facts and ideas (Moshontz et al., 2021). Monahan’s (2012) work is highly articulate and deep, helping concerned parties develop a clear understanding of the covered concept effectively. The definition of challenge is a major issue concerning ethical leadership (Gangai & Agrawal, 2019). The leadership scholar thus avoids the simplistic approach to the question by providing several explanations backed by verifiable texts. This facet makes Monahan’s work comprehensive and respectable, promoting the presentation capacity. The link between personal integrity and morality and their influence on ethical leadership forms the second section of Monahan’s (2012) article. The section depicts the specific values making some leaders ethical and not others. Providing such personality elements helps in answering the question of ethical leadership’s legitimacy. Therefore, the section silences concerns that the inability to make every leader ethical through training makes the style imaginary.
Presentation success further appears through the last two sections of the article. For example, the work’s third segment makes what many investigators perceive as imaginary more practical. The application part starts by saying that only a leader with ethical maturity can inspire followers to embrace virtuous living (Monahan, 2012). Furthermore, Monahan clarifies that almost every leader is moral on ordinary issues until when a dilemma arises. The argument thus clears the air about when, where, and how an ethical leader is noticeable. A moral leader is a person whose actions and words exhibit no gap, meaning that individuals who choose when to act morally cannot be ethical. Accordingly, Monahan succeeds significantly in the presentation aspect by arranging his work in a way that takes the reader from a point of not knowing to understanding the practical application of the matter.
Article Critique
Authority: The work under evaluation is highly authoritative based on the scholar’s exploitative articulation of concepts and facts. A major source of authority in research articles comes from reliable sources’ citations (Khraisat et al., 2019). Thus, Monahan (2012) combines the two facets to develop a highly authoritative work on a contradictory topic. The author adopts the literature review methodology for the work to realize his goal. The decision leads him to gather multiple acquiescent facts linking the concept’s definition to practical applications. Furthermore, Monahan (2012) features over thirty-five sources, all covering related subjects that give meaning to the author’s work. Consequently, combining multiple citations with exploitive content on a rather difficult subject makes the article highly authoritative.
Accuracy: The work under review is highly exact, revealing the author’s hard work and comprehension of the subject under investigation. Monahan (2012) never beats around the bush concerning the matter. Instead, the scholar introduces the idea and directly heads to the specific sections to cover the intended ethical leadership facets. The provided definitions for the theme are precise and diverse. The investigator equally employs a correctly selected choice of words and language for the work. The order of concepts under discussion further tells much about the article’s precision. Accordingly, the investigator’s determination to create a highly informative work informs his choice of various elements that make the work accurate.
Currency: At least two aspects determine a research work’s currency or contemporariness. The first such element concerns a scholarly article’s publication date or period. Most research works require sources not older than five years to ensure currency. However, 2012, the present article’s publication date, is not far. The dates prove the editorial’s contemporariness, particularly now that it is a twenty-first-century publication. An article’s subject or theme is the other determinant of its currency. The point that Monahan (2012) tackles a subject in its exploratory stage makes the work very new. Thus, these two aspects prove the reviewed article’s currency and relevance.
Relevance: The fact that ethical leadership is a novel administration model that global leaders and scholars seek to understand makes authoritative research works covering the idea highly significant. Monahan (2012) is per excellence of such works, helping people acquire answers to multiple concerns regarding the seemingly contradictory tenets as advanced by different narrow-scoped investigators. For instance, the author substantially settles concerns about the right definition of the new leadership idea. The fellow uses research to present several complementary meanings, as opposed to picking a single definition and justifying it, as many people do. Therefore, the article forms a crucial foundation for further studies into the subject, making it highly essential.
Objectivity: The article depicts high levels of impartiality, detachment, and neutrality. Monahan (2012) does not present personal ideas to win the public or seek dominance over the subject matter. Rather, the researcher undertakes informed investigations to develop independent concepts that pass the message regardless of the author’s title. That way, Monahan avoids the common mistake of some prolific scholars who use names and personal opinions to lure readers. Monahan’s work, thus, does not require promotion or endorsement to make an impact. The presentation of highly backed, hard-to-deny facts free from personal sentiments reveals the work’s objectivity. Therefore, the article makes a significant impact on the leadership scholarship fraternity due to its relevance and impartiality.
Stability: Permanence develops based on where the researcher publishes their work. Publishing research jobs in transitory journals means they will not be there longer, leading to the loss of the essential information (Shanahan & Bezuidenhout, 2020). Thus, since the work exists in a permanent global authoritative leadership journal proves its stability.
Analysis of graph/Image/Table
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Recent Advances Related to the Topic
Many articles published previously about ethical leadership subject were maiden in nature. However, advancements in the sector lead researchers to new concerns. For example, present-day academic inquiries focus on the leadership style’s fitfulness to innovation, workforce motivation and retention, and corporate social responsibility requirements. Onkila and Sarna (2022)’s article is an example of a contemporary research work that investigates the leadership model’s effectiveness in promoting organizational responsibility to the public. Iszatt‐White and Kempster (2019) note that the desire for money and continuously growing income pushes many corporate leaders to focus on returns more than public safety. The issue particularly affects the manufacturing sector, where firms now prefer non-durable product development to ensure continuous purchases by customers (Saha et al., 2020). Thus, organizations realize a significant improvement in morality due to the ethical leadership scheme’s adoption.
Other researchers now focus on ethical leadership’s effectiveness in promoting quality healthcare provision. Kim et al. (2022) maintain that the medical fraternity operates under specific principles, including beneficence and honesty, which most traditional management designs could not promote adequately. However, Shakeel et al. (2020) agree with Monahan (2012) that ethical leaders’ primary role in organizations is the personification of espoused values. Jha and Singh (2019) purport that an ethical head’s morality awakens the spirit of morality among followers, with the manager serving as an example and a witness. Therefore, moral leadership’s adoption in hospitals promotes a general virtuous landscape that benefits all stakeholders (Kim et al., 2022). Lastly, Oskam and De Visser-Amundson (2022) investigate ethical leadership’s impact on workforce innovativeness. The findings show that a virtuous head’s promotion of responsible autonomy among workers allows them to create and implement new ideas. Consequently, the present and past research work on the leadership subject vary significantly based on the topic and area of focus, proving the theme’s continuous acceptance and implementation.
Conclusion
The article under review is a critical eye-opener to anyone intending to advance knowledge on the significantly new leadership model. Monahan (2012) provides essential background information that one would not get without going through the over 30 sources studied in the article. The work is highly ordered, comprehensive, and authoritative. Coming at a time when ethical leadership faces challenges makes the article very important. The article notes that reading relevant information is necessary for persons with inborn moral management capacity to become the leaders the world requires. That is because information nurtures, with many people in headship positions trying to copy what others do. Reading the work under review thus promises to make one an ethical leader. Monahan clarifies this under the personal integrity chapter, where he notes that a leader must utilize academic and research works to learn how to grow morally. The argument reiterates the essence of reading and, especially, understanding the various concepts in the article. Ethical leadership is what the world requires presently, a time when humanity continuously lacks sense due to the search for the extra coin. Surprising news concerning organizations’ unethical dealings involving customers’ details reiterates the need to reintroduce humanity and ethics in the investment world, something Monahan contributes substantially.
References
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