Introduction
Nowadays, the problem of leadership is acknowledged as one of the most significant problems of the business environment. In their article “Ethical leadership: The effect on employees”, Atiya Alshammari, Naser N. Almutairi and Shebaib Fahad Thuwaini, scholars from Management Department, College of Business, Public Authority of Applied Education and Training, Kuwait, studied ethical leadership and its influence on employees.
Summarizing the Article
The authors of the article established a task to examine the influence of ethical leadership on the efficiency, performance, and behaviour of employees. They made an attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of ethical leadership and its possible impact on the internal conditions of an organization.
First, the authors give a definition of ethical leadership. To their opinion, this term indicates the aspect of organizational leadership, which encourages to make a decision on the basis of ethical principles. Nevertheless, a fuller definition of ethical leadership is lacking.
Next, the authors study the history of ethical leadership. According to them, it emerged from traditional leadership under the influence of the challenges of the business environment. However, the same can be stated about every leadership style. Then, the authors claim, managers realised the importance of proper HRM, which laid the basis for ethical leadership. The next stage in the story of the development of ethical leadership is institutionalization when scholars started to research the topic.
Then, the researchers mention different patterns of ethical leadership as seen by other scholars, among which are the following:
- leaders devote their time and energy to business tasks extensively;
- leaders exploit values and ethics;
- leaders implement the values in practices.
Next, the authors cite other researches to establish the core functions of ethical leadership, such as constructing ethical paradigms and addressing ethical dilemmas.
The next topic is the influence of leaders on employees where the authors mention empowering, increasing efficiency, compliance behaviour, and the promotion of responsible conduct. The authors also discuss the advantages and challenges of ethical leadership in the public sector.
The methodology section is quite unclear. While it is obvious that the authors used literature analysis and performed literature search by keywords, the other numerous approaches and methods mentioned in the section do not look relevant to the article. The conclusion is unclear as well. It is clear that ethical leadership has a positive impact on the attitudes and performance of the employees, but the conclusion has to be more detailed and understandable.
Advantages and Shortcomings
The article surely has some positive points, as well as negative ones. As for the advantages, the article is detailed, it provides a comprehensive explanation of various aspects of ethical leadership, such as its history, purpose, impact, etc. The authors performed an extensive research in the current literature relevant to the topic. The work is really helpful for understanding what ethical leadership is.
As for the shortcomings, the article contains almost nothing about the authors’ opinion; it is, in fact, a vast literature review. The methodology and conclusion sections are weak and unclear. The main gap of the article is that only the public sector is studied despite the fact that neither the name nor the introduction warns that only the public sector is going to be studied.
Conclusion
The authors of the article intended to study the effect of ethical leadership on employees. They presented a detailed analysis of various aspects of ethical leadership and a well-prepared literature review. However, the researchers studied only the public sector, said little about their own opinion, and provided unconvincing methodology and conclusion sections.