The effect of Virtuous Leadership on Organisational Culture and the Ethical Behaviour of Employees

Abstract

Leaders are regarded as custodians of organisational ethics and are deemed to inspire an ethical culture and to instil values entrenched with integrity in the organisation. The rampant corruption and ethics failures as well as leadership and employee incompetence that have blemished the reputation of once reputable institutions, may be an indication that South Africa is experiencing a critical shortage of ethical leaders (Reddy, 2017). With human beings being creatures of mimicry, the study hypothesised that the effect of moral leadership, through its endorsement of policies, frameworks and procedures may be more potent if complimented by visible evidence of leadership adherence to its endorsed policies, frameworks and procedures in an effort to promote an ethical organisational culture and to persuade employees to behave ethically.

The opinions of 11 participants were solicited through semi-structured interviews, with the aim of determining the effect that virtuous leadership has on the organisational culture and their ethical behaviour as employees. Furthermore, participants identified virtues that characterised virtuous leadership. The empirical findings of this study indicated that virtuous leadership has a positive influence on organisational culture and the ethical behaviour of employees. A slight majority of the participants indicated that the presence of the identified virtues had a positive influence on their inclination to behave in an ethical manner. Similarly, these participants indicated that unethical leadership at various levels of the institution under review could engender unethical behaviour amongst them