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Article published In: Strategic Communication: Beyond nation cultural adaption, images and identity
Edited by Hassan Abu Bakar and Bahtiar Bin Mohamad
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 28:1] 2018
► pp. 20–40

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Ethical leadership

From Western foundation to Chinese context

 | University of Florida
 | University of Queensland
 | Hong Kong Baptist University
Published online: 19 January 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00002.she
Abstract
Mainstream ethical leadership studies largely adopt Brown, M. E., Trevino, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 97(2), 117–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar conceptualization and operationalization. Ethical leadership has been found to predict positive individual and organizational outcomes. An examination of the mainstream literature reveals several weaknesses that include the lack of a well-developed theoretical framework, the marginalized role of communication in leadership processes, and a low correspondence between conceptualization and operationalization. In addition to these weaknesses, Chinese ethical leadership studies meet additional challenges regarding the relative impacts of universality and cultural specificity. The Chinese literature consists of empirical research adopting the mainstream Western ethical leadership construct, point-of-view articles stressing Chinese cultural roots, and research considering both universal and cultural characteristics. This paper argues that future development in Chinese ethical leadership research can begin by conceiving a construct model that denotes communication as a key leadership behavior, explicates the relative importance of universal versus cultural influences, and defines key cultural components.
Article outline
  • The mainstream Western foundation of ethical leadership
    • The conceptualization of ethical leadership
    • Theoretical propositions
    • The operationalization of ethical leadership
    • The influence process and outcomes
  • The communication aspect of ethical leadership
  • Culture and ethical leadership
  • Chinese ethical leadership
    • Ethical leadership examined as a mainstream construct
    • Chinese culture-based ethical leadership
    • Ethical leadership co-influenced by universal and cultural properties
  • Evaluation of the three approaches to Chinese ethical leadership
  • Future development in Chinese ethical leadership studies
    • Construct model development
    • Cultural specificity development
    • Leadership communication behavior development
    • Operationalization development
  • Applications in Chinese organizations
  • References
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