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Conceptualization and Measurement of Virtuous Leadership: Doing Well by Doing Good

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Abstract

Despite a long history in eastern and western culture of defining leadership in terms of virtues and character, their significance for guiding leader behavior has largely been confined to the ethics literature. As such, agreement concerning the defining elements of virtuous leadership and their measurement is lacking. Drawing on both Confucian and Aristotelian concepts, we define virtuous leadership and distinguish it conceptually from several related perspectives, including virtues-based leadership in the Positive organizational behavior literature, and from ethical and value-laden (spiritual, servant, charismatic, transformational, and authentic) leadership. Then, two empirical studies are presented that develop and validate the Virtuous Leadership Questionnaire (VLQ), an 18-item behaviorally based assessment of the construct. Among other findings, we show that the VLQ accounts for variance in several outcome variables, even after self-assessed leader virtue and subordinate-rated social and personalized leader charisma are controlled.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the feedback and insights provided by the two anonymous reviewers. We also appreciate the comments that Peter Bycio has made during the course of developing the manuscript. This study received financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Centre for Business, George Brown College, 290 Adelaide Street East, Toronto, ON, M5T 2T9, Canada

    Gordon Wang

  2. DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4M4, Canada

    Rick D. Hackett

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  1. Gordon Wang
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  2. Rick D. Hackett
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Correspondence to Gordon Wang.

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Wang, G., Hackett, R.D. Conceptualization and Measurement of Virtuous Leadership: Doing Well by Doing Good. J Bus Ethics 137, 321–345 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2560-1

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