Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ethical Leadership and Organizations: An Analysis of Leadership in the Manufacturing Industry Based on the Perceived Leadership Integrity Scale

  • Published:
Journal of Business Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Ethics has been identified as a significant issue among those in leadership positions. The purpose of this research was to assess the ethics and integrity of leaders in today’s manufacturing environment as perceived by their employees. This study included a total of 10 manufacturing companies in the United States. A total of 59 surveys were used to calculate data for this study. A demographic survey and the Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PLIS) were used to collect data from respondents. The research addressed the following question: To what degree are leaders in the manufacturing industry considered “low ethical,” “moderate ethical,” and “high ethical” on the PLIS? It was determined through descriptive data analysis that the majority of supervisors in this study, as rated by their employees were highly ethical. Male and female employees equally rated their supervisors as highly ethical. Employees in the age category (18–25) rated their supervisors higher ethically than other age groups in the␣study. However, considering ethnicity categories, African-Americans scored their supervisors lower ethically than the European-American category. The education level of the employees did not provide any significant findings in rating their supervisors.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Abbreviations

PLIS:

Perceived Leader Integrity Scale

References

  • Baker, B. and B. Craig: 2006, ‹When Actions Speak Louder than Words: The Relative Importance of Leader Behaviors in Predicting Global Impressions of Integrity’, in M. Hargis (chair), Leadership, It’s All Relative: Applying Relative Importance Statistics to Leadership. Symposium Conducted at the Annual Conference of the Academy of Management in Atlanta, Georgia, August 15, 2006

  • Barrile, S. (2002). A question of ethics. Business Date, 10(2), 1–4.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bass, B. M. and Steidlmeier P. (1999). Ethics, character, and authentic transformational Leadership behavior. The Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181–218. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(99)00016-8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buono, A. (2002). Ethics and excuses book. Personnel Psychology, 55(2), 518.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burns, J.M. 1978, Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clements, C., & Washbush, J.B. (1999). The two faces of leadership: Considering the dark side of leader-follower dynamics. Journal of Workplace Learning, 11(5), 170–177. doi:10.1108/13665629910279509

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Craig, S.B., & Gustafson, S.B. (1998). Perceived leader integrity scale: An instrument for assessing employee perceptions of leader integrity. The Leadership Quarterly, 9(2), 127–145. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(98)90001-7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drucker, P.F. 1999, Management challenges for the 21st Century. New York: HarperCollins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fulmer, R. (2004). The challenge of ethical leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 33(3), 307–317. doi:10.1016/j.orgdyn.2004.06.007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Games are for losers: 2002, Harvard Business Review 80(3), 64+.

  • Kapstein, E. (2001). The corporate ethics crusade. Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), 80(5), 105.

    Google Scholar 

  • National Business Ethics Survey: 2005, www.ethics.org/download.asp?fl=/downloads/2005_NBES_Summary.pdf. Accessed 8 Nov 2007

  • Northouse, P.G. 2004, Leadership: Theory and practice (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parry, K.W., & Proctor-Thomson, S.B. (2002). Perceived integrity of transformational leaders in organizational settings. Journal of Business Ethics, 35, 75–96. doi:10.1023/A:1013077109223

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trevino, L., Hartman, L., & Brown, M. (2000). Moral person and moral manager: How executives develop a reputation for ethical leadership. California Management Review, 42(4), 128.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trevino, L., L. Klebe, G. Weaver and M. Brown: 2000b, ‹It’s Lovely at the Top: Comparing Senior Managers’ and Employees’ Perceptions of Organizational Ethics’, Academy of Management Proceedings, 1–6

  • U.S. Bureau of the Census: 2000, ‹Census 2000 Summary␣File 3, Matrix P49’, http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_QTP30&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U. Accessed 9 March 2008

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LMU, Harrogate, TN, 37752, U.S.A.

    Jack McCann & Roger Holt

Authors
  1. Jack McCann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roger Holt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jack McCann.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

McCann, J., Holt, R. Ethical Leadership and Organizations: An Analysis of Leadership in the Manufacturing Industry Based on the Perceived Leadership Integrity Scale. J Bus Ethics 87, 211–220 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9880-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9880-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation