Ethical Leadership Essential for an Ethical Environment

Abstract

High profile scandals and ethical misconduct in companies around the world have brought about a renewed interest in business ethics, specifically the need for a better understanding of the roles and responsibilities of leadership in promoting ethical behaviour. Against this background, a quantitative analysis was conducted among companies operating in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province's automotive industry. The aim of the study was to determine the ethics-related roles played by the leadership at these organisations and the extent to which they contributed to establishing and maintaining an ethical organisational environment. A structured online questionnaire was used to collect the data. The results revealed that the organisations in the sample are highly ethical due to ethical and committed leadership and moreover the presence of ethics related interventions, including a code of ethics, adherence to internal and external governance requirements, compliance with legislation and encouragement and disclosure of unethical behaviour. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p897