ANSWER EACH OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS OR POST STATEMENTS. MUST BE 150 WORDS (PLEASE), WRITE IN 3RD PERSON. ONLY ONE REFERENCE CAN BE USED FOR EACH ANSWER.
Part 1
Q1. It depends upon the definition of ethical based on the culture. People can be perceived as ethical and be very unethical outside of that environment. I would like to believe that if a leader is perceived to be ethical, then they are truly leading with ethical practices. For example, a religious leader is perceived to be ethical. They present themselves as ethical. A "scandal" occurs and they might be having an extramarital affair, stealing from the organization or acting inappropriately. Is this ethical behavior? Does this activity affect their ability to spread the gospel and run the church? A leader in this instance can faithfully treat everyone right, lead a successful church and run the church like a business. There are some followers that are not forgiving and what the followers really have to identify is that can a leader be unethical personally and still be ethically efficient publicly?
Can a leader be toxic and ethical at the same time? Characteristics of toxic leadership include exhibiting negative behavior that tends to decay followers' morale, motivation, self-esteem and they impose unrealistic workloads on the followers (Mehta and Maheshwari, 2013). Toxic leaders like power and excel in lying, misrepresenting and withholding information to make his or herself look good. Typically this type of leadership harms the organization and pushes employees to leave. When a leader is toxic, I do not think they can still be ethical. The behavior and characteristics of this type of leadership does not fall within the ethical leader definition.
Mehta, S. and Makeshwari, G.C. (2013). Consequence of toxic leadership on employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment, Journal of Contemporary Management Research, 8(2), 1-23.
Part 2
Q1. Chekwa et al. (2014) performed a study regarding business ethics. The problem statement for the research will identify the center of the effect of various factors on productivity and management as they relate to ethics within business. The study also identifies if the perception of leadership's ethical values will impact ethical behavior. Research questions include determining the effects of leadership on ethical behavior within an educated workforce, and to understand the role of leadership and the effect on subordinates of the organization. The final issue dealt with how some organizations with a code of ethics and have leaders engaged in public ethical scandals in the company when the companies have behaved unethically.
The purpose of the research is to examine the standards established by leaders to ensure that all employees act in an ethical manner. This could be a combination of a code of ethics, ethics training within the organization and the perception of the leader's ethics. The methodology of the study included the distribution of a self-administered survey with 19 questions. The sample population was 30 adult working online students. Twenty-one surveys were returned. The survey questions focused on perception and employer leadership as they related to ethical responsibility.
Scholarly research follows a specific format. All of these pieces of information are important because they provide the premise for the research. It is important to know what problem the research solves, the purpose of the research study, the questions that will be answered by the study, and the method in which the data was collected. They form the foundation of the research project or study.
Chekwa, C., Ouhirra, L., Thomas, E., &Chukwuanu, M. (2014). An examination of the effects of leadership on business ethics: empirical study. International Journal of Business & Public Administration, 11(1), 48-65.
Q2. Ethical practices are critical to the success of an organization or business. In reading the assigned article authored by Chekwa, Ouhirra, Thomas, and Chukwuanu (2014), the research question and purposeis presented to examine the effects of leadership based on the demonstration of ethical behavior within an educated workforce. The reasoning behind the study is to identify the effects on the workforce when a leader speaks to demonstrating ethical behavior but may or may not exhibit ethical behavior themselves. The collection assertions that survey observations of leadership behavior are utilized as a methodology to comprise information in the study. The study takes into account workforce experiences as related to personal definitions of ethical behavior. Each piece of the empirical research study proves to be important as the title, problem, purpose, and research questions will greatly improve the quality of the research by producing consistency in research planning and reflecting upon alignment (Newman and Covrig, 2013).
Newman, I., &Covrig, D. M. (2013). Building consistency between title, problem statement, purpose, and research questions to improve the quality of research plans and reports. New Horizons in Adult Education & Human Resource Development, 25(1), 70-79.
Q3. Chekwa, Ouhirra, Thomas, and Chukwuanu (2014) assert the problem in examining the effects of leadership on business ethics lies within companies who have codes of ethics of which employees of said company are unaware of the codes existence. Additionally, companies whose leaders participate in unethical behavior are responsible for the unethical behavior of followers and subordinates. The purpose of the research is to scrutinize the framework of leaders who set the standard for employees acting in an ethical manner. The research has two questions, (a) perceptions of leader behavior does have an effect on employee ethical behavior, and (b) perceptions of leader behavior does not have an effect on employee ethical behavior. The researcher's methods and research design disseminated a self-administered survey to 30 students. Of note, the researchers allude to a limitation of this study revolves around a sample population of convenience. In other words, the researcher's used students rather than employees in a company and thus, the results cannot be used in a broad spectrum of companies and other cultures.
The pieces of information used in scholarly research are critically important for three reasons (a) the problem statement, purpose statement, research questions, and methodology serves as an ethical standard for scholarly research, and (b) the standard provides focus and clarity for the reader as a logical path for information processing, analysis, and synthesis. Without these standards, researchers will most likely be on their own programs which will call into question the authenticity, authority and validity of all research.
Reference
Chekwa, C., Ouhirra, L., Thomas, E., &Chukwuanu, M. (2014). An examination of the effects of leadership on business ethics: empirical study. International Journal of Business & Public Administration, 11(1), 48-65.