Accountability and Moral Competence Promote Ethical Leadership

Abstract

Accountability and moral competence are two factors that may have a positive effect on ethical leadership in organizations. This study utilized a survey methodology to investigate the relationship among accountability, moral competence, and ethical leadership in a sample of 103 leaders from a variety of industries and different countries. Accountability was found to be a significant positive predictor of ethical leadership. Moral competence was also found to moderate this relationship such that increases in moral competence enhanced the positive effects of accountability on ethical leadership. The results of the study suggest that organizations can increase ethical leadership throughout the company via accountability (especially selfaccountability) and moral competence by training their leaders to use self-monitoring behaviors and increasing moral education.

Self-accountability in the Literature of Leadership

“…When a leader has a well-developed sense of personal wisdom for a certain situation, the leader has the ability to hold himself/herself accountable for his/her behavior. Consequently, scholarshave considered self-accountability in the leadership realm falls in the contexts of self-identity, performance improvement and personal wisdom (Dhiman et al, 2018;Dose & Klimoski, 1995;Ghanem & Castelli, 2019;Musah, 2011;Peloza et al, 2013).…”

“…Interested scholars have viewed self-accountability as an important way to improve and develop leaders' performance (Artley, 2001;Ghanem & Castelli, 2019;Galindo, 2009;Mansouri & Rowney, 2014). Self-accountability helps leaders to shape their own behavior considering what accounts their appearance and behavior may elicit (e.g., Hollander, 2013).…”

“…According to Mordhah (2012), self-accountability helps leaders to avoid oppression and act equally with their subordinates thus self-accountable leaders set their choices and decisions to be along with the ethical and sustainable manners (Peloza et al, 2013). accountability and moral-cognitive development, where the self-accountable leaders demonstrate high moral utilization (Ghanem & Castelli, 2019). Self-accountability comprisesthe moral virtue of a leader where it refers to internal principles that help the leader recognize right from wrong.…”

“…Increased self-accountability may occur by enhancing self-monitoring in organizational leaders (Ghanem & Castelli, 2019;Bergsteiner & Avery, 2010;De Cremer et al, 2001). In the absence of efficient external accountability conditions, a leader's self-accountability may play a critical role in affecting her/his decisions and actions (Dhiman et al, 2018).…”

“…The organizational context of leadership accountability involves accountability of a leader by self and others (Ghanem & Castelli, 2019;Bergsteiner, 2011;Dose & Klimoski, 1995). The traditional view of accountability has been to treat it as a practice of external control from others (i.e., other-accountability).…”