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The beginning of the twenty-first century was plagued with extensive, evasive, and disheartening U.S. business and political leadership failures. Despite the accounting profession’s standards of professional ethics, accounting as a profession also was tainted with various ethical leadership indiscretions during this time. In response to these ethical leadership failings, renewed interest in developing accounting professionals with strong ethical principles and ethical leadership behaviors emerged. In many firms, training and development in ethical behavior is now at the forefront of communications and professional development efforts. The question remains, however, can the profession instill in its members the importance of ethical conduct? Can ethical leaders be developed who model ethical behavior? In response to the call for leaders who are ethical and moral, this research examined a model of ethical leadership and its impact on leader effectiveness for leaders within the accounting profession. The analysis shows that ethical and transformational leadership behaviors make independent and significant contributions to explaining leader effectiveness.

Recently, ethical leadership has become a widely studied research topic. Simultaneously, many studies have begun to emphasise the role of interpersonal communication competence (ICC) in successful leadership. However, there has been little discussion on the links between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. To address this research gap, this study aims to compare and combine the research traditions of ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. The study is based on two literature reviews examining (a) ethical leadership (substudy 1; N = 27) and (b) leaders’ ICC (substudy 2; N = 18). The research questions are as follows: (a) How are the requirements of leaders’ ICC noticed in the literature of ethical leadership? (substudy 1) (b) How are the requirements of ethical leadership noticed in the literature of leaders’ ICC? (substudy 2) The findings reveal that (a) studies in ethical leadership rarely pay attention to leaders’ ICC and (b) studies in leaders’ ICC do not often discuss ethical aspects of ICC, at least explicitly. While a larger sample would have been preferred, the study contributes to previous research by addressing a research gap between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC and suggests integrating these research traditions to better understand the nature of ethics and ICC in leadership. By promoting novel interdisciplinary research perspectives, the study provides a foundation for further research and development of (a) a competence-based approach to ethical leadership and (b) an ethics-focused approach to competent leadership communication.

This study seeks to find an interactive effect between ethical leadership (EL) and corporate governance (CG) variables and investigate whether they would affect employee organizational citizenship behavior (EOCB) in a Malaysian organizational setting. The collected data from the 300 accounting/finance department employees were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Partial Least Square–Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM; SmartPLS 3.0). Several primary results confirmed a coherent significant relationship between EL and ethical climate (EC), EL and EOCB, EL and CG, and CG and organizational success. Theoretically, it implies a more enhanced EOCB literature on how it can be infused in an organization. It also offers valuable knowledge by providing organizations with several insights concerning the improvement of EOCB, enabling the organization to achieve its desired success and, more importantly, how the findings could contribute directly and indirectly to emerging markets in terms of their industrial and financial performance.

The chapter examines to what extent research from social cognitive neuroscience can inform ethical leadership. We evaluate the contribution of brain research to the understanding of ethical leaders as moral persons as well the understanding of their role as moral managers. The areas of social cognitive neuroscience that mirror these two aspects of ethical leadership comprise research relating to understanding oneself, understanding others, and the relationship between the self and others. Within these, we deem it relevant for ethical leadership to incorporate research findings about self-reflection, self-regulation, theory of mind, empathy, trust, and fairness. The chapter highlights social cognitive neuroscience research in these areas and discusses its actual and potential contributions to ethical leadership. The chapter thereby engages also with the broader discussion on the neuroscience of leadership. We suggest new avenues for future research in the field of leadership ethics and responsibility.

The Covid-19 pandemic has continued to place intense economic and social strains on global economies and families. While rising poverty and unemployment have been worsened by the crisis, small businesses are under increasing pressure to manage burgeoning uncertainties and the corresponding economic and social challenges. No doubt, the deleterious effects of the crisis has intensified pressure on small business leaders to sustain their role in delivering responsible services.

Scholars argue that in crises, like Covid-19, the values of small business leaders are placed under scrutiny. Despite laws and regulations guiding ethical leadership especially in business, there exist challenges that are complex and not easy to address, and the pandemic situation further adds to them. The implication is that small business leaders are increasingly associated with accountability problems.

Navigating this period will require strategies for addressing the weaknesses in an existing leadership capacity in the delivery of business services, and successfully implementing ethical standards. This becomes crucial since the pandemic as an added challenge can spur on unethical leadership. The highlights of some of the key elements impacting ethical leadership during crises like Covid-19. This chapter also explores how business leaders can influence responsible behavioural change among employees for them to be creative and innovative. Additionally, an attempt will be made towards assisting small business leaders in finding responsible solutions.

In this chapter, we propose that society- and organization-level social context cues influence the endorsement of ethical leadership. More specifically, we propose that certain organizational culture values provide proximal contextual cues that people use to form perceptions of the importance of ethical leadership. We further propose that specific societal culture values and societal corruption provide a set of more distal, yet salient, environmental cues about the importance of ethical leadership. Using data from Project GLOBE, we provide evidence that both proximal and distal contextual cues were related to perceptions of four dimensions of ethical leadership as important for effective leadership, including character/integrity, altruism, collective motivation, and encouragement.

Ethical leadership is of great interest in the accounting profession. After numerous ethical and moral leadership failures over the last two decades, where accounting professionals played a significant role in the fraudulent behaviors that impacted individuals, businesses, and the economy as a whole, the profession has renewed its focus on promoting ethical behavior. To date, research contributing to improving ethical behavior in the accounting profession has been minimal. A plethora of research has identified the deficiency of ethical reasoning and conduct in accounting students and professionals but has provided minimal recommendations on how to improve the status quo. Earlier studies have also found that values based, ethical and transformational leadership behaviors contribute to leader effectiveness in the accounting and business professions. What has not been studied or identified are the specific ethical and transformational leadership behaviors that should be sought or developed in professionals that would improve the ethical conduct and effectiveness of accounting leaders. This study seeks to address the gap in the literature by using neuro network analysis to understand the individual components of ethical and transformational leadership that result in leaders that are more effective in the profession. It concludes that in this study of 212 accounting professionals, ethical leaders that: (a) communicate openly, (b) are trustworthy, (c) consider and support their subordinates’ interest and (d) are altruistic, with a selfless concern for the well-being of others and transformational leaders that encourage their followers to think creatively are innovative are more effective leaders.

This chapter critically reviews the literature on authentic leadership (AL) that emerged in response to scandals in private- and public-sector organisations, drawing on theories, concepts and methods from other disciplines. The author finds that AL lacks a consensus definition, and that quantitative research has largely been at the level of employees rather than executives or board members. The review reveals 12 categories of criticisms. Schaefler advocates inductive qualitative research on the major concerns of executive leaders and means of addressing them via group dynamics, maintaining that exploring processes of AL in real-world settings would complement existing quantitative research and contribute to the development and extension of AL theory.

This chapter explores leadership failure by way of performance appraisal. A series of experiences in two different organizations with two different managers is examined through the lens of four critical performance appraisal mistakes – lack of objectivism (assessment based upon own experiences, beliefs and expectations), freshness (relying on recent events with little consideration for past behavior), causal attribution (flawed interpretation of employee behavior) and first impression (assessment based upon something learned from early introduction to employee, often the first encounter) These mistakes represent a continuum of infractions for which ethical leadership is offered as an antidote. Ethical leadership strategies are provided to support employees, managers, teams, and organizations in counteracting, avoiding, surviving and eliminating these mistakes, respectively.

Achieving sustainable development in heart-wrenching milestone in the face of the current pandemic (COVID-19) situation is becoming a key factor for competitiveness of organizations. Human Resource Development professionals are deemed to be in an ideal position to facilitate the organizational sustainable development by bringing about contextual changes in the workplace and by changing the behavioral patterns of employees. The COVID-19 pandemic has engendered the disruption across societies, raising challenges for the organizations besides other institutions to play their imperative role for a sustainable development pathway. One such way of striving by organizations would be to embark among employees a spark of bringing a change among its employees from being self-centered to societal-oriented by instilling among them the kindle of DSIW (Desire to have Significant Impact through Work). It is the desire of making substantial impact toward society and others' lives, which is evoked under ethical leadership and perceived ethical Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Thus, we have identified the underpinning values of being an ethical leader in wake of contributing toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) toward bringing a societal perspective among employees by infusing the altruistic desire, that is, DSIW among employees. This chapter is broadly divided into two main sections. The first section highlights the contextual settings and the underlying mechanisms that lead to DSIW. The second section draws the attention toward the implication of DSIW for employees in bringing about social change with respect to sustainability, social well-being, as well for the sustainable development of organizations and for positive socioeconomic consequences.