A PROXIMACIÓN DOCTRINAL AL CONCEPTO DE ESTADO CIVIL

As seen earlier (sections 3.1.1, 3.1.2 and 3.1.3) extant empirical ethical leadership research appears predominantly positivist in character, but its methodological origins can be traced to a seminal piece of qualitative research carried out by Treviño et al. (2003) . The authors justify the use of an inductive qualitative methodology (Conger, 1998) claiming that, not only is the ethical leadership phenomenon complex, and likely to possess symbolic and subjective aspects, but it is also difficult to capture with other methodologies. They conducted 40 semi- structured interviews, 20 with corporate ethics/compliance officers and 20 with senior executives representing large American companies. The latter were members of the ‘top management team’ and entirely male (Treviño et al., 2003,

p9); all but one of the industries/contexts were commercial enterprises. Despite the limitations regarding sample diversity this groundbreaking study provided new insights. Ethical leaders were accordingly, people-orientated, their actions and traits were visible. They set standards and demonstrated accountability, and crucially, ethical awareness influenced decision-making.

Treviño et al. (2003) criticised the leadership literature at the time for being too focused on characteristics. They noted that extant constructs such as Burns’ (1978) transformational leadership did not reflect, nor emphasise a leader’s concern for people, or how important exemplar role modelling was for ethical leader behaviour. Ethical leadership included adherence to principles, and the reinforcing of standards. This values-based and fair approach was transmitted through the leader’s exceptional communication skills, and decision-making. Ethical leaders possessed broad self-awareness, and a concern for community and society, and were capable of seeing beyond short-term goals. In effect, they could understand the ends, but were also concerned with the means. Whilst the research had tangible, important implications, it was weak on actuals. There was no expansion of stakeholders, community or society, and only a cursory mention of decision-making. Moreover, Treviño et al. (2003) recommended that their results be used to:

‘Develop more complex and precise measures of the ethical dimension of executive leadership… Survey methodologies can better answer questions, such as which dimensions of executive ethical leadership are most important and how they work together, what factors influence the development of ethical leadership in executives, and what organizational and employee outcomes it influences’ (p30).

Sadly, the authors followed their own advice and conducted a further study (Brown et al., 2005). Its explicit intention was to develop and test an ethical leadership scale (ELS). The original qualitative study appeared to be,what Bryman (2004) described as purely preparatory. Furthermore, the follow-up study with its 48-item survey only warranted qualitative attention to uncover whether the newly devised ELS would be up to the task. This involved carrying out 20 in-depth

were asked to describe a supervisor they regarded as an ethical leader. The authors concluded that they had developed a content valid instrument. They did not seek a comparable sample, or consider canvassing senior executives from not- for-profit organisations. Opportunities to uncover additional dimensions were ignored. Brown et al. (2005) dispensed with qualitative methods. The survey would now undergo a comprehensive process of quantitative validation involving further unsuitable respondents, from a variety of inappropriate settings.

This was a key paradigm shift and it resulted in a plethora of quantitative studies. Quietly though, qualitative researchers (Morgan and Thiagarajan, 2009, Resick et al., 2011, April et al., 2011, Heres and Lasthuizen, 2012, Eisenbeiß, 2012, Frisch and Huppenbauer, 2014) were carrying out research designed to enlarge, not reduce the scholarly picture. Resick et al. (2011) used ‘qualitative methods to explore culture-specific behaviors and characteristics of ethical and unethical leadership’ (p 440). They pooled from six societies (USA, Ireland, Germany, the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and the Republic of China; Taiwan) to enable a ‘more complete and differentiated perspective on beliefs about ethical leadership across and within cultures…which does not restrict responses to a pre- defined list of attributes’ (p437). Due to the nature of the research and its insights, they suggested that the findings could be ‘critical for developing systems of mentoring and development in context, rather than attempting to implement a one size fits all approach’ (p452). Although their study was a departure from their previous quantitative body of work (Resick et al., 2006, Keating et al., 2007, Martin et al., 2009), it also relied upon a well-worn respondent pool known as The Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organisational Effectiveness) cultural clusters. This framework was devised as a result of extensive data gathered in the mid-1990s, to explore and group societies with similar cultural characteristics and dominant leadership preferences. But its use in their most recent study (Resick et al., 2011) remains questionable. Of the six societies canvassed by Resick et al. (2011) , only three were actually in the ten global clusters. Are the GLOBE data clusters still reliable, and current for use in more recent work given recent political, and economic changes?

Of the scholars to explore cultural understandings without reliance upon the GLOBE data, Morgan and Thiagarajan (2009) conducted a phenomenological (pilot) study to offer new conceptualisations regarding ethics, common-sense and rationality, they found ethics to be ‘internal to each person though influenced by culture and nature’ (p487). Heres and Lasthuizen (2012) adopted a multi- dimensional qualitative approach, canvassing from public, private and hybrid sectors to elicit perceptual differences across and between the contexts. Their study sought to provide a more detailed explication of what ethical leadership should look like. Whilst they found that the moral person, moral manager components of ethical leadership, as described by Treviño et al. (2000) were ‘universally stable’ (Heres and Lasthuizen, 2012, p460), there was concern regarding how the ‘components’ were ‘interpreted and enacted’ (p460). Their final recommendation was to develop a context-sensitive measurement instrument to meet these needs. Sadly, confirming Bryman’s (2004) well-worn criticism that qualitative research lacked cumulativeness and appeared preparatory.

Frisch and Huppenbauer (2014) attempted to clarify the meaning of ‘normatively appropriate behavior’ (Brown et al., 2005, p120). They examined its impact on stakeholders by identifying further antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership. They carried out 17 qualitative face-to-face interviews with mainly Swiss executives from a variety of commercial companies who were thought to possess ‘an outstanding ethical reputation’ (p27). According to the authors, key to their success was the adoption of a qualitative exploratory approach which enabled them to make claims regarding the importance of the ethical leader’s role models, how they influenced ethical leader behaviour, and that ethical leadership was an internal perspective. This was in contrast to extant research where the focus had been on the importance of leaders as role models for employee behaviour. This felt like a return to the original methodological principles of Treviño et al. (2003) . Although Frisch and Huppenbauer (2014) felt that their methods were capable of deepening understandings, and could provide new hypotheses to explore, the study revealed methodological shortcomings,

Such issues were also echoed in the work of April et al. (2010, 2011). Their qualitative study regarding the enablers and stumbling blocks to leading ethically concerned the views of 646 middle managers that were also enrolled on MBA programmes at two South African Universities. On the surface this appeared to be a significant departure from the use of pre-scripted scenarios. But close examination of the data revealed that the respondents simply used and reflected the language of a provided definition. Although this could cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the data, the results were impressive. Arguably, the study could have been made more robust had they simply asked respondents to conceptualise ethics for themselves instead of providing a definition heavily punctuated with explicit terminology, and biased towards the eventual outcomes.