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Ethical leadership in Chinese organizations: Developing a scale

Frontiers of Business Research in China volume 5, pages 179–198 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

In light of a series of ethical scandals in China in recent years, this research aims to develop a reliable and valid scale to measure ethical leadership, namely the “ethical leadership measure (ELM).” Our results show that ELM is strongly and positively correlated with scales for authentic leadership, ethical leadership, idealized influence, and a recently-developed leadership virtues questionnaire (LVQ); and negatively correlated with laissez-faire leadership and passive management by exception. ELM is also found to be positively related to followers’ job satisfaction, affective commitment, trust in leader, organizational citizenship behavior, and moral identity, and negatively related to followers’ intention to quit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Xiaoming Zheng, Xi Zhang & Lu Zhang

  2. School of Graduate Professional Studies, Pennsylvania State University, Malvern, PA, 19355-1443, USA

    Weichun Zhu

  3. School of Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Haibo Yu

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  1. Xiaoming Zheng
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  2. Weichun Zhu
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  3. Haibo Yu
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  4. Xi Zhang
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  5. Lu Zhang
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Correspondence to Xiaoming Zheng.

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Zheng, X., Zhu, W., Yu, H. et al. Ethical leadership in Chinese organizations: Developing a scale. Front. Bus. Res. China 5, 179–198 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11782-011-0127-2

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