What Is An Ethical Leader Like? €“ A Study Based On Business Students' Opinions

Nowadays, ethical behaviour, namely responsible behaviour towards the stakeholders of a company, is more and more required. Companies fulfil this expectation if their leaders are committed to an ethical approach, and if the whole organization is permeated with a moral and ethical approach through their example. Therefore, managers play a key role in the ethical operation of companies, and although bottom-up initiatives and objectives are important, they will have no effect without the support of leaders. The ideal situation is if the manager is ethically in control, both of his subordinates and of his company, from the beginning, i.e. the internal demands and the external expectations are both met. In my present study, I aim to investigate ethical leadership behaviour among students in higher education in economics, as most of them are likely to be leaders in their later careers. In my study, I first review the most important and most frequently cited definitions and theories of ethical leadership. Then, with the help of the Ethical Leadership Scale developed by Brown, Treviño and Harrison (2005), I examine what the students of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Debrecen think of leaders’ ethical behaviour. In my research, 269 students took part, evaluating the 10 items of the ELS. They responded on the basis of their expectations of an ethical leader; that is to say they did not evaluate a particular individual. In qualitative analyses, I used averages, standard deviations and simpler statistical functions in order to find relationships among students’ answers. In our students' opinion, the most important traits of an ethical leader are the following: “can be trusted†; “makes fair and balanced decisions†and “listens to what employees have to say†. At the same time an ethical leader’s least important trait is: “disciplines employees who violate ethical standards†. Women consider “listens to what employees have to say†and “defines success not just by results but also the way that they are obtained†more important. Regarding smoking, previous ethical studies and work experiences, I also tried to search for relationships in students’ answers; however, I found only some significant differences in my data base. Considering the respondents’ status as full time or correspondence students, there was no significant difference in the answers. In some of the questions I examined, I found a moderate correlation, which means that values of certain items move together among the 10 items.