Elsevier

The Leadership Quarterly

Volume 22, Issue 1, February 2011, Pages 51-69
The Leadership Quarterly

Ethical leadership at work questionnaire (ELW): Development and validation of a multidimensional measure

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.12.007Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper describes the development and validation of the multi-dimensional Ethical Leadership at Work (ELW) questionnaire. Based on theory, interviews and a student sample, we developed seven ethical leader behaviors (fairness, integrity, ethical guidance, people orientation, power sharing, role clarification, and concern for sustainability). We then tested the factor structure in two employee samples (first common-source, EFA; next multi-source, CFA). To establish construct validity we related ethical leader behaviors to other leadership styles and employee attitudes in Study 1. The expected pattern of relationships emerged, e.g., positive relationships with satisfaction and commitment, and negative ones with cynicism. The results suggest that the ELW scales have sound psychometric properties and good construct validity. In Study 2, using a multi-source sample, the ELW behaviors explained variance in trust, OCB, and leader and follower effectiveness beyond a uni-dimensional measure of ethical leadership. Ethical leadership was also related to OCB (supervisor-rated). Employees who rate their leader higher on power sharing and fairness show more OCB. Taken together, the results suggest that the ELW is a useful new multidimensional measurement tool that can help further our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership.

Section snippets

Ethical leader behavior

In the last few years, ethics and integrity have received a growing amount of attention in the leadership field. Both transformational and authentic leadership have been described as containing an ethical component. Related to this, Craig and Custafson (1998) developed a leader integrity measure that focused more on the negative rather than the positive side of integrity. Integrity shows some conceptual overlap with ethical leadership, yet is only one element of ethical behavior (e.g., Palanski

Study 1

To investigate the validity of ethical leader behaviors as measured with the ELW we included variables that have previously been investigated in relation to ethical leadership (see Table 2). Brown et al. (2005) showed that ethical leadership relates to leader effectiveness, trust, satisfaction with the leader and transformational leadership. In addition, Den Hartog and De Hoogh (2009) found a relationship between ethical leadership and commitment. Furthermore, in line with Brown et al. (2005)

Item and scale development

We followed Hinkin's (1998) recommendations in generating items for the ELW questionnaire. As an item-generation strategy, we obtained (published) articles and examined them for clear item examples. We also interviewed eight managers and seven employees to generate additional items and to determine whether other or additional dimensions of ethical leadership would emerge. Thus, we combine the inductive and deductive item generation process recommended by Hinkin. The interview sample was diverse

Results

For construct validity, principal component factor analysis (PCA) was performed with Oblimin rotation on the 46 ethical leadership items. The factor correlation matrix showed correlations above .32 implying that factors are related and Oblimin rotation is warranted (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Seven factors explained a total of 70% of the variance, exceeding the minimum acceptable target of 60% for scale development (Hinkin, 1998). Less well interpretable solutions were the three, six and eight

Study 2

As stated above, the aim of the first study was to develop the ELW as a valid and reliable multidimensional measure of ethical leader behavior. The next step in the validation process in Study 2 is retesting the factor structure on a different sample using CFA and linking the dimensions of ethical leadership (employee rated) to outcomes, such as trust in the leader (employee rated), leader effectiveness (employee rated), employees' organizational citizenship behaviors (supervisor rated) and

Sample and procedure

We conducted a multi-source study. Employees rated ethical leader behaviors, trust and leader effectiveness and leaders rated employees' effectiveness and OCB. Leaders in financial and business services, health care, government, construction and education organizations in the Netherlands were contacted and asked to voluntarily participate. Participating leaders selected two employees to complete a questionnaire. Survey packets were sent to leaders and contained a letter for each respondent

Results

The next step in the validation process was to conduct CFA's to reconfirm the ELW factor structure. The goodness of fit of the a priori seven-factor model was tested in comparison to 12 competing models varying from a single factor model to several six factor models. The results are presented in Table 5. We used different fit indicators (cf. Hu & Bentler, 1999): the chi-square (χ²), comparative fit index (CFI ≥ .96), non-normed fit index (NNFI ≥ .96), standardized root-mean-square residual

Discussion

The purpose of our studies was to contribute to the literature by developing the theory-based multidimensional Ethical Leadership at Work (ELW) questionnaire measuring fairness, role clarification, ethical guidance, people orientation, power sharing, integrity and concern for sustainability. Generally, the a priori seven factor structure was stable across two independent field samples and internal consistencies were good, supporting construct validity (cf. Hinkin, 1998). Providing further

Acknowledgement

We thank Marcus Dickson for his helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article.

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