Building an Ethical Organization: Why It's Time to Define Ethical Followership

Abstract

Based on a review of the literature on moral disengagement and ethical leadership today, one might conclude simply that the individual is the problem. That is, workers morally disengage and thereby justify unethical behavior, and there aren’t enough ethical leaders to stop them from doing so. This paper presents
a critique of the literature on these two constructs and proposes a definition of ethical followership. Armed with this definition, and soon a scale to measure this construct, researchers can examine the efforts of followers to influence ethical conduct in organizations, whether through commitment, refusal, negotiation, or reflective practice. Such research can inform organizational development interventions to reduce unethical behavior and foster an ethical climate.

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ISSN 40-0650
Perspectives on Leadership
in Organization Development
3. From the Editor
8. Perspectives on Leadership in Organization Development
Special Issue Guest Editor: Anton Shufutinsky
12. The Leader’s Use of Self
Matt Minahan and RussForrester
19. Preparing Leaders to Hold Space for Self and Others During Generative
ChangeEvents
Nayla Choueiter, GervaseBushe, and AmineBelemlih
25. How Will You Choose to Lead? Three Leadership Principles and Practices
for Net-PositiveODImpacts
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32. Developing Africa’s Contextually Appropriate Leadership Through the Prisms of OD
Justine Chinoperekweyi
39. Theorizing Thought Leadership for OD Scholar Practitioners
Lisa M. Meyer and MatthewS.Maluchnik
44. Thought Followership: Being Responsible Stewards of Research, Practice,
andInnovation
Anton Shufutinsky, Edward Korbal, Douglas Thompson, Tim Massaquoi,
Stephanie Rossi, and David Szabla
56. Why Are Followers Neglected inLeadership Research?
Ronald E. Riggio, Kevin B. Lowe, and Lester Levy
61. Leadership and FollowershipTraining: Everyone, Everywhere, All at Once
Marc Hurwitz and SamanthaHurwitz
68. Building an Ethical Organization: Why It’s Time to Dene Ethical Followership
Kyle Payne
74. Leading Ethical Organizational Leadership and Behavior Through True Storytelling:
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David M. Boje, DuncanPelly, and Usha Haley
Fall Year 2023 Vol. 55 No. 3
Fall Year 2023 Volume 55 No. 3

“In OD practice, enhancing theory related to ethical followership enables practitioners to see a
more complete picture of the role of the follower, who is determining their own course of action
when they recognize unethical thought or actions within their organization.”
Building an Ethical Organization
Why It’s Time to Dene Ethical Followership
By Kyle Payne Abstract
Based on a review of the literature on moral disengagement and ethical leader-
ship today, one might conclude simply that the individual is the problem. That
is, workers morally disengage and thereby justify unethical behavior, and there
aren’t enough ethical leaders to stop them from doing so. This paper presents
a critique of the literature on these two constructs and proposes a denition of
ethical follow ership. Armed with this denition, and soon a scale to measure this
construct, researchers can examine the eorts of followers to inuence ethical
conduct in organizations, whether through commitment, refusal, negotiation, or
reective practice. Such research can inform organizational development inter-
ventions to reduce unethical behavior and foster an ethical climate.
Keywords: social learning theory, social cognitive theory, ethical leadership, moral
disengagement, followership
Introduction
In the last twenty-ve years of research
informed by social learning theory (Ban-
dura, ), and specically research ask-
ing how workers learn how to “do the right
thing,” two constructs stand out as signi-
cant steps forward in theory building—
moral disengagement (Bandura et al.,
) and ethical leadership (Brown et al.,
). However, in both cases, enthusi-
asm to understand the individual—and
in particular to understand the individual
leader—has outpaced the potential to
examine how workers collectively navi-
gate ethical dilemmas. This focus on the
individual has hampered eorts by organi-
zational development (OD) professionals
to reduce unethical behavior. This article
attempts to “reverse the lens” (Shamir,
) on these two constructs and argues
that future research should focus on
ethicalfollowership.
The article begins with a brief review
of social learning theory, which is founda-
tional to other constructs to be discussed.
The article oers a critique of the moral
disengagement and ethical leadership lit-
erature, the former for its disproportion-
ate focus on the individual and the latter
for its disproportionate focus on the leader
role. Proposed thereafter is a denition
of ethical followership and implications
for the eld of organizational develop-
ment should ethical followership be more
closelyexamined.
Social Learning Theory
Social learning theory focuses on how peo-
ple learn by imitating or observing others
(Bandura, ). In social learning, an indi-
vidual identies a role model, pays close
attention to their behavior, and applies
the observed behavior personally to nd
some sort of reinforcement. While there
68 ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT REVIEW Vol. 55 No. 3 2023

are steps the role model can take to pro-
mote social learning, as we will explore
in the discussion of ethical leadership,
reinforce ment can also come in the form
of self- regulation. That is, an individual can
monitor their behavior, evaluate it against
a set of standards for performance or con-
duct, and then “self-react” with praise or
censure. Bandura (, p. ) discusses
the example of learning to write through
evaluative self-reactions:
Writers adopt a standard of what con-
stitutes an acceptable piece of work.
Ideas are generated and rephrased in
thought before they are committed to
paper. Provisional constructions are
successively revised until authors are
satised with what they have written.
The more exacting the personal stan-
dards, the more extensive are the cor-
rective improvements.
Bandura’s social learning theory devel-
oped into social cognitive theory (Bandura,
), which asserts that personal, behav-
ioral, and environmental inuences oper-
ate as interlocking determinants of each
other, or what Bandura () refers to as
“reciprocal determinism.” In social cogni-
tive theory, an individual’s moral reason-
ing and agency is put into action through
self-regulation. While self-regulating, an
individual who has betrayed their moral
standards or desires to do so may experi-
ence distressand self-censure. Bandura
() notes, however, that one can selec-
tively optout ofthis sort of self- regulation,
or make exceptions. These exceptions
becameeight mechanisms of moral
disengagement (Bandura et al., ),
which are shown in Table 1 and organized
into fourloci.
Review and Critique of Moral
Disengagement Literature
The cognitive restructuring that occurs
as an individual disassociates from their
moral standards and behaves unethically
without feeling distress is known as moral
disengagement (Bandura et al., ). It is
based on the premise that “people do not
ordinarily engage in reprehensible conduct
until they have justied the rightness of
their actions” (Bandura et al., , p. ).
Moral disengagement does not change
an individual’s moral standards. Rather, it
provides the mean to “circumvent moral
standards in ways that strip morality from
human behavior and their responsibility
for it” (Bandura, , p. ).
According to Bandura et al. (),
when morally disengaging, an individual
might shift their focus to the benets of an
unethical act, such as productivity or prot
(moral justication), or how the bad deed
they did pales in comparison to the wrongs
committed by others (advantageous com-
parison). They also state that an individual
might change the meaning of their actions
through the words they use to describe
them, perhaps treating deception as “tell-
ing the customer what they need to know”
(euphemistic language). The authors add
that an individual might point the nger
at an authority who inuenced their deci-
sion or peers who they believe would
have done the same thing in their shoes
(displacement or diusion of responsibil-
ity). Finally, according to Bandura et al.
(), an individual might minimize the
harm caused by their actions (distorting
the consequences), or they might blame
the victim or belittle their concerns (dehu-
manization or attribution of blame).
Antecedents of moral disengagement
include envy (Duy et al., ), cynicism
and locus of control (Detert et al., ),
resource depletion (Lee et al., ), and
psychological entitlement (Lee et al., ).
Researchers have found that authenticity
(Knoll et al., ), moral identity (Aquino
et al., ; Detert et al., ; McFerran et
al., ; Moore et al., ), and religiosity
(Vitell et al., ) are negatively associated
with moral disengagement. Moore etal.
() also determined that ethical leader-
ship is negatively associated with moral
disengagement, stating, “It is not simply
that bad people do bad things. Rather, the
organizational environment and social
relationships embedded therein impact
workers’ moral disengagement and mis-
conduct” (p. ).
Researchers have positively associated
moral disengagement with unethical deci-
sion making (Detert et al., ; Moore
et al., ) and unethical behavior (Bar-
sky, ; Knoll et al., ). Researchers
have associated moral disengagement with
cheating (Fida et al., ) and employee
silence (He et al., ). In their study on
safety culture, Petitta et al. () point to
moral disengagement as a mediator, stat-
ing, “Accident underreporting appears to be
fostered by a technocratic safety culture, yet
this eect is exerted only through the devel-
opment of moral justications for engaging
in behaviors that sacrice safety” (p. ).
Despite shedding light on a wide vari-
ety of antecedents and outcomes of moral
disengagement, all the aforementioned
variables reside in the individual level of
analysis, rendering invisible any team or
organizational phenomena. Two notable
exceptions come from Alnuaimi et al.
() and Huang and Yan (). The for-
mer studied technology-supported teams
and found that mechanisms of moral
disengagement mediated the relation-
ship between two variables—team size
and team dispersion—and social loang
(Alnuaimi et al., ). The latter found a
Table . Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement
Loci Mechanisms
Behavioral Moral Justication
Euphemistic Language
Advantageous Comparison
Agency Displacement of Responsibility
Diusion of Responsibility
Eects Distorting the Consequences
Victim Dehumanization
Attribution of Blame
Note: Adapted from Bandura et al. (1996).
69Building an Ethical Organization: Why It’s Time to Dene Ethical Followership

negative association between ethical leader-
ship and collective organizational deviance,
which was mediated by group moral disen-
gagement. Albeit outside the realm of orga-
nization development (OD), a few studies
on children and adolescents have exam-
ined collective moral disengagement, iden-
tifying friendship as a potential antecedent
(Caravita et al., ), as well as bullying,
aggression, and passive bystander behav-
iors as potential outcomes (Gini et al., ;
Pozzoli et al., ).
The concept of “collective moral dis-
engagement” was anticipated by Bandura
et al. () who insisted that this phenom-
enon “can have widespread societal and
political ramications by supporting, jus-
tifying, and legitimizing inhuman social
practices and policies” (p. ). Bemoaning
the scarcity of multilevel analysis of moral
disengagement, Newman et al. ()
argue that this approach “will be of prac-
tical benet to managers and organiza-
tions in designing policies and practices to
reduce the likelihood that employees will
morally disengage and engage in immoral
conduct” (p. ). This broader analysis
could help OD professionals attack the
problem of unethical behavior at all levels
of the organization.
Review and Critique of
EthicalLeadershipLiterature
When dening and operationalizing ethical
leadership, Brown et al. () rooted their
analysis in social learning theory, propos-
ing that “leaders inuence the ethical con-
duct of followers via modeling... by virtue
of their assigned role, their status and suc-
cess in the organization, and their power to
aect the behavior and outcomes of others”
(p. ). They further state that followers
identify and emulate ethical leaders who
act in a manner that is “normatively appro-
priate and motivated by altruism” (p.)
and who communicate explicitly about
ethics and reinforce ethical behavior. The
authors dene ethical leadership as “the
demonstration of normatively appropriate
conduct through personal actions and
interpersonal relationships, and the promo-
tion of such conduct to followers through
two-way communication, reinforcement,
and decision-making” (p. ). Brown et al.
() developed and validated a ten-item
scale to measure ethical leadership, which
is shown in Table 2.
Mayer et al. () found that moral
identity is positively associated with ethi-
cal leadership, suggesting that people who
have a strong sense of being a moral per-
son are more likely to demonstrate ethical
leadership. Consistent with social cogni-
tive theory, moral identity is viewed as a
self-regulatory mechanism—that is, leaders
whose moral identity is important to them
should act like a moral person. Brown and
Treviño () found a positive association
between having had an ethical role model
and being perceived as an ethical role
model by subordinates. Kalshoven et al.
() found that leaders who are agreeable
or conscientious are more likely to be per-
ceived as ethical leaders.
In their meta-analysis on ethical lead-
ership research, Bedi et al. () found a
positive relationship between ethical lead-
ership and several outcomes, including
follower perceptions of an ethical work
environment, follower self-ecacy, follower
ethical behavior, and follower psychological
well-being. Bedi et al. () also found fol-
lowers of ethical leaders to have greater job
satisfaction, organizational commitment,
aective commitment, normative commit-
ment, job performance, job engagement,
and organizational identication. Further-
more, Bedi et al. () found that follow-
ers showed lower turnover intention and
counter-productive work behaviors, put in
more eort at work and exhibited less work
stress, and were more likely to share ques-
tions and concerns with their leaders.
The study of leadership has historically
been leader-centric (Uhl-Bien et al., ),
which has painted an inaccurate picture
of how organizations operate. Rather than
understanding leadership as “co-produced,”
with followers as active participants, the
study of leadership has historically framed
the follower as a passive recipient of lead-
ers’ inuence (Shamir, ). Leadership
research has ignored that, as Carsten and
Lapierre explain, “Despite the fact that
many followers do indeed follow in a
blindly obedient manner, there are just as
many others who engage with leaders in a
constructive way to advance the objectives
and goals of the group” (, p. ). The
ethical leadership construct maintains this
tradition by design.
There are two objectives of ethical
leadership, as originally conceptualized by
Treviño et al. ()—that is, to be a moral
person and to be a moral manager. The latter
requires “being a role model for ethical
conduct, communicating regularly about
ethics and values, and using the reward
system to hold everyone accountable to the
values and standards” (p. –). That is,
in this framework, ethical leaders are those
whose followers replicate their leader’s
ethics. Given the expectations of the moral
manager, we should ask, “Does this mean
that followers themselves get to determine
what is ethical?” (Price, , p. ). Or is
there any room in ethical leadership for an
ethical follower?
Table . Ethical Leadership Scale
My leader conducts his or her personal life in an ethical manner.
My leader denes success not just by results but also the way that they are obtained.
My leader listens to what employees have to say.
My leader disciplines employees who violate ethical standards.
My leader makes fair and balanced decisions.
My leader can be trusted.
My leader discusses business ethics or values with employees.
My leader sets an example of how to do things the right way in terms of ethics.
My leader has the best interests of employees in mind.
My leader asks, “What is the right thing to do?” when making decisions.
Note: Adapted from Brown et al. (2005).
ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT REVIEW Vol. 55 No. 3 202370

Emphasizing the importance of the
“invisible leader” (Hickman & Sorenson,
), Price () argues that leadership
must be rooted in “autonomous relation-
ships,” in which leaders and followers are
respected as autonomous agents. This
way of thinking coincides with the goal of
OD work that is focused on ensuring that
all persons are able to participate fully in
their work and their organizations (Katz
& Miller, ; Miller & Katz, ). It is
also consistent with Rost’s () view that
“leadership adds to the autonomy and
value of individuals who are in the rela-
tionship… and does not require that indi-
viduals sacrice some of their integrity to
be in the relationship” (p. ). The ethi-
cal leadership construct, with its narrow,
leader-centric focus, privileges the perspec-
tive of the leader and reduces the auton-
omy of followers. As Price () argues, it
treats followers as a means to the (ethical)
leader’sends.
Review of Literature on Ethical
Followership and a Proposed Denition
Ethical followership can help researchers
understand ethical and unethical behavior,
as well as mechanisms of moral disen-
gagement that inuence ethical decision
making, from a broader perspective. Rather
than framing moral disengagement as only
operating within the individual, or framing
ethical leadership as primarily within the
control of the leader, ethical followership
can shed light on how followers inuence
ethical decision making. This nal section
of the article reviews ethical followership
as discussed in leadership and followership
literature, and it proposes a denition of
the construct.
In the rst empirical study to examine
ethical followership, Uhl-Bien and Carsten
(), in lieu of a denition, frame ethical
followership as a follower resisting a “crime
of obedience,” in which a leader makes an
unethical request. They identify two beliefs
that appear to inuence whether a follower
will obey or constructively resist a leader’s
unethical request—coproduction of lead-
ership, or a belief that leaders and follow-
ers are partners coproducing leadership
outcomes (Carsten & Uhl-Bien, ), and
romance of leadership, which refers to an
inated view of a leader’s importance in
aecting organizational outcomes (Meindl
& Ehrlich, ). Uhl-Bien and Carsten
conclude that “individuals with stronger
coproduction beliefs, who fail to romanti-
cize leaders, show the lowest levels of dis-
placement of responsibility and are least
likely to obey a leader’s unethical request”
(, p. ). To our detriment, researchers
have not followed their lead and taken any
steps to dene and operationalize ethical
followership, or even to empirically exam-
ine other types of ethical followership.
While not using the term “ethical
followership,” Chale’s () work on
courageous followership represents the
most complete conceptual framework for
how followers navigate ethical dilemmas
in organizational life. The breadth and
depth of ethical followership is evident in
Chale’s description of the “courage to
take moral action,” which includes “the
decision of whether to appeal to higher
levels ofauthority within an organization,
whether to stay in or leave an organization,
how to frame conversations and actions
around these decision-making processes,
and how to conduct oneself in the face of
dierent potential outcomes” (, p. ).
Chale’s description of ethical followership
paints a broader picture of follower think-
ing and behavior related to ethics, and it
alludes to skills that may be necessary for
ethical followership to be eective.
Building on Chale’s work, ethical
followership could be dened as the dem-
onstration of upward or lateral inuencing
within an organization to encourage ethical
conduct through commitment, refusal, nego-
tiation, or reective practice. This denition
refers to four behaviors of ethical follow-
ers. The rst three behaviors identied
are rooted in the literature on responses
to downward inuence attempts; com-
mitment is derived from Falbe and Yukl
(), whereas refusal and negotiation
come from Tepper et al. (). Reective
practice, on the other hand, is not tradi-
tionally associated with ethical leadership
or ethical followership. It refers to the abil-
ity to “surface and criticize the tacit under-
standings that have grown up around
the repetitive experience of a specialized
practice and make new sense of the situ-
ations of uncertainty and uniqueness”
(Schon, , p. ). It is a method that is
well suited to the challenge of followers
trying to evaluate (and help others evalu-
ate) new ethical dilemmas, consider their
own and others’ propensity to morally dis-
engage, and even question the taken-for-
granted assumptions underlying current
ethical standards.
Conclusion
Based on a review of the literature on
moral disengagement and ethical leader-
ship today, one might conclude simply
that the individual is the problem. That
is, workers morally disengage and thereby
justify unethical behavior, and there aren’t
enough ethical leaders to stop them from
doing so. Without further research on col-
lective moral disengagement, as well as
whether and how leaders and followers
navigate ethical dilemmas together, this
narrow perspective will likely be preserved.
Armed with a denition of ethical follower-
ship, and soon a scale to measure this con-
struct, researchers can examine the eorts
of followers to inuence ethical conduct
in organizations, whether through com-
mitment, refusal, negotiation, or reective
practice. Such research can inform orga-
nizational development interventions to
reduce unethical behavior and build an eth-
ical organization.
In OD practice, enhancing theory
related to ethical followership enables
practitioners to see a more complete pic-
ture of the role of the follower, who is
determining their own course of action
when they recognize unethical thought or
actions within their organization. A fol-
lower may commit to working on a new
project that makesmeaningful contribu-
tions to a greater good, they may refuse
or attempt tonegotiate an assignment
that conicts with their values, or they
may raise unasked questions about the
nature of theirwork and their role. In each
case, followers are attempting to bring
their “whole self” and will benet from
practi tioners who promote “whole self-
awareness” and the eective use of self
(Jamieson et al., ).
71Building an Ethical Organization: Why It’s Time to Dene Ethical Followership

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Kyle Payne, PhD, is the talent
development manager at Collins
Engineers in Chicago, Illinois.
He also serves as a leadership
consultant for Development
Dimensions International. He
brings een years of experience
driving process improvement
through training, coaching,
and kaizen events. An expert
in Lean Six Sigma, Dr. Payne
has designed management
systems that meet strict regula-
tory requirements and foster
continuous improvement. He
has published and given talks
related to evidence-based prac-
tices that foster identication,
engagement, and citizenship
behaviors among employees. He
also frequently volunteers as an
exam developer for professional
associations. He can be reached
at kyle.payne@ddiworld.com.
73Building an Ethical Organization: Why It’s Time to Dene Ethical Followership