DOES GENDER MATTER IN ETHICAL LEADERSHIP PERCEPTIONS? CROSS-NATIONAL EVIDENCE
DOES GENDER MATTER IN ETHICAL LEADERSHIP PERCEPTIONS? CROSS-NATIONAL EVIDENCE

Summary/Abstract: Last decade’s ethical leadership failures inbusiness across the globe had severe ramifications,including bankruptcy for corporations that had previouslybeen viewed as exemplary. Hence, ethical leadership hasgained increased attention from both practitioners andresearchers. In particular, the increased focus has beenplaced on ethical leadership perceptions in managementsettings. This paper presents empirical findings from athree-country experiment (N = 538) on the perceptionsof ethical and unethical leadership, and how they interactwith gender. Building on role congruity theory, we positthat female leaders encounter more severe criticism forunethical leadership compared to male leaders, but theyalso garner greater positive reactions for ethicalleadership. We also hypothesize the existence of nationaldifferences in ethical leadership perceptions. Our resultsindicate that the rater’s perceptions are influenced by thegender of the leader they are rating and by ethicalleadership. The rater’s gender, however, does not affectthe evaluation of male and female leaders in the culturesexamined. We have also found national differencesamong perceptions of ethical leadership, in line with theCorruption Perception Index. We further explore theconsequences of these results for theoretical and practicalapplications in this paper and propose directions forfuture research.

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