Does gender matter in ethical leadership perceptions? Cross-national evidence

Abstract

Last decade’s ethical leadership failures in business across the globe had severe ramifications, including bankruptcy for corporations that had previously been viewed as exemplary. Hence, ethical leadership has gained increased attention from both practitioners and researchers. In particular, the increased focus has been placed on ethical leadership perceptions in management settings. This paper presents empirical findings from a three-country experiment (N = 538) on the perceptions of ethical and unethical leadership, and how they interact with gender. Building on role congruity theory, we posit that female leaders encounter more severe criticism for unethical leadership compared to male leaders, but they also garner greater positive reactions for ethical leadership. We also hypothesize the existence of national differences in ethical leadership perceptions. Our results indicate that the rater’s perceptions are influenced by the gender of the leader they are rating and by ethical leadership. The rater’s gender, however, does not affect the evaluation of male and female leaders in the cultures examined. We have also found national differences among perceptions of ethical leadership, in line with the Corruption Perception Index. We further explore the consequences of these results for theoretical and practical applications in this paper and propose directions for future research.