Leadership Styles and Their Influence on Ethical Decision-Making in Organizations: Synthesis of the Literature

Abstract

Leadership styles significantly influence organizational outcomes, including ethical decisionmaking. This conceptual study investigates how four major stylesautocratic, democratic, laissezfaire, and transformationalinfluence leaders' moral decisions. Despite growing attention, ethical breaches continue, highlighting gaps in understanding the complex dynamics that influe nce principled behavior, especially when competing priorities arise. The situational leadership and Vroom-Yetton decision models offer valuable frameworks. The goal is to review literature that contrasts leadership approaches and their relationships with ethical judgments. The issue is that conflicting findings exist regarding whether certain styles promote values-attentive decisions or whether contextual factors exert greater influence. A lack of shared ethical definitions further undermines consistency. Analysis will reveal whether leadership styles influence moral behavior. Key findings show that while all leaders face ethical dilemmas, transformational leadership possesses the greatest potential to foster ethical climates through inspiring vision and purpose, intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, and motivation. However, it appears that character is more crucial than style. Leaders, as moral individuals, place integrity, humility, and service at the heart of their decisions. Moral managers uphold ethical standards and accountability through communication, policies, and consequences. This study fills gaps by consolidating emerging insights into the dynamics linking leadership approaches and ethical decision elements. The findings highlight the importance of ethical consciousness in shaping an overarching vision that permeates culture. While context and style play a role, principled leaders view ethics as a guiding value integrated into choices, not tradeoffs. Further research can help clarify leadership predictors of moral behavior.