Ethical leadership and its influence on employee voice behavior: role of demographic variables

• Date: 26 April 2022
• Pages: 213-235
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOES-10-2021-0200
• Published date: 26 April 2022
• Subject Matter: Economics,Social economics
• Author: Ashok Kumar Dua,Ayesha Farooq,Sumita Rai

Ethical leadership and its

inf‌luence on employee

voice behavior: role of

demographic variables

Ashok Kumar Dua and Ayesha Farooq

Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management Studies and Research,

Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India, and

Sumita Rai

Department of Organizational Behavior, Management Development Institute,

Gurgaon, India

Abstract

Purpose –The purposeof this paper is to examine the nature of relationshipbetween ethical leadership and

employee voice behavior. Study of employee voice behavior is important, because leaders in organizations

make numerous decisions based onemployees’work-related inputs which do inf‌luence the decision quality

and team performance.

Design/methodology/approach –Survey data were collected through structured questionnaire from

Indian organizations.Data were analysed through statistical techniquessuch as conf‌irmatory factor analysis

and structuralequation modeling.

Findings –The f‌indings showed that ethical leadership did impact the employee voice in apositive and

signif‌icant but moderate manner. The study also found no signif‌icant differences in ethical leadership and

voice behavior across demographic variablessuch as gender, age, educational qualif‌ication and job level in

the Indian context.

Research limitations/implications –The study is conducted using single cross-sectional research

design, and for better causal inferencesof the relationship between various variables, future researchstudies

may be conducted with longitudinal research design, multiple data sources and variety of industries with

large samplesize.

Practical implications –With erosion of ethical values and corporate scandals, managers

need to develop and display ethical leadership as employees emulate their leaders’ethical behavior

because ethical leadership, or its perception, relates positively and signif‌icantly to employee voice

behavior.

Originality/value –There is less study to understand ethical leadership and its inf‌luence on voice

behavior in developing countries, especially in India. Ethical leadership behavior encourages employees to

voice their work-related constructive opinions and concerns for improved decision-making and reduced

unethical practices.Also, there is scarcity of research that explores the impact of demographic variables and

this studyis an effort to understand this gap.

Keywords Employee voice, Ethical leadership, Prohibitive voice, Promotive voice, India

Paper type Research paper

Funding: The authors received no f‌inancial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of

this article.

Declaration of conf‌licting interest: The authors declare that there is no conf‌lict of interest.

Ethical

leadership and

its inf‌luence

213

Received30 October 2021

Revised20 February 2022

22March 2022

Accepted23 March 2022

InternationalJournal of Ethics and

Systems

Vol.39 No. 2, 2023

pp. 213-235

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2514-9369

DOI 10.1108/IJOES-10-2021-0200

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2514-9369.htm

Introduction

Ethical values in organizations around the world are declining (Chakraborty, 1998;Yukl,

2014). Corporate scandals and frauds in Arthur Andersen, Enron, Global Crossing, Health

South, Lehman Brothers, Parmalat, Qwest, Scandia, Tyco International, Volkswagen and

WorldCom are indicative of this decline (Bhandari et al., 2009;Leigh, 2013;London, 2004;

Yukl, 2014). Even during ongoingCOVID-19 pandemic, decline of ethical values is observed

(Kooli and Abadli, 2021). India also have had a number of scandals, frauds, scams in

companies/banks such as ITC Limited (Chakraborty, 1998), Satyam Computer Services

Limited (now renamed as Mahindra Satyam;Balasubramanian, 2015;Bhandari et al.,2009;

Bhasin, 2013), Punjab National Bank (PNB;see Merwin, 2018), Punjab and Maharashtra Co-

operative (PMC) Bank Limited and HousingDevelopment and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL;

The Economic Times, 2020) and Shakti Bhog Foods Limited (SBFL; The Economic Times,

2021). According to a study by M/s Ernst and Young Private Limited,frauds of the order of

INR 66bn were committed in India during2011–12. Of these frauds, 61% were committed by

the employees, including the senior management (Ernst and Young Pvt Ltd., 2012).

Furthermore, as per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), 3,766 frauds worth INR 715bn were

detected by the Indian banking system in 2018–19 (Manikandan, 2019). Such scandals,

frauds and scams can be avoided if employeestimely voice their concerns against unethical

conduct. These are apparently because of systemic ethical failures (London, 2004) and are

receiving increasing attention of media and academia (Aronson, 2001;Ciulla, 1998;Den

Hartog, 2015;Kaptein, 2019;Treviño etal.,2003;Walumbwa and Schaubroeck, 2009;Yukl,

2014). Thus, there is a need to have leaders who are driven by ethical values to minimize

instances of scandals,frauds and scams in organizations.

Leadership styles inf‌luenceemployee voice behavior differently. For example, leadership

styles such as authentic (Hsiung, 2012), ethical (Walumbwa and Schaubroeck, 2009),

transformational (Liu et al.,2010), servant (Song et al.,2021) and spiritual leadership (Yang

et al.,2019) do create an environment of fairness in which employees can conduct themselves

ethically and also voice their opinions, suggestions and concerns freely to minimize

instances of scandals,frauds and scams (Detert and Burris, 2007) but ethical leadership does

also offer added advantage of moral managementin line with ethical standards (Brown and

Treviño, 2006;Goswami et al., 2021). Besides, an ethical leader is a caring, fair, moral and

ethically driven role model who leads by his/her personalexample, conducts in accordance

with norms that employees imbibe and emulate and encourages them to communicate their

opinions and concerns freely (Brown et al.,2005;Den Hartog, 2015). Morrison (2014)

identif‌ies ethical leadership as one of the motivators that can encourage employee voice

behavior. Chamberlin et al. (2017), carryingforward Morrison’s (2014) work, f‌ind that voice

is positively related to ethical leadership. Moreover, ethical leadership helps create ethical

culture and climate in organizations in which employees are able to voice their concerns

freely. Also, as ethical leadership inf‌luences organizational outcomes (Hansen et al.,2013),

there is a crucial need to have such a leadership in organizations (Eisenbeiss, 2012)to

minimize instancesof scandals, frauds, scams and ethical failures in future.

In organizations, employeevoice plays important role in decision-making as it inf‌luences

the decision quality and team performance and in turn organizational effectiveness (Kooli,

2019;Morrison and Milliken, 2000;Qi and Ming-Xia, 2014). In many instances, employees

may not share their ideas, opinions and concerns mainly because of fear that voicing the

same may be perceived negatively which, besides adversely impacting relationships, may

also lead to career risks and repercussions such as reduced promotion opportunities

(Morrison and Milliken, 2000). In addition to fear, Morrison (2014) indicates abusive

leadership as another reason for employees choosing not to voice. Also, social pressures

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