(Un)Ethical leadership: What can Educational Psychology Services learn?

Abstract

Aims:This paper reviews published literature on ethical and unethical leadership and makes some comparisons with ethical codes of conduct. It considers the relevance of the constructs of ethical and unethical leadership for educational psychology leaders, managers and practitioners working within today’s climate of traded educational psychology services. Similarities and differences between cultures and across private and public sector organisations are discussed and lessons that can be learned from the research literature are highlighted (with a particular focus on the limited research on unethical leadership).Method/Rationale:Literature searches were conducted using the key concepts ethical leadership and unethical leadership in the search engines PsychInfo and Embase. Selected studies were included for review if ethical or unethical leadership was a key concept of the research and/or aspects of unethical leadership were a topic focus for the research.Findings:The following individual and contextual factors were found to be potential contributors to ethical and unethical leadership: the moral character of leaders, the cultural values of society and organisations, the ethical interests of stakeholders both inside and outside an organisation, the ethical behaviour of the peer group, and systems for dealing with unethical conduct.Limitations:Many studies were drawn from The Leadership Quarterly and The Journal of Business Ethics. It is recognised that there are other business journals likely to include business ethics literature, which were not available to the author.Conclusions:The current context of some educational psychology services poses risks for ethical (including financial) misconduct. All educational psychologists have a responsibility to minimise these risks.