The Relation Between Perceptions of Ethical Leadership and Perceptions of Political Skill: A Study of Employed Business Students

• In Event: Breakfast and Roundtable
  In Roundtable: Roundtable 2

Abstract

Using a sample of 703 full or part-time employed business students at two U.S. universities,we conducted an empirical investigation of the relation between perceptions of ethical leadership and perceptions of political skills. The Ethical Leadership Scale (ELS) developed by Brown, Trevino, and Harrison (2005) was used to measure ethical perceptions; and the Political Skill Inventory (PSI) developed by Ferris et al. (1999) was used to measure political skills perceptions. In agreement with the findings of one prior study (Harvey, Harris, Kacmar, Buckless, & Pescosolido, 2014) in which this relation was investigated, the results indicated that the two scales are highly correlated. The perception of both leadership and political skills significantly drops with age and work experience. Our findings suggest that business students may enter the workforce with deficient ethical awareness. That is, young and experienced entry-level employees may be prone to cognitively confuse the leadership attributes of political skills and ethics. In the complex contest of improving business ethics learning outcomes, we shed light on the employees perceiving unethical leaders as being ethical based on their political skills.

Authors

• Donald Lamar Ariail, Kennesaw State University

• Amine Khayati, Kennesaw State University

• Tara J Shawver, King's College