Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 10, 1999

Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting

Jacqueline N. Hood
Pages 121-132

The Influence of Values and Transformational Leadership on Ethical Practices in Organizations

This study analyzes the relationship between CEO values, leadership style and ethical practices in organizations. Two ethical practices are investigated: formal statement of ethics and diversity training. Results indicate that the top manager’s values are related to ethical practices, transformational leadership is significantly related to all types of values, and laissez-faire leadership is negatively related to competency-based values. When size of company and values are controlled, transformational leadership explains a significant amount of change in formal statement of ethics, and transactional leadership explains a significant amount of change in diversity training.