The Concept, Dimensions, and Measurement of the Confucian Construct of Senior Ethical Leadership

Most studies of ethical leadership have included two dimensions: moral individual and moral manager. However, those concepts and their measures fail to fully reflect the Chinese cultural setting in today's business scenarios. Using the Confucian doctrine of ethical culture, in Study 1 we adopted grounded theory and the questionnaire-development method to create the new dimension of moral citizen, which exists in parallel with moral individual and moral manager in senior ethical leadership and reveals unique behavioral characteristics. In Study 2 we developed the Senior Ethical Leadership Scale, which was found to have good reliability and validity. The scale comprises three dimensions eliciting the key behaviors of improving oneself to serve others: moral individual, moral manager, and moral citizen. Thus, we have contributed to expanding the content of Western ethical leadership theory and opened up new avenues for future study.