The impact of ethical leadership on workers’ job satisfaction at a selected financial institution in Cape Town

Abstract

Talent, revenue, and valuable skills have been lost by many business organisations because of working conditions that are perceived by employees to be unsatisfactory. Although the reasons for the loss of skilled personnel have been the subject of a great deal of relevant research, the role of ethical leadership in the contentment of employees and the degree of satisfaction that they are able to derive from their work has tended to be underemphasised in South Africa. The careers of employees have also been adversely affected by being obliged to leave positions in organisations whose working conditions they have found to be untenable. One of the aims of this study was to assess the influence that ethical leadership exerted on the satisfaction that subordinate employees of a business organisation that is based in the City of Cape Town were able to derive from their work. The preliminary background research necessitated a comprehensive review of styles of leadership, to identify those that either optimally accorded with the central tenets of ethical leadership or were sufficiently flexible to incorporate its priorities. As the field of ethics is rooted in the scholarly discipline of ethical philosophy, it has informed relatively little popular business-oriented research, despite its immense potential for developing policies that ensure the success and stability of business organisations. The researcher endeavoured to ascertain the degree to which the subordinate employees in the research sample understood the concept of ethical leadership and the role that it should play in ensuring that their working conditions were conducive to motivating subordinates to excel by enabling them to derive satisfaction from their work. A significant conclusion that emerged from the findings was that perceptions of not only the absence of a viable system for implementing measures to ensure adherence to the principles that are articulated in the code of conduct at all levels of the organisation, but also the lack of an adequate appreciation of the potential of ethical leadership to maximise the performance and productivity of subordinates were evident in the survey. The overarching conclusion that was drawn from the findings was that little progress was likely to be achieved in these respects without the implementation of formal ethical training for all employees of the organisation. The main finding was that subordinates were able to obtain the most joy from their work when they believed that their superiors treated them with fairness, respect, and transparency.