Making sense of the moral maze: an interpretive interactionist approach for understanding the ethics of leaders

As the few existing empirical studies on leaders ethics are based on a functionalist perspective - in which leaders ethics rely on conformity with certain types of behavior - not taking into account the context, the purpose of this research is to chose an interpretative approach, focusing on the subordinates’ perspective. A qualitative investigation was conducted, based on interviews and a three-year participant observation in a French software company, where the employees were interviewed about their perceptions of their top managers’ ethics. What do subordinates consider to be right or wrong, in other words appropriate or not, in their leaders’ behaviors? The findings of this study show that in mundane, everyday situations, leaders’ ethics seems to be - first of all - a matter of professional excellence. Second, the study highlights the contextual dimension of ethical judgment, which alters across people, situations and times.