Abstract
Purpose:
Ethical leadership has been widely recognised as a leadership approach associated with enhanced organisational trust, employee commitment, and reduced unethical behaviour through the consistent application of moral principles in decision-making processes. Central to ethical leadership theory is the assumption that sustained adherence to ethical standards promotes fairness, legitimacy, and organisational stability. However, in dynamic organisational environments characterised by uncertainty and complexity, consistent adherence to established ethical commitments may inadvertently constrain leaders’ capacity to respond adaptively to changing circumstances. This paper introduces the construct of ethical rigidity (ER) to describe a leadership condition in which sustained commitment to normative ethical principles influences organisational adaptability by limiting strategic flexibility in response to environmental uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach:
Adopting a qualitative research design grounded in an interpretivist philosophical stance, this study proposes an inductive empirical strategy to explore leadership practices associated with ethical rigidity. Semi-structured interviews are proposed as a data collection method to examine follower perceptions of ethical decision-making processes during organisational change.
Findings:
The conceptual analysis suggests that sustained adherence to ethical commitments may influence leadership decision-making by prioritising procedural fairness over adaptive responsiveness. Ethical rigidity may therefore contribute to organisational coordination challenges under conditions of environmental uncertainty.
Originality/value:
By introducing the construct of ethical rigidity, this paper extends ethical leadership literature by examining the potential organisational consequences of moral consistency in decision-making processes. The proposed framework provides a foundation for future empirical research examining leadership effectiveness in dynamic organisational environments.