A Crisis in Leadership: Transforming Opportunistic Leaders into Leaders that can be Trusted
Journal of Management and Governance(2021)
Abstract
Business leaders often rely on the power of their authority to influence their employees. Recent workplace surveys however have found a growing distrust in a business leader’s authority. While such distrust has been increasingly associated with abuses in a leader’s authority, leadership research has primarily focused on the positive outcomes of leadership. The task of this study is to develop a conceptual model of leadership to address this shortcoming. In drawing Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), a concept of opportunistic authority was developed to explain employees’ distrust in their leader’s authority. This opportunistic authority is defined by a legal and moral opportunism in which a leader in a position of authority seeks to beguile, cloak and / or deceive employees of their legal and moral responsibilities. Legitimacy is identified as a solution to overcoming this opportunistic authority. Specifically, a leader’s efforts to develop pragmatic and moral forms of legitimacy develop normative expectations in upholding a leader’s legal and moral responsibilities. These normative expectations reduce a leader’s legal and moral opportunism and develop employees’ trust in the leader’s authority. A contribution of this study is that it not only offers a “darker side” explanation of leadership, but it also introduces a legitimizing process that can transform “ass**le” leaders into leaders that can be trusted.
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Key words
Leadership,Authority,Legitimacy,Organizational economics,Ethics
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