The Measurement of Ethical Leadership from an Et(H)Ic Position

The purpose of this study was to investigate the construct validity of an Ethical Leadership Questionnaire (ELQ) that was developed outside the South African and African context, thus adopting an etic position. A representative sample of the South African workforce was used in the study (N=3 894). The results confirmed the factorial composition of ethical leadership in terms of three elements, namely Morality and fairness, Role clarification leadership and Power sharing leadership. All three factors reported acceptable measurement properties. The instrument can therefore be used with confidence to measure Ethical leadership, and recommendations were made for further studies.