oai:eurokd.com:article/11 2025-12-15

Employee Trust and Ethical Leadership Decision Making <p style="text-align: justify;">Organizations that encourage a trusting culture are believed to have a&nbsp;competitive advantage on ethical decision-making. Part of a leader&rsquo;s functions&nbsp;is to work with employees to find problems within an organization and solve&nbsp;them. The ease at which a leader gains access to the information they need to&nbsp;make ethical decisions and solve problems depends on how much employees trust&nbsp;them, and how much they (leaders) trust employees. This study examines the role&nbsp;of employee trust on ethical leadership decision making. It explores the role&nbsp;of employees trust towards their leaders&rsquo; ethical decision making and how a&nbsp;lack of employee trust (mistrust) in an organization affects ethical leadership&nbsp;decision making. The research methodology employed in this study is literature&nbsp;review and it was aimed at addressing critically the role of employee trust&nbsp;(and lack of that) towards leadership ethical decision making. The findings of&nbsp;this study indicate that when leaders are trusted by their employees, they are&nbsp;forced to prove their competence and ethics in the decisions they make. It also&nbsp;shows that when employees are trusted by their leaders, they encounter a&nbsp;feeling of indefinite responsibility to show signs of goodness towards their&nbsp;leaders and this influences ethical decision making. A lack of trust between&nbsp;employees and their leaders weakens relationships, causes suspicion, deception&nbsp;and affects a leader&rsquo;s decision making ethics.</p> EuroKD Publishing 2019-04-08 Text https://api.eurokd.com/Uploads/Article/11/JBSO.2019.01.01.pdf https://doi.org/10.32038/JBSO.2019.01.01 en Pages 1–12