Examining psychological capital as a predictor of ethical leadership

Abstract

It has been several years since Brown and Trevino (2006) offered the opinion that the field of ethical leadership was still uncharted territory; knowing how leaders ought to behave is well explored but understanding how we can predict ethical leadership is uncultivated. This research investigated psychological capital as a predictor of ethical leadership. Study 1 (N = 440) examined the structure and model fit of the psychological capital scale using confirmatory factor analysis. The four-factor model resulted in an equal but more parsimonious fit of data as compared to a second order factor (X [superscript 2] robust (246,N=440)= 542.21, CFI = .90, RMSEA = .05 CI [.05-.06]). Study 2 (N = 47) a combined data set of matched leaders and followers were used to examine the relationship between self-evaluated leader psychological capital and follower evaluated ethical leadership. Hope, as measured by psychological capital, uniquely accounted for 7% of the variance when controlling for age and gender (b = .39, SE = .20, B = .52, t = 2.00, p = .05).