Authentic leadership and the ethic of care

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the relationship between authentic leadership and the ethic of care (EoC) and to propose that leadership is characterized by the commitment of others that is represented by EoC’s moral perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is a conceptual paper that compares authentic leadership characteristics with the moral and ethical elements of EoC.

Findings

This paper proposes that authentic leadership is closely tied to the commitment of others which characterizes the leader’s moral responsibility and shows how EoC fits with 11 other ethical perspectives in enabling leaders to serve others

Originality/value

The contribution of this paper lies on its focus on the importance of EoC as a guiding moral perspective in the actions of authentic leaders. Although authentic leadership has been written about extensively, very little has been written to link authentic leadership with the EoC.

Citation

Atwijuka, S. and Caldwell, C. (2017), "Authentic leadership and the ethic of care", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 36 No. 8, pp. 1040-1051. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-12-2016-0331