Det etiska ledarskapets roll i kampen mot korruption - En studie om antikorruptionsarbete i den svenska banksektorn

Sammanfattning: Despite Sweden's ranking as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, recent studies suggest that the prevalence of corruption in the private sector is growing, now approaching international levels. Over the past couple of years, Sweden has witnessed a growing number of scandals involving unethical behavior on the part of its corporate sector. Corruption has gained the attention of authorities, legislators and the public - putting the private sector under pressure to take action to prevent such corporate misconduct. As a result, companies increasingly prioritize strategies and policies aiming to prevent corruption. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role of leadership in such preventive work. Ethical leadership has been established as a significant success factor in attempts to reduce unethical behavior in organizations. Yet, empirical research on the outcomes of executive ethical leadership on follower behavior is limited. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify the most important aspects of ethical leadership and to propose a model illustrating how these influence follower behavior. The study applies the ethical leadership construct to a specific organizational context: the work to prevent corruption in the Swedish banking sector. The study integrates Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior and the ethical leadership construct developed in Brown et al. (2005) in order to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms with which ethical leadership affects follower behavior. A model is proposed and tested in a qualitative study conducted in the Swedish banking sector. The analysis identifies three salient aspects of ethical leadership in this organizational context and proposes a specification of the notion of normatively appropriate leader behavior. The findings support that executive ethical leadership has potential to reduce the unethical follower behavior that constitutes or enables corruption and that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control appear to play a mediating role. Finally, limitations of the ethical leadership construct are discussed.