A Crisis in Leadership: Transforming Opportunistic Leaders into Leaders that can be Trusted Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • AbstractBusiness leaders often rely on the power of their authority to influence their employees. Recent workplace surveys however have found a growing distrust in a business leaders authority. While such distrust has been increasingly associated with abuses in a leaders authority, leadership research has primarily focused on the positive outcomes of leadership. The task of this study is to develop a conceptual model of leadership to address this shortcoming. In drawing Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), a concept of opportunistic authority was developed to explain employees distrust in their leaders authority. This opportunistic authority is defined by a legal and moral opportunism in which a leader in a position of authority seeks to beguile, cloak and / or deceive employees of their legal and moral responsibilities. Legitimacy is identified as a solution to overcoming this opportunistic authority. Specifically, a leaders efforts to develop pragmatic and moral forms of legitimacy develop normative expectations in upholding a leaders legal and moral responsibilities. These normative expectations reduce a leaders legal and moral opportunism and develop employees trust in the leaders authority. A contribution of this study is that it not only offers a darker side explanation of leadership, but it also introduces a legitimizing process that can transform ass**le leaders into leaders that can be trusted.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT & GOVERNANCE

author list (cited authors)

  • Ng, D. W., & VanDuinkerken, W.

citation count

  • 0

complete list of authors

  • Ng, Desmond W||VanDuinkerken, Wyoma

publication date

  • December 2021