Linking ethical leadership to nurses' internal whistleblowing through psychological safety.

Background: Cultivating internal whistleblowing among nurses is of paramount importance to nurse leaders. Yet, the literature on how nurse leaders can foster this phenomenon among nurses is limited. Additionally, the underlying mechanisms linking leadership behaviors to internal whistleblowing intentions remain underexplored.Aim: This study aimed to examine how ethical leadership is linked to internal whistleblowing intentions among nurses through the mediating effect of psychological safety.Research design: A multicenter cross-sectional research design was used for this study.Participants and research context: This study involved 201 nurses working in three tertiary governmental hospitals across three cities in Egypt. Data were collected between October and December 2023, using an introductory information form, the Ethical Leadership Scale, the Psychological Safety Scale, and the Internal Whistleblowing Intentions Scale. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate study hypotheses.Ethical consideration: Research Ethics Committee of Faculty of Nursing, Port Said University, Egypt approved the study (reference number: NUR (6/8/2023)(28)), and each participant signed the informed consent form before participation in the study.Results: Ethical leadership was positively linked to nurses' psychological safety and internal whistleblowing intentions. Psychological safety mediated the link between ethical leadership and nurses' internal whistleblowing intentions.Conclusion: Our study suggests that nurse leaders can foster nurses' intentions to blow the whistle internally by adopting ethical leadership behaviors and enhancing psychological safety among nurses.

Ethical leadership behaviors of senior managers perceived by the junior managers working in public hospitals in Hail, Saudi Arabia.

Objective: To examine junior managers experiences of ethical leadership behaviors exhibited by their senior managers. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 263 junior health care managers working in public hospitals in Hail, Saudi Arabia were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire between 20 November, 2022 and 15 February, 2023. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were employed in the analysis. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) was used to conduct statistical analyses. Results: The sample consisted of 118 men (44.9%) and the majority (66.6%) of the respondents were below the age of 36 years. In case of working environment, nearly 84% of the participants were satisfied with the relationships that they have had with their supervisors. Regression analysis indicate that women were more likely than men to experience healthy ethical leadership behaviors of their seniors (ß = -0.163, p < 0.05). Ethical leadership behaviors of senior health care managers would not influence by the age or work experience of their juniors. Conclusion: Ethical leadership behavior of senior health care managers was satisfactory. Longitudinal research is needed to investigate how cultural and environmental factors affect the ethical leadership behavior of healthcare managers in Saudi Arabia.

Moral beacons: Understanding moral character and moral influence.

OBJECTIVE: We introduce the concept of moral beacons-individuals who are higher in moral character than their peers and prominent within their social environment-and examine the degree to which moral beacons increase the moral awareness of their peers. BACKGROUND: Using data from cohorts of students in graduate business education across two universities, we applied theory and methods from organizational behavior, personality psychology, and social networks analysis to test two research questions about moral beacons. METHOD: We used latent profile analysis of data from personality questionnaires and social network surveys completed by graduate business students at two universities (N = 502) to identify individuals classified as moral beacons. We used peer nominations and an in-class business case discussion exercise to assess moral influence. RESULTS: Latent profile analysis identified a latent class of moral beacons in our sample. These individuals received more nominations from their peers in end-of-class surveys as guides for moral thought and action and positively impacted the moral awareness of their peers in a discussion of a difficult business case about possible lead poisoning of employees, but did not significantly change their counterparts' moral awareness in a different case. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide promising initial evidence that moral beacons can be distinguished from their peers by both moral character and social prominence and can act as guides for others, at times encouraging greater consideration of the moral aspects of situations and decisions. As these results are the first of their kind, we encourage further replication and investigations of moral beacons and moral influence in other settings.

Ethical leadership supports safety voice by increasing risk perception and reducing ethical ambiguity: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Misconduct by business and political leaders during the pandemic is feared to have impacted people's adherence to protective measures that would help to safeguard against the spread of COVID-19. Addressing this concern, this article theorizes and tests a model linking ethical leadership with workplace risk communication-a practice referred to as 'safety voice' in the research literature. Our study, conducted with 511 employees from UK companies, revealed that ethical leadership is positively associated with greater intention to engage in safety voice regarding COVID-19. We also find that this association is mediated by relations with the perceived health risk of COVID-19 and ambiguity about ethical decision making in the workplace. These findings therefore underscore the importance of good ethical conduct by leaders for ensuring that health and safety risks are well understood and communicated effectively by organizational members particularly during crises. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our study and highlight further opportunities for future research to address the ethical dimensions of leadership, risk management, and organizational risk communication.

The relationship between ethical leadership and nurse well-being: The mediating role of workplace mindfulness.

AIM: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between nurses' well-being and their ethical leadership, and the mediating role of workplace mindfulness in this relationship. DESIGN: This was a quantitative cross-sectional study. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in three tertiary hospitals in central China from May 2022 to July 2022, and the Nurses' Workplace Mindfulness, Ethical Leadership and Well-Being Scale were distributed and collected via the Internet. A total of 1579 nurses volunteered to participate in this study. SPSS 26.0 statistical software was used to analyse the data by Z-test and Spearman's rank correlation; the internal mechanism of workplace mindfulness and ethical leadership on nurses' well-being was completed by AMOS 23.0 statistical software. RESULTS: The scores of nurses' well-being, workplace mindfulness and ethical leadership were 93.00 (81.00, 108.00), 96.00 (80.00, 112.00) and 73.00 (67.00, 81.00) respectively. The professional title, age and department atmosphere affect their well-being. Spearman's analysis showed that nurses' well-being was positively correlated with ethical leadership (r = .507, p < .01) and workplace mindfulness (r = .600, p < .01); workplace mindfulness partially mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and nurses' well-being accounting for 38.5% of the total effect ratio [p < .001, 95% CI = (0.215, 0.316)]. CONCLUSION: Nurses' well-being was at a medium level, and had a higher score in ethical leadership and workplace mindfulness, and workplace mindfulness played a partial mediating role between ethical leadership and nurses' well-being. IMPACT: This suggests that nursing managers need to pay attention to clinical nurses' well-being experience, actively focus on the relationship among ethical leadership, workplace mindfulness and well-being and integrate core values such as positivity and morality into nurses' daily routines, so as to improve the work enthusiasm and well-being experience of clinical nurses, enhancing the nursing quality and stabilizing the nursing team.

The role of ethical leadership and social networks in the promotion of workplace happiness and quality of care: A cross-sectional study.

This study examines the sequential effects of perceived ethical leaders and the strength of social networks among healthcare professionals on the perceived workplace happiness of healthcare professionals and its impacts on the quality of provided care. We conduct a partial least squares (PLS) analysis to estimate the relationship between the variables. Data comes from a survey conducted to 321 healthcare professionals with primary/direct contact with patients working at Portuguese hospitals. We use previously validated scales in the literature for measuring the variables; ethical leadership, social network in the context of the workplace; satisfaction, engagement, and commitment as proxies of workplace happiness, and, quality of care provided to patients (the outcome of the research model). Results show that ethical leadership positively influences social networks, workplace happiness, and quality of provided care. Social networks also have a positive relationship with workplace happiness and quality of provided care. Additionally, the workplace happiness of healthcare professionals positively influences the quality of provided care to patients. Our work addresses a diverse research gap regarding hospitals' ethical and social environment and hospital performance. Specifically, the empirical operationalisation of ethical leadership fights a literature gap in healthcare management. Moreover, we report evidence on the influence of antecedents, but also the performance consequences, of workplace happiness in healthcare environments. Our findings contribute to the literature while providing managerial implications for healthcare settings.

How does ethical leadership influence nurses' job performance? Learning goal orientation as a mediator and co-worker support as a moderator.

BACKGROUND: Ethical nurse leaders play a pivotal role in helping their nurse employees deliver high-quality healthcare services. However, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the mediating and moderating mechanisms by which ethical leadership improves job performance. PURPOSE: This study aims to investigate: (1) whether ethical leadership would enhance nurses' job performance; (2) whether learning goal orientation acts as a mediator; and (3) whether co-worker support operates as a moderator. PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT: We collected two-wave data from 218 nurses working in hospitals located in Jiangsu, China. RESEARCH DESIGN: A time-lagged study based on an online survey design was utilized for data collection between September 2022 and January 2023. PROCESS Model 5 was employed to test the research hypotheses. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: We obtained ethics approval from the University Ethics Committee. The nursing participants were assured that their survey responses were completely anonymous. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Ethical leadership is not significantly correlated with job performance. However, ethical leadership has an indirect impact on nurses' job performance through the mediator (learning goal orientation). Moreover, co-worker support moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and job performance. CONCLUSION: The conceptual model provides us with a fine-grained understanding of the relationship between ethical leadership and nurses' job performance. We highlight the mediating role of learning goal orientation and the moderating role of co-worker support. We suggest that healthcare organizations should devote more efforts to promoting ethical leadership, co-worker support, and learning goal orientation.

Unethical behaviour in the military: The role of supervisor ethicality, ethical climate, and right-wing authoritarianism.

Using an anonymous self-report survey of 350 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel, this study investigated the effect of perceptions of the ethicality of one's immediate supervisor (supervisor ethics), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and ethical climate on self-reported unethical behavior in the form of discrimination and obeying an unlawful command (past behavior, behavioral intentions). As well, we investigated how supervisor ethics and RWA interact when predicting unethical behavior, and whether ethical climate mediated the relation between supervisor ethics and self-reported unethical behavior. Unethical behavior depended on perceptions of the ethicality of one's supervisor and RWA. RWA predicted discrimination toward a gay man (behavioral intentions), and supervisor ethics predicted discrimination against outgroups of people, and obedience of an unlawful command (past behavior). As well, the effects of ethical supervision on discrimination (past behavior, behavioral intentions) depended on participants' level of RWA . Finally, ethical climate mediated the relation between supervisor ethics and obeying an unlawful command, such that higher perceptions of supervisor ethics led to a higher ethical climate, which led to less obedience of an unlawful command in the past. This suggests that leaders can affect the ethical climate of on organization, which in turn affects ethical behavior of followers.

Moral Distress Amongst District Leaders: Intensity, Dilemmas, and Coping Mechanisms in the Context of Covid-19.

Purpose: This study examines the sources and intensity of moral distress among school district leaders during the first full school year of the Covid-19 pandemic and investigates their coping mechanisms for addressing issues that create moral dilemmas for them. Design and Evidence: We draw on semi-structured interviews with 26 school district leaders across 13 school districts in the Northwestern United States. Brief summaries detailing themes in each interview were prepared. Magnitude coding was used to understand the intensity of district leaders' feelings of distress. Open coding and axial coding allowed us to categorize the origins/sources of distress and the approaches/strategies district leaders used to reduce feelings of moral distress. Findings: Reported moral distress ranged from none to moderate but manageable amounts. Three types of problems were described as morally distressing: political problems with the community or unions, staff problems including staff stress, staff resistance, and collaboration amongst staff members, and an inability to meet student needs due to resource, policy, or community/family constraints. Leaders' coping mechanisms included social responses such as team building, but also drew on individual virtues such as persistence and patience. Implications: Within the ranks of district leaders, the extent to which leaders frame their challenges in a moral frame is varied. A sizable group articulated challenges with implications for moral action in primarily technical or political terms. If district leaders engage unevenly with the moral tradeoffs of their decisions, they risk adopting an overly managerialist frame.

The effects of ethical leadership on creativity: A conservation of resources perspective.

The pursuit of novelty can be a challenging experience that often comes with stress. Thinking outside the box can even lead to ethical dilemmas, particularly when innovators are under the pressure to meet deadlines. In this study, we examine creativity as a stress-inducing process, especially when employees encounter setbacks during their pursuit of novelty. Our aim was to explore the relationship between ethical leadership and creativity from a Conservation of Resources (COR) perspective. Using two distinct research samples, we discovered that help seeking behavior during the pursuit of novelty is crucial for acquiring resources in the workplace and serves as a mediator in the relationship between ethical leadership and creativity. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The relationship between ethical leadership, conscientiousness, and moral courage from nurses' perspective.

BACKGROUND: Nurses' conscientiousness and moral courage are essential to providing high quality care. Leadership is one of the factors that may be very effective in strengthening these characteristics in nurses. Among leadership styles, the ethical leadership has a special value. This study investigated the relationship between ethical leadership of nursing managers, conscientiousness, and moral courage from the nurses' perspective. METHODS: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, 180 nurses working in hospitals of Yazd, central Iran, were selected through simple random sampling. Three questionnaires: the "Ethical Leadership", "Conscientiousness", and "Moral Courage" were used to collect data. Data were analyzed with SPSS20 using descriptive and analytical statistics. RESULTS: There was a positive and significant relationship between conscientiousness and moral courage with ethical leadership from the nurses' perspective (P < 0.05). The relationship between conscientiousness and moral courage was also significant (P < 0.05). The regression analysis showed that ethical leadership can be considered as a predictor of conscientiousness and moral courage. CONCLUSION: The relationship between ethical leadership and conscientiousness and moral courage suggests that nursing managers, by adopting such an approach in leadership, can increase conscientiousness and moral courage in nurses.

Missed nursing care and its relationship with perceived ethical leadership.

BACKGROUND: Determination of the factors affecting missed nursing care and the impact of ethical leadership is important in improving the quality of care. AIM: This study aims to determine the missed nursing care and its relationship with perceived ethical leadership. RESEARCH DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT: The sample consisted of 233 nurses, of whom 92.7% were staff nurses and 7.3% were charge nurses, who work in three different hospitals in Turkey. The study data were collected using a personal and professional characteristics data form, the Missed Nursing Care Survey, and the Ethical Leadership Scale. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: The study was approved by the non-interventional ethics committee of Dokuz Eylül University Ethics Committee for Noninvasive Clinical Studies. All participants' written and verbal consents were obtained. FINDINGS: The most missed nursing care practices were ambulation, attending interdisciplinary care conferences, and discharge planning. According to the logistic regression analysis, sex, the number of patients that the nurse is in charge of giving care, the number of patients discharged in the last shift, and satisfaction with the team were determined as factors affecting missed care. No significant relationship was found between ethical leadership and missed nursing care (p > 0.05), and a weak but significant relationship was found between the clarification of duties/roles subscale and missed nursing care (r = -0.136, p < 0.05). DISCUSSION: Ethical leaders should collaborate with policy-makers at an institutional level to particularly achieve teamwork that is effective in the provision of care, to control missed basic nursing care, and to organize working hours and at the country level to determine roles and to increase the workforce. CONCLUSION: The results of this study contribute to the international literature on the most common type of missed nursing care, its reasons, and the relationship between the missed care and ethical leadership in a different cultural context.

The relationship between the conflict management strategies and ethical leadership behaviours of nurse managers perceived by nurses.

AIM: The aims of this study were to determine nurse managers' level of ethical leadership perceived by nurses and to examine its relationship with conflict management strategies. BACKGROUND: Ethical leadership is about how managers use their power in their decisions and actions, and its source is based on moral and ethical authority. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of ethical behaviours of nurse managers in the work environment on determining conflict management strategies. METHOD: The data of this descriptive, correlational, and cross-sectional study were collected face-to-face from 285 nurses between April-June 2019. The data collection instruments included the introductory information form, the Ethical Leadership Scale, and The Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II. RESULTS: Ethical leadership scores perceived by nurses in nurse managers were found 3.78, and the highest score was obtained from the behavioural ethics subscale (3.81 ± .91). In conflict management strategies perceived by nurses, it was determined that they got highest scores from collaborating style (3.76 ± .90) and lowest scores from competing style (2.90 ± .94). There was no significant relationship only between ethical leadership and its subscales and competing (r: -.038/-.041, p > .05). In other subscales, there were positive, moderate, and highly significant relationships (r: .466-.747, p < .001). The rate of explanatoriness of communicative ethics subscale in conflict management strategies ranged from 22.3% to 58.0%. CONCLUSIONS: The study shows that communicative ethics subscale significantly affects the conflict management strategies of nurse managers. Therefore, it is important for nurse managers to communicate bilaterally and be a role model for nurses. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Ethical leaders value trust and respect in their interactions with employees and reflect what appropriate behaviour to the situation is. Nurses who perceive that their managers demonstrate ethical leadership behaviours will also evaluate their role in conflict resolution. On the other hand, the power-based, aggressive, noncompromising domination approach that the person imposes on others is not associated with the ethical leadership perception towards their managers by nurses and is a strategy that should not be preferred. Therefore, nurse managers who use appropriate conflict management strategies were seen as a role model by nurses.

Moral distress and moral injury and their interplay as a challenge for leadership and management: The case of Croatia.

AIM: We aim to investigate the interplay between moral distress and moral injury among nurses working in palliative and oncology wards and to assess its impact on nursing leadership. BACKGROUND: The past 2 years have been particularly challenging for nurses and nursing leaders in Croatia. The coronavirus disease pandemic and the subsequent earthquakes in the country significantly impacted the work of nurses. Moral distress has been well-known to nursing professionals, but recent studies warn about cofounding it with moral injury and their possible intercorrelation, deserving more attention from an empirical perspective. METHODS: We conducted quantitative cross-sectional research in palliative and oncology wards in 11 Croatian health care facilities on 162 nurses, using a questionnaire and paper/pencil method over 6 months (1 January 2021 to 1 July 2021). The questionnaire consisted of three parts: sociodemographic data, a Measure of moral distress for health care professionals and Moral injury symptoms scale for health care professionals. The research protocol was approved by the Ethics committee of the Catholic University of Croatia under no. 1-21-04. RESULTS: The findings of our study demonstrated that the current average levels of moral distress might be characterized as low, but the moral injury symptoms are severe. The results of our study bring interesting novel insights, such as the strong correlation between moral distress and moral injury, but also in terms of nurses' decision to leave or consider leaving their position. The nurses who experience higher levels of moral distress experience severe symptoms of moral injury, while nurses who score higher in moral distress and moral injury have left, considered or consider leaving their positions. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlighted the need to pay attention to the emerging phenomenon of moral injury that has been unaddressed and overshadowed by moral distress, their intercorrelation, and the importance of addressing them timely and adequately within health care organizations with their leadership and management. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: These findings provide a significant insight that may assist nursing managers and leaders to act and respond in time to develop various prevention and mitigation measures and help resolve situations leading to moral distress or moral injury.

Ethical leadership: Exploring bottom-line mentality and trust perceptions of employees on middle-level managers.

With the increased competitiveness and significance of the workforce, the responsibility of organizational leaders has been increased to behave ethically and lead their followers in the best ethical way. This study aims to explore how the perception and trust of followers of their middle-level managers can shape the ethical behavior of middle managers and their bottom-line mentality. This qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews from 10 employees of two Pakistani textile organizations-selecting five employees from each. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis. The findings reported that the bottom-line mentality demands are given priority. Thus, to achieve these demands, ethical values are being ignored while the nature of the task and attitude of the supervisor leads towards the social undermining of the employees. Furthermore, it has been found that leaders' behavior and personality are more important in building trust and perception of employees, and this perception does not entail that leader will be acting ethically in real, but they are perceived to be. This study can provide valuable implications for policymakers, especially HR personnel, to device policies by considering ethical leadership practices. The findings of this research recommend that better performance and profit maximization by employees can be enhanced by reducing the bottom-line mentality of top management. Few scholars have elaborated on ethical leadership, the complexity of the leader-follower relationship, and individual perceptions. Behavioral aspects, bottom-line mentality, and trust from employees' perspective in ethical leadership have received little attention. In addition, this research has taken a step forward by exploring the collectivist country of Pakistan.

Linking perceived ethical leadership to workplace cheating behavior: A moderated mediation model of moral identity and leader-follower value congruence.

According to social learning theory, we examine the effect of ethical leadership by investigating how moral identity resulting from ethical leadership influences employees' workplace cheating behaviors. Adopting a moderated mediation framework, this study suggests that leader-follower value congruence moderates the positive relationship between ethical leadership and employees' moral identity and mitigates the indirect effect of ethical leadership on employees' workplace cheating behaviors. The results of this study, drawn from a sample of 243 full-time employees and their direct supervisors, support these hypotheses. As such, this study provides novel theoretical and empirical insights into ethical leadership and workplace cheating behavior.

Ethical leadership and decision authority effects on nurses' engagement, exhaustion, and turnover intention.

AIM: The aim of the present study was to investigate emotional exhaustion, work engagement, and turnover intention in the nursing profession by exploring the antecedent effects of ethical leadership and job components such as decision authority. BACKGROUND: Emotional exhaustion, low work engagement, and high turnover intention are prevalent issues in the nursing profession. The experience of feeling overworked has led to feelings of burnout and low morale among nurses in Ireland, which has prompted the authors to identify potential variables that reduce these outcomes-in this case, ethical leadership and decision authority. DESIGN: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey design was used across three hospital sites. METHODS: A cross-sectional sample of 89 nurses was recruited from three Irish hospitals to capture the experience of nurses between December 2017 - February 2018. Hypotheses were tested using path model analysis. RESULTS: Ethical leadership positively predicted decision authority among nurses. Ethical leadership also had an indirect effect on all three outcome variables (work engagement, exhaustion, and turnover intention). Further effects were noted in relation to the mediators in relation to the three outcome variables. Decision authority had a positive effect on work engagement and related to lower turnover intention. CONCLUSIONS: The present study demonstrated the role of ethical leadership as a mechanism to positively affect job control and work experience outcomes for nurses at work. Ethical leadership style in hospitals and providing nurses with the authority to make decisions can improve their work experience and help to engage, support, and retain nurses. IMPACT: The study found support for the positive role of ethical leadership in relation to decision authority and as a positive predictor of work engagement, negative predictor of emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention among nurses.

Explaining the effect of authentic and ethical leadership on psychological empowerment of nurses.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explain the effect of authentic and ethical leadership on the psychological empowerment of nurses. BACKGROUND: Ethics-related leadership styles can play an important role in improving employee performance by influencing job satisfaction. However, no study has investigated ethics-related leadership and its impact on the psychological empowerment of nurses. METHOD: The present study is a descriptive correlational study with emphasis on structural equations. A random sample of 384 nurses in public hospitals in Tehran responded to three self-report questionnaires. RESULTS: The authentic leadership variable explains 74.5% of the variance of the psychological empowerment variable. In addition, the variable of ethical leadership explains 87.7% of the variance of psychological empowerment variable. CONCLUSION: Ethical and authentic leadership is effective on the nurses' psychological empowerment. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Ethical and authentic leadership is necessary for managers to psychologically empower nursing staff. Increasing awareness of capabilities of nurses and how decisions and behaviours affect them, balanced information processing, observance of ethics in the workplace, transparency in communication, information and power sharing, all impact justice in the workplace.

Cultivating ethical leadership in the recovery of COVID-19.

AIM: To propose the necessity of fostering ethical leadership in the recovery of COVID-19. BACKGROUND: Supporting physically and emotionally exhausted nurses, whilst ensuring quality standards of care delivery in the recovery phase of COVID-19, requires careful, considerate and proactive planning. EVALUATION: Drawing on literature and utilizing Lawton and Paez Gabriunas' (2015) integrated ethical leadership framework (purpose, practices, virtues), possible practical suggestions for the operationalization of ethical leadership are proposed. DISCUSSION: Nurse managers must maintain ethical vigilance in order to nurture value-driven behaviour, demonstrating empathy and compassion for nurses experiencing physical and emotional exhaustion because of COVID-19. It is important that open dialogue, active listening and self-care interventions exist. Nurse managers have an essential role in inspiring and empowering nurses, and building morale and a collective commitment to safe and quality care. CONCLUSION: Nurse managers need to consider ways of empowering, supporting and enabling nurses to apply ethical standards in everyday practice. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Fostering ethical nurse leadership requires careful and sensitive planning, as well as charismatic, compassionate and inspirational leaders. Supporting staff through respect, empathy, role modelling and genuine conscientiousness is essential for increasing job performance and sustaining an ethical work environment.

Being an ethical leader during the apocalypse: Lessons from the walking dead to face the COVID-19 crisis.

This article draws on Gareth Morgan's theory of organizational metaphors. Using imaginization, this research examines practices of ethical leadership during a crisis, using The Walking Dead television series as a reference. The Walking Dead offers an artistic representation of different leadership styles, with business organizations likened to groups of survivors. Its post-apocalyptic setting offers something of an analogy to the COVID-19 crisis. Each firm's struggle for survival in the face of external threats is paralleled with each community's struggle to protect members' lives, preserve resources, and pursue development. The practices of the leaders in the program are compared to those of the leaders of firms such as P&G, Boeing, GM, Renault-Nissan, IBM, BP, GE, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Ali Baba, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and SpaceX. This paper illustrates why ethical leadership goes far beyond charisma and competencies to involve deep motivations and sincere emotions and why it is accessible to everyone through a process of learning and transformation. The study shows the need to adapt leadership style to context. Good leaders know when to step back, meditate, and be lucid. They balance consultation and initiative. They do not fear other leaders and mentor new ones.