Research on work values shows that respectful leadership is highly desired by employees. On the applied side, however, the extant research does not offer many insights as to which concrete leadership behaviors are perceived by employees as indications of respectful leadership. Thus, to offer such insights, we collected and content analyzed employees’ narrations of encounters with respectful leadership (N1 = 426). The coding process resulted in 19 categories of respectful leadership spanning 149 leadership behaviors. Furthermore, to also harness this comprehensive (...) repertoire for quantitative organizational research, we undertook two more studies (N2a = 228; N2b = 412) to empirically derive a feasible item-based measurement of respectful leadership and assess its psychometric qualities. In these studies, we additionally investigated the relationships between respectful leadership as assessed with this new measurement and employees’ vertical and contextual followership as assessed via subordinates’ identification with their leaders, their appraisal respect for their leaders, their feeling of self-determination, and their job satisfaction. (shrink)

There is much public focus in North America today on issues of corporate governance and ethics due mainly to the malpractice of several high profile corporate leaders and the negative impact of this on their corporation's stakeholders, employees and communities. This has caused a crisis of trust in the public and lead to much discussion on ways to prevent such unethical behavior by adopting new approaches through legislation and the structure of corporations. This article is not about introducing a new (...) approach to corporate ethics and governance as there is much change already taking place. The National Quality Institute in Canada offers a demonstrated and proven way, through the application of the Excellence Frameworks, of providing for good corporate guidance and ethical leadership practices. Organizations, which adopt a strategic focus on Excellence, attain great results and become healthy organizations, as their leaders understand the dynamic relationship and the balance that exists between "employees, customers, and stakeholders". These organizations build trust by acting responsibly. NQI works with many organizations in Canada that have a strategic leadership focus on organizational excellence utilizing the criteria in the NQI Canadian Excellence Frameworks for Quality and for Healthy Workplace. Organizations that take an integrated approach to Excellence also perform well in such areas as corporate social responsibility, employee health and customer satisfaction. This article has specific references to three organizations that have achieved Canada's prime recognition the Canada Awards for Excellence. (shrink)