Ethical Leadership in Organisation in Transition

Leaders play a prominent role in promoting ethics in organisations. Trevino, Hartman and Brown (2000) emphasise the importance of being a moral manager for a leader, as well as being a moral person. As an ethical leader, it is not enough to be a moral person, as it only "tells followers what the leader will do. It doesn't tell them what the leader expects them to do" (Trevino and Brown, 2004). A moral manager on the other hand is "one, who leads others on the ethical dimension, lets them know what is expected, and holds them accountable" (Trevino and Brown, 2004). A number of ways that moral managers can act have been identified (Trevino et al, 2000): to be a role model, to communicate the ethics, and to consistently employ reward system. Leadership has also been perceived as a key element in the ethics management implementation at the Indonesian tax administration. Such view was revealed from interviews and focus group discussions mainly conducted in the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT), the Indonesian tax administration. This paper identifies two other ways moral managers can carry out their role: to show a strong commitment and great concern, and to comfort and reinforce. These additional ways are seen as essential, particularly where ethics management is still at early stages of implementation. Furthermore, Trevino et al (2000) suggests four possibilities of moral person-moral manager combinations. One of which is a weak moral person-strong moral manager condition. In this regard, this paper is of the opinion that in the case of ethics management implementation in DGT, the two dimensions must not be seen as separable conditions. A strong moral person is part of, and the characteristics are a prerequisite to be, a strong moral manager. The research will contribute to the number of studies in ethics management in public sector conducted in developing countries. In Indonesian context, in which bureaucracy reform is currently taking place, the research will provide insights on the implementation of ethics management and will give feedbacks on it in public sector reforms in Indonesia.