The role of self-leadership in becoming an ethical leader in the South African work context

Unethical behaviour has reached unacceptable levels in South Africa. Ethical leadership is an important source of ethical influence, and therefore provides an impetus for finding ways of managing ethics in an organisational context. Ethical leadership, however, is influenced and affected by self-leadership. The objective of this conceptual and theoretical research, therefore, was to indicate how self-leadership can contribute to leaders becoming ethical leaders within the current South African work context. The social learning theory can be made applicable to self-leadership and ethical leadership, and was used as the basis for this study. It is indicated that self-leadership strategies can have an effect on ethical behaviour of leaders.