An ethical perspective on corporate leadership: Setting up a research agenda for emerging economy contexts

Developing leadership for good organization is about developing good leadership, which can mean technically good (or effective) and morally good (or ethical). Emerging economies appear particularly to be a challenging environment for corporate leadership to adopt ethical values and practices. This paper aims at setting up a research agenda for the ethics of business leadership in emerging economies based on a narrative review of extant literature addressing: 1) the philosophical embeddedness (assumptions) of leadership ethics; 2) existing conceptualizations of ethics in leadership literature; and 3) the gaps between existing conceptualizations and emerging economy contextual embeddedness. The research agenda highlights the need for a more integrated view on ethics with more attention to teleological issues, an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, qualitative in-depth cases and small-scale comparative studies between two or more emerging economy contexts.