This article challenges the assumption that the source of ethical leadership is the well-intentioned leader of good character. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s critical philosophy, it argues that those aspiring to lead ethically must actively constitute themselves in order to become subjects who are free to exercise ethical agency. The practices of self-care (epimeileisthai sautou) and courageous speech (parrhesia) are introduced as means by which such self-constitution can be approached. The case of US President Barack Obama’s inability to close the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay serves as an illustrative device to ground Foucault’s ideas. The argument enriches a philosophically informed rendering of ethical leadership in three ways: by highlighting the role resistance plays in any leader’s attempts to achieve ethical ends, by demonstrating the importance of an orientation of critique on the part of those aspiring to lead ethically, and by revealing the importance of followers in realizing ethical outcomes.

In this study, we investigate how different internal and external stakeholders influence the innovation strategy of a social enterprise to adopt product, process, and partnership innovations that impact either social or commercial performance. Relying on survey data from a sample of work integration social enterprises, we find that in situations of turbulence, administrative leaders do not significantly influence the innovation strategy of a social enterprise. Instead, board members and external stakeholders seem to play a role. Our study contributes to strategic and business ethics research on social enterprises and, more broadly, to the literature that explores how business organizations combine social value creation and wealth generation.

We provide evidence concerning the effect of managerial risk-taking incentives on merger and acquisition (M&A) decisions and outcomes for different types of mergers: vertical, horizontal, and diversifying. Using chief executive officer (CEO) relative inside leverage to proxy for the incentives of risk-averse managers, we find that CEOs with higher inside leverage are more likely to engage in vertical mergers, and those mergers generate lower announcement returns for shareholders. This effect of CEO relative inside leverage on returns for shareholders in vertical acquisitions is more pronounced when the acquirer has a higher degree of informational opacity, weak governance, and excess cash.

This study elucidates the falsity of business research in relying on either respondents or informants alone for data collection, and argues that with the biased data, business research cannot provide unbiased solutions. We compare 400 reports (200 respondents and 200 informants) on the workplace deviance and assess the goodness of both the techniques. Analysis of variance and posthoc (descriptive discriminant analysis) indicate significant disparities between the two approaches across all items. In the informant’s role, people tend to overreport, whereas in the respondent’s part they underreport an undesirable behavior. Further, we find that conventional techniques for assessing the construct’s validity and common-method bias neither assures realistic measurement nor eliminate the response bias. Drawing on the theory of psychological projection, we propose a hybrid approach that curtails some of the main biases in data and measurement. Qualitative confirmation through informal interviews with managers in the investigated firms validates the proposed method.

A mission statement is a widely used strategic tool that emphasises an organisation’s uniqueness and identity. It was in the early 1980s that academics, managers, and consultants recognised the need for explicitly formulating a mission statement in organisations. Since then, mission statements have remained as a popular strategic tool in organisations. This article conducts a systematic literature review to synthesise research on mission statements. The analysis of the 53 articles selected includes a bibliometric and content analysis. According to their perspective, the works selected were grouped into four thematic areas: (1) mission statement development, (2) mission statement components, (3) mission impact on employees, and (4) mission impact on performance. The overreaching conclusion is that mission statements are widely used in practice but poorly researched in theory. Most articles adopt a managerial phenomenon-based strand, lacking a deep theoretical foundation. The article ends with suggestions for further research in terms of theory, practice, and methodology.