The Moral Entrepreneur: A New Component of Ethical Leadership

Ethical leadership has become a popular subject of empirical research in recent years. Most studies follow Brown et al.’s (Organ Behav Hum Decis Process, 97:117–134, 2005) definition of ethical leadership, which consists of two components: the moral person and the moral manager. In this paper, I argue for a third relevant component: i.e., the moral entrepreneur who creates a new ethical norm. Viewing moral entrepreneurship as a new component of ethical leadership opens up avenues for studying various antecedents and outcomes of ethical leadership that have not been acknowledged so far, or at least, not adequately.