Fundamentals of Human Resource Management 5th Edition by Raymond Noe, John Hollenbeck, Barry Gerhart, Patrick Wright

Exercise 17

HOW CAN ETHICS PROMOTE JOB SATISFACTION?
Not only do most organizations want their people to behave ethically, there is some evidence that employees want their managers and employers to behave ethically as well. Thus, promoting ethical conduct is not only the moral thing for an organization to do, it also may support employee engagement.
In their research on leadership, for example, James Kouzes and Barry Posner have found that individuals around the world want their leaders to be honest. Evidently, if employees are going to follow someone's lead, they want to believe the person when he or she says where they all are going. Employees want to believe they can trust the people who are in charge.
One way managers provide this kind of leadership is to embrace the qualities of a "servant leader." Servant leadership involves leading with honesty, humility, integrity, and a focus on results. These qualities can be learned and developed. John Heer introduced the practice of servant leadership to North Mississippi Health Services, where he is chief executive. As managers at all levels learned to be servant leaders, employee satisfaction scores rose dramatically. So did patient and physician satisfaction-and financial performance as well.
Interestingly, there also seems to be some research showing satisfaction and ethics working in the opposite direction. That is, when employees are satisfied with their jobs and want to stay with the organization, they tend to make ethical decisions to a greater degree than employees who are not satisfied. The satisfied employees also tend to be more cooperative and more inclined to help out their co-workers.
Suppose you work in the HR department of an organization that wants to improve the job satisfaction of its employees. How might promoting ethical leadership contribute to this goal? How would you make the case for that effort?