The Role of Personality in Leadership: Five Factor Personality Traits and Ethical Leadership

The ethical dimension of executive leadership is thought to be uniquely important because of the executive's potential to influence employee and organizational behavior. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the link between five factor personality traits and ethical leadership. Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were hypothesized to predict ethical leadership. The results revealed that Neuroticism have negative effect on ethical leadership perception of employees. Results did not show any significant relationship between extraversion and ethical leadership. However, as proposed Openness to experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness are found to be important antecedents for ethical leadership. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.