UNDERSTANDING THE PRACTICE OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP AMONG SCHOOL PRINCIPALS: EVIDENCE FROM MALAYSIA
Ethical leadership is a type of value based leadership that greatly aids in balancing the principal's role as a manager and leader in schools. Studies have shown the impact of practicing ethical leadership towards building trust, positive workplace behaviour, increasing innovative workplace mindset and organisational performance. The emerging leadership style has found strong roots in the international platforms but not in Malaysian local school leadership 3 secondary school principals were selected for this study based on the ethical leadership level as perceived by their teachers from a previous study by the researcher. which shows that principals have high to moderately high level of ethical leadership practice in schools. This case study caters the findings on the understanding and practises of ethical leadership style among the principals as perceived by the principals themselves. The study also explores the seven dimensions of ethical leadership as being practised amongst principals. A semi structured interview was conducted to collect relevant data. The interview is transcribed and analysed thematically The principals revealed that they lacked an understanding of ethical leadership style but practised several dimensions of ethical leadership in their daily school administration tasks. The findings suggest that ethical leadership has ample room to be integrated into current school leadership practises and develop an understanding of its impact on improving teacher work performance.