JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

Ethical leadership is crucial for employee adaptability to change in organizations whose long term survival and success depends on their agility and ability to be adaptive. Studies across countries in Africa and organizations point out that the positive or negative response of employees to change is largely dependent on leaders who initiate and followup the change process. The values and standards that leaders use in the process are usually drawn from the organization as well as from the complexity of the lives, existence, and connectivity of their culture. This study realized, however, that there is scanty literature that contextualizes leaders’ ethical consciousness and its role in employee response to organizational change within the African setting. Additionally, there are distortions in organizational management in Africa, which are characterized by unethical practices such as corruption, ethnicity, and favoritism. Thus, this paper examines the extent to which leaders’ ethical consciousness, from an African perspective, impacts on employee response to change which is an important element in the change management processes. The paper argues that lack of ethical sensibility and proper moral judgement of leaders, who are mainly initiators of change, may cause failures of change initiatives in organizations. As a way forward, the study uses African ethics to propose a means for enhancing formation of ethical leadership in order to improve the success of change management process, with special reference to Faith-based health organizations. This paper is based on a review of existing literature that is part of an ongoing qualitative study on "Ethical factors influencing employee response to change in Faith-based Health Organizations in Nairobi County, Kenya."