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Abstract

Over the past several years, Thai public opinion and stockholder sentiment have been rocked by corporate executive violations of insider trading laws. These insider trading scandals have coincided with other global high-profile cases of a similar nature. As these executives serve as public fiduciaries to their stockholders, the ethical nature of their performance is of critical importance. Therefore, an investigation was undertaken on the variables of personal characteristics, organizational culture, job characteristics, and organizational engagement and their effects on a Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) executives’ ethical leadership performance. The research instrument used was a 56-item questionnaire which contained a five-level, Likert type agreement scale. Selection of the sample group’s 236 executive members was accomplished by purposive sampling, followed by a process of being randomly categorized based on industry group through quota sampling. From the seven hypotheses developed from the theory and literature, six were supported. From the supported hypotheses, it was determined that an executive’s characteristics, job characteristics, and organization engagement had direct positive impacts on ethical leadership performance. The single unsupported hypotheses were speculated to have been rejected due to a Thai cultural trait in which authority (Pu Yai) is never questioned or challenged. It was also noted from the research the importance of families in a SET-listed stock’s performance. The study concluded that an executive’s ethical performance could either make or break an organization. Indeed, the study’s results highlighted the gravity of ethical leadership and the importance of which organizations should invest in instilling organizational engagement into their employees. Additionally, it was established that organizational culture has a tremendous influence on ethical leadership performance. Hence, aggressive culture is an ideal option for embedding ethical practices in the organization. The conceptual model of this research substantiated methods of implementing ethical practices in an organization, particularly the fact that personal characteristics, job characteristics, and organizational engagement should be taken into consideration.

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