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It is essential that leaders within an organization routinely meet with employees to ensure needs are met and employees understand the values, which the organization is founded. Leadership and ethical decision-making play a vital role in maintaining a cohesive organization. Leaders must retain a stable work ethic and corporate culture within the organization by clearly defining goals and behaviors, values, decisions, and communications that align with the mission. The purpose of this narrative inquiry is to investigate accounting leaders' stories related to ethical practices in accounting. How do leaders make decisions that support an ethical environment? Non-profit leaders who head up accounting departments are duty bound to enforce best practices and be held to high standards as organizational leaders working in the southern region of Louisiana. The data collection method used was in the form of semi-structured interviews. Ten open-ended semi-structured questions were posed to explore accounting leaders' stories related to their ethical practices in non-profit accounting. Data analysis administered several thematic codes using NVivo 12 software.
Keywords: non-profit accounting leaders, ethical leadership, accountability, culture, trust
INTRODUCTION
The United States non-profit (NP) workforce is currently at a critical turning point with research delineating a nationwide executive leadership crisis (Vito, 2018). The crisis has been attributed to a number of factors including Lehman Brothers, Arthur Anderson, Enron, and Worldcom (Landles-Cobb et al., 2015), lack of skilled replacement leaders (Austin, Regan, Samples, Schwartz, & Carnochan, 2011; Deaton et al., 2013; Froelich et al., 2011). A projected 18% increase in need for social and community service managers between 2016 and 2026 (U.S. Department of Labor, 2016), and the overall changing nature of non-profit organizations resulting in more workers needing to develop more advanced leadership skills (Vito, 2018). The need for leadership learning and development is imperative, and researchers have called for increased focus on non-profit leadership development (Landles-Cobb et al., 2015).
Ethical leadership creates many benefits for an organization. Ethical leadership has a direct impact on the corporate culture of the firm. Ethical leaders delineate organizations' mission and values encouraging employees to internalize what drives the organizations' purpose and beliefs (Ferrell et al., 2017). Leadership provides cultural motivations encouraging ethical behavior and can implement reward systems for practicing ethical conduct and decision making.
Problem Statement
The general...