When Ethical Leaders Are Not Enough: Corporate Ethical Culture and the Translation of Psychological Safety Into Ethical Voice

Danny Philipe Bukidz

doi:10.55927/cjas.v4i7.211

Penulis

Danny Philipe Bukidz Universitas Pelita Harapan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55927/cjas.v4i7.211

Kata Kunci:

Coorporate Ethical Culture, Ethical Leadership, Employee Voice, Organizational Silence, Psychological Safety

Abstrak

Employee ethical voice is essential for detecting misconduct and preventing organizational harm, yet employees may remain silent even under leaders perceived as ethical. Existing research has largely examined ethical leadership, psychological safety, and ethical culture as separate predictors, leaving unclear how leader-level and organizational-level signals jointly shape employees’ decisions to raise morally relevant concerns.

This article conducts a structured integrative review of peer-reviewed research on ethical leadership, employee voice, organizational silence, psychological safety, and ethical culture. The synthesis develops a multilevel framework in which ethical leadership legitimizes speaking up, psychological safety reduces anticipated interpersonal costs, and corporate ethical culture determines the expected efficacy and institutional credibility of voice. We introduce ethical signal consistency to explain why ethical leadership produces stronger voice when leader behavior is aligned with reporting systems, reward structures, and organizational sanctions.

The framework distinguishes employee ethical voice from general promotive voice and proposes that speaking up depends jointly on perceived safety, moral legitimacy, and voice efficacy. The article contributes to business ethics research by reframing employee voice as an ethical governance mechanism and identifying conditions under which ostensibly ethical organizations may nevertheless reproduce silence.

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