Responsibility-Oriented Perspective of Responsible Leadership: Development of a Measurement Instrument

Abstract

Responsible leadership, a construct at the intersection of corporate social responsibility (CSR), ethics, and leadership, is considered to meet the conflicting demands of modern organizations by striking a balance between internal and external responsibilities. To further explore antecedents and outcomes of responsible leadership, scholars and practitioners need an instrument that can gauge the influence of responsible leadership on organizational members. The present study is a combination of four studies and is aimed at developing a measurement instrument using the sequential mixed method equal status approach. The study aims to explore responsibility-oriented dimensions and their subdimensions that are perceived to be comparatively more relevant to responsible leadership by organizational members, while simultaneously, being supported by existing literature. An initial qualitative study, comprising 25 in-depth interviews, revealed six responsibility-oriented dimensions that could reliably measure the construct. Three quantitative studies, entailing collection and analysis of data for each (N = 608, 745, 800), were conducted to refine and validate the instrument. The study used the opinions of followers (organizational members) to determine the influence of responsible leadership in an organization. Based on the validity and reliability statistics of the three studies, the instrument is considered reliable for measurement of the influence of responsible leadership at individual, group, and organizational levels.