Ethical Followership Institute

The Ethical Followership Institute (EFI) was incorporated in 2024 by Dr. Kyle Payne.

Our mission is to conduct research and provide education on the efforts of followers to constructively resist directives, requests, or pressures to do unethical things at work, as well as their broader contributions to co-creating ethical leadership.

Background

When presenting the results of his dissertation - a study on unethical behavior in the engineering profession - Dr. Kyle Payne found that workers are less likely to act unethically if being a moral person is important to them, if they appreciate the moral implications of their work, and if they are encouraged to reflect on these moral implications. No surprise there!

What Dr. Payne found surprising, though, was the response from audiences at industry events when he suggested that organizations celebrate cases when workers do the right thing when facing pressure to do otherwise, such as when they receive an unethical directive. When he encouraged audiences to celebrate what he calls "ethical followership," the response was often, "You mean whistleblowing?" Well... yes and no.

Ethical followership is more than just blowing the whistle when you observe or suspect an ethical lapse; it includes behaviors like querying, appealing, and advocating. Through these and other behaviors, followers play an important role in fostering ethical behavior at work, one that scholarship on ethical leadership has historically ignored. Similar constructs like "employee voice" or "organizational dissent" come close to explaining the impact of ethical followers, but they don't address the relationship between leader and follower or their efforts to co-create ethical leadership.

Research Agenda

To help organizations support ethical followers, EFI identified an initial set of research questions:

What happens when a worker is directed or asked to do something unethical?
What behaviors should we expect of ethical followers?
What are the outcomes of ethical follower behaviors?
How do we set up ethical followers for success?
How do leaders and colleagues perceive and respond to ethical followership?
How do we measure and evaluate ethical followership?

To get to know the answers to these and other questions, please refer to the articles below:

Publications

Payne, K. (2023). Doing bad things for good reasons: An examination of unethical pro-organizational behavior among professional engineers. Journal of Leadership, Accountability, and Ethics, 20(5), 74-100.

Payne, K. (2023, Spring). How to avoid doing bad things for good reasons: Lessons from a study of professional engineers. PE Magazine.

Payne, K. (2023). Building an ethical organization: Why it's time to define ethical followership. Organization Development Review, 55(3), 68-73.

Payne, K. (2024). Making room for followers: A grounded theory study of ethical followership among professional engineers. The International Journal of Ethical Leadership, 11(1), 45-74.

This study introduced the following theoretical framework for ethical followership:

Payne, K. (2024). Engineering ethics: How to hold your leader accountable. PE Magazine.

Fabiano, S. (Host). (2024, March 3). Followers Navigating Ethical Dilemmas [Season 3, Episode 1 episode with guest Dr. Kyle Payne]. Lead and Follow Podcast.

Works in Progress:

Payne, K. (in press, expected 2025). Can we talk about this later? A mixed methods study of reactions to ethical followership.

Payne, K. (in press, expected 2026). Reversing the lens on ethical leadership: Development and validation of an ethical followership scale.