Abstract

A comparison of two groups of college students, at a public state university and a private religious school, yields the same results: undergraduates’ interpretations of recent business scandals make distinctions between public and private behavior. Students admire “family men” even when they are caught at fraud. The students’ interpretations illustrate a significant gap in ethical theories: the benefits of a group perspective for corporate citizenship versus individual family values. Most leadership theories, including stakeholder theories, do not address this disjunction. This article describes the phenomenon and maps the ethics literature to locate the dynamic forces underlying the empirical and theoretical disconnections between leadership and ethics.