effect of ethical leadership on employees high in entitlement. Ethical leaders are honest and fair. Tey tend to manage with ethics in mind. When ethical leaders make decisions, they consider whether the decision is fair to all involved. Ethical leaders reward and reprimand employees consistent with objective, ethical standards. In this way, ethical leaders are the antithesis of the overindulgent or neglectful authority figures that the excessively entitled employee may have experienced in childhood. We surveyed more than 400 employees


and their respective supervisors at financial services organizations. Te majority of those organizations were CPA firms. Employees who had higher expectations as to what they were entitled to tended to have lower job performance. Yet this negative correlation was mitigated, and the effect was statistically significant when those excessively entitled employees reported to a leader who they viewed as ethical.


While no one single response is the


perfect antidote, our research indicates ethical leadership may be a partial solution to employee entitlement. Highly entitled


employees are less likely to approach their work with enthusiasm and engagement, which results in lower job performance. Ethical leaders, with their trustworthy, fair and candid nature, are more effective in calibrating entitled employees’ expectations. Tese ethical leaders are also more likely to require fair and ethical workplace practices, which may effectively temper entitled employees’ inequitable demands. John Maxell wrote “everything rises and falls on leadership.”11


Perhaps he was on to


something. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reminded us 50 years ago, “We can’t always get what we want. But if we try sometimes, we just might find, we get what we need.”12 Ethical leaders may help us understand the difference between what we want and what we have earned. Tis is just one more reason CPAs in both public practice and corporate finance should maintain our collective emphasis on high ethical standards.


References 1


Stein, J. (2013). Millennials: Te me, me, me


Generation. Time, 181(8), Retrieved from http://nation. time.com/millennials/


2


Eberstadt, N. (2012, September 1-2). Are entitlements corrupting us? Wall Street Journal, C1-C2 3


Joplin, Toby, Rebecca Greenbaum, J. Wallace, and


Bryan Edwards. (2019). Employee Entitlement, Engagement, and Performance: Te Moderating Effect of Ethical Leadership. Journal of Business Ethics: 1-14. 4


American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. (2019), AICPA Professional Standards, AICPA, New York, NY. 5


Plato. (1921). Te laws (Vol. 2). New York, NY:


Manchester University. 6


Patty, W. L., & Johnson, L. S. (1953). Personality and adjustment. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. 7


Freud, S. (1916). On narcissism: An introduction, London: Hogarth Press. 8


Magazine. Sep. 4, 2014. 9


Simmons, N. (2014). Rock is Finally Dead. Esquire


Alsop, R. (2008). Te trophy kids grow up: How the millennial generation is shaking up the workplace. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. 11


Maxwell, John C. (2007). Te 21 Indispensable


Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the person others will want to follow. 2nd Ed. XI. Tomas Nelson. Nashville, TN 12


You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Feb. 4, 2020.


In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/You_Can%27t_Always_Get_What_You_Want Feb, 7, 2020


Samuelson, R. J. (1995). Te good life and its discontents: Te American Dream in the age of entitlement, 1945-1995. New York, NY: Times Books. 10


Contact Us


813 Oak Street 10A #298 Conway, AR 72032


Kathy Cell - 501.514.4928 Christy Cell - 501.499.4357


Kathy Brents, CPA, CBI Broker, Managing Member


Christy Hudson, CBI Broker


Selling your accounting firm is complex.


kathy@accountingbizbrokers.com christy@accountingbizbrokers.com accountingbizbrokers.com


Let us make it simple. July/August 2020 CPAFOCUS 7


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32