The Role of Servant Leadership in Developing an Ethical Climate in Sport Organizations Laura J. Burton University of Connecticut Jon Welty Peachey University of Illinois Janelle E. Wells University of South Florida Evaluation of leadership as a necessary component to reform sport could be critical to fostering a more ethical climate and reducing the frequency and severity of ethical improprieties within this context. However, limited research has examined the relationship between leadership and ethical climate. Servant leadership, due to its ethical component and people-centered focus, is a leadership approach that may best support development of an ethical climate. The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of servant leadership on perceptions of an ethical climate in intercollegiate athletic departments, with an examination of how trust and perceptions of organizational justice indirectly influence the relationship between servant leadership and perceptions of an ethical climate. Findings indicated that servant leadership was directly related to trust in leadership and perceptions of an ethical climate. Further, both trust in the leader and procedural justice indirectly influenced the relationship between servant leadership and ethical climate. Keywords: ethics, intercollegiate athletics, leadership, trust The sport landscape has been plagued with ethical improprieties and scandals in recent years. There are recent examples in U.S. intercollegiate sport (e.g., Penn State/Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal, academic scandals) and U.S. professional sport (e.g., National Football League alleged minimization of the links between concussions and long-term brain injury), and ethical scandals have also plagued international sport at the highest level of sport leadership (e.g., Federation International de Football Association bribery scandals, International Association of Athletics doping scandals). Organizational climates that foster unethical behavior among leaders, administrators, and coaches seem to be more the norm than the exception in sport organizations. In light of these recent ethical scandals and many others, educators, scholars, and officials both within and outside of sport management have called for reform of sport organizations and those that lead them (Lapchick, 2013; Lopiano & Gurney, 2014). In essence, scholars are beginning to call attention to the need for evaluation of leadership as a necessary component for reform in sport organizations and in intercollegiate athletics in particular (Burton & Welty Peachey, 2013; DeSensi, 2014; Sagas & Wigley, 2014). More specifically, leadership is considered criti- cal to fostering a more ethical climate within sport organizations (Welty Peachey, Damon, Zhou, & Burton, 2015). Current leadership research is moving away from the more traditional studies of transformational and transactional leadership toward a stronger emphasis on a shared and relational perspective, with a focus on the interaction between a leader and a follower (see Wang, Waldman, & Zhang, 2014). In addition, work by Welty Peachey and colleagues (2015) has highlighted the need to examine different types of leadership within the context of sport organizations, beyond transformational and transactional. Servant leadership has gained appeal as a result of the myriad positive outcomes associated with this style of leadership, most importantly the unique Laura J. Burton is with the Department of Educational Leadership, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. Jon Welty Peachey is with the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL. Janelle E. Well is with the Department of Sport and Entertainment Management, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. Address author correspondence to Laura J. Burton at laura.burton@ uconn.edu. 229 Journal of Sport Management, 2017, 31, 229-240 https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2016-0047 © 2017 Human Kinetics, Inc. ARTICLE