Chapter 2 - Leadership Morality and Transformative Philosophy (original) (raw)

Moral Leadership: A Transformative Model for Tomorrow's Leaders

2012

Moral Leadership: A Transformative Model for Tomorrow's Leaders (Strategic Management Collection) Cam Caldwell The challenge facing leaders in the 21st century is to restore stakeholder trust, build employee commitment, and create organizations that are able to sustain long-term competitive advantage. Great leadership combines both character and competence, but corporate values must include excellence and quality as well as integrity and honesty. Creating organizational systems that reinforce and support core values and that achieve outstanding performance must be founded upon principles that work on the street, in the office, and on the shop floor. Ethical leadership that honors a commitment to world class standards is a mandatory requirement for today's incredibly competitive global business environment, but ethical leadership encompasses far more than avoiding polluting the environment or misrepresenting product features to customers. This book clarifies the duties and obligations that leaders owe to their many stakeholders as they seek to create longterm wealth, but it also provides insights about how to build the organizational culture and systems required to sustain highly ethical organizations that inspire commitment and compete successfully.

Leading with Integrity: ethical leadership — a fundamental principle of integrity and good

Govnet Ejournal, 2007

The assessment of 'Integrity Systems', sometimes referred to as 'Ethics Regimes', has generally focused on national perspectives, whether the right institutions, policies and procedures exist to achieve an effective national integrity system. The recently released Australian National Integrity System Assessment report highlighted the importance of mapping integrity systems and analysing whether the various elements have the resources to do their job (capacity), how they interact (coherence) and whether they are yielding the desired results (consequences). 1 However, no matter how sound an integrity system may be, without the right human capital operating within it, such a system can achieve very little. In practice, it is people, primarily leaders at all levels, who drive organisational direction, create and sustain an ethical climate and provide major incentives or disincentives for organisational and employee ethical behaviour. This paper attempts to extend this framework beyond a systems and national focus to more fully recognise the interplay of complex human relationships within individual organisations. In this context the quality of the leadership is a critical dynamic as it deeply influences the predictability of the behaviour of people in organisations. Therefore, the development of ethical leadership skills, underpinned by sound ethical decision making, is fundamental to creating organisations in which people 'Lead with Integrity'. This paper examines some of the relevant and recent literature on ethical leadership, focusing on the key issues surrounding ethical leadership roles and how these might be better understood, assessed and enhanced, not just as valuable qualities in their own right, but as a key to organisational integrity. The paper then presents some recommendations for actions within organisations to ensure and sustain ethical leadership. Finally, the paper recommends further research to assess the current standing of ethical leadership and ways in which it can be measured for improvements over time.

Strategic leadership of ethical behavior in business

Academy of Management Perspectives, 2004

The strategic leadership of ethical behavior in business can no longer be ignored. Executives must accept the fact that the moral impact of their leadership presence and behaviors will rarely, if ever, be neutral. In the leadership capacity, executives have great power to shift the ethics mindfulness of organizational members in positive as well as negative directions. Rather than being left to chance, this power to serve as ethics leaders must be used to establish a social context within which positive self-regulation of ethical behavior becomes a clear and compelling organizational norm and in which people act ethically as a matter of routine. This article frames the responsibility for strategic leadership of ethical behavior on three premises: (1) It must be done-a stakeholder analysis of the total costs of ethical failures confirms the urgency for ethics change; (2) It can be done-exemplars show that a compelling majority of an organization's membership can be influenced to make ethical choices; (3) It is sustainable-integrity programs help build and confirm corporate cultures in which principled actions and ethics norms predominate.

Leadership and Ethical Responsibility

The WEA Global Issues Series, 2013

The Three Aspects of Every Decision Executives have to continually make responsible decisions. However, Christians who are executives often do not know how to build a bridge between their underlying va- lues and the continual requirements of everyday working life. The author sees a main problem in the way that within Christianity the three sides of ethical decisions have been played off against each other. However, one finds in the Bible that command- ments, wisdom, and the heart all belong inseparably together. Therefore, norms, the particular situation, and existential concern all have to be considered in order to make mature decisions.

Leadership and Ethical Responsibility: The Three Aspects of every Decision

The WEA Global Issues Series, 2013

Executives have to continually make responsible decisions. However, Christians who are executives often do not know how to build a bridge between their underlying values and the continual requirements of everyday working life. The author sees a main problem in the way that within Christianity the three sides of ethical decisions have been played off against each other. However, one finds in the Bible that commandments, wisdom, and the heart all belong inseparably together. Therefore, norms, the particular situation, and existential concern all have to be considered in order to make mature decisions.

Components of Ethical Leadership and Their Importance in Sustaining Organizations Over the Long Term

Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 2018

This article identifies components of ethical leadership and then aligns them with the style of leadership that includes them. The importance of such an article comes at a time when ethical practices or lack thereof seems to be increasingly prevalent in many organizations' execution of their business practices. These organizations quite often have an ethics statement outlining required behavior of employees and tout their commitment to employees, society, and the customer, yet we continue to see major infractions of these codes of ethics. All this comes at a high financial cost to organizations. In order to avoid such fines, and damage to brand equity, we propose ethical components which must permeate the organization to ensure appropriate behavior which neither breaks legal requirements, disengages the employee, or alienates the customer.

Moral Implications of Leadership -Transformative Insights

In this paper we examine the correlations between Lawrence Kohlberg's six stages of morality and Transformative Leadership, a new morally-based approach to leadership. Using survey of students, faculty members, and staffs at a South Florida private university we present evidence that there is a clear relationship between an individual's self-described leadership perspectives and the stages of Kohlberg's moral development model. Our paper provides five significant contributions to the literature about leadership and its moral role and enables scholars and practitioners to understand more completely the relationships between leadership and moral behavior.

THE ROLE OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN ORGANIZATIONS

ECOFORUM, 2023

The prosperity and success of any company greatly depends on the leadership qualities and skills of the management. Leadership is essential for successful management. It is a process where one person has a certain influence on other members and leads them to achieve the set goal by a process. A leader is the person with the leverage of influence. The head of the organization should be an effective manager and a leader. When it comes to a leadership, the issue of ethics is also worth noting. A leader, who works alongside with and makes an impact on people with different characteristics, must behave ethically. Every single decision made by a leader should be based on ethical standards. A leader must be able to control himself and others, to manage emotions, take responsibility and make fair decisions. Consequently, issues related to ethical leadership are an important research subject and the given article deals with those aspects of ethics that are directly concerned to a leadership.