ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique

(James Macgregor Burns 1978)

Business world leaders are repeatedly morally disappointing; this blog will explore ethical leadership and its necessity in achieving organizational success and effectiveness.

Ethics is to leadership in organizations as what the thread is to the spider web hanging from a fence; the thread enables the spider lower himself and weave its fabric stretching out to every corner. The thread sustains the whole framework of the web without which everything loosens. Just as the thread serves the spider to weave and sustain the woven fabric, in the same way a leader’s moral integrity moves and sustains the followers’ effort to achieve organizational goals. Ethics as defined by Bellingham. R (2003) in a two-fold manner as:

1. The discipline of dealing with what is good and bad, and with moral duty and obligation.
2. The principles of conduct governing an individual or a group.

Having said this, why then do we need ethics within the organisation or in a leader? We need ethics in the organisation because organizations cannot thrive or be successful under the leadership of unethical leaders, it is bound to destroy the integrity of the organization and demotivate the employees in the long run. Leadership according to Mullins (2013) is typically a relationship through which one person influences the actions or behaviour of other people. He also stated that leadership is about determination, personality and an inherent ability at the right time for a particular competitive situation.

The need to explore the phenomenon of ethical leadership in organizations is prompted by the increasing societal concerns that it is unacceptable for organisational leaders to be indifferent to moral responsibility, or engage in unethical behaviour (Mendonca M, and Kanungo R 2007). According to (Treviño, et. al 2006) the media’s interest in recent corporate scandals highlights the importance society places on ethical behaviour in organizations.

Ethical Leadership is defined as a skill needed to guide and inspire people with regard to what is morally right and technically acceptable for the organization (Cuilla 2004). In addition also states that the effectiveness of leadership mainly revolves around ethics and its guidelines.

  The two principal theories of ethical leadership is Deontological and Teleological leadership;

Deontological approaches to ethics attempts to ascertain the content of duty without considering the consequences of particular ways of acting on the other hand Teleological approaches to ethics on the other hand morally evaluates actions by looking at their consequences – right actions being right because they tend to have good consequences, wrong actions being wrong because they tend to have bad consequences. (Macdonald. J. et al 1994).

Deontological (Rules)	Teleological (consequentialist)
·         Formalistic perspective ·        Tendency to adhere to professional                       guidelines and rules for resolving                      dilemmas.  It Emphasizes duty i.e.                      what must be done or not done                            irrespective of results ·         Concerned with what people do, not                 with the consequences of their actions.	·         Utilitarian perspective ·         Ethical decisions tend to be based on               outcomes. ·        A ‘bad’ act can have ‘good’ news                             Goodness or badness is only                                evident in the results (Frere 2007)

An ethical leader can therefore be described as a leader who cares, who listens to what employees have to say and has their best interests in mind. In addition an ethical leader also communicates messages concerning ethics and values, not only during major publicized events but on a daily basis through conduct and decisions that reflect a particular ethics. In making decisions ethical leaders always ask themselves what is best for each employee, group or the organization as whole. An example of an ethical leader is Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO  who told his shareholders and investors of his commitment to reduce apple’s environmental footprint; Under Tim Cook’s leadership the company has stepped up its commitment to curbing its environmental impact pledging to supply 100% of its power from renewable sources and crack down on the use of minerals mined in the democratic republic of Congo (DRC) that can fund war and human right abuses (the guardian).

On the contrary there are also some unethical leaders one of who is David Colby the former CFO of WellPoint, David Colby was infamous for being a womanizer, having affairs with multiple woman (over 30 in total) and accosting one of the women to ABORT the pregnancy she was left with. He was also accused of ill-treating 3 of these women (Huffington post).

 Does ethics in leadership really matter? According to (Mayer.et.al 2009) it absolutely does because followers who rate their leaders as more ethical have more supportive job attitudes such as satisfaction and commitment and are less likely leave the organization. This is because followers are attracted to ethical role models who care about them, treat them fairly and set high ethical standards.

Also as stated in Bandura’s Social learning theory one way people learn is by observing and emulating attractive and credible models; likewise employees learn how to behave from observing their leaders therefore when unethical acts occur in the environment the employees with an ethical leader is more likely to report wrong doing to management unlike employees with unethical leaders (Mayer et al., 2013).

References

Bandura. A (1976) Social learning theory. New York: Prentice – Hall.

Bellingham R. (2003) Ethical leadership; rebuilding trust in corporations’ human resource development: google books.

Cuilla, J.B (2004) Ethics: The heart of leadership 2^nd Edition. WestPoint: Praeger

David. M.M, Nurmohamed. S., Klebe, L. Trevino, Shapiro. D.L, Schminke, M. (2013). Organisational behaviour and human decision process – Encouraging employees to report unethical conduct internally: it takes a village; science direct 121:89 – 103.

Frere.M.L (2007). An exploratory study of multiple relations, ethical decision making and the identification of potentially harmful relationships in college counselling centers: ProQuest

Guardian environment network (2014). Tim cook tells climate sceptics to ditch apple shares: [online] available from http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/03/tim-cook-climate-change-sceptics-ditch-apple-shares. [24 March 2015].

Huffington post (2011) Ex- WellPoint exec accused of womanizing: [online] available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/26/exwellpoint-exec-accused-_n_83361.html  [24 March 2015]

Macdonald, J.E, Caryn.L B, Dudley (1994) ‘Are Deontology and Teleology mutually exclusive? Journal of Business ethics 13 (8) 615 – 623.

Mayer. M. D, Kuenzi.M, Greenbau, Bardes R. Salvador (2009). Organizational behaviour and human decision processes: ‘How long does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickle- down model. Science direct 108 (1) 1 – 13 [22 March 2015].

Mendonca. M, Rabindra. N, Kanungo (2007). Ethical Leadership: open University press.

Mullins. J.L (2013) Management and Organisational Behaviour 10^th edition: Pearson Education.

Trevino, L.K, Weaver, G.R and Reynolds, S.J (2006), ‘Behavioural ethics in organizations’: A review journal of management, 6: 951 – 990.