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Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility

to the Other David Knights

Majella O’Leary

ABSTRACT. Of recent time, there has been a prolif-

eration of concerns with ethical leadership within cor-

porate business not least because of the numerous scandals

at Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, and two major Irish

banks – Allied Irish Bank (AIB) and National Irish Bank

(NIB). These have not only threatened the position of

many senior corporate managers but also the financial

survival of some of the companies over which they

preside. Some authors have attributed these scandals to

the pre-eminence of a focus on increasing shareholder

value in Western business schools and/or to their failure

to inculcate ethical standards. In this paper, we challenge

these accounts and the aetiological view of knowledge

from which they derive but are grateful for the consensus

that they convey regarding the importance of business

ethics. The paper focuses on different approaches to

ethical leadership concluding with a view that some

hybrid of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics and Levinas’s ethics of

responsibility may serve as an inspiration for both edu-

cators and practitioners.

KEY WORDS: corporate scandals, ethical leadership,

ethics of responsibility.

Introduction

Of recent time, business ethics has become rather

more fashionable among both educators and prac-

titioners. Why this is the case is difficult to discern

except that concerns about risk (Beck, 1992a, b)

relating to health and the environment have grown

significantly as global warming, pollution, the

depletion of energy resources, genetic modification,

poverty, universal viruses, terrorism, war, and other

human made disasters threaten our existence. Rarely

is the corporation uninvolved or free of responsi-

bility for these threats and hence perhaps the

increasing interest in business ethics. While the

popularity of business ethics seemingly pre-dated the

corporate scandals such as Enron, Parlamat, Allied

Irish Bank (AIB), National Irish Bank (NIB), and

WorldCom, there is little question that they have

further raised the profile of ethical concerns with

academics, practitioners, the public, regulators and

governments. They make it ever more legitimate to

deliberate and debate business morality and in par-

ticular the issue of ethical leadership. We link ethics

to leadership partly because, like ethics, it has been

increasingly a topic of concern for both practising

managers and academic researchers. Practitioner

interest in leadership could have a number of

sources some of which may simply relate to the

historical cycle of fads and fashions (Abrahamson,

1991, 1996; Newell et al., 2001) and others that

perhaps have more substance. One major reason, we

suspect, is that other kinds of innovations whether

organizational or technological (e.g. Quality Man-

agement, Business Process Reengineering, Internet

trading or Knowledge Management) have often

failed to deliver on their promises (Knights and

McCabe, 2003). In this article, then, we seek to

reflect on, and theorize, ethical leadership.

Dr. David Knights is a Professor of Organisational Analysis in

the School of Economic and Management Studies at Keele

University. He previously held chairs in Manchester, Not-

tingham and Exeter Universities. He is a founding and

continuing editor of the journal Gender, Work and Orga-

nisation and his most recent books include: Management

Lives, Sage, 1999 (with H. Willmott) and Organization

and Innovation, McGraw-Hill, 2003 (with D. McCabe).

Majella O’Leary is a Lecturer in Management at the University

of Exeter. Her research interests include corporate scandals,

ethical leadership, disaster sensemaking, and organizational

storytelling. Majella’s most recent publications have appeared

in Human Relations and European Journal of Business

Ethics.

Journal of Business Ethics (2006) 67:125–137 � Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10551-006-9008-6

Prima facie, many of the recent corporate scandals

would seem like a failure of ethical leadership, but

we need to examine some of the alternative accounts

before concluding that this is the case. Consequently

the first section of this article turns to an examination

of the current debate about the role of business-

school education and the extent to which it might be

seen as responsible for the failure of business ethics

evidenced by the numerous recent corporate scan-

dals. In this discussion, we challenge the tendency of

the literature to follow a causal model of knowledge

derived from positivist epistemologies (Beer, 2001;

Clegg and Ross-Smith, 2003; Grey, 2004; Goshal,

2005). We suggest that a more plausible account of

the corporate scandals is a failure of ethical leadership

that derives from the pre-occupation with the self

that drives individuals to seek wealth, fame and

success regardless of moral considerations.

Assuming this to be so, it is necessary to examine

the ethical leadership literature in the second section

of the article but we first discuss and critique the

main approaches to moral philosophy that informs

this literature. The literature on ethical leadership

tends to favour virtue ethics over deontology and

consequentialism (see e.g. Arjoon, 2000; Molyne-

aux, 2003; Morrison, 2001; Whetstone, 2001). But

for the most part, these works involve an individu-

alistic approach to morality and do not attempt to

transcend the dualism between self and other.

In order to avoid this, in section three we turn to a

discussion of the work of MacIntyre’s reinterpreta-

tion of the Aristotelian version of virtue ethics, which

challenges the autonomous self of the Enlighten-

ment. Although we are sympathetic to this approach,

in offering an alternative to liberal individualism we

also wish to draw on the ethics of responsibility and

in particular, on the work of Levinas (see e.g. Lev-

inas, 1966, 1969, 1991/1998). For Levinas, the no-

tion of the self is generated not by the self but rather

through engagement with the Other, an engagement

that is defined by a sense of responsibility. This

responsibility facilitates a reflexive challenge to the

philosophy of liberal individualism that not only re-

flects but also reproduces the pre-occupation with

self that, we argue, renders ethical leadership unat-

tainable. For then it is heavily constrained if not

entirely deflected by subjects whose egotistic self-

interests override any concern with ethics. We argue

that the breakdown in ethics instanced by recent

corporate scandals can be attributed to the failure of

business leaders to ‘‘actively promote ethical ideals

and practices’’ (Brien, 1998, p. 391). In the conclu-

sion, we offer an alternative direction for the dis-

course on ethical leadership, which focuses on

Levinas’ ethics of responsibility.

The failure of business-school education

A number of recent authors have sought to blame

these corporate scandals on the general influence of

business-school education on practicing managers

through Master of Business Administration (MBA)

programmes. ‘We – as business school faculty – need

to own up to our own role in creating Enrons’,

Goshal (2005, p. 75) wrote in one of his last pieces.

‘It is our theories and ideas that have done much to

strengthen the management practices we are all so

loudly condemning’. Recent company excesses,

Ghoshal argued, had ‘their roots in ideas developed

in business schools over the past 30 years’ (ibid.). 1

The blame for managers seeking diverse and some-

times deviant ways of boosting share prices and

paying themselves high salaries and bonuses is to be

found in business-school courses on strategy, trans-

action cost economics and agency theory (Caulkin,

2005). The explanation for these scandals as

reflecting the pre-occupation with shareholder value

is also endorsed by Mintzberg et al. (2002, p. 69) but

this is taken further when Mintzberg (2004) argues

that ‘MBAs haven’t been trained to manage, and

many don’t have the will for it’, partly because they

have been fast-tracked from business schools without

ever properly learning their own business from the

inside. ‘But they are determined to lead. So a tra-

jectory has been developed to take them round

management into leadership. The trouble ... is that

many of these people make dreadful leaders, pre-

cisely because their hands are off the business’

(Mintzberg, 2004, p. 1).

We are fairly sceptical of these explanations of

corporate scandals since they elevate the power of

business-school education well beyond its likely

effects. Notwithstanding the absence, highly selec-

tive or inconclusive evidence provided by Mintz-

berg to support his case for the domination of

shareholder value in corporate business, Tiratsoo

(unpublished) 2

concludes that quite the opposite

126 David Knights and Majella O’Leary

view could be supported by a fairly limited survey of

MBA education say through examining The Portable

MBA series (e.g. Collins and Devanna, 1990), pub-

lished since 1970 enjoying sales exceeding 600,000

copies to date and therefore bound to include a fair

number of adoptions by MBA faculty.

As we see it, there is a problem with Mintzberg’s

thesis about the impact of the MBA in creating a

corporate world in which ethics is either non-exis-

tent or sufficiently marginalized to prevent it acting

as a constraint on corruption but also with Tiratsoo’s

critique in demonstrating the absence of much evi-

dence to support it. Both leave unquestioned the

view that it is possible to demonstrate the presence

or absence of a direct causal relation between the

content of MBA syllabi and the behaviour of man-

agers; they differ only as to what form the content

and hence the behaviour takes. That is to say,

Mintzberg assumes that education results in a pre-

occupation with shareholder value and thereby

ethical paucity, whereas Tiratsoo argues that the

evidence is not adequate to make this claim. While

more sympathetic to Tiratsoo here, our difference

relates to his failure to question the causal analysis

itself. It is our view that knowledge rarely follows

this causal form where the effects of education or

knowledge can be directly identified or denied.

Following Latour (1987), we reject diffusion models

of dissemination that presume knowledge to be

formed independently of practice and where a linear

development from genesis and invention through to

innovation and application is perceived to occur

smoothly and without much dissent because the

discoveries speak for themselves.

While business schools and their faculty may love

to think that they make a difference in the world,

significantly influencing their students in relation to

the work they perform after the university experi-

ence, insofar as there are effects they are much more

likely to be diffuse and not particularly amenable to

traditional conceptions of causal analysis. There is

another literature that questions the value of the

MBA as a vehicle for career success or managerial

performance (Pfeffer and Fong, 2002, 2004). Yet

again, however, the assumption is that a direct causal

relation between the educational achievements of

MBA students and their career success is to be ex-

pected. Instead of challenging the causal model,

these authors prefer to cast aspersions on the MBA

for not delivering what is expected of it. If these

expectations were formalized as promises written

into brochures, then business schools would need to

challenge the research or admit to an ethical

dilemma. However, while there may well be

implicit assumptions about the career benefits of

MBAs, business schools generally refrain from direct

promises or causal claims. We would go further to

challenge the causal model presumed by this

research, suggesting that relationships between

power, knowledge, subjectivity and behaviour are

more elusive, mutually interdependent and complex

than the simple causal model portrays (Grey, 2004,

p. 178).

Challenging the causal accounts in this way,

however, is not to deny entirely any relationship

between MBA education and business practice.

Indirectly, the effect of education in management

and business may be more sustaining where the

values in MBAs reflect and therefore reinforce those

that the students held prior to their educational

experience and that are then found in business

practice. So, for example, many students see the

MBA as a passport to career success and in a capitalist

economy this means contributing to corporate suc-

cess as measured by profit and returns on investments

to shareholders. ‘It is clear that most business and

management students pursue their studies in order to

facilitate self-advancement. Their approach, in other

words, is instrumental’ (Tiratsoo, unpublished).

Conversely, few demonstrate the kind of ‘subject

loyalty’ that traditionally exists in, for example, the

humanities. Consequently, it can be seen that the

values of personal success exhibited by MBA stu-

dents are virtually a carbon copy of, or isomorphic

with, corporate thinking and therefore it is to be

expected that they will support and sustain the kinds

of behaviour that lead to a pre-occupation with

shareholder, at the expense of other, values. Inter-

estingly, one of the authors recently had a discussion

with Irish MBA students of the participation of NIB

in assisting their clients to evade tax. Many students

in the class felt that the bank had done nothing

immoral, arguing that the tax evasion was customer

driven and that the banks were simply providing a

service. Moreover, taking a customer viewpoint, the

students argued that the fraud was justified because

for so many years in Ireland the government charged

extremely high rates of tax. Here the values of MBA

Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility to the Other 127

students reflect those of an economically individu-

alistic instrumental society that elevates private over

public goods even to the point of breaking the law

to ensure that individual accumulated wealth is

protected against tax liabilities. These Irish MBA

students were in the first week of their programme

and it is hardly likely that their MBA programme

directly inculcated them with the kind of values that

sustained a justification of the NIB tax scandal.

In effect, then, our argument suggests a weak case

of the thesis promulgated by Goshal (2005) and

Mintzberg (2004), not the strong one that they

present. That is to say, insofar as MBA education

involves a concentration on shareholder value, this

does not directly determine managerial behaviour; it

simply reflects and reinforces what is already an

overwhelming aspect of corporate consciousness and

this is the end result or measure of individual career

success – a pre-occupation of those students who

decide on an MBA education. There is then a direct

coincidence between the values of students, the

content of MBA programmes, and corporate con-

sciousness. We cannot thereby agree that the MBA is

a major impetus for corporate corruption of the kind

we have seen in recent scandals. But nor do we

believe that the pluralistic content of MBA courses,

particularly the inclusion of courses on corporate

ethics or ‘‘Business and Society’’ modules, would

militate massively against the corporate corruption

that we have been witnessing. 3

This is not an

argument against introducing ethics courses in busi-

ness schools but simply an acknowledgement that

their effect is likely to be marginal, partly because of

the countervailing power effects on managerial

subjectivity of other discourses and practices prior to,

within and post an MBA. In the debate on MBA

education, both claim and counterclaim would seem

to be premised on an exaggerated view of the power

of the MBA to affect managerial behaviour and

corporate life.

If this is the case, we need to direct our attention

not particularly at Business Schools but to society in

general and business corporations in particular. A

starting point would be to examine conceptions of

leadership and ethics in social and business life to

assess whether it not only secures a sufficiently central

focus but also whether it really challenges the indi-

vidualistic pre-occupation with the self that we be-

lieve fuels ethical failures in the modern corporation.

So far, we have argued that the recent corporate

scandals cannot be attributed only to the pre-emi-

nence of a model of shareholder value and the

marginality of ethics in MBA education. We suggest

that an equally plausible account of the corporate

scandals is the failure in ethical leadership more

generally that can be traced to the dominance of

individualism within post-enlightenment discourse

and practice. This individualism manifests itself in a

pre-occupation with the self – that is, an over-

whelming yet often self-defeating concern to have

one’s self-image confirmed by others. This pre-

occupation with the self is reflected and reinforced

by traditional ethical discourses including those

specific to business as well as most modern ap-

proaches to leadership. Arguing that ethical leader-

ship is thwarted by pre-occupations with the self, we

suggest that some hybrid of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics

and Levinas’s ethics of responsibility may serve as an

inspiration for both educators and practitioners who

seek to respond to corporate scandals. We desist

from proposing an ethical model or programme

since that it is to impose ethical rules or principles,

which is to return to the very deontological or

utilitarian ethics that we criticize. In addition, on the

basis that one size does not fit all, it is more appro-

priate for institutions to develop ethical policies that

suit their own distinctive circumstances. It is our

view that ethical discourse is not about providing

models of correct behaviour or rules that are deemed

to realize it. However, what it can do is provide

alternative ways of thinking that may facilitate peo-

ple or institutions to behave ethically in relation to

their own circumstances and contexts. A good

example of this is MacIntyre’s own contribution to

the ethical curriculum of the MBA at the University

of Notre Dame (see http://www.nd.edu/�cba/ 011221/index.html).

In the following section, we examine the moral

philosophies that inform studies of ethical leadership

and subject them to some critical analysis.

Leadership, moral philosophy and ethics

Leadership

Before discussing the ethical leadership literature, it

is helpful to examine briefly both the principal moral

128 David Knights and Majella O’Leary

philosophies and the leadership literature from

which they draw their inspiration. It is beyond the

scope of this paper to give an in-depth discussion of

either of these extensive literatures. The most that

can be attempted is to present a brief description and

critique of the main schools of thought. In terms of

our concerns in leadership studies, this has been

made comparatively straightforward because Grint

(2000) has performed the task for us by showing

how the major theories of leadership – the trait,

contingency and situational approaches – are con-

strained by some form of essentialism and deter-

minism (see Figure 1) whereby leadership is seen to

be determined by personality (trait), the environ-

ment (situational) or by matching the appropriate

traits to different environments (contingency).

The problem with the trait approach is that it

concentrates on the qualities of the individual as

essential and universal aspects of leadership

regardless of diverse contexts. Leadership is seen as

almost equivalent to personality and cannot there-

fore be taught or improved. By contrast, the situ-

ational approach perceives the context as essential

but the qualities of the individual leader less rele-

vant. There are no universal styles of leadership for

it will change depending on the circumstances,

context or situation. Once the situation is defined,

leaders can be taught the appropriate skills neces-

sary to lead in particular contexts that it is pre-

sumed are readily captured through their essential

features. Particular leaders could grow into the job

assuming a competent analysis that discloses the

essence of the situation. The exact opposite of this

is the contingency approach where you have to

match the right leader for each circumstance or

contingency rather than secure his or her adapta-

tion to the environment.

In addition to their essentialism and determinism,

it is our view that these leadership theories tend to

reflect and reproduce the autonomous subject of

Enlightenment thinking since leadership is invariably

seen to be the property of individuals not that of

social groups or institutions. This results in individ-

ualistic and often psychologistic theories of leader-

ship. This is less so for the constructionist approach,

where the argument is that leadership is about nei-

ther an essential individual nor an essential context

but an outcome of interpretation (Grint, 2000, p. 2).

Within such a framework, leadership would simply

be the embodied manifestation of collective and

communal interpretations of appropriate behaviour

in particular contexts. In this sense, leadership and

the context in which it is practised are mutually

constitutive of one another. If leaders fail to

understand that leadership is about interpretation,

there is a greater tendency for them to fall back on

the conventional individualistic approaches to lead-

ership, which is likely to make ethical leadership

problematic because leaders become pre-occupied

with their own image as leaders rather than with

their ethical responsibility to others.

The constitutive approach eschews any sense of

essential characteristics or contexts in favour of

understanding interpretation to be at the centre

of practical leadership. There is no ‘one best way’ as

with the other approaches since both leaders and led

are precisely those who interpret the appropriate

forms of leadership and the contexts in which it is

located and therefore are not independent of the

power and knowledge relations in which they are

embedded. Part of the activity of leadership is that of

exercising power to enrol supporters or followers

and to mobilize resources in pursuit of the objectives

for which leadership is deemed necessary. Defining

situations in ways that capture the imaginations,

identities and interests of those that are to be led may

then be seen as leadership.

Non-essentialist

Individual

Essentialist Context Non-essentialist

Situational Constitutive

Contingent Trait

Figure 1. Essentialist and non-essentialist leadership

(Source Grint, 2000, p. 2).

Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility to the Other 129

Moral philosophy

In moral philosophy, the literature variously

emphasizes consequences, actions and character.

Consequentialist theories involve two main strains –

Egoism and Utilitarianism. Egoism attributes

morality to action that is freely pursued for purposes

of individual self-interest. Adam Smith (1759/1793)

was a major exponent of this form of Consequen-

tialism because he believed that in a market econ-

omy, the aggregate effect of individuals acting in

their own self-interest was beneficial for all (Crane

and Matten, 2004). A modification of this form of

consequentialism is Utilitarianism that calls for the

maximization of goodness in society by measuring

the probable outcome or consequences (e.g. the

communal utilitarian principle of the greatest bal-

ance of good over evil).

Two central principles underlie these conse-

quentialist theories: first is that the rightness or

wrongness of an act is determined by the results that

flow from it, either for the interests of the individual

(egoism) or for a majority in society (utilitarianism)

and second, the hedonistic principle which argues

that pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil,

and that human beings are pleasure-seeking indi-

viduals. While the first results-based principle is

problematic since it relies on a simple linear causal

relationship between a moral act and its conse-

quences, the hedonistic (behaviourist) theory is

tautological in that the pleasurable or painful con-

sequences (responses) are not independent of the

ethical act (stimulus) that is deemed to be their cause

(Chomsky, 1970). Moreover, there is the problem

that de Tocqueville (1998) identified with respect to

majority rule – of minorities being disenfranchised

or suffering for the sake of the pleasure of the largest

group.

The literature on ethical leadership draws more

on the moral philosophies of deontology and virtue

ethics than on consequentialist philosophies. Deon-

tology focuses strongly on the ethical act and most

deontologists have been rule deontologists who be-

lieve that there are universal rules that provide

standards of right and wrong behaviour e.g., ‘‘we

should never lie’’. Deontology assumes universalis-

ability and appeals to universal principles (e.g.

promise-keeping and truth-telling). For example,

Kant (1724–1804) emphasized the use of reason to

work out a consistent set of moral principles that

cannot be overridden. Kant’s Categorical Imperative

suggests that we should ‘‘act only on that maxim

whereby thou canst at the same time will that it

would become a universal law.’’ This is, of course,

consistent with the Christian principle that you

should not do to others what you would not have

done unto yourself. According to deontology, to be

autonomous is to be a lawgiver to oneself, or self-

governing. It perceives humans as rational beings

and, in contrast to Utilitarianism, values rationality

and reason over pleasure. Deontology, in contrast to

consequentialism, protects the individual more than

society. Deontology emphasizes universal rights such

as freedom of speech, freedom of consent, the right

to privacy or freedom of conscience.

However, conflicting rights such as freedom of

speech and the right to privacy make rights-based

ethics rather complex. There are further difficulties

associated with deontology and in particular, it is

difficult to see how rules and obligations can ever

account for, or dispense with the need for contin-

uous deliberations about, the complexity of moral

life. In producing an un-reflexive compliance to

rules, deontology removes the moral dilemma

(Derrida, 1992) and results in de-sensitising us to our

own moral judgment. In effect, the attempt through

deontology to bureaucratize morality leads to its

displacement. It may also be argued that deontology

separates the ethics of the act from the ethics of the

agent and focuses on the act to the neglect of the

agent.

Finally, we have virtue-based ethics (sometimes

called aretaic from the Greek arête translated as

‘excellence or virtue’) in which morality is internal

and the key to good lies not in rules or rights, but in

the classic notion of character (honesty, fairness,

compassion, and generosity). According to Stephens

(1882), the morality should be expressed in the form

‘be this’, not in the form ‘do this’. Virtue ethics 4

extends to Aristotle and Plato and rather than

viewing the heart of ethics to be in actions or duties,

virtue-based ethical systems centre on the agent, the

character and dispositions of persons. The central

question here then is ‘what sort of person should I

become?’ Many approaches to virtue ethics overly

rely on a relatively arbitrary and almost inexhaustive

list of character traits. Virtue-based ethics seeks to

produce excellent persons who both act well (out of

130 David Knights and Majella O’Leary

spontaneous goodness) and serve as examples to in-

spire others. In contrast to deontology, virtue ethics

focuses exclusively on the agent rather than the act

and, in this sense, is highly or wholly decontextu-

alized.

Now that the different approaches to moral phi-

losophy have been demonstrated, the literature on

ethical leadership will be examined in relation to its

underlying moral philosophy. There is a growing

body of research which positions leadership as hav-

ing a central role and responsibility in constituting

organizational or business ethics. For example, Arj-

oon (2000) argues that the crises that business and

society face today are the crises of leadership and

ethics, Minkes et al. (1999, p. 328) argue that con-

formity to ethical requirements is a responsibility of,

and depends on, the leadership in the organization,

and Maier (2002) proposes that leadership

approaches should be more collaborative than con-

trolling and more values-based than outcome-fo-

cused. Similarly, Sims and Brinkmann (2002, p. 327)

explain unethical behaviour in organizations as

resulting from the interaction between disputable

leadership and ethical climate. Drawing on the case

of the Salomon Brothers, they blame the leader John

Gutfreund for moulding an organizational culture

that resulted in unethical and illegal behaviour by its

members. The focus of their research is on the

character of Gutfreund, his absolute attention to a

short-term business focus, his willingness to cover-

up illegal behaviour and the ease with which he

allegedly betrayed his mentor in his rise to power.

Ethical leadership

Given the individualistic and psychologistic approach

taken in the study of leadership generally, it is not

surprising that the literature on ethical leadership has

a strong focus on character and therefore is driven by

virtue ethics. Many researchers focus on the devel-

opment of a specific virtue essential in leadership, for

example Molyneaux (2003, p. 347) emphasizes

‘‘meekness’’ which he argues is an important personal

quality for highest-level leadership: ‘‘meekness’’ is

not about ‘‘powers foregone’’ but ‘‘powers con-

trolled and exercised with discernment’’. Similarly,

Morrison (2001) focuses on ‘‘integrity’’, which he

argues forms the foundation of character and is

essential to sustainable global leadership since without

integrity, leaders will never generate goodwill or

trust. Drawing on Plato’s work, Takala (1998)

emphasizes the virtues of ‘‘prudence, courage, tem-

perance and justice’’, in his investigation of ethical

leadership. Whetstone (2001) offers a different per-

spective suggesting that virtue ethics can act as a

complement to deontology and consequentialism in

a tripartite ethic. He argues that one can have more

than one reason for doing something: ‘‘moral reasons

can include both the duty to act and the conse-

quences expected from the act as well as the belief that

so acting is characteristic of the kind of person one

wants to be’’ (Whetstone, 2001, p. 102). Further-

more, he argues that a servant leader, who seeks to

lead others toward a meaningful telos according to

highly principled means, exercises this tripartite

ethics (ibid.). In their empirical research of corporate

ethics officers and senior executives, Trevino et al.

(2003, p. 5) also adopt a combinative approach and

suggest that ethical leadership entails more than traits

and values and includes a transactional component

that involves using communication and the reward

system to guide ethical behaviour.

While virtue ethics can be seen to share similar

essentialist tendencies that have been heavily criti-

cized in all but constructionist approaches to lead-

ership (see above), we see merits in some versions of

virtue, which draw on the work of Aristotle and

MacIntyre. Takala (1998) argues that the wider

community influences our virtues and Arjoon (2000)

stresses individual and collective responsibilities and

character development. Arjoon dismisses deontology

because it focuses on the minimalist or negative as-

pect of ethics, rights and duties and suggests that

virtue ethics is more fundamental than the other

moral philosophies: ‘‘the virtue of responsibility or

justice ... allows us to recognize and respect the

rights of others, which is the source of our obligation

and a sense of duty for the welfare and happiness of

others’’ (Arjoon, 2000, p. 162). This reflects the

view of Thomas Aquinas who regarded virtue ethics

as being more vital than other ethical theories and

who suggested that every moral question could be

reduced to an assessment of virtue. In the following

section, we explore further the idea of virtue pre-

sented in the work of Aristotle and MacIntyre and

consider how it can be complemented by a Levin-

asian ethic of responsibility.

Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility to the Other 131

Ethics, subjectivity and responsibility

In the previous section, we outlined the way in

which the ethical leadership literature draws pri-

marily on the concept of virtue and, most recently,

the post-Enlightenment virtue ethics of MacIntyre

(1991). In an earlier paper, we explore the contri-

bution of MacIntyre to the debate on business ethics

(see Knights and O’Leary, 2005). However, in this

present contribution, we want to further this interest

in Macintyre in order to develop its implications for

our Levinasian analysis of ethical leadership. In a

similar fashion to Nietzsche, Macintyre rejects the

enlightenment view of ethics as rational action based

on duty or rules (deontological), or the greatest

happiness for the largest number (utilitarianism or

consequentialism). Drawing on Nietzsche’s demys-

tification of enlightenment morality on the basis that

its rational foundation is no more than a mask for the

expression or assertion of subjective will (the will to

power), MacIntyre (1991, p. 114) argues that ‘there

can be no place for such fictions as natural rights,

utility, the greatest happiness of the greatest num-

ber’. We have then to abandon reason in favour of

the will – a will that relentlessly seeks to reinvent

itself in pursuit of a morality that is wholly original to

the self and not simply compliance to some tradition.

It is much less concerned with what rules an indi-

vidual ought to obey and why s (he) should obey

them than with what kind of a person should I be-

come, and how I should live my life – an inescapably

practical question, which Enlightenment morality

fails to address directly (MacIntyre, 1991, p. 118).

Acknowledging that Nietzsche’s genius has been

to identify the problem rather than the solution (e.g.

the Ubermensch (Superman)), MacIntyre returns to

Aristotelian ethics and its concern with the virtues

and telos. He supports the Nietzschean claim that

the Enlightenment philosophers were unable to

contest his thesis that morality was little more than a

disguise of the will to power, but MacIntyre (ibid.) is

sure that this failure was an inevitable consequence

of their rejecting the ‘Aristotelian tradition’. This has

meant that rules have displaced moral character or

the good life to the extent that ‘qualities of character

then generally come to be prized only because they

lead us to follow the right set of rules’ (ibid. 119). In

a post-Nietzschean world, all rational groundings of

morality fail but MacIntyre (ibid. 117) believes that

the one escape from this moral nihilism is a return to

Aristotle’s virtues.

The virtues of concern here are those that pro-

mote community values and solidarity rather than

those that express heroism in the liberal individual-

istic sense of the term. For Aristotle, a hero is not

one who merely gains the approval of others because

of her or his achievements; heroism and the honour

associated with it is attributed to those who exercise

virtues that sustain a social role or excellence in some

social practice. These virtues return us to a pre-

modern mode of civilization where possessive or

competitive individualism and a pre-occupation

with the self that is the legacy of the Enlightenment

are unknown. There is no sense of a separation of

individual and society since human behaviour is

never simply an individual acting in his or her own

self-interests but rather a reflection of what it means

to be a member of that society. Of course, con-

temporary economic self-interest and the pursuit of

fame and glory are equally reflections of what it is to

be a member of our society. It is just that this society

has become amoral because the competitive pursuit

of individual success transcends any moral obligation

to live the good life, and seek excellence for its own

sake rather than for personal material and symbolic

reward. Our concern here is to challenge the iden-

tity that is imposed upon us through the exercise of

power in contemporary society. For this encourages

the pre-occupation with a self that secures itself

principally through social confirmations that, rely on

the acquisition of material and symbolic images

(Knights and O’Leary, 2005, p. 365). This acquisi-

tiveness can easily transfer to internal non-material

images when identity is secured through an attach-

ment to some spiritual faith – a state of ego that

Trungpa (2002) described as spiritual materialism.

Despite the danger that virtue ethics can slip into

an essentialist trap, MacIntyre’s (1991, p. 223) ver-

sion appeals as it involves not so much a list of

character traits but rather a capacity for judgement.

In his view, it is the virtues that enable people to

move towards their goals (telos) and is an essential

part of the attainment of these goals. This telos is an

important dimension of Aristotelian ethics and,

according to MacIntyre, life requires a telos toward

which that life is driving. It is teleology that lends life

intelligibility; a quest or project is required in order

to make life meaningful. Telos is socially embedded

132 David Knights and Majella O’Leary

and excellence is not fixed and determined for all

time. For MacIntyre, ethics is not only choosing

what to do as individuals, but also and essentially

discovering who we are in relation to others – in

short, our membership of organizations, communi-

ties and societies.

According to MacIntyre (1991, p. 219) ‘‘the good

life for man [sic] is the life spent in seeking for the

good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the

seeking are those which will enable us to understand

what more and what else the good life for man is’’.

Virtue therefore is integral to telos but pursuit of the

project is always educative and therefore provides

the opportunity for the development of the virtues.

The ethics of MacIntyre raises a number of inter-

esting issues that we seek to explore further. In

particular, it is interesting to explore the nature of

this moral project. In doing this, we draw on Lev-

inas’ ethics of responsibility for it is possible that

responsibility to the Other is precisely the teleo-

logical project that could reconcile the Aristotelian

virtues and Nietzsche’s concern for individuals to

remake or re-create themselves. Ethics can only

serve as a guide, as MacIntyre would suggest, on

how to behave in particular localized contexts.

However, since the self is not the autonomous entity

that is valorized in enlightenment thinking but

simply the medium and outcome of social relations,

there is no incompatibility between a continual

reformation of the self in pursuit of an ethical life and

the responsibility to the Other demanded by Lev-

inas’ ethics. We argue that ethical leadership cannot

exist without some attempt to overcome the pre-

occupation with self that is the legacy of the

Enlightenment thinking on autonomy. Through his

emphasis on responsibility, Levinas provides a means

to overcome this pre-occupation.

Levinas (1969, 1998) avoids some of the difficul-

ties associated with traditional approaches to moral

philosophy by concentrating instead on an ethic of

responsibility. In a similar fashion to MacIntyre,

Levinas (1969) rejects the autonomous self of the

Enlightenment and suggests that self-interestedness

has no part to play in ethics. The problem with

Enlightenment thinking is that it encourages a

responsibility to the self in advance of a responsibility

to the Other. When a pre-occupation with the self is

pre-eminent, morality is reduced to an exercise of

power where the image of what it is to be ethical

transcends any sense of responsibility. Levinas seeks

to challenge philosophies of liberal individualism

with an alternative ethic of responsibility. He suggests

that moral thinking involves addressing ontology as

well as ethics for it is the moral act, which brings

about existence. Ethics therefore is prior to being:

‘‘Responsibility for another is not an accident that

happens to a subject, but precedes essence in it, it

has not awaited freedom, in which a commitment

to another would have been made’’. (Levinas, 1981,

p. 114, quoted in Chalier, 1993)

The self is not autonomous for it is constituted

through face-to-face relationships and always in line

with the expectations of the Other. Our encounter

with the Other is an interruption ‘‘a risky uncov-

ering of oneself, in sincerity, the breaking up of

inwardness and the abandonment of all shelters,

exposure to traumas, vulnerability’’ (Levinas, 1981,

p. 48). Through this interruption, subjectivity is

constituted – that is, through the passivity of an

exposed self rather than the activity of an autono-

mous self. The Other is a source of both our free-

dom and responsibility, as Bauman (1993, p. 86) puts

it ‘‘It is this creation of meaning of the Other, and

thus also of myself, that my freedom, my ethical

freedom, comes to be’’.

The moral project is one of responsibility and the

heart of ethics rests in the face-to-face interaction

with the Other. The Other may call upon us

through words or actions but it is sufficient for the

Other merely to come in contact with us in order

for us to be compelled to respond: ‘‘The face opens

the primordial discourse whose first word is obli-

gation’’ (Plato, Republic 1993, p. 17). The needs of

the Other cannot be denied, not because of any

rights, but simply because the Other exists. This very

existence makes us morally responsible, a responsi-

bility which is limitless and undeniable. We never

completely understand the demands of the Other for

the Other who is ‘‘higher than me and yet poorer

than me’’ is unique, different from all other persons

and objects. Importantly responsibility does not de-

mand reciprocity; it is a non-symmetrical relation.

The Relationship with the Other is non-instru-

mental and not based on an imperative outside the

self; it is about an inexhaustive care for the Other.

The unchosen responsibility to the Other cannot be

passed on (there is no substitution in the ethic of

Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility to the Other 133

responsibility). It must be noted that we are not only

responsible to the Other, we are also responsible for

ourselves to the Other, and we must defend our-

selves to the Other. The Other challenges the self’s

right to exist.

Thus far we have considered the ethical rela-

tionship between the self and the Other but it is also

necessary to consider what happens when there are

multiple and competing others. We can only be fully

responsible in relationships of intimacy, since in

everyday social relations the form of responsibility is

ordinarily limited to social and legal conventions.

From the moment the third party enters, according

to Levinas (1998, p. 202), we must compare. In the

face-to-face with the Other, there is no judgement

but from the moment the Third Party makes an

entrance, judgement and justice are required and

rationality takes the place of passion. Levinas

acknowledges the unavoidability of falling into law

once there is an encounter with the multiplicity.

Consequently, whilst Levinas is critical of deontol-

ogy, he nonetheless accepts its necessity. According

to Bauman (1993, p. 113), this is the point where we

leave the realm of morality proper and enter the

realm of the Social Order. 5

Obviously rules and

constraints are necessary in order to maintain social

order (Durkheim, 1887 quoted in Giddens, 1971, p.

70) and, in particular, to expose or make an example

of those that violate the ethical code. In this sense,

perhaps the law is more efficient in exposing rather

than preventing unethical behaviour if only because

a manifestation of evil can serve the purpose of

revealing an enemy that must be expunged (Knights

et al., 2002). An example of this occurred recently

when large financial corporations in the UK were

named and shamed by the regulator for failing to

comply with new regulations. Of course, the

exposure serves as an example to others and thereby

indirectly prevents unethical practices but since such

compliance is purely instrumental to avoiding sanc-

tions, it is questionably ethical.

Our critique of deontology, therefore, is not an

attempt to displace it entirely for third party conflict

requires judgement and such judgement involves an

assessment of both conduct and character. However,

our sympathy towards virtue ethics resides in a view

of the telos or moral project outlined by MacIntyre

as a perfect accompaniment to Levinas’s responsi-

bility to the Other. An ethic of responsibility moves

us away from a pre-occupation with the self towards

an indeclinable and unlimited responsibility to the

Other, experienced in the face-to-face interaction

and driven by an inexhaustive care. In-keeping with

the constructionist approach, which we endorse,

leadership here is interpretation of the Other and the

self in the face-to-face interaction.

Summary and conclusion

We began this paper with a reflection on some of the

recent corporate scandals, examining various expla-

nations for their occurrence. We concluded that

none of these explanations were very illuminating:

they either exaggerated the extent of the so-called

crisis and/or inappropriately attributed business-

school influence on corporate behaviour. Although

we cannot subscribe to a view that corporate scandals

are more pervasive now than in the past, nonetheless

the existence of these scandals provides us with a

platform to re-energize discourses on ethical leader-

ship. In examining the leadership literature, we

reached the conclusion that there were dominant

individualistic, psychologistic and deterministic

strains that reflect and reproduce the autonomous

subject of Enlightenment thinking. Not surprisingly,

the ethical leadership literature is concerned with

character and draws mostly on virtue ethics rather

than the traditional moral philosophies of conse-

quentialism and deontology. We discussed some of

the difficulties associated with virtue ethics (as well as

deontology and consequentialism) but were sup-

portive of the particular approach to virtue ethics

present in the work of MacIntyre, which challenges

the autonomous self. We argued that the recent

corporate scandals could be seen as resulting from

ethical failures arising from contemporary concerns

with material and symbolic success, which reside in

an ultimate pre-occupation with the self. We have

been concerned to challenge this pre-occupation

with the self through focusing on an alternative ethics

of responsibility presented in the work of Levinas.

The advantage of an ethic of responsibility is that it

confronts the pre-occupation with self that is a legacy

of the enlightenment of autonomy thus offering an

alternative to the traditional moral philosophies of

consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics while

not seeking entirely to displace them.

134 David Knights and Majella O’Leary

We believe this makes a contribution to the lit-

erature on ethical leadership that is potentially of

value to corporate business if it is to establish a

culture that is inimical to the kind of management

behaviour that has been associated with corporate

scandal. In order to ensure maximum impact for our

analysis, we have been uncritical of Levinas prefer-

ring simply to complement the existing literature

with insights drawn from his work. However, by

way of conclusion we wish to raise some limitations

or at least points of tension that appear to reside in

his ethics of responsibility. At least two points of

tension may be detected and these were skirted

around in the last section when we discussed first, his

conviction that ethics precedes being, the self or

freedom and second, the problem of the third party

in relationships that extend beyond the intimacy of

the face-to-face.

Levinas’ insistence that ethics and the Other

precede being is understandable given that he seeks

to undermine the pre-occupation with self that is the

legacy of enlightenment autonomy. The question is

whether it is dangerously close to the philosophy it

seeks to challenge except just from the opposite side.

That is to say, while enlightenment philosophies

make ethics conditional upon an autonomous and

rational self, Levinas makes the self and subjectivity

conditional upon ethics. Insofar as this is a rhetorical

device designed to undermine the pre-occupation

with self that so dominates our post-enlightenment

culture, we fully endorse the strategy. However, we

are more comfortable with a view of their mutual

interdependence and co-constitution since the self

has no existence outside of the Other and yet the

Other cannot be recognized outside of a condition

of self-consciousness. Given that we have already

endorsed a constructionist theory of leadership, a co-

constitutive understanding of self and other or ethics

and being are more compatible with our concern to

develop a theory of ethical leadership.

This leads us to the second tension concerning the

dilemma that occurs when there is a conflict of

responsibility to different others. In order to distin-

guish between more and less deserving others,

Levinas sees a requirement to return to law and a

deontological approach to morality where, in effect,

rules intervene in place of face-to-face responsibility.

Despite Levinas prioritising ethics over the self, he is

quick to resort to the law or moral rules wherever

there is some tension or conflict between different

others. Is this ready reliance on the law a function of

his refusal to see the constitution of the self and other

as simultaneous events? For if this is the case, it is so

for every other and every self such that responsibility

to another will reach its limit at the point where it

contradicts the responsibility to an equally deserving

other. The self can make a judgement and would not

therefore have to resort to the law. It is our view that

the law or deontological ethics operates best as a

means of dealing with the exceptional breakdown of

morality and, as we have argued, exposing rather

than preventing unethical behaviour. Obviously the

threat of sanctions or punishment that are associated

with the law may deter breaches but this is not what

can be called ethical behaviour since it is motivated

by mere instrumental compliance. In the end, per-

haps we have to be more strictly Levinasian such that

each engagement is approached as if there is only

one Other; in each engagement, the Other is given

complete attention and in this way the pre-occu-

pation with the self is transcended and truly moral

relationships can develop.

Notes

1 Interestingly while condemning academic pre-occu-

pations with science based, causal theories of business

behaviour, Goshal does not seemingly recognize how

he is indeed subscribing to such an epistemology in his

analysis of the effects of business-school education (See

Alferoff and Knights, 2005). 2

Mintzberg’s thesis relies on evidence from the Busi-

ness Roundtable, a ‘‘group of chief executives of Amer-

ica’s largest corporations’’ who have changed their

emphasis in recent time. Whereas in 1981, statements

were made that suggested some ‘balance’ of the legiti-

mate interests of different ‘stakeholders’ by 1997, ‘‘the

paramount duty of management and of boards is to the

corporation’s stockholders’’ (Mintzberg quoted in Tira-

tsoo, unpublished). Yet in the 1997 statement, Mintz-

berg chooses to ignore a paragraph that reflects precisely

the same concern that the 1981 statement had in a more

pluralistic stakeholder view of corporate interests as nec-

essary to the long term interests of shareholders (The

Business Roundtable, 1997, p. 3 quoted in ibid. 2). 3

After all, while there is more clamour now for busi-

ness ethics courses, they have been taught in some form

or other for over 20 years (see ABS, 2004).

Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility to the Other 135

4 This is the natural extension of the Greek definition

of ‘ethos’ which is defined as character. 5

One of our anonymous reviewers pointed out to us

that Karl-Otto Apel in his lectures at Leuven had ar-

gued that morality still holds when we leave our focus

on the other. While we cannot be responsible to all of

society for our actions, we are responsible to those

affected by our actions.

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David Knights School of Economic and Management Studies,

University of Keele,

Newcastle-under-Lyme,

ST5 5BG,

U.K.

E-mail: [email protected]

Leadership, Ethics and Responsibility to the Other 137

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