Module 14: Leadership and Ethics no.2
Nora Abdullah
M14_Northouse9e_Ch15_PPT.pptxChapter 15: Leadership Ethics
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
Description (1 of 22)
Broad ethical guidelines.
Little research on leadership ethics.
Recent interest due to scandals.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Description
Unlike other chapters, this one is multifaceted and presents a broad set of ethical viewpoints.
A general guide to leadership ethics.
Despite a wealth of historical accounts of “great leaders” and their morals, there is very little research on leadership ethics.
One of the earliest writings on leadership ethics appeared in 1966, but was a small set of working papers from an equally small group of scholars.
Examined how leadership theory and practice could be used to build a more caring and just society.
Recent corporate and political scandals have raised substantial interest in the nature of ethical leadership.
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Description (2 of 22)
Ethics Defined.
Plato and Aristotle.
What leaders do and who they are.
Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.
Six stages within three morality levels.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethics Defined
Western traditions of ethics date back to Plato and Aristotle.
The word ethics has its roots in the Greek word ethos, which translates to “customs,” “conduct,” or “character.”
Ethics is concerned with the kinds of values and morals an individual or a society finds desirable or appropriate.
Ethical theory provides a system of rules or principles that guide us in making decisions about what is right or wrong and good or bad in a particular situation
With specific regard to leadership, ethics is concerned with what leaders do and who leaders are.
Leader behavior and virtuousness.
In any decision-making situation, ethical issues are either implicitly or explicitly involved.
A leader’s choices are also influenced by his or her moral development. The most widely recognized theory advanced to explain how people think about moral issues is Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.
Kohlberg explored the reasoning behind choices in groups of children presented with moral dilemmas.
From these data he created a classification system of moral reasoning that was divided into six stages: Stage 1—Obedience and Punishment, Stage 2—Individualism and Exchange, Stage 3—Interpersonal Accord and Conformity, Stage 4—Maintaining the Social Order, Stage 5—Social Contract and Individual Rights, and Stage 6—Universal Principles.
Kohlberg further classified the first two stages as preconventional morality, the second two as conventional morality, and the last two as postconventional morality.
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Description (3 of 22)
Ethics Defined: Level 1. Preconventional Morality.
Stage 1—Obedience and Punishment.
Stage 2—Individualism and Exchange.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethics Defined
In Level 1, Preconventional Morality, an individual tends to judge the morality of an action by its direct consequences.
Stage 1—Obedience and Punishment. The individual is egocentric, with an external morality dictated by authority; rules are obeyed to avoid punishment.
Stage 2—Individualism and Exchange. The individual makes moral decisions based on self-interest, and believes others act this way too; express little adoption of the values of the community, but are willing to exchange favors.
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Description (4 of 22)
Ethics Defined: Level 2. Conventional Morality.
Stage 3—Interpersonal Accord and Conformity.
Stage 4—Maintaining the Social Order.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethics Defined
In Level 2, Conventional Morality, the morality of actions is assessed by comparison to society’s views and expectations.
Stage 3—Interpersonal Accord and Conformity. The individual makes moral choices that conform to others’ societal definitions of being a “good” person.
Stage 4—Maintaining the Social Order. The individual makes moral decisions in ways that show concern for society as a whole; they recognize that obeying society’s rules preserves everyone’s safety.
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Description (5 of 22)
Ethics Defined: Level 3. Postconventional Morality.
Stage 5—Social Contract and Individual Rights.
Stage 6—Universal Principles.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethics Defined
In Level 3, Postconventional Morality, individuals have developed their own personal set of ethics and morals that guide their behavior.
Stage 5—Social Contract and Individual Rights. Individuals make moral decisions based on a social contract and his or her views on what a good society should be like; they also acknowledge the differing opinions and values of groups, and the need to negotiate agreement between these groups in devising laws.
Stage 6—Universal Principles. At this stage, the individual’s moral reasoning is based on internalized universal principles of justice that apply to everyone; decisions must respect all parties’ perspectives.
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Description (6 of 22)
Criticisms of Kohlberg’s model.
Heavy focus on justice values.
Sex-biased.
Culturally biased.
Favors postconventional outlook.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethics Defined
Kohlberg’s model of moral development has been criticized as:
Focusing exclusively on justice values.
Sex-biased, since it is derived from an all-male sample.
Culturally biased, since it is based on a sample from an individualist culture.
Advocating a postconventional morality where people place their own principles above those of the law or society.
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Description (7 of 22)
Ethical Theories (1 of 2).
Two domains: conduct and character.
Three approaches to moral decision-making.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethical Theories
Ethical theories can be thought of as falling within two broad domains: theories about leaders’ conduct and theories about leaders’ character.
That is, how leaders act and who leaders are.
Ethical theories that deal with the conduct of leaders are in turn divided into two kinds: theories that stress the consequences of leaders’ actions and those that emphasize the duty or rules governing leaders’ actions.
Teleological theories try to answer questions about right and wrong by focusing on whether a person’s conduct will produce desirable consequences.
In assessing consequences, there are three different approaches to making decisions regarding moral conduct:
Ethical egoism: States that a person should act so as to create the greatest good for themselves.
Utilitarianism: States that we should behave so as to create the greatest good for the greatest number.
Altruism: Suggests that actions are moral if their primary purpose is to promote the best interests of others.
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Description (8 of 22)
Ethical Theories (2 of 2).
Deontological theory.
Virtue-based theories.
Common virtues.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethical Theories
Quite different from looking at which actions will produce which outcomes, deontological theory suggests whether a given action is ethical rests not only with its consequences (teleological), but also with whether the action itself is good.
Whereas teleological and deontological theories approach ethics by looking at the behavior or conduct of a leader, a second set of theories approaches ethics from the viewpoint of a leader’s character (virtue-based theories).
In this perspective, virtues are rooted in the individual and can be acquired through practice and instruction.
Current advocates of virtue-based theory stress that more attention should be given to the development and training of moral values,
There are a number of common virtues which seem to be valued, many of which date back to Aristotle: courage, temperance, generosity, self-control, honesty, sociability, modesty, fairness, and justice.
In essence, virtue-based ethics is about being and becoming a good, worthy human being.
Our virtues are derived from our actions, and our actions manifest our virtues.
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Description (9 of 22)
Centrality of Ethics to Leadership.
Influence dimension.
Respect followers.
Ethics central to leadership.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Centrality of Ethics to Leadership
The influence dimension of leadership requires the leader to have an impact on the lives of those being led.
To make a change in other people carries with it an enormous ethical burden and responsibility.
Leaders must be sensitive to how their leadership affects followers’ lives.
The principle of “respect for people” demands that leaders be sensitive to followers’ own interests, needs, and conscientious concerns.
Proposes leaders have a special concern for others, as they have a greater opportunity to influence others in significant ways.
Ethics is central to leadership, and leaders help to establish and reinforce organizational values.
Every leader has a distinct philosophy and point of view.
The values promoted by the leader have a significant impact on the values exhibited by the organization.
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Description (10 of 22)
Heifetz’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership.
How leaders help followers.
Authority used to mobilize people.
Other uses of authority.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Heifetz’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership
Ronald Heifetz’s (1994) approach to ethical leadership emphasizes how leaders help followers to confront conflict and to address conflict by effecting changes.
According to Heifetz, leadership involves the use of authority to help followers deal with the conflicting values that emerge in rapidly changing work environments and social cultures.
For Heifetz (1994), leaders must use authority to mobilize people to face tough issues.
This is easier when the leader provides a “holding environment” in which there is trust, nurturance, and empathy.
In a supportive context, followers can feel safe to confront hard problems.
Leaders may also use authority to:
Get people to pay attention to the issues.
Act as a reality test regarding information.
Manage and frame issues.
Orchestrate conflicting perspectives.
Facilitate decision making.
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Description (11 of 22)
Burns’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership.
Transformational.
Origins of Burns’s perspective.
Criticisms.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Burns’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership
Transformational leadership involves attempts by leaders to move followers to higher standards of moral responsibility.
Represents a clearly moral approach to leadership.
The origins of Burns’s position on leadership ethics are rooted in the works of such writers as Abraham Maslow, Milton Rokeach, and Lawrence Kohlberg.
As such, Burns emphasizes the leader’s role in attending to the personal motivations and moral development of the follower.
Criticisms of Burns’ perspective:
What makes a set of moral values “better” than others, and what constitutes a moral high ground?
If leadership, by definition, entails raising individual moral functioning, does this mean that the leadership of corrupt leaders is not actually leadership?
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Description (12 of 22)
The Dark Side of Leadership (1 of 2).
Unethical and destructive leadership.
Toxic leader behaviors.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
The Dark Side of Leadership
Although Burns (1978) placed ethics at the core of leadership, there still exists a dark side of leadership that exemplifies leadership that is unethical and destructive.
The dark side of leadership is the destructive and toxic side of leadership in that a leader uses leadership for personal ends (such as pseudotransformational and destructive leaderships).
Toxic leaders are characterized by destructive behaviors such as leaving their followers worse off than they found them, violating the basic human rights of others, and playing to followers’ basest fears.
Associated personal characteristics include lack of integrity, insatiable ambition, arrogance, and reckless disregard for their actions.
Other studies have linked toxic leadership to managerial incompetency, dark traits, derisive supervision, impervious despotic leadership, dearth of ethics, erratic behavior, narcissism, and self-promoting.
The same characteristics and behaviors that distinguish leaders as special can also be used by leaders to produce disastrous outcomes.
Destructive leadership is closely related to negative affectivity and to the experience of occupational stress.
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Description (13 of 22)
The Dark Side of Leadership (2 of 2).
Toxic triangle.
Destructive leaders.
Susceptible followers.
Conducive environment.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
The Dark Side of Leadership
In an attempt to more clearly define destructive leadership, Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser (2007) developed the concept of a toxic triangle that focuses on the influences of destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments.
Destructive leaders: Leaders who have charisma and a need to use power and coercion for personal gains.
They are also narcissistic and often attention-getting and self-absorbed.
Destructive leaders often have a history of traumatic childhood events or other negative life stories.
Perhaps from self-hatred, they often express an ideology of hate in their rhetoric and worldview.
Susceptible followers: Followers, either conformers or colluders, who are particularly vulnerable to abuse from destructive leaders.
Conformers: Susceptible followers who go along with destructive leaders to satisfy unmet needs such as emptiness, alienation, or need for community.
Colluders: Susceptible followers who may respond to destructive leaders because they are ambitious, desire status, or see an opportunity to profit.
Conducive environment: An environment with characteristics that are optimal for the development of destructive leadership.
In unstable environments, the leader is often granted more authority to assert radical change.
When there is a perceived threat, followers often accept assertive leadership.
Destructive leaders who express compatible cultural values with followers are more likely to succeed.
Weak checks and balances or ineffectual rules are also significant influences.
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Description (14 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Respect Others (1 of 2).
Respect decisions and values.
Visualize unconditional worth and valuable differences.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Principles of Ethical Leadership
Ethical leaders respect others, or treat others as ends in themselves and never as means to ends.
This requires treating other people’s decisions and values with respect, and allowing them to be themselves.
They approach other people with a sense of their unconditional worth and valuable individual differences.
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Description (15 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Respect Others (2 of 2).
Give credence to others’ ideas.
Listen, be empathetic, tolerant.
Makes followers feel competent.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Principles of Ethical Leadership
Ethical leaders respect others, or treat others as ends in themselves and never as means to ends.
Respect includes giving credence to others’ ideas and confirming them as human beings.
Respect means that a leader listens closely to followers, is empathic, and is tolerant of opposing points of view.
When a leader exhibits respect to followers, followers can feel competent about their work.
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Description (16 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Serve Others.
Similar to beneficence.
Service principle.
Personal vision as larger than oneself.
Oaths of service and ethics.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Principles of Ethical Leadership
Ethical leaders serve others altruistically, placing their followers’ welfare foremost in their plans through mentoring, empowerment, team building, citizenship, and more.
Very similar to the ethical principle in health care of beneficence, which holds that choices should benefit others in pursuing their legitimate interests and goals.
In the past, the service principle has received a great deal of emphasis in the leadership literature—one of the most important building blocks of moral leadership is attending to others and being a steward of organizational vision.
Effective leaders see their own personal vision as an important part of something larger than themselves—a part of the organization and the community at large.
Servant leadership in particular has strong altruistic ethical overtones in how it emphasizes that leaders should be attentive to the concerns of their followers and should take care of them and nurture them.
In the business world, oaths of service and ethics are becoming increasingly popular.
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Description (17 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Are Just (1 of 2).
No special treatment.
Equity of rewards or punishments.
Conflicts of fairness.
Equal opportunity.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Principles of Ethical Leadership
Ethical leaders are just, making it a top priority to treat followers equally.
No one should receive special treatment or special consideration except when their particular situation demands it.
When resources and rewards or punishments are distributed to employees, the leader plays a major role; how these factors are applied is a direct product of the leader’s beliefs about justice and fairness.
Issues of fairness become problematic because there is always a limit on goods and resources, and there is often competition for the limited things available—conflicts around fairness are common for that reason.
Equal opportunity: Where each employee seeking an opportunity has similar access to/chance to pursue that opportunity.
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Description (18 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Are Just (2 of 2).
Individual need.
Right and effort.
Societal contribution.
Performance.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Principles of Ethical Leadership
Ethical leaders are just, making it a top priority to treat followers equally.
Individual need: An employee’s level of need for the benefits of an opportunity due to individual factors like family or illness.
Right: In distributive justice, a belief that one’s circumstances justify the receipt of a special opportunity compared to others.
Effort: In distributive justice, the amount and intensity of work that has been done in the past and may be used to justify receipt of an opportunity not extended to others.
Societal contribution: The ways an employee candidate has pursued and supported the broader social good, used to evaluate whether the candidate should receive an opportunity.
Performance: The quality of an employee’s work, which may include both their loyalty and length of service as well as their consistency and skill in delivering it.
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Description (19 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Are Honest.
Consequences of dishonesty.
More than telling truth.
Balance openness and monitoring.
Honesty in organizations.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Principles of Ethical Leadership
Ethical leaders are honest and truthful.
Dishonesty misrepresents reality, bringing with it objectionable outcomes and mistrust from followers and peers; this ultimately contributes negatively to a leader’s overall impact.
It also strains the relationships between all people, not just leaders—it indicates that a dishonest person is willing to manipulate a relationship in their own interest.
Being honest is not just about telling the truth. It has to do with being open with others and representing reality as fully and completely as possible.
The challenge for leaders is to strike a balance between being open and candid while monitoring what is appropriate to disclose in a particular situation.
For leaders in organizations, being honest means, “Do not promise what you can’t deliver, do not misrepresent, do not hide behind spin-doctored evasions, do not suppress obligations, do not evade accountability, do not accept that the ‘survival of the fittest’ pressures of business release any of us from the responsibility to respect another’s dignity and humanity.”
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Description (20 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Build Community (1 of 2).
Concern for others.
Guides Burns’s (1978) theory.
Transformational leaders.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethical Theories
Ethical leaders build community by creating common goals that meet their own and organizational purposes, but also consider the purposes agreed upon/important to their followers.
This factor, concern for others, is the distinctive feature that delineates authentic transformational leaders from pseudotransformational leaders.
Burns (1978) placed this idea at the center of his theory on transformational leadership.
A transformational leader tries to move the group toward a common good that is beneficial for both the leaders and the followers, changing both leaders and followers in the process.
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Description (21 of 22)
Principles of Ethical Leadership: Ethical Leaders Build Community (2 of 2).
Importance of leader–follower relationship.
Values members’ interests and cultures.
Rost (1991) called for civic virtue.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Ethical Theories
Ethical leaders build community by creating common goals that meet their own and organizational purposes, but also consider the purposes agreed upon/important to their followers.
Thus, for Burns, true leadership is grounded in a leader–follower relationship and cannot be controlled strictly by the leader.
An ethical leader takes into account the purposes of everyone involved in the group and is attentive to the interests of the community and the culture.
Rost (1991) went a step further and suggested that ethical leadership demands attention to a civic virtue—in a sense, holding the community’s goals and purpose over one’s own.
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Description (22 of 22)
Culture and Ethical Leadership.
Leader attributes and ethical behavior definitions vary culturally.
Importance of specific ethical dimensions also culturally variable.
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15-1 Define ethics in a leadership context.
Culture and Ethical Leadership
Cultures vary widely in what they view as positive leadership attributes and in what they define as ethical behavior of leaders.
It becomes increasingly important to understand cross-cultural perspectives as the world becomes more connected.
Ethical leadership dimensions of character/integrity, altruism, collective motivation, and encouragement were endorsed across all cultures but that the importance of each dimension varied by culture.
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Strengths (1 of 2)
Provides timely research.
Ethics integral part of leadership.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-2 Discuss the strengths of the ethical approach to leadership.
Strengths
Provides a body of timely research on ethical issues; people have been insisting on higher levels of moral responsibility from their leaders for some decades now.
Suggests that ethics ought to be considered as an integral part of the broader domain of leadership.
In the broader scope of leadership research, ethics are only integral to servant, transformational, inclusive, and authentic leadership—a more ‘amoral’ approach that leadership ethics rejects.
Leadership involves values, including showing respect for followers, being fair to others, and building community.
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Strengths (2 of 2)
Benefits organizations.
Followers benefit from leader as role model.
Measurement improved.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-2 Discuss the strengths of the ethical approach to leadership.
Ethical leadership benefits organizations.
When employees perceive that their leaders are ethical role models, there is less deviance and more cooperation, resulting in higher performance and organizational citizenship.
Ethical leadership predicts the ethical climate of the organization.
Followers exhibit ethical norms, positive job attitudes, and constructive ethical behaviors because their leaders serve as role models when they behave ethically.
This effect “cascades” from higher organizations, with followers emulating their superiors all the way down an organizational hierarchy.
The measurement of ethical leadership has drastically improved.
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Criticisms
Little traditional research.
Little research on theoretical foundations.
Previously relied on a few people.
Generational differences.
Northouse, Leadership, 9th edition. © SAGE Publications, 2021.
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15-3 Discuss the criticisms of the ethical approach to leadership.
Criticisms
In an early stage of development, with little traditional research.
Conceptually ill-defined and difficult to measure.
Some definitions are based on leader intentions, others on follower perceptions of leader behaviors.
Followers’ perceptions of leaders may be biased.
Very little research on theoretical foundations of leadership ethics, rather than business ethics.
Yukl et al (2013) suggest the construct domain of ethical leadership includes integrity, honesty, fairness, communication of ethical values, consistency of behavior with espoused values, ethical guidance, and altruism.
In the past, leadership ethics relied on the writings of just a few people who have penned essays and texts that were strongly influenced by their personal opinions about the nature of leadership ethics and their view of the world.
Overwhelmingly anecdotal and untested with either quantitative or qualitative research methods.
More empirical development is very recent.
Fourth, there are also generational differences in ethical perspectives, especially in terms of millennials:
More individualistic than older employees:
Less likely to view the intensity of moral decisions in the same way.
Less likely to look to their leaders for guidance on making ethical decisions.
See work as less central to their lives:
Less likely to view ethical dilemmas at work as particularly problematic.
More sensitive to extrinsic rewards:
Less likely to respond to ethical appeals to do the right thing for the organization.
May be even more likely to succumb to temptations to be unethical if such behavior is likely to lead to pay-offs.
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Application
Few training programs.
Applies to all organizational levels.
Reduces tendency to morally disengage.
Use of research.
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15-4 Recognize applications of the ethical approach to leadership.
Application
Although issues of morality and leadership are discussed more often in society today, these discussions have not resulted in a large number of programs in training and development designed to teach ethical leadership.
While training programs may tangentially touch on managerial effectiveness, few—if any—are directly focused on ethics and leadership.
This research can be applied to people at all levels of organizations and in all walks of life.
One cannot be a leader without being aware of and concerned about one’s own values.
Being a leader demands awareness on our part of the way our ethics defines our leadership.
Ethical leadership reduces followers’ tendencies to morally disengage and then engage in deviant behavior.
Moral disengagement, or is thinking that it is acceptable to take credit for someone else’s work, can be minimized by role modeling proper behavior.
Managers and leaders can use the information in research on ethical leadership to better understand themselves and strengthen their own leadership.
To be an ethical leader, we must be sensitive to the needs of others, treat others in ways that are just, and care for others.
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