Leadership is built on the foundation of influence and credibility. When a leader’s credibility is eroded, the platform from which impact is made is destroyed. In examining the critical importance of trustworthiness in leadership, leaders must be mindful of the enormous ethical burden and responsibility of their role in the lives of the followers.
Leaders play a significant role in establishing the ethical climate of their organisations, and there is a heavy burden on leaders of organisations and nations to live and act in such a way as never to be regarded as unethical even by the loudest critic. However, we have seen many instances in the 21st century, where the sinful human nature gets in the way of ethical leadership standard.
Recent incidences have revealed that ethical standards are mere reactionary responses in compelling leaders to act within expectations rather than serve as a guide for determining the correct course of actions for leaders. Northouse, explains that humans have been concerned with the ethics of leaders all through the ages and that the history books are full of descriptions of good kings and bad kings, great empires and evil empires, and influential presidents and weak presidents. Hence, leadership theories on ethics address two domains, assumptions about a leader’s conduct and character.
The word ethics is derived from the root word ethos in Greek, which connotes conduct, character, or customs. It is concerned with the values and morals that an individual or group of people find desirable. Leaders always make decisions, and their ethics influence the choices they make. Ethics has to do with not only what leaders do, but also who they are. It has to do with their behaviour and with their inherent virtuousness.
Fedler offered three major approaches to ethics. First is deontology, which focusses on a person’s action, as it is believed to be the one thing that a person has control over. Next is consequentialist ethics or utilitarianism, which focusses on the results of a person’s actions. Consequentialists believe that “the end justifies the means.” Thirdly, we have virtue ethics, which centres on a person’s character and the person’s views of morality. Northouse notes that there has been a resurgence of interest in the popularity of virtue ethics, and this may be as a result of the fact that traditional approaches to ethicality have not produced desired results over time. A moral person, according to Aristotle, “demonstrates the virtues of courage, temperance, generosity, self-control, honesty, sociability, modesty, fairness, and justice.”
Every day, leaders and their followers make decisions impacting the future. Often, ethical decisions determine either a positive or negative outcome. However, decision-making is a delicate process for leaders. Not only do they have to choose between what is right and what is wrong many times, but they also need to choose between right and right. This is coupled with the pressure that power puts on human character. Chester Barnard asserts that leadership brings the risk of moral destruction. He explained that positions of power carry complicated responsibilities which at times conflict with each other, and at other times conflict with a leader’s personal values. This is further complicated by what Bazerman and Tenbrunsel describe as ethical gaps that exist between how ethical leaders think they are and how noble they indeed are. They explained that people have the innate ability to believe something and to act contrary to it.
Indeed, in many of the corporate scandals that have happened in the last few decades, a number of the corporate leaders responsible did not see themselves as having done anything wrong. Bazerman and Tenbrunsel further addressed the concept of ethical fading, which is seen as what happens when organisations disperse different aspects of a decision to different parts of the organisation, making people see them as engineering, marketing, or financial problems and not as the ethical problems they usually are.
Another issue that impacts negatively on decision-making by organisational leaders is moral hypocrisy, which makes them perceive their transgressions as being less objectionable than they feel when they see others commit the same sins. We must add to all these potential ethical problems the issue of conflict of interest. This is a very tricky issue as leaders are usually not aware when this problem surfaces as most think the battle of intent is a problem of intentional corruption. Further, Bazerman and Tenbrunsel assert that research has shown that when people have a vested interest in seeing a problem in a particular manner, they are no longer confident of objectivity.
The issue here is that there are conditions that make leaders fail to see some decisions as ethical ones, making them vulnerable to act in unintended and unethical ways. These conditions are mostly emotional. The traditional approach to ethics, which assumes that moral reasoning precedes moral judgment, is being re-examined. We now realize that moral judgment precedes moral reasoning. In other words, we make emotional decisions before our thinking kicks in to justify the conclusions. Badarraco alludes to this, saying that it is unrealistic to expect people to rise above their culture, history, religious faiths, their urgent need for practical assistance, their biological predispositions, in a word, their humanity, and enter an abstract, platonic realm of dispassionate ethical analysis. Such emotional issues create boundaries around our sense of awareness, creating what is referred to as bounded ethicality.
Therefore, organisational leaders need to apply the principles of ethical leadership, bearing in mind that, it is the leadership that establishes and reinforce the values of their organisations. If there is a disparity between the mission and values of the organisation, their followers will replicate their behaviours, which will serve as an indication of the informal values of the organisation. Also, ethical leadership is more than a guide; it is a preventive measure that determines the correct course of action for individuals and organisations, as well as a qualitative standard for everyone in leadership and the followers alike.
Sobande is a Lawyer and Leadership Consultant. He is a Doctoral Candidate at Regent University, Virginia Beach, USA, for a Ph.D. in Strategic Leadership. He can be reached through Email: [email protected]
