Are leaders morally special? Is there something ethically distinctive about the relationship between leaders and followers? Should leaders do whatever it takes to achieve group goals? Leadership Ethics uses moral theory, as well as empirical research in psychology, to evaluate the reasons everyday leaders give to justify breaking the rules. Written for people without a background in philosophy, it introduces readers to the moral theories that are relevant to leadership ethics: relativism, amoralism, egoism, virtue ethics, social contract theory, situation ethics, communitarianism, and cosmopolitan theories such as utilitarianism and transformational leadership. Unlike many introductory texts, the book does more than simply acquaint readers with different approaches to leadership ethics. It defends the Kantian view that everyday leaders are not justified in breaking the moral rules.

Top academic scholars ponder the question of ethics as it pertains to all aspects of leadership in business, government, and nonprofit organizations. If leaders were defined by their influence on history, Hitler would be on par with Gandhi, Lincoln, and Mother Theresa. Yet most of us believe that our superiors have a responsibility to exercise power with a purpose far greater than any political agenda and a motive more noble than personal gain. This thought-provoking collection of essays explores the ethical challenges that leaders face in their relationships with followers, the choices they make, and the ways in which they influence others. Joanne Ciulla and her contributors examine the traits and characteristics of top-tier leaders. She questions the assumption that moral fortitude is an inherent part of being in charge; analyzes the roles that charisma, morality, and delegation play in the leadership paradigm; and considers whether individuals who want to lead with integrity but are sometimes forced to get their hands dirty for their constituents can be called "moral leaders." Readers will gain an appreciation for how ethics is not an add-on to the practice of leadership but rather an integral part of it—an element that informs the very idea of what it means to lead and to lead well.

Designed to help midlevel and senior managers in organizations dedicated to public purposes, this book provides trained self-awareness to deploy values to guide decisions and build the culture of their organizations. The book explores how all managing involves leading and identifies the levels of ethical responsibility for managerial leaders. Highlighting the fundamental role that ethics plays in organizational life, J. Patrick Dobel uses insights from cognitive and social psychology to discuss how to anticipate and address threats to integrity and value informed decision making. Building on traditional ethical theory and modern research, the book begins with the fundamental assumption that individuals possess responsibility when they act for ethical purposes and results in taking a position within a public or nonprofit organization. This assumption of responsibility recognizes the inherent discretion in all positions and claims that effective ethical management requires self-awareness, self-mastery, integrity and a working frame of one’s values and character. The book pays special attention to the challenges of integrating diverse people and perspectives in public organizations as well as attending to the slippages to integrity in organizational life and how managers and leaders can foresee and address ethical slippage and corruption. The book provides checklists and decision frameworks that individuals can adopt and deploy to guide decisions. Public Leadership Ethics: A Management Approach will help create strong value informed cultures supported by communication, transparency, incentives and strong management cadres to achieve high quality service and integrity based actions. It will be of special interest to managerial leaders in public service and teaching in public administration and policy programs or executive training.

This book points to a necessary relationship between ethics and business; the success of such an alliance depends directly on sound business leadership. Without the sort of leadership that upholds the dignity and rights of employees and clients, as well as the interests of shareholders, even the most meticulously prepared ethics statements are destined to founder, as evidenced at Enron and elsewhere. Over the past 30 years or so, since business ethics became established as a discipline in its own right, much progress has been made in the ethical conduct of business at all levels. In short, business people, like politicians, doctors and church leaders, have come to realize that it is not possible to avoid involvement in ethics, for much of what business people do and cannot do may be subject to ethical evaluation. While the history of business ethics as currently practised may be traced to the medieval and ancient periods; our principal concern is with developments in the ?eld over recent decades. A consideration of how the topic has been treated by the Harvard Business Review, the business world’sleadingprofessionaljournal,provideshelpful insights into past progress and present challenges. In 1929, just as business ethics was beginning to evolve, Wallace B.

Ethics and Leadership