Integrating Pragmatism and Ethics in Entrepreneurial Submitted to: Prof. Dr.

Mubasshir Hassan
Submitted by: Athar Nasir
Leadership for Sustainable Value Creation Date Due: 24 March, 2020

(Summary of EL#4)
Entrepreneurial leaders are often perceived as eschewing ethics and values because of their
strong focus on goals and achievement. Yet the most successful entrepreneurial leaders are
able to integrate efficiency with ethics. Ethics and entrepreneurial leadership can be
integrated by applying a pragmatic, action oriented approach to the moral arena to generate
trust and commitment for sustaining innovation and value creation.

Perspectives on entrepreneurial leadership:

While theories of leadership abound, they focus on three recent cross-cultural perspectives of
leadership that are relevant to entrepreneurial leadership.

First, neo-charismatic/transformational leadership focuses on how leaders evoke

super-ordinate performance from followers through a transcendence of self-interested
behavior in contrast to the instrumental and transactional role of the leader emphasized in
earlier leadership theories. The neo charismatic transformational leadership act "binds leader
and follower together in a mutual and continuing pursuit of a higher purpose."
Second, team oriented leadership research such as Leader-Member Exchange theory,
focuses on inter actions between leaders and group members, high lights role exchanges and
emphasizes the ability of leaders to elicit heightened levels of group involvement and
participation.
Third, value-based leadership suggests that such leaders articulate a vision and
mission derived from super-ordinate values. They also behave in a manner that reinforces the
mission by communicating high expectations to followers and conveying confidence in their
ability to meet such expectations.
Conceptual framework: reconciling pragmatism and ethics in entrepreneurial
leadership.
Entrepreneurship has long been recognized as a leading driver of development in local,
regional, and national economies and the entrepreneur a "key agent" in explaining the market
system in neo-classical theory by creating value through innovation and employment.
Schumpeter popularized the view of the entrepreneur as an innovator who undertakes ".
The entrepreneurial literature suggests at least four conditions that encourage entrepreneurial
action in the firm. These include the effective communication of an entrepreneurial vision,
processes to nurture innovation, processes to secure resources and expertise for
entrepreneurial efforts, and the capacity to facilitate continuous exploration and idea
generation.

The primary purpose of an ethical or value system is to serve as a guide for choosing amongst
various possibilities for action. Thus, it is human action that shapes and reveals to us our
ideals and ethical vision, a view endorsed by Sartre (1943, 1947) and supported by the social
constructionist view of learning and innovation. While individualism and the free market
system may be useful in obtaining efficiency, the need for intervention to ensure equity and
access. Efficiency in the moral arena refers to the efficiency of the system in using its
available resources in creating the values which it recognizes, that is, in producing the largest
quantity of "goods" as measured by its standards.

By summarizing the question of values on a continuous basis in the process of achieving their
goals, entrepreneurial leaders are likely to alter current norms and evolve new ones. In this
way, ethical behavior is reinforced through practice and standards evolved as in other
domains. The cases outlined in this paper provide a glimpse of how some entrepreneurial
leaders have implemented the integration of ethics in their organizations

Ethics and entrepreneurial leadership can be integrated by applying a pragmatic, action

oriented approach to the moral arena to generate trust and commitment for sustaining
innovation and value creation. One implication is that entrepreneurial leaders must consider
all actions in light of their impact on long-term credibility not simply expedience. By
addressing the question of values on a continuous basis in the process of achieving their
goals, entrepreneurial leaders are likely to alter current norms and evolve new ones. In this
way, ethical behavior is reinforced through practice and standards evolved as in other
domains