The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/2056-4929.htm

Ethical
Ethical leadership and the leadership and
role of scholars the role of
scholars
Deborah Poff
Brandon University, Brandon, Canada, and
59
Cam Caldwell
Modern College of Business and Science, Muscat, Oman Received 5 December 2016
Revised 5 December 2016
Accepted 4 January 2017
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss an interview with Dr Deborah Poff – world renowned
Scholar, Ethics Scholar, Founder and Editor of major ethics journals, and a university leader – on ethical
leadership and the role of scholars.
Design/methodology/approach – This is a personal interview with a world renowned ethics scholar on
ethical leadership.
Findings – Being good when bad is easier and will be received better is an extremely tough thing to do.
Leadership without integrity may work for you and sometimes for those around you, but in the long run,
compromising on goodness trust and integrity is harmful.
Originality/value – Dr Poff’s ideas come from a lifelong study of leadership and ethics. Her writing is world
renowned and of valuable information for all scholars of leadership and ethics.
Keywords Ethical leadership, Ethical conflicts, Goodness, Trust and accountability
Paper type Viewpoint

Dr Deborah Poff is a world renowned Scholar, Editor and recipient of the prestigious 2016
Order of Canada. For many years, she has served as editor of the Journal of Academic Ethics,
Co-founder and Co-editor of the Journal of Business Ethics, Editor of Advances in Business
Ethics, and Editor of the Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. She has served as the
President of Canada’s Brandon University. This interview was conducted in October, 2016.
Cam Caldwell (C): You have had an extremely successful career as an ethics scholar,
founder and editor of major ethics journals, and a university leader. How has that extensive
background influenced your philosophy of leadership and the duties that leaders owe
stakeholders?
Deborah Poff (DP): As many people have noted, success is frequently a combination of
luck and preparedness. I have always worked hard to be able to optimize my chances when
opportunities were available to me. One of the wonderful experiences I had was to work at a
brand new university which is now 20 years old and has consistently topped the Canadian
national university rankings of small universities in Canada.
When you start a de novo institution, you get to think philosophically about the nature of
universities, the purpose of a university education, the ethics around many issues such as
access, quality, competitiveness, excellence, equality, social justice, fundraising, government-
university relations, among many other things. Although building a new university is a very
instrumentalist task with budget and time constraints, it did afford me the opportunity to read
and to think deeply about many critical ethical issues related to universities and the role and
purpose of these institutions, particularly in the context of a democratic nation state.
Part way through my time at the university, I started the Journal of Academic Ethics as
an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal to publish original research in all facets
International Journal of Public
of ethical issues related to universities. Leadership
C: In recent years, leaders worldwide struggle to earn and retain the trust and Vol. 14 No. 1, 2018
pp. 59-62
commitment of followers. Can you identify why so many leaders are so unsuccessful in © Emerald Publishing Limited
2056-4929
earning that trust? DOI 10.1108/IJPL-12-2016-0054
IJPL DP: This is a hard question to answer for a number of reasons. Do the leaders in question
14,1 want trust and commitment or just followership? Even if they are committed to earning and
retaining trust and do whatever they can to deserve it, the complexity and contingencies of
being mortal and limited human beings may thwart and challenge a leader’s success and
may consequently disappoint followers.
The high levels of approval of the President Barack Obama, as he left after eight years in
60 office, is noteworthy because of what it implies. Although he began his term facing daunting
problems and did not always succeed (partially because of the intentional blocking by
ideologically opposed people), I felt that he always projected integrity and trustworthiness.
I think that there is a useful message there about how leaders establish credibility.
C: Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is unusual inasmuch as he is highly
regarded within his country and in many other nations throughout the world. In your view,
what has made him so successful when so many other leaders have struggled?
DP: Trudeau’s reputational success is multifaceted in nature. Some of the reasons are good.
Some reasons are not so noble. In terms of the context of Canada, Canadians at the time of
Trudeau’s election had a prime minister who was extremely closed, anti-intellectual, very
conservative, not accessible, anti-environmental protection and not forthcoming about much
of anything else. He was not internationally engaged and was parochial in his approach to
most complex issues. He was a micromanager with a puppet cabinet. And during the last
election, he was patently disliked and distrusted by most of the Canadian voters.
Into this context came a values-based, feelings-based politician who called himself a
feminist and talked about improving the economic quality of life for middle-class Canadians.
He also talked about taking Canada’s commitment to environmental sustainability seriously
and addressed the problems of entrenched racial and cultural discrimination against
indigenous Canadians. He was also young, classically handsome, wealthy and came with the
pedigree of being the son of Canada’s last great intellectual, progressive prime minister.
The real challenge he faces now is to deal with a Canadian economy that is still
extensively resource extraction-based and not environmentally progressive while
addressing growth and economic social justice, including justice for Canada’s largely
deprived Aboriginal population. He is being watched very closely by many Canadians who
are hoping that he maintains the values he articulated during the election.
With respect to the international community, the first positive thing is that Canada is
back as a player on the international field. The new prime minister hosted the three amigos
meeting of Canada, the USA and Mexico that the previous prime minister had canceled.
Canada also sought to gain a seat on the UN Security Council and to shift the perception of
Canada as irrelevant to global peace keeping. Further, Trudeau positioned himself as
strongly committed to the Paris accord.
C: Today’s world and the world of tomorrow are facing many challenging problems that
require worldwide collaboration to resolve. Which of those problems concern you the most
as you contemplate their resolution?
DP: Human rights, economic and environmental justice and sustainability are critical to
having any reasonable “world of tomorrow.” Violence, war, poverty, starvation,
immigration, intolerance and incivility are problems bred and fed by a world where
80-90 percent of the world’s wealth – depending upon the calculus you call on – is owned by
less than 2 percent of the world’s population. There are many paths to address these issues
that have been posited by economists and social scientists for a long time. What all of these
paths have in common is the introduction of mechanisms to re-distribute wealth – including,
but not limited to, transaction taxes.
It is also essential to educate the majority of the world’s population of women and girls who
are still significantly overrepresented in the illiterate and uneducated population on the globe.
We need ethical and competent leadership, particularly across all democratic nations, to
have the moral courage to address fundamental economic and wealth inequity. There is a Ethical
mean-spiritedness evident in a number of democratic populations these days that seems to leadership and
be a direct consequence of having to deal with the massive refugee populations who are the role of
attempting to flee intolerable and unsustainable living conditions. Perhaps, at issue is that
countries are dealing with this challenge in the absence of any collective economic scholars
redistribution of resources. That challenge requires collective wisdom, and more
importantly, collective will. 61
C: Albert Einstein once observed, “The significant problems we face cannot be resolved
at the level we were at when we created them.” What do you think needs to be done to go to
that higher level necessary to resolve so many of today’s world problems?
DP: I am not sure that I entirely agree with the quotation. While received knowledge
changes over time, the ultimate values that drive a moral world or ethical decision making
do not. If you agreed with the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights based on ethical
principles and ethical values, you would surely not disagree with them in 2016 because our
knowledge has changed. The complex, instrumentalist factors necessary to implement
change will vary from time to time but ethical leadership will be grounded on the moral
compass that directed that 1948 declaration.
C: LaRue Hosmer (1995), the esteemed University of Michigan Ethics Scholar, suggested
that one of the difficulties in resolving ethical conflicts and building trust is that there are so
many different ethical perspectives with each having a justifiable philosophical point of
view. What advice would you offer to leaders who understand the importance of “being
ethical” but may find themselves in conflict with others who also call themselves ethical but
derive their definition from a different philosophical perspective?
DP: Yes, the challenges of differences in ethical perspectives are complex. Some people
who believe that they are ethical seem to be able comfortably to put groups of other human
beings into categories of those whom they believe to be less worthy than they. This is the
foundation for sexism, racism, classism and various forms of elitist appeals to privilege, etc.
If you are committed to a just, caring and equal world for all (granting the complexity and
disagreement about the meaning of all of these terms), then the best you can do is vigilantly,
rationally and caringly act in such a way as to maximize the potential for the actualization of
such a world. These beliefs and actions are clearly, as pragmatists would note, necessary if
not sufficient conditions for the achievement of this goal. But if you do not believe, then
there are not even these necessary conditions.
C: To what degree do you think today’s academic community can and should contribute
to the resolution of the problems of ethical leadership in today’s world?
DP: I believe in the vocational role of the citizen scholar. Particularly in a democratic nation
state, academics are privileged by notions of “academic freedom.” Faculty members frequently
say that they have a “right” to academic freedom. As those of us who talk about rights are very
aware, the corollary of rights is duties and obligations. I also believe that the concept of tenure
includes the responsibility to speak the truth in the service of the common good.
A number of universities are now taking a much more serious and sustained approach to
inculcating ethics into the curriculum whether we are talking about business and
professional ethics, research ethics or publication ethics. And as Aristotle instructs us,
ethics is not just about learning but also about doing. As teachers, those of us who teach
should also model the behavior we espouse in our teaching.
C: The role of business as corporate citizens and stakeholders in the world of tomorrow
has generated much discussion and made the subject of corporate social responsibility a
major discussion item. What role should the business community at all levels contribute to
solving the problems that are on the horizon?
DP: Communities are where we hold people accountable. That is certainly part of what
Adam Smith meant when he discussed moral sentiments. It is consequently important for
IJPL the business community at all levels to contribute to corporate social responsibility.
14,1 There are a fair number of leaders who operate in the mode of “I made good, so now I do
good.” Many of them are addressing significant problems of injustice, poverty and disease
in the world and that is great. But it is also important that all business people see their
working lives and the rest of their lives as connected and not compartmentalize personal
values from public values.
62 C: What advice would you give to those who lead, whether in the public or private
sectors, in preparing themselves to be “part of the solution” in resolving today’s and
tomorrow’s leadership problems?
DP: Have the courage to stay strong when you are doing the right things for the right
reason. That can be a terribly lonely place to be. Being good when bad is easier and will be
received better is an extremely tough thing to do. Leadership without integrity may work for
you and sometimes for those around you, but in the long run, compromising on goodness,
trust and integrity is harmful. If human beings, who have reflective consciousness and who
understand the difference between right and wrong, chose the wrong, then so much the worse
for the world.

Corresponding author
Cam Caldwell can be contacted at: cam.caldwell@gmail.com

For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.