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Chapter 6
Leadership Ethics and
Social Responsibility
LEADERSHIP: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills
Andrew J. DuBrin, 9th Edition

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 © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
Learning Objectives
• Specify key principles of ethical and moral leadership.
• Apply a guide to ethical decision making.
• Describe what leaders can do to foster an ethical and
socially responsible organization.
• Explain the link between business ethics and
organizational performance.

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Principles & Practices of

© 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.

Ethical & Moral Leadership
Ethics
• The study of moral obligations.

• The study of separating right from wrong.

Morals
• An individual’s determination of what is right or wrong.

• Influenced by a person’s values.

Values
• Tied closely to ethics because ethics become the vehicle for 3
converting values into action.
Principles and Practices of

© 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.

Ethical and Moral Leadership
• A moral leader will practice good ethics.
• Ethics is at the center of leadership because the goal of a
rational leader is to merge the interests of all parties so
that everyone benefits and the organization prospers.
• A leader should do the right thing, as perceived by a
consensus of reasonable people.

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Four Ethical Leadership

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Behaviors
1. Be Honest and Trustworthy and Have Integrity in Dealing
with Others
• Practicing what one preaches regardless of emotional or social
pressure.
2. Pay Attention to All Stakeholders
• Ethical and moral leaders strive to treat fairly all interested parties
affected by their decisions.
3. Build Community
• When many people work toward the same common constructive
goal, they build a community.
4. Respect the Individual
• Showing respect for the individual also means that you recognize
that everybody has some inner worth and should be treated with 5
courtesy and kindness.
 Factors Contributing

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to Ethical Differences
1. Leader moral identity
2. Level of greed, gluttony, & avarice
3. Rationalization and implied permission
4. Moral development level
• Pre-conventional
• Conventional
• Post-conventional
5. Sense of entitlement
6. Situational influences
7. Character of the person
8. Motivated blindness
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Describe one example of unethical behavior. Then use two factors
to explain what was the possible cause of this behavior.
Evaluating the Ethics of a

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Decision
• Ethical Screen/Guidelines to Help Leaders Determine if a Given
Act is Ethical or Unethical
• Is it right?
• Is it fair?
• Who gets hurt?
• Would you be comfortable if the details of your decision or
actions were made public in the media or through email?
• What would you tell your child, sibling, or young relative to do?
• How does it smell?
• Leaders regularly face the necessity of running a contemplated
decision through an ethics test.
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Leadership & Social

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Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility
• Obligations to society beyond the company’s
economic obligations to owners or stockholders and
beyond those prescribed by law or contract.
• Part of external engagement, or the efforts a company
makes to manage its relationship with the external
world.
• When corporate social responsibility generates value
for shareholders and stakeholders, it is regarded as
good business strategy.
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 © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
Figure 6-1 Initiatives for Achieving a Socially
Responsible and Ethical Organization

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Providing Strategic Leadership

© 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.

of Ethics
• The most effective route to an ethical and socially
responsible organization is for senior management to
provide strategic leadership in that direction.
• If high ethics receive top priority, workers at all levels are
more likely to behave ethically.
• Strategic leadership of ethics and social responsibility
includes leading by example.

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 © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
Social Responsibility (1 of 5)
Creating a Pleasant Workplace
• Creating a comfortable, pleasant, and intellectually stimulating
work environment is a social responsibility initiative that
directly affects employees’ well-being.

Helping Build a Sustainable Environment

• Socially responsible leaders influence others to sustain and
preserve the external environment through a variety of
actions that go beyond mandatory environmental controls.

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 © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
Social Responsibility (2 of 5)
Engaging in Social Entrepreneurship
• An entrepreneurial approach to social problems such as
homelessness, contaminated drinking water, damaged
physical environments, and extreme poverty.

Engaging in Philanthropy
• A standard organizational leadership approach to social
responsibility is to donate money to charity and various other
causes.

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 © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
Social Responsibility (3 of 5)
Working with Suppliers to Improve Working Conditions
• An opportunity for practicing social responsibility is for
company leaders to work with suppliers to improve physical
and mental working conditions.

Establishing Written Codes of Ethical Conduct

• Many organizations use written codes of conduct as guidelines
for ethical and socially responsible behavior.
• A written code of conduct is more likely to influence behavior
when both formal and informal leaders throughout the firm
refer to it frequently.

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 © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
Social Responsibility (4 of 5)
Developing Formal Mechanisms for Dealing with Ethical
Problems
• Large organizations frequently establish ethics committees to
help ensure ethical and socially responsible behavior.

Accepting Whistleblowers
• A whistleblower is an employee who discloses organizational
wrongdoing to parties who can take action.
• Being a whistleblower requires a small act of leadership, in the
sense of taking the initiative to bring about change.

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Social Responsibility (5 of 5)
Providing Training in Ethics and Social Responsibility
• Training includes messages about ethics and social
responsibility from company leadership, classes and exercises
in ethics.
• Training programs are most likely to be effective when the
organizational culture encourages ethical behavior.

Minimizing Abusive Supervision Throughout the Organization

• Dysfunctional leadership behavior that adversely affects its
targets and the organization as a whole.
• Minimizing abusive supervision includes a variety of top-level
leadership actions such as frequent communication about the
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topic, and coaching managers known to be abusive.
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Charity vs. CSR?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9IyDvkxADU

What is the main difference between CSR and Charity? 16

What are the four steps a company must make to ensure
CSR?
Ethical Behavior &

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Organizational Performance
• High ethics and social responsibility are sometimes
related to good financial performance.
• Relationship between social responsibility and financial
performance may be a virtuous circle.
• Corporate social responsibility and corporate financial
performance may feed and reinforce each other.

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CSR and Performance

https://www.greatplacetowork.me/better-workplace-better-performance-2/

Above a link to the ‘Great Place to Work’ website, for

evidence of the relation with ROI.
How else can CSR benefit your company? Think of 18
ways in which it can save costs, create new
opportunities, and generate more income.
 © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved.
Paper: CSR and Leadership
Open the paper by Jones Christensen et al (2014) to obtain
deeper insights:
• Read two paragraphs “Recent work in trait theory…
impacts of traits on organizations.” (p.168)
• Read the paragraph “Emerging work…CSR-related
activities” (p.170)
• Read about ‘Instrumental versus altruistic CSR’ (p. 171)
• Read the paragraph ‘Although servant leadership
shares…& Lang, 2012).” (p.173-174 19