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Chapter Outline
• Introduction
• Leadership and “doing the right things”
• Character-based approaches to leadership
• The roles of ethics and values in organizational leadership
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Values, Ethics and Character
Leadership cannot just go along to get along… Leadership must
meet the moral challenge of the day
• Jesse Jackson, American civil rights activist
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Introduction
Leaders can use power for good or ill
• Leader’s personal values and ethical code may be the most
important determinants of how that leader exercises available
power sources
• Recent scandals involving political, business, and religious figures
highlight the need to consider values and ethics in terms of
leadership
• Scholarly and popular literature have turned greater attention to
the question of ethical leadership
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Leadership and “Doing the Right Things”, 1
Leaders face dilemmas that require choices between competing
sets of values and priorities
• Leaders set a moral example that becomes the model for an entire
group or organization
• Leaders should internalize a strong set of ethics, which are
principles of right conduct or a system of moral values
• Gardner and Burns stressed the centrality and importance of the
moral dimension of leadership
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Leadership and “Doing the Right Things”, 2
Qualities of leadership that engender trust
• Vision
• Empathy
• Consistency
• Integrity
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Values, 1
Constructs representing generalized behaviors or states of affairs
that are considered by the individual to be important
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Values, 2
Pervasive influences of broad forces at a particular time tend to
create common value systems
• May contribute to misunderstandings and tension in the
interactions between older leaders and younger followers
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Values, 3
Gen Xers have a clearly different view of authority than previous
generations
• Define leading as removing obstacles and giving followers what they
need to work well
• Expect managers to earn their promotions and not be rewarded
with leadership responsibilities because of seniority
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Moral Reasoning and Character-Based Leadership, 1
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Moral Reasoning and Character-Based Leadership, 2
• Unconscious biases may affect one’s moral judgments, which is why
many organizations are developing programs to develop moral
decision-making competence among leaders
• Effectiveness of such programs depends on understanding the moral
decision-making process
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Moral Reasoning and Character-Based Leadership, 3
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Moral Reasoning and Character-Based Leadership, 4
• Justice versus mercy: Deciding whether to excuse a person’s
misbehaviour because of extenuating circumstances or a conviction
that he or she has learned a lesson
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Moral Reasoning and Character-Based Leadership, 5
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Moral Reasoning and Character-Based Leadership, 6
Ways in which people with firm moral principles may behave
badly without feeling guilt or remorse over their behavior
• Moral justification: Justifying otherwise immoral behavior in terms
of a higher purpose
• Euphemistic labeling: Disguising morally distasteful behavior with
cosmetic words
• Advantageous comparison: Avoiding self-contempt for one’s
behavior by comparing it to even more heinous behavior by others
• Displacement or diffusion of responsibility: Violating personal
moral standards by attributing responsibility to others
• Diffusion of responsibility: Excusing one’s own reprehensible
behavior because others are behaving in the same way
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Moral Reasoning and Character-Based Leadership, 7
• Disregard or distortion of consequences: Minimizing the actual
harm caused by one’s behavior
• Dehumanization: Avoiding the consequences of one’s behavior by
dehumanizing those who are affected
• Attribution of blame: Justifying one's immoral behavior by claiming
it was caused by someone else’s actions
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Avolio and Associates: Components of
Ethical Leadership
Moral person
• Principled decision-maker who cares about people and the broader
society
Moral manager
• Makes ethics an explicit part of the leadership agenda by
communicating messages of ethics and values and by modeling
ethical behavior
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Character-Based Approaches to Leadership, 1
Authentic leadership
• Authentic leaders exhibit consistency among their values, beliefs,
and actions
• Are self-aware
• Self-consciously align their actions with their inner values
• Study of authentic leadership has gained momentum because of
the following beliefs:
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Character-Based Approaches to Leadership, 2
Servant leadership views serving others as being the leader’s
role
• Characteristics of servant leaders
• Listening
• Empathy
• Healing
• Awareness
• Persuasion
• Conceptualization
• Foresight
• Stewardship
• Commitment to others’ growth
• Building community
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Roles of Ethics and Values in Organizational
Leadership
Organizations have dominant values just as individuals do
• Values represent the principles by which employees are to get work
done and treat other employees, customers, and vendors
• Leaders in an organization fail because of a misalignment between
personal and organizational values
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Leading by Example: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 1
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Leading by Example: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 2
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Creating and Sustaining an Ethical Climate, 1
“Fronts” of leadership action required to create an ethical
climate
• Formal ethics policies and procedures
• Core ideology
• Integrity
• Structural reinforcement
• Process focus
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Creating and Sustaining an Ethical Climate, 2
Principle-centered leadership asserts a fundamental
interdependence between the personal, interpersonal,
managerial, and organizational levels of leadership
• Interdependence between the levels posited in principle-centered
leadership is similar to the conceptualizations of authentic
leadership
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Summary
• There is a relationship between ethics, values, and leadership
• It is not just the content of what one believes is right and
wrong but how one makes moral or ethical judgments
• Ethical dilemmas often involve a choice between two “rights”
rather than choices between what is right or wrong
• Recent research has explored the interdependencies between
effective leadership and particular value systems
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