Written By Ben Burka /Alan Paul
Throughout the history of the political science of homo sapiens ethics of the leaders or rulers mattered greatly to the people. The significant importance people gave to the ethics of the leaders is because the ethical capacity and outlook of the leaders are substantial in causing either harm or benefit to the people. Ethical behaviors have been subjected to philosophical studies.
Why does this matter to people and political scientists? This is because leadership is a fundamental part of the human condition and how we live and work together. Leadership can be defined as a complex relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, emotion, and some shared vision of good. It is not matter that revolves around a single person. Leadership is also attributed to a group of people. It can be said that leadership is a product of our social relations and hierarchies.
How does ethics become inseparable from leadership? Actions that are moral can be performed by a leadership collectively in a society only if it is bound to ethics. For example, only an ethically sound government will accurately deliver welfare to the people.
In certain cases, ethics becomes an effective tool in influencing and driving leadership to the right track. For example, whistleblowers can influence the leadership/ governments to function effectively without leakages. Since leadership is a complex relationship any alterations that happen to leadership and its functioning influence social processes and vice-versa. In short, ethics also act as a social changer where leadership is the apparatus.
Some initial efforts were made to map out the ethical dimensions of leadership, and scholars like Bernard Bass and Edwin Hollander discussed ethics in the context of leadership. Textbooks on leadership ethics have been developed, often tailored to specific contexts such as business or education. Some of these textbooks cover topics like power, virtue, and the moral relationship between leaders and followers.
Distinguishing between the roles of a leader and a manager can be complex, as both terms can overlap. The distinction is important, as leaders often have a broader ethical perspective and vision for the future. However, some literature on leadership may actually focus on managerial subjects or should be categorized as business ethics rather than leadership ethics.
There has been a shift in recent leadership literature, acknowledging the limitations of charismatic and heroic leadership models. Some scholars have critiqued the emphasis on charismatic leaders and highlighted the effectiveness of inconspicuous and diligent leaders.
When people become leaders, they have a special relationship with others and unique responsibilities. One big difference is that leaders often have more power and influence than their followers. This power can come from their position, skills, or personality. Leaders can use this power for good or bad, and it brings ethical challenges.
Historically, many leaders faced moral problems related to power. For instance, a story called the “Ring of Gyges” explores how people might act if they had the power to be invisible. This is similar to the power leaders have, overseeing others and making decisions.
To define the scope of leadership ethics, we need to consider what is ethically unique about the role of a leader. This involves exploring concepts like right and wrong, virtue, duty, fairness, and justice within the context of leadership and human relationships.
The concept of leadership varies from institution to institution. So are ethics. The ethical application of business will not be completely the case in politics. This led to the rise of business ethical studies, leadership studies, and management studies. While business ethical studies are a mix of social science, empirical studies whereas the leadership studies do not consider empirical studies.
Critical leadership studies (CLS) draw on Marxian philosophy and challenge the power and privileges associated with leadership. The writings of Jurgen Habermas are used by CLS to examine the discourse which speaks about the negative sides of leadership like cult, and fundamentalism. Inspired by the philosophies of Aristotle, Alastair Macintyre, and Emmanuel Levinas, CLS tends also to pursue ways in which leadership might concern itself with ethical standards or justice. CLS scholars have drawn on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Merleau Ponty to develop a more embodied and material sense of ethical leadership and yet others have found Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault as valuable in studying masculinity and ethnicity in leadership.
So, there are three main aspects of looking at leadership ethically:
- What kind of person the leader is and their personal ethics.
- How the leader goes about leading and the relationship they have with others.
- What the leader actually does and the outcomes of their leadership.
These three aspects help us understand if a leader is doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons.
These three parts cover different ways of thinking about what makes a leader ethical. They connect to different areas of research on leadership. Some research looks at the traits and psychology of leaders, some focus on the relationship between leaders and followers, and others study how leaders behave based on the situation they’re in.
Ethical Challenges in Leadership Ethics and the use of Power
Some aspects or tendencies of leadership are at times hindrances to the ethics of leadership. Leadership can be said to be built on the contract between the rulers or ruled. Rather we can say the ruling class maintains its power and thrust by the exploitation of the working class and accumulating wealth. Whether you believe in the social contract approach or the Marxian approach, leadership entails a relationship that draws on people’s hope, fears, identities, and emotions.
Let us discuss some key challenges in Leadership Ethics
Self Interest
Plato discusses the self-interest of the leader in the book Republic-1. He discusses the conflict between the interests of a leader and the interest that his kins and relations expect. Socrates says that one of the key normative aspects of leadership when he argues that it is about pursuing the interests of others or of a cause. Plato also points out the downside of being an ethical leader. He says, for example, your friends and family may get angry with you because you will not give them special favors. A leader’s role and the very idea of a leader is to serve the interests of a group, organization, country, or cause. Leaders who do not do that are not only unethical, they are not doing their jobs as leaders.
Since leaders are supposed to put their interests after the interests of the group, a key set of problems in leadership ethics center around self-interested behaviors and conflicts of interest. To find a ground zero between this conflict ancient philosophers preached that deep respect was an important virtue for leaders. This kept leaders from acting like gods and reminded them that they were part of something bigger than themselves.
Dirty Hand
Ancient philosophers tried to inculcate the virtue of reverence in kings to keep their egos in such a way that they abide by the interest of people.
Machiavelli analysed another major challenge to the leadership. It is to commit bad things which are inevitable either for the good of the people or the leader. He says that leaders must learn how not to be good, especially in situations where other leaders are unethical.
Ethics is basically a template that bounds leaders to do only good things. But Machiavelli in his book Prince says, if necessary, the king/prince can commit actions that go against their morals. Machiavelli tells us that leaders cannot afford to take the high moral ground when their power and the lives of their people are at stake. Max Weber makes a similar observation when he says, in some situations, it is inappropriate for leaders to behave like saints. “A leader must know that he is responsible for what may become of himself under these paradoxes.”
A famous saying of burning a village for the good of a country is justified is related to the Machiavellian theory.
Michael Waltz justifies the breaking of high morals and ethics by arguing that it is not the individual’s decision rather they are opted by the people to take such decisions.
Ethics and Effectiveness
The relationship between ethics and effectiveness focuses on a broader category of ethical problems in leadership based on the relationship between competency and morality. This problem arises when we compare two different leaders based on their objectives, charisma, and organizational skills. For example, if we analyze Hitler, he possessed the above-said elements. But can we describe him as a good leader? When the binary of unethical competency and ethical impotency arises then the question of ethics and effectiveness becomes a challenge to leadership.
Responsibility and Moral Luck
At times either bias or emotional vulnerability of people makes them hold leaders responsible for something that they have no role in. We praise leaders when their followers do something good and blame them when they do something bad. This is true even when the leader did not know about the action and did not directly or indirectly do anything to influence or cause it to occur. This assumption is especially common in hierarchical organizations such as corporations. Usually, when an individual or group of people undertake leadership there is either an explicit or tacit assumption that, as leaders, they will be accountable or be held accountable for what transpires.
When we give leaders power and privilege, we expect or even require them, to take responsibility for whatever happens to their constituents, groups, organizations, or society. If we treat leadership as a proprietary and hierarchical position, then perhaps this accountability is one of the prices that they must pay for their privileges.
Diversity: Gender and Race in Leadership Studies
Both leadership and ethics in its historical progress possessed patriarchal and allied characteristics in defining and analyzing issues. Though there are feminist, anti-colonial alternatives they remain marginalized by the mainstream studies and approaches. This creates a kind of cartesian binary between mind and body along with fundamental dualisms between subjects and objects (ontology), representational and realist knowledge (epistemology), agency and structure (methodology) as well as other binaries of a political nature relating to age, ethnicity/race, gender, sexuality, and the able-bodied.
In the clash between these binaries, one exhibits hierarchy over the other. This creates a privilege for white heterosexual men. In short, the problem of under-representation and marginalization.
The glorification of male hero leaders is evident throughout mainstream kinds of literature both fictional and non-fictional in connection with politics.
Leadership and Spirituality
Recent years have witnessed a stream of writing on spiritual leadership theory. Some organizational scholars have started to use theology to develop alternative approaches to management theory.
Given that leadership touches on matters of human well-being and motivation in the workplace, oppression and emancipation, power, and powerlessness, on organizational purpose and meaning, it is perhaps not surprising that, alongside philosophy, theology can speak to such matters and prompt us to expand the frame of modern organization theories.
Though this creates a holistic approach there are high chances of backfire. The spirituality of most religions is antagonistic toward greed, exploitation, and violence. Its application to leadership at political, organizational, and managerial levels can cater to positive results. But the shortcoming of theology is the kind of endogamic as well as exclusive propositions each religion contains. Apart from certain secular bonsais, most religions have an exclusionary character that can develop into fundamentalism. Thus there remains a possibility of either a theocratic state or theology led leadership.
