#📓 #📚 #🟡 # Moral leadership and business. ![[calendar-plus.svg]] <small>Nov 06, 2021</small> | ![[calendar-clock.svg]] <small>Jan 03, 2023</small> 🏷️ [[ethics]] **Authors:** [[A. Gini]], [[R. M. Green]] **Citation:** Gini, A., & Green, R. M. (2014). Moral leadership and business. In J. B. Ciulla (Ed.), _Ethics, the heart of leadership_ (Third Edition, pp. 32–52). Praeger. --- # Summary This chapter defined and discussed the concepts of business and leadership ethics. Both call for the reflections of "What we ought to do in relation to others." # Notes #### p. 32 - Business leaders set the tone and shape behaviors for the rest of society. Business is the activity of making exchange transactions. *([note on p.33](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=2))* #### p. 33 - Both business and ethics require us to acknowledge that we are communal creatures dependent on each other to survive. > Our collective existence requires us to continually make choices, be they good or bad, about "what we ought to do" in regard to others. ([Gini and Green 2014:33](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=2)) Leadership ethics set the tone and impact the culture of a workplace, which helps shape the ethical choices and decisions of the employees. *([note on p.34](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=3))* #### p. 34 - Aristotle's [[virtue ethics]] underlies the idea of business leaders as [[moral role models]]. [[Aristotle]] believed the morality of an individual was awakened through witnessing the conduct of a moral person or role model. #### p. 35 - Morality starts as habits picked up by following external, culturally defined rules and goals. But real ethical thinking requires that we freely decide to accept and embrace, modify, or deny those rules. *([note on p.35](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=4))* Leaders communicate the ethics of organizations and establish the standards and expectations they have of employees. Lessons learned at work, good or bad, impact the development of employees' moral perspectives and how they make ethical choices. *([note on p.35](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=4))* #### p. 36 - Ethics examines the tension between one person's individual rights and needs and the rights and needs of others. *([note on p.36](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=5))* Economics and ethics are competing paradigms - Economics is focused on how individual can achieve his/her wants and desires - Totally subjective and only considers interests of others if they work to the individual's advantage *([note on p.37](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=6))* - Ethics requires that sometimes we "ought to act" contrary to our own interests and instead act on behalf of the interests of others. *([note on p.38](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=7))* #### p. 38 - Ethics always considers impact of individual's actions on others. If there is a conflict, individual should at least consider modifying his/her action to recognize the interest of others. *([note on p.38](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=7))* #### p. 39 - According to R. Edward Freeman, business ethics is about how customers and employees are treated. *([note on p.39](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=8))* > every act of business has social consequences and may arouse public interest. Every time business hires, builds, sells or buys, it is acting for the . .. people as well as for itself, 18 and it must be prepared to accept full responsibility. *-General Robert Wood Johnson* ([Gini and Green 2014:39](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=8)) #### p. 40 - Leadership is stewardship, representing and managing the affairs of others, and so is by definition an ethical undertaking. *([note on p.40](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=9))* Leadership is a collective activity shared by leaders and followers. *([note on p.41](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=10))* #### p. 42 - Leadership and ethics both ask the question, "What ought to be done with regard to others?" *([note on p.42](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=11))* > "The real role of leadership is to manage the values of an organization." *-Tom Peters & Bob Waterman* ([Gini and Green 2014:42](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=11)) #### p. 43 - The quality of leadership can't be measured by outcomes alone, but must consider the intentions, values and beliefs of the leader. *([note on p.43](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=12))* #### p. 45 - The character, goals and aspirations of a leader are developed in response and relation to the needs and opportunities their contextual environment (time and place). *([note on p.45](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=14))* > To have power is to possess the capacity to control or direct change. ([Gini and Green 2014:45](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=14)) #### p. 46 - Howard S. Schwartz argued that businesses can't be exemplars of moral behavior because the goal of survival creates an imperative of 'getting ahead by any means necessary.' *([note on p.46](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/4FJQZ2R2?page=15))* ## My Questions & Thoughts --- # Other References TBR:: 🔖 Peters. T. J., & Waterman, R. H. (1982). *In search of excellence.* Harper and Row (GR)