Assignment Number 2: Leadership, Trustworthiness, and Ethical Stewardship

Ethics is the guiding force in any respectable organization. With a moral compass, especially in the leadership of organization, a company can become compromised and fall into a quagmire of legal issues, a tarnished reputation, and devaluation of company stock if it is a publically traded company. In pursuit of examine my own ethical lens I will analyze the ethical traits of an admired leader, my own traits as exhibited in the Ethical Lens Inventory, and how I make a decision concerning a particular ethical dilemma.

In this book, trust is defined as “one’s willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent.” (page xiii) The author recognizes that trust is complex and dynamic. She views trust as the “lubricant” that greases the machinery of the organization. Trust is particularly important where parties are interdependent, or the “interests of one party cannot be achieve without reliance upon another.” In schools “teachers and principals are

This paper will first discuss briefly what ethics are and provide the definition for an ethical issue. An ethical leadership issue is identified and explained for this author’s practice area. We will then identify and discuss key strategies for leadership that are pertinent to the ethical issue. Next, empirical evidence which supports the strategies discussed will be analyzed. Then, the impact and importance of the strategies will be stated. The final step will be to provide a conclusion to the reader that summarizes the content and strategies.

An ethical audit is important to establish the company’s current weaknesses and strengths concerning how it conducts itself in an ethical manner. An ethics audit will involve evaluating the company’s standard of ethic, it ethic climate, and how well the company’s employees follow ethical standards. One of the first things to evaluate in an ethics audit is if a company has a written code of ethics and how comprehensive it is. Moreover, the written code of ethics should apply to everyone in the company from the top down with a clear zero tolerance policy in place for ethics violations. Included in a comprehensive ethics code should be a method for

Ethical leadership is commonly connected with characteristics like fairness and honesty, that can enable a person within an organization to do the right thing. In responding to the lack of attention to the ethical dimensions of positive leadership Brown and colleagues designed a definition for ethical leadership. They would define it as “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such

My understanding of the seven tasks of the ethical leader in creating value for an organization’s stakeholders is that these seven tasks should lead as a guide to leaders. It is essential for leaders to be role models for their employees. A leader needs to not just think about themselves, but to consider how their actions will affect others, including the image of the company. Having a process for employees to address their concerns and feel they are being heard is very important for leading a team. This creates value and a feeling of belonging within a company. Developing key employees and utilizing their talents also gives them value as well as value for others. This raises the bar for them to step up and become role models as well. Always acting in the best interest of the company, even if it is letting someone go.

Ethical leadership practices shape and support trust, and trust is decided to a great extent by the conduct of the

In this book, author Robert Starratt provides a framework for building a foundation of ethical leadership based on responsibility, authenticity, and presence. Readers should understand that this book is not how to transform schools, but how to think about affecting change in our teachers, staff, and students.

This paper was prepared for Ethical Leadership – MGT 310, taught by Professor Kristen Irey

It is only during moral lapses and corporate scandals that interest groups and the broader public ask themselves the fundamental ethical questions, who are the managers of the organization and were they acting with the ethical guidelines. For a long time, the issue of ethics was largely ignored, with organizations focusing on profit maximization. However, this has changed, and much attention is now focused on ethics management by researchers and leaders. The issue of ethics has arisen at a time when public trust on corporate governance is low, and the legitimacy of leadership is being questioned. Leaders are expected to be the source of moral development and ethical guidance to their employees.

Plato once asked whether you would rather be "an unethical person with a good reputation or an ethical person with a reputation for injustice." Ethical leadership has long been a debate in regards to its importance and place in the universal business world.

For the organisation to work, positive relationships are required. Ethical leadership focuses on relationships that rely on respect and trust, even when there isn’t always agreement. It’s important to trust each member within the team, even if you don’t always agree with the decisions. German philosopher and theologian Martin Buber called these as I-Thou relationships. The distinction between the I-Thou relationships and the I-It relationships is explained in the below image.

This broader concept of ethical leadership empowers leaders to incorporate and be explicit about their own values and ethics. The following list provides a framework for developing ethical leadership. It is based on the observations of and conversations with a host of executives and students over the past 25 years, and on readings of both popular and scholarly business literature. Written from the perspective of the leader, these ten facets of ethical leaders offer a way to understand ethical leadership that is more complex and more useful than just a matter of “good character and values.”

In order for interpersonal trustworthiness to exist in organizations, a leader-follower relationship must first exist between the parties involved (Caldwell et al., 2010, p. 500). Once that leader-follower relationship is established, leaders have to earn trust. Leaders earn trust by their respective actions, morals and virtues. Trust is can also be based on past history. If something was done in the past which questions a leader’s values, morals or judgment, it would be unlikely that the leader would be trusted in the future. One of the most important parts of being an effective leader is building and maintaining trust. Trust can further be defined as a “multi-dimensional construct comprising different dimensions of the trustee’s attributes that the trustor evaluates” (Ingenhoff and Sommer, 2010, p. 341).

In the past, the term “authentic leadership” is used to define ethical leadership. Researches examine authentic leadership as an attempt to discover more about ethical leadership. Researchers argue that authentic leadership is concerned with self-awareness, relational transparency, internalized moral perspective, and balanced processing (Gardner et al., 2005; Walumbwa et al., 2008). Although Authenticity is an important aspect of ethical leadership and the above definition creates a good list of behaviors, it doesn’t solely define all aspects of ethical leadership. It has also been argued that Influence processes used by leaders are driven by the underlying ethical values (Groves et al., 2011). Therefore, another approach to inspect ethical intent would be to examine the influence process used by leaders. Since leader’s influence processes are very much linked to her leadership styles, it’s appropriate to look at some leadership styles and the compatible influence processes.