Ethical Leadership Of Bill Gates

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.

Bill Gates (William Henry Gates III) was “brought” to this world on October 28, 1955 in the “lands” of Seattle, Washington. He growed up in an upper-class family with his two sisters: Kristianne and Libby Gates. His father, William H. Gates Sr., was a shy and promising law student when he met his “future” wife, Mary Maxwell, who was an ongoing student as an athletic in the University of Washington. Mary, at the time, was actively involved in student affairs and leadership. His families atmosphere is very warm and close and all of the three children, including Bill himself, were all promoted to be competitive and academically intelligent by their parents. However, Bill showed early signs of “competitiveness” whenever he plans to play board games, such as Monopoly and Risk, with the family at their summer house located in Puget Sound. In his childhood, Bill had a very close relationship with his mother since she would often take

After Gates graduated high school, with a perfect 800 on the SAT, he went to Harvard law school in 1973 (“Gates, Bill” 2) (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1). In 1975 his friend Paul Allen came up to him while Bill was in college and showed him a Popular Mechanics article about a $350 microcomputer, Gates read this article and was convinced that he wanted to be in the computer industry (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1). As a sophomore in college he and Paul Allen made the computer language BASIC compatible to microcomputers, this took much skill and he was the first to do it (Leaders of info 2). He did this for a company called MITS (Leaders of info 2). This shows his motivation to do well in the world, and to be successful. With this new success in the BASIC software, he dropped out of Harvard and went to pursue his new career (“Gates, Bill 1). He went to Albuquerque, New Mexico with Paul and they both founded a new company called Microsoft to mass produce their new software (Leaders of Info 2).

Microsoft is the global leader in computer software, and well recognized in the field of corporate social responsibility and philanthropy. However, since 1990 the computing giant has been plagued by allegations of antitrust violations and monopolistic, non-competitive business practices. By answering the three questions posed in Part 5, Case 7 of Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases; this review will address how such a legal and ethical dichotomy is possible, and how the issues relate to one another in terms of corporate reputation.

This scenario is difficult to understand. The utilitarian debate argues that the status of bringing helpful financial consequences is something that is worth obtaining (Mill, 2007). Bill Gates thereby must be permitted to attain the corporation and manage it as he deems it appropriate. Nonetheless, ethical leadership grows into all factors of management. For instance, it’s

Bill Gates was the former CEO of the computer software giant Microsoft. It was not purely on inherited merit or luck that he was able to lead and maintain Microsoft, one substantial attribution to the success of Microsoft was due to the leadership style of Bill Gates. The main philosophy that Bill Gates used was autocratic leadership. Autocratic leadership can be defined as: a person who maintains most of the decision making process for themselves (DuBrin A.J., 2013). An advantage of the autocratic leadership style was that corporate decisions were made more efficiently, if Bill were a democratic or consultative leader, it might have taken longer for Microsoft to seize primary markets of interests. Gates was also competent in delegating tasks to the right people, such as allowing the engineering teams to work at full capacity to meet their production goals. Microsoft’s success can be linked to the proper delegation of duties to the correct personnel, and a focus on goal-based decision making.

Mr. Gates continue his education in Harvard Law where he was admitted with a SAT score 1590 (over 99.65%) but on his second year he left all behind to pursue his vision.

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.

“It is important for leaders to tell a compelling and morally rich story, but ethical leaders must also embody and live the story. This is a difficult task in today’s business environment where everyone lives in a fishbowl—on public display. So many political leaders fail to embody the high-minded stories they tell at election time, and more recently, business leaders have become the focus of similar criticism through the revelations of numerous scandals and bad behaviours. CEOs in today’s corporations are really ethical role models for all of society.”

Gates’ passion for technology began at the age of 8, when he built his first computer program. This program allowed the player to compete in a game of tic tac toe

In my opinion Bill Gates is ethical in his business at Microsoft. He runs a successful corporation that makes a good profit and uses some of that profit and contributes to charitable organizations. The Microsoft Corporation is socially responsible and a profitable fortune 500 company. Bill Gates hast a postconventional level of moral development in that he motivated by universal principles of right and wrong. He balances his concerns for himself and his company with

1. What do you think Bill and Melinda Gate’s personality traits are for each of the Big Five dimensions? Compare the two.

Leadership is by all means a special talent that not all people possess. A leader must also have ethics to be effective for the long term in the corporate world. These leaders generally implement ethical programs in order to influence an organizations climate (Yukl, 2010). I will evaluate the importance of ethical leadership and the role it plays into today’s organizations. In addition, I will discuss the repercussions a company may have when its leadership allows and even rewards unethical business practices. Lastly, I will apply my personal leadership perspective. My perspective will include the path-goal theory and ethical practices that I find important to

William Henry “Bill” Gates III, was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, to a wealthy family (Heller 6). His parents were William H. Gates III, a prominent attorney, and Mary, a school teacher (William Henry (Bill) Gates). Because Gates and his father had the same name his parents nicknamed him “Trey,” referring to the III at the end of his full name. Gates struggled in public elementary school, so his parent enrolled him in private Lakeside School. There, he was