Question: Reth R. Response

Respond with 150 words with 1 reference and with 1 direct question

Ethical leadership is having the ability to lead an organization or a group of people in a way that is fair, moral, and decent. As Palmer (2009) pointed out to be in a position of leadership a person doesn't necessarily have to be at the top of an organization positionally in order to be a leader. Some people are leaders on a smaller scale either everyday or in certain situations.

The reason that ethical leadership is important is because, leadership by itself is important. When considering what leadership is, it is "acting in a way to move others to act" (Palmer, 2009). So if someone who is in a position to exert leadership acts in a way that is not moral, fair or decent, that person will influence others to act the same way and as a result can ruin an entire organization by creating that type of environment that most people will eventually reject. Demonstrating proper ethics while in a leadership role comes primarily three different methods, which are virtue ethics, ethic of justice, or ethic of care. Virtue ethics is primarily displayed from a person's disposition as a person, while ethic of justice is about being fair and just, and ethic of care is the outward showing of care and concern for others (Bauman, 2011).

As most people know, when choosing someone to fill a position within an organization it is important to choose the most appropriate person to fill those positions. So when choosing someone who needs to fill a leadership role, it is important to probably choose a person who naturally has a disposition to be ethical. If a person already has this disposition in their character, then it will come natural to that person to act in an ethical manner regardless of the situation that person faces. However, if a leader is going through the motions and just trying to respond in an ethical manner even though they do not truly feel that way, those responses many times will be seen as insincere and can still hurt an organization's reputation even though they are trying to be seen as acting in an ethical manner.

Looking at the financial crisis that happened as the result of unethical practices of banks selling subprime mortgages, is a great example to look at and consider how unethical leadership has the ability to ruin organizations. Leaders at the top knew what was being practiced and encouraged it. Furthermore, when questioned after the collapse of the housing market and the resulting financial crisis, those same leaders tried to act sincere in their apologies. The problem was that most everyone could see through their insincerity, only adding to how unethical the general public viewed them.

So for a business to succeed it is important to have leaders that will promote strong ethics, which will be primarily supported if that person is ethical themselves. In this case when the organization faces hard times, the ethical leader will do what is right ethically and will not further damage the organization's reputation by being unethical.

References:

Bauman, D. (2011). Evaluating ethical approaches to crisis leadership: Insights from unintentional harm research. Journal of Business Ethics, 98(2), 281-295. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551- 010-0549-3

Palmer, D. (2009). Business leadership: Three levels of ethical analysis. Journal of Business Ethics, 88(3), 525-536. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0117-x

http://tech.co/leadership-situational-integrity-2014-04