SOCW 7060 WK 6 Discussion 2: Reflections on Ethical Leadership

  

SOCW 6070 WK 6 Discussion 2: Reflections on Ethical Leadership

What does it mean to be an ethical leader? How is ethical leadership demonstrated in social work practice? As a leader in the social work profession, you have to achieve a balance between your professional and personal ethics. At times, these may be aligned with each other, but there may be situations in which they conflict. Because leadership includes value and moral dimensions, your character, actions, and goals as a social work administrator should reflect ethical leadership.

For this Discussion, consider the characteristics of ethical leadership and the challenges associated with practicing ethical leadership.

300 to 500 words

Post your definition of ethical leadership as it relates to the social work profession. 

Explain what it means to be an ethical leader and describe the challenges of being an ethical leader.

Support your post with specific references to the resources. Be sure to provide full APA citations for your references.

Resources 

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Sage.

Chapter 12, “Addressing Ethics in Leadership” (pp. 308- 335)

National Association of Social Workers. (2017) Code of ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. Retrieved from

http://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English.aspx

 

\_____..__——-….,;.. t 6

Leadership Ethics

DESCRIPTION

This chapter is different from many of the other chapters in this book.
Most of the other chapters focus on one unified leadership theory or
approach (e.g., trait approach, path-goal theory, or transformational lead­
ership), whereas this chapter is multifaceted and presents a broad set of
ethical viewpoints. The chapter is not intended as an “ethical leadership
theory,” but rather as a guide to some of the ethical issues that arise in
leadership situations.

Probably as long ago as our cave-dwelling days, human beings have
been concerned with the eth ics of our leaders. Our history books are
replete with descriptions of good kings and bad kings, great empires and
evil empires, and strong presidents and weak presidents. But despite a
wealth of biographical accounts of great leaders and their morals, very little
research has been published on the theoretical foundations of leadership
ethics. There have been many studies on business ethics in general since
the early 1970s, but these studies have been only tangentially related to
leadership ethi cs. Even in the literature of management, written primarily
for practitioners, there are very few books on leadership ethics. This sug­
gests that theoretical formulations in this area are still in their infancy.

One of the earliest writings that specifically focused on leadership ethics
appeared as recently as 1996. It was a set of working papers generated from
a small group ofleadership scholars, brought together by the W. K. Kellogg
Foundation. These scholars examined how leadership theory and practice
could be used to build a more caring and just society. The ideas of the
Kellogg group are now published in a volume titled Ethics, the Heart of
Leadership (Ciulla, 1998).

423

424 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

Interest in the nature of ethical leadership has continued to grow, par­
ticularly because of the many recent scandals in corporate America and
the political realm. On the academic front, there has also been a strong
interest in exploring the nature of ethical leadership (see Aronson, 2001;
Ciulla, 2001, 2003; Johnson , 2011; Kanungo, 2001; Price, 2008; Trevino,
Brown, & Hartman, 2003).

Ethics Defined

From the perspective of Western tradition, the development of ethical
theory dates back to Plato (427-347 B.c.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). The
word ethics has its roots in the Greek word ethos, which translates to cus­
toms, conduct, or character. Ethics is concerned with the kinds of values
and morals an individual or a society finds desirable or appropriate. Fur­
thermore, ethics is concerned with the virtuousness of individuals and
their motives. Ethical theory provides a system of rules or principles that
guide us in making decisions about what is right or wrong and good or bad
in a particular situation. It provides a basis for understanding what it means
to be a morally decent human being.

In regard to leadership, ethics has to do with what leaders do and who
leaders are. It is concerned with the nature of leaders’ behavior, and with
their virtuousness. In any decision-making situation, ethical issues are either
implicitly or explicitly involved. The choices leaders make and how they
respond in a given circumstance are informed and directed by their ethics.

Ethical Theories

For the purposes of studying ethics and leadership, ethical theories can
be thought of as falling within two broad domains: theories about leaders’
conduct and theories about leaders’ character (Table 16.1 ). Stated another
way, ethical theories when applied to leadership are about both the actions
of leaders and who they are as people. Throughout the chapter, our discus­
sions about ethics and leadership will always fall within one of these two
domains: conduct or character.

Ethical theories that deal with the conduct of leaders are in turn
divided into two kinds: theories that stress the consequences of leaders’
actions and those that emphasize the duty or rules governing leaders’
actions (see Table 16.1). Teleological theories, from the Greek word telos,

I ~ 16.1 Practical Ethical Theory

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 425

Table 16.1 Domains of Ethical Theories

Conduct Character

Consequences (telelogical theories) Virtue-based theories

• Ethical egoism

• Utilitarianism

Duty (deontological theories)

meaning “ends” or “purposes,” try to answer questions about right and
wrong by focusing on whether a person’s conduct will produce desirable
consequences. From the teleological perspective, the question “What is
right?” is answered by looking at results or outcomes. In effect, the conse­
quences of an individual’s actions determine the goodness or badness of a
particular behavior.

In assess ing consequences, there are three different approaches to mak­
ing deci sions regarding moral conduct (Figure 16.1): ethical egoism, utili­
tarianism, and altruism. Ethical egoism states that a person should act so
as to create the greatest good for herself or himself. A leader with this ori­
entation would take a job or career that he or she selfishly enjoys (Avolio
& Locke, 2002). Self-interest is an ethical stance closely related to transac­
tional leadership theories (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). Ethical egoism is
common in some business contexts in which a company and its employees
make decisions to achieve its goal of maximizing profits. For example, a
midlevel, upward-aspiring manager who wants her team to be the best in
the company could be described as acting out of ethical egoism.

A second teleological approach, utilitarianism, states that we should
behave so as to create the greatest good for the greatest number. From this
viewpoint, the morally correct action is the action that maximizes social
benefits while minimizing social costs (Schumann, 2001). When the U.S.
government allocates a large part of the federal budget for preventive
health care rather than for catastrophic illnesses, it is acting from a utilitar­
ian perspective, putting money where it will have the best result for the
largest number of citizens.

Closely related to utilitarianism, and opposite of ethical egoism, is a
third teleological approach, altruism. Altruism is an approach that suggests
that actions are moral if their primary purpose is to promote the best inter­
ests of others. From this perspective, a leader may be called on to act in the

426 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

Figure 16.1 Ethical Theories Based on Self-Interest Versus Interest
for Others

I
High • Ethical Egoism

CONCERN
FOR Medium • Utilitarianism

SELF-INTEREST

Low • Altruism

I
Low Medium High

CONCERN FOR
THE INTEREST OF OTHERS

interests of others, even when it runs contrary to his or her own self­
interests (Bowie, 1991 ). Authentic transformational leadership is based on
altruistic principles (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Kanungo & Mendonca,
1996). The strongest example of altruist ethics can be found in the work of
Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to helping the poor.

Quite different from looking at which actions will produce which out­
comes, deontological theory is derived from the Greek word deos, which
means “duty.” Whether a given action is ethical rests not only with its
consequences (teleological), but also with whether the action itself is good.
Telling the truth , keeping promises, being fair, and respecting others are
all examples of actions that are inherently good, independent of the con­
sequences. The deontological perspective focuses on the actions of the
leader and his or her moral obligations and responsibilities to do the right
thing. A leader’s actions are moral if the leader has a moral right to do
them, if the actions do not infringe on others’ rights, and if the actions
further the moral rights of others (Schumann, 2001).

In the late 1990s, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was
brought before Congress for misrepresenting under oath an affair he had

Chapte r 16 I Leadership Ethics 427

maintained with a White House intern. For his actions, he was impeached
by the U.S. House of Representatives, but then was acquitted by the U.S.
Senate. At one point during the long ordeal, the president appeared on
national television and, in what is now a famous speech, declared his inno­
cence. Because subsequent hearings provided information that suggested
that he may have lied during this television speech , many Americans felt
President Clinton had violated his duty and responsibility (as a person,
leader, and president) to tell the truth. From a deontological perspective,
it could be said that he failed his ethical responsibility to do the right
thing-to tell the truth.

Whereas teleological and deontological theories approach ethics by look­
ing at the behavior or conduct ofa leader, a second set of theories approaches
ethics from the viewpoint of a leader’s character (see Table 16.1 ). These
theories are called virtue-based theories; they focus on who leaders are as
people. In this perspective, virtues are rooted in the heart of the individual
and in the individual’s disposition (Po jman, 1995). Furthermore, it is
believed that virtues and moral abilities are not innate but can be acquired
and learned through practice. People can be taught by their families and
communities to be morally appropriate human beings.

With their origin traced back in the Western tradition to the ancient
Greeks and the works of Plato and Aristotle, virtue theories are experiencing
a resurgence in popularity. The Greek term associated with these theories
is aretaic, which means “excellence” or “virtue.” Consistent with Aristotle,
current advocates of virtue-based theory stress that more attention should be
given to the development and training of moral values (Velasquez, 1992).
Rather than telling people what to do, attention should be directed toward
telling people what to be, or helping them to become more virtuous.

What, then , are the virtues of an ethical person? There are many, all of
which seem to be important. Based on the writings of Aristotle, a moral
person demonstrates the virtues of courage, temperance, generosity, self­
control, honesty, sociability, modesty, fairness, and justice (Velasquez,
1992). For Aristotle, virtues allowed people to live well in communities.
Applying ethics to leadership and management, Velasquez has suggested that
managers should develop virtues such as perseverance, public-spiritedness,
integrity, truthfulness, fidelity, benevolence, and humility.

In essence, virtue-based ethics is about being and becoming a good,
worthy human being. Although people can learn and develop good values,
this theory maintains that virtues are present in one’s disposition . When

428 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

practiced over time, from youth to adulthood, good values become habit­
ual, and part of the people themselves. By telling the truth, people become
truthful; by giving to the poor, people become benevolent; by being fair to
others, people become just. Our virtues are derived from our actions, and
our actions manifest our virtues (Frankena, 1973; Pojman, 1995).

Centrality of Ethics to Leadership

As discussed in Chapter 1, leadership is a process whereby the leader
influences others to reach a common goal. The influence dimension of
leadership requires the leader to have an impact on the lives of those being
led. To make a change in other people carries with it an enormous ethical
burden and responsibility. Because leaders usually have more power and
control than followers, they also have more responsibility to be sensitive to
how their leadership affects followers’ lives.

\Vhether in group work, organizational pursuits, or community proj­
ects, leaders engage subordinates and utilize them in their efforts to reach
common goals . In all these situations, leaders have the ethical responsibil­
ity to treat followers with dignity and respect-as human beings with
unique identities . This “respect for people” demands that leaders be
sensitive to followers’ own interests, needs , and conscientious concerns
(Beauchamp & Bowie, 1988) . Although all of us have an ethical respon­
sibility to treat other people as unique human beings, leaders have a spe­
cial responsibility, because the nature of their leadership puts them in a
special position in which they have a greater opportunity to influence
others in significant ways.

Ethics is central to leadership, and leaders help to establish and rein­
force organizational values. Every leader has a distinct philosophy and
point of view. “All leaders have an agenda, a series of beliefs, proposals,
values, ideas, and issues that they wish to ‘put on the table”‘ (Gini, 1998,
p. 36). The values promoted by the leader have a significant impact on th e
values exhibited by the organization (see Carlson & Perrewe, 1995;
Schminke, Ambrose, & Noel, 1997; Trevino, 1986). Again, because of their
influence, leaders play a major role in establishing the ethical climate of
their organizations.

In short, ethics is central to leadership because of the nature of the
process of influence, the need to engage followers in accomplishing
mutual goals, and the impact leaders have on the organization’s values .

I ~ 16.1 Consequences

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 429

The following section provides a discussion of some of the work of
prominent leadership scholars who have addressed issues related to ethics
and leadership. Although many additional viewpoints exist, those pre­
sented are representative of the predominant thinking in the area of ethics
and leadership today.

Heifetz’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership

Based on his work as a psychiatrist and his observations and analysis of
many world leaders (e.g., President Lyndon Johnson, Mohanclas Gandhi,
and Margaret Sanger), Ronald Heifetz ( 1994) has formulated a unique
approach to ethical leadership. His approach emphasizes how leaders help
followers to confront conflict and to address conflict by effecting changes.
Heifetz’s perspective is related to ethical leadership because it deals with
values: the values of workers and the values of the organizations and com­
munities in which they work. According to Heifetz, leadership involves the
use of authority to help followers deal with the conflicting values that
emerge in rapidly changing work environments and social cultures. It is an
ethical perspective because it speaks directly to the values of workers.

For Heifetz ( 1994), leaders must use authority to mobilize people to face
tough issues. The leader provides a “holding environment” in which there
is trust, nurturance, and empathy. In a supportive context, followers can feel
safe to confront hard problems. Specifically, leaders use authority to get
people to pay attention to the issues, to act as a reality test regarding infor­
mation, to manage and frame issues, to orchestrate conflicting perspectives,
and to facilitate decision making (Heifetz, 1994, p. 113). The leader’s duties
are to assist the follower in struggling with change and personal growth.

Burns’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership

As discussed in Chapter 9, Burns’s theory of transformational leadership
places a strong emphasis on followers ‘ needs, values, and morals. Transfor­
mational leadership involves attempts by leaders to move followers to higher
standards of moral responsibility. This emphasis sets transformational leader­
ship apart from most other approaches to leadership because it clearly states
that leadership has a moral dimension (see Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999).

Similar to that of Heifetz, Burns’s ( 1978) perspective argues that it is
important for leaders to engage themselves with followers and help them

I 0 16.1 Ethical Norms

430 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

in their personal struggles regarding conflicting values. The resulting con­
nection raises the level of morality in both the leader and the follower.

The origins of Burns’s position on leadership ethics are rooted in the
works of such writers as Abraham Maslow, Milton Rokeach, and Lawrence
Kohlberg (Ciulla, 1998). The influence of these writers can be seen in
how Burns emphasizes the leader’s role in attending to the personal moti­
vations and moral development of the follower. For Burns, it is the respon­
sibility of the leader to help followers assess their own values and needs in
order to raise them to a higher level of functioning, to a level that will stress
values such as liberty, justice, and equality (Ciulla , 1998).

Burns’s position on leadership as a morally uplifting process has not
been without its critics. It has raised many questions: How do you choose
what a better set of moral values is? Who is to say that some decisions rep­
resent higher moral ground than others? If leadership, by definition,
entails raising individual moral functioning, does this mean that the lead­
ership of corrupt leaders is not actually leadership? Notwithstanding these
very legitimate questions, Burns’s perspective is unique in that it makes
ethics the central characteristic of the leadership process. His writing has
placed ethics at the forefront of scholarly discussions of what leadership
means and how leadership should be carried out.

Principles of Ethical Leadership

In this section, we turn to a discussion of five principles of ethical lead­
ership, the origins of which can be traced back to Aristotle. The impor­
tance of these principles has been discussed in a variety of disciplines,
including biomedical ethics (Beauchamp & Childress, 1994), business
ethics (Beauchamp & Bowie, 1988), counseling psychology (Kitchener,
1984), and leadership education (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 1998), to
name a few. Although not inclusive, these principles provide a foundation
for the development of sound ethical leadership: respect, service, justice,
honesty, and community (Figure 16.2).

Ethical Leaders Respect Others

Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724- 1804) argued that it is our duty
to treat others with respect. To do so means always to treat others as ends
in themselves and never as means to ends. As Beauchamp and Bowie

I ~ 16.2 Teaching Ethical Leadership

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 431

Figure 16.2 Principles of Ethical Leadership

ETHICAL

LEADERSHIP

( 1988, p. 3 7) pointed out, “Persons must be treated as having their own
autonomously established goals and must never be treated purely as the
means to another’s personal goals.” These writers then suggested that
treating others as ends rather than as means requires that we treat other
people’s decisions and values with respect: Failing to do so would signify
that we were treating them as a means to our own ends.

Leaders who respect others also allow them to be themselves, with cre­
ative wants and desires. They approach other people with a sense of their
unconditional worth and valuable individual differences (Kitchener,
1984). Respect includes giving credence to others’ ideas and confirming
them as human beings. At times, it may require that leaders defer to others.
As Burns ( 1978) suggested, leaders should nurture followers in becoming
aware of their own needs, values, and purposes, and assist followers 111
integrating these with the leader’s needs, values, and purposes.

Respect for others is a complex ethic that is similar to but goes deeper
than the kind of respect that parents teach little children. Respect means
that a leader listens closely to subordinates, is empathic, and is tolerant of
opposing points of view. It means treating subordinates in ways that con­
firm their beliefs, attitudes, and values. When a leader exhibits respect to

I !j 16.1 Ethical Role of Management

432 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

subordinates, subordinates can feel competent about their work. In short,
leaders who show respect treat others as worthy human beings.

Ethical Leaders Serve Others

Earlier in this chapter, we contrasted tvvo ethical theories, one based on
a concern for self (ethical egoism) and another based on the interests of oth­
ers (eth ical altruism). The service principle clearly is an example of altruism.
Leaders who serve are altruistic: They place their followers’ welfare foremost
in their plans. In the workplace, altruistic service behavior can be observed
in activities such as mentoring, empowerment behaviors, team building, and
citizenship behaviors, to name a few (Kanungo & Mendonca, 1996).

The leader’s ethical responsibility to serve others is very similar to the
ethical principle in health care of beneficence. Beneficence is derived
from the Hippocratic tradition, which holds that health professionals
ought to make choices that benefit patients. In a general way, beneficence
asserts that providers have a duty to help others pursue their own legitimate
interests and goals (Beauchamp & Childress, 1994 ). Like health profes­
sionals, ethical leaders have a responsibility to attend to others, be of ser­
vice to them, and make decisions pertaining to them that are beneficial
and not harmful to their welfare.

In the past decade, the service principle has received a great deal of
emphasis in the leadership literature. It is clearly evident in the writings of
Block (1993), Covey (1990), DePree (1989), Gilligan (1982), and Kouzes
and Posner ( 1995 ), all of whom maintained that attending to others is the
primary building block of moral leadership. Further emphasis on service
can be observed in the work of Senge ( 1990) in his well-recognized writing
on learning organizations. Senge contended that one of the important
tasks of leaders in learning organizations is to be the steward (servant) of
the vision within the organization. Being a steward means clarifying and
nurturing a vis ion that is greater than oneself. This means not being self­
centered, but rather integrating one’s self or vision with that of others in
the organization. Effective leaders see their own personal vision as an
important part of something larger than themselves-a part of the organi­
zation and the community at large.

The idea of leaders serving others was more deeply explored by Robert
Greenleaf (1970, 1977), who developed the servant leadership approach.
Servant leadership, which is explored in depth in Chapter 10, has strong

I fl) 16.2 Ethical School Leadership

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 433

altruistic ethical overtones in how it emphasizes that leaders should be atten­
tive to the concerns of their followers and should take care of them and
nurture them. In addition, Greenleaf argues that the servant leader has a
social responsibility to be concerned with the have-nots and should strive to
remove inequalities and social injustices. Greenleaf places a great deal of
emphasis on listening, empathy, and unconditional acceptance of others.

In short, whether it is Greenleaf’s notion of waiting on the have-nots or
Senge’s notion of giving oneself to a larger purpose, the idea behind service
is contributing to the greater good of others. Recently, the idea of serving
the “greater good” has found an unusual following in the business world. In
2009, 20% of the graduating class of the Harvard Business School, consid­
ered to be one of the premier schools producing today’s business leaders,
took an oath pledging that they will act responsibly and ethically, and
refrain from advancing their own ambitions at the expense of others. Simi­
larly, Columbia Business School requires all students to pledge to an honor
code requiring they adhere to truth, integrity, and respect (Wayne, 2009).
In practicing the principle of service, these and other ethical leaders must
be willing to be follower centered, must place others’ interests foremost in
their work, and must act in ways that will benefit others .

Ethical leaders Are Just

Ethical leaders are concerned about issues of fairness and justice. They
make it a top priority to treat all of their subordinates in an equal manner.
Justice demands that leaders place issues of fairness at the center of their
decision making. As a rule, no one should receive special treatment or
special consideration except when his or her particular situation demands
it. When individuals are treated differently, the grounds for different treat­
ment must be clear and reasonable, and must be based on moral values.

For example, many of us can remember being involved with some type
of athletic team when we were growing up. The coaches we liked were
those we thought were fair with us. No matter what, we did not want the
coach to treat anyone differently from the rest. When someone came late
to practice with a poor excuse, we wanted that person disciplined just as
we would have been disciplined. If a player had a personal problem and
needed a break, we wanted the coach to give it, just as we would have been
given a break. Without question, the good coaches were those who never
had favorites and who made a point of playing everyone on the team. In
essence, what we wanted was that our coach be fair and just.

I 0 16.2 Ethics in Management

434 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

When resources and rewards or punishments are distributed to employ­
ees, the leader plays a major role. The rules that are used and how they are
applied say a great deal about whether the leader is concerned about jus­
tice and how he or she approaches issues of fairness.

Rawls ( 1971) stated that a concern with issues of fairness is necessary
for all people who are cooperating together to promote their common
interests. It is similar to the ethic of reciprocity, otherwise known as the
Golden Rule- “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”­
variations of which have appeared in many different cultures throughout
the ages. If we expect fairness from others in how they treat us, then we
should treat others fairly in our dealings with them. Issues of fairness
become problematic because there is always a limit on goods and
resources, and there is often competition for the limited things available.
Because of the real or perceived scarcity of resources, conflicts often
occur between individuals about fair methods of distribution. It is impor­
tant for leaders to clearly establish the rules for distributing rewards. The
nature of these rules says a lot about the ethical underpinnings of the
leader and the organization.

Beauchamp and Bowie ( 1988) outlined several of the common princi­
ples that serve as guides for leaders in distributing the benefits and burdens
fairly in an organization (Table 16.2 ). Although not inclusive, these prin­
ciples point to the reasoning behind why leaders choose to distribute things
as they do in organizations. In a given situation, a leader may use a single
principle or a combination of several principles in treating subordinates.

To illustrate the principles described in Table 16.2, consider the fol­
lowing hypothetical example: You are the owner of a small trucking com­
pany that employs 50 drivers . You have just opened a new route, and it

Table 16.2 Principles of Distributive Justice

These principles are applied in different situations.

To each person

• An equal share or opportunity
• According to individual need

• According to that person’s rights
• According to individual effort
• According to societal contribution
• According to merit or performance

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 435

promises to be one that pays well and has an ideal schedule. Only one
driver can be assigned to the route, but seven drivers have applied for it.
Each driver wants an equal opportunity to get the route. One of the drivers
recently lost his wife to breast cancer and is struggling to care for three
young children (individual need). T\vo of the drivers are minorities, and
one of them feels strongly that he has a right to the job. One of the drivers
has logged more driving hours for three consecutive years, and she feels
her effort makes her the logical candidate for the new route . One of the
drivers serves on the National Safety Board and has a 20-year accident-free
driving record (societal contribution). Two drivers have been with the
company since its inception, and th eir performance has been meritorious
year after year.

As the owner of the company, your challenge is to assign the new route
in a fair way. Although many other factors could influence your decision
(e.g., seniority, wage rate, or employee health), the principles described in
Table 16.2 provide guidelines for deciding who is to get the new route.

Ethical Leaders Are Honest

When we were children, grown-ups often told us we must “never tell a
lie.” To be good meant we must be truthful. For leaders the lesson is the
same: To be a good leader, one must be honest.

The importance of being honest can be understood more clearly when
we consider the opposite of honesty: dishonesty (see Jaksa & Pritchard,
1988). Dishonesty is a form of lying, a way of misrepresenting reality. Dis­
honesty may bring with it many objectionable outcomes; foremost among
those outcomes is the distrust it creates. vVhen leaders are not honest, oth­
ers come to see them as undependable and unreliable. People lose faith in
what leaders say and stand for, and their respect for leaders is diminished.
As a result, the leader’s impact is compromised because others no longer
trust and belie\·e in the leader.

When we relate to others, dishonesty also has a negative impact. It puts
a strain on how people are connected to each other. When we lie to others,
we are in essence saying that we are willing to manipulate the relationship
on our own terms. We are saying that we do not trust the other person in
the relationship to be able to deal with information we have. In reality, we
are putting ourselves ahead of the relationship by saying that we know what
is best for the relationship. The long-term effect of this type of behavior is

I e 16.3 Developing Leadership Character

436 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

that it weakens relationships. Even when used with good intentions, dis­
honesty contributes to the breakdown of relationships.

But being honest is not just about telling the truth. It has to do with
being open with others and representing reality as fully and completely as
possible. This is not an easy task, however, because there are times when
telling the complete truth can be destructive or counterproductive. The
challenge for leaders is to strike a balance between being open and candid
while monitoring what is appropriate to disclose in a particular situation.
Many times, there are organizational constraints that prevent leaders from
disclosing information to followers . It is important for leaders to be authen­
tic, but it is also essential that they be sensitive to the attitudes and feelings
of others. Honest leadership involves a wide set of behaviors.

Dalla Costa ( 1998) made the point clearly in his book, The Ethical
Imperative, that being honest means more than not deceiving. For leaders
in organizations, being honest means, “Do not promise what you can’t
deliver, do not misrepresent, do not hide behind spin-doctored evasions,
do not suppress obligations, do not evade accountability, do not accept that
the ‘survival of the fittest’ pressures of business release any of us from the
responsibility to respect another’s dignity and humanity” (p. 164 ). In addi­
tion, Dalla Costa suggested that it is imperative that organizations recog­
nize and acknowledge the necessity of honesty and reward honest behavior
within the organization.

Ethical Leaders Build Community

In Chapter 1, we defined leadership as a process whereby an individual
influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. This defini­
tion has a clear ethical dimension because it refers to a common goal. A
common goal requires that the leader and followers agree on the direction
to be taken by the group. Leaders need to take into account their own and
followers’ purposes while working toward goals that are suitable for both of
them. This factor, concern for others, is the distinctive feature that delin­
eates authentic transformational leaders from pseudotransformationallead­
ers (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). Concern for the common good means that
leaders cannot impose their will on others. T hey need to search for goals
that are compatible with everyone.

Burns ( 1978) placed this idea at the center of his theory on transforma­
tional leadership. A transformational leader tries to move the group toward

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 437

a common good that is beneficial for both the leaders and the followers. In
moving toward mutual goals, both the leader and the followers are
changed. It is this feature that makes Burns’s theory unique. For Burns,
leadership has to be grounded in the leader-follower relationship. It can­
not be controlled by the leader, such as Hitler’s influence in Germany.
Hitler coerced people to meet his own agenda and followed goals that did
not advance the goodness of humankind.

An ethical leader takes into account the purposes of everyone involved
in the group and is attentive to the interests of the community and the
culture. Such a leader demonstrates an ethic of caring toward others
(Gilligan, 1982) and does not force others or ignore the intentions of oth­
ers (Bass & Steidlrneier, 1999).

Rost (1991) went a step farther and suggested that ethical leadership
demands attention to a civic virtue. By this, he meant that leaders and fol­
lowers need to attend to more than their own mutually determined goals.
They need to attend to the community’s goals and purpose. As Burns ( 1978,
p. 429) wrote, transformational leaders and followers begin to reach out to
wider social collectivities and seek to establish higher and broader moral
purposes. Similarly, Greenleaf ( 1970) argued that building community was
a main characteristic of servant leadership. All of our individual and group
goals are bound up in the common good and public interest. We need to
pay attention to how the changes proposed by a leader and followers will
affect the larger organization, the community, and society. An ethical
leader is concerned with the common good, in the broadest sense.

STRENGTHS

This chapter discusses a broad set of ideas regarding ethics and leadership. This
general field of study has several strengths. First, it provides a body of timely
research on ethical issues. There is a high demand for moral leadership in our
society today. Beginning with the Nixon administration in the 1970s and con­
tinuing through George W. Bush’s administration in the last decade, people
have been insisting on higher levels of moral responsibility from their leaders. At
a time when there seems to be a vacuum in ethical leadership, this research
offers us some direction on how to think about and practice ethical leadership.

Second, this body of research suggests that ethics ought to be consid­
ered as an integral part of the broader domain of leadership. Except for

I 0 16.3 Ethical Issues in Nursing I ~~~ 16.2 Ethical Dilemmas

438 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

servant, transformational, and authentic leadership, none of the other
leadership theories discussed in this book includes eth ics as a dimension
of the leadership process. T his chapter suggests that leadership is not an
amoral phenomenon. Leadership is a process of influencing others; it has
a moral dimension that distinguishes it from other types of influence, such
as coercion or despotic control. Leadership involves values, including
showing respect for followers , being fair to others, and building commu­
nity. It is not a process that we can demonstrate without showing our val­
ues. When we influence, we have an effect on others, which means we
need to pay attention to our values and our ethics.

Third, this body of research highl ights several principles that are impor­
tant to the development of ethical leadership. The virtues discussed in this
research have been around for more than 2,000 years. They are reviewed
in this chapter because of their significance for today’s leaders.

CRITICISMS

Although the area of ethics and leadership has many strengths, it also
has some weaknesses . First, it is an area of research in its early stage of
development, and therefore lacks a strong body of traditional research
findings to substantiate it. As was pointed out at the beginning of the
chapter, very little research has been published on the theoretical foun­
dations of leadership ethics. Although many studies have been pub­
lished on business ethics, these studies have not been directly related to
ethical leadership. The dearth of research on leadership ethics makes
speculation about the nature of ethical leadership difficult. Until more
research studies have been conducted that deal directly with the ethical
dimensions of leadership, theoretical formulations about the process
will remain tentative.

Another criticism is that leadership ethics today relies primarily on the
writings of just a few people who have written essays and texts that are
strongly influenced by their personal opinions about the nature of leader­
ship ethics and their view of the world. Although these writings, such as
Heifetz’s and Burns’s, have stood the test of time, they have not been tested
using traditional quantitative or qualitative research methods. They are
primarily descriptive and anecdotal. Therefore, leadership ethics lacks the
traditional kind of empirical support that usually accompanies accepted
theories of human behavior.

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 439

APPLICATION

Although issues of morality and leadership are discussed more often in
society today, these discussions have not resulted in a large number of
programs in training and development designed to teach eth ical leader­
ship. Many new programs are oriented toward helping managers become
more effective at work and in life in general, but these programs do not
directly target the area of ethics and leadership.

Yet the ethics and leadership research in this chapter can be applied to
people at all levels of organizations and in all walks of life. At a very mini­
mum, it is crucial to state that leadership involves values, and one cannot
be a leader without being aware of and concerned about one’s own values.
Because leadership has a moral dimension, being a leader demands aware­
ness on om part of the way our ethics defines om leadership.

Managers and leaders can use the information in this research to better
understand themselves and strengthen their own leadership. Ethical theo­
ries can remind leaders to ask themselves, “What is the right and fair thing
to do?” or “vVhat would a good person do?” Leaders can use the ethical
principles described in this research as benchmarks for their own behavior.
Do I show respect to others? Do I act with a generous spirit? Do I show
honesty and faithfulness to others? Do I serve the community? Finally, we
can learn from the overriding theme in thi s research that the leader­
follower relationship is central to ethical leadership. To be an eth ical
leader, we must be sensitive to the needs of others, treat others in ways that
are just, and care for others.

——CASESTUDIES—–­

The following section contains three case studies (Cases 16.1, 16.2, and
16.3) based on actual situations in which ethical leadership was needed.
Case 16.1 describes the owner of a small business and the ethical problems
he faces during a difficult period of consolidation. Case 16.2 is concerned
with one manufacturing company’s unique approach to safety standards.
Case 16.3 deals with the ethical issues surrounding how a human resource
service company established the pricing for its services. At the end of each
case, there are questions that point to the intricacies and complexities of
practicing ethical leadership.

I ® 16.3 Ethical Case Study

440 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

CASE 16.1

A Struggling Company Without Enough Cash

Joe Woodman bought a small, struggling computer company. After several
difficult years, revenues started to grow, and it seemed that profits were
growing as well, at least according to the financial statements. In reality,
though, the business did not have enough cash to function .

The company’s key stakeholders, such as the bank, vendors, and inves­
tors, were applying pressure on Joe to improve earnings and cash flow.
They threatened to take over the business if major changes were not
made. About the same time, making matters worse, Joe was notified that
several contracts, constituting about 25% of his top-line revenues, would
be lost to the competition.

Joe responded by laying off employees, freezing wages, and closing
several marginal operations, but these efforts were not enough. Joe was
still badly in need of more cash and professional management. To remain
viable, he had three options:

• He could negotiate a “capital for control” type of exchange with the
investor and the banks. If he did this, the banks could help recruit
new talent and offer interim financing to support the company while
restructuring occurred. On the downside, with this option his status
in the organization would change significantly: Instead of being the
owner, Joe would become more of a senior manager.

• Joe could maintain control and hire turnaround management,
explaining to new managers that the company was in a critical
turnaround phase and that the organization’s future depended on
their ability to generate credibility and positive performance within
a year. He would have to disclose the wage freezes of the past
2 years and explain that he could not initially offer competitive
salaries or certain traditional benefits. If he took this option, Joe
would have difficulty recruiting skilled managers because they
would not want to come into a situation with failing operations, no
operating cash, and the prospects of a dramatically dwindling rev­
enue base. If it succeeded, this option would allow Joe to keep
control and save his reputation.

• Joe could remain in control and hire turnaround management with­
out fully explaining the serious situation. He might say that the
company is one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry,
and that it just completed an operational turnaround, had regained

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 441

profitability, and was upgrading staff to take the company to the next
level. He could support this positive picture by representing pro
forma financial information as though it were actual. This approach
probably would be successful initially in gaining new qualified staff,
but the new managers might join only to leave soon afterward. They
would probably not develop into loyal, long-term employees
because of Joe’s dishonesty. This option would give Joe the oppor­
tunity to maintain control and keep all his workers employed.

Questions

I. Of the three options available to Joe, which is the most ethical?

2. How does egoism come into play in this case? In which of the three
options is altruism most apparent?

3. Which option would provide the greatest good for the greatest num­
ber? From an ethical perspective, what is Joe’s duty in this situation?

4. What pressures does Joe face regarding honesty and telling the truth
about his situation?

CASE 16.2

How Safe Is Safe?

Perfect Plastics Incorporated (PPI) is a small injection molding plastics
company that employs 50 people. The company is I 0 years old, has a
healthy balance sheet, and does about $4 million a year in sales. The
company has a good safety record, and the insurance company that has
PPI’s liability policy has not had to pay any claims to employees for
several years. There have been no major injuries of any kind since the
company began.

Tom Griffin, the owner, takes great pride in the interior design and
working conditions at PPI. He describes the interior of the plant as being
like a hospital compared with his competitors. Order, efficiency, and
cleanliness are top priorities at PPI. It is a remarkably well-organized
manufacturing company.

(Continued)

442 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

(Continued)

PPI has a unique approach to guaranteeing safe working conditions.
Each year, management brings in outside consultants from the insurance
industry and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
to audit the plant for unsafe conditions. Each year, the inspections reveal
a variety of concerns, which are then addressed through new equipment,
repairs, and changed work-flow designs. Although the inspectors con­
tinue to find opportunities for improvement, the overall safety improves
each year.

The attorneys for PPI are very opposed to the company’s approach to
safety. The lawyers are vehemently against the procedure of having out­
side auditors. If a lawsuit were to be brought against PPI, the attorneys
argue that any previous issues could be used as evidence of a historical
pattern and knowledge of unsafe conditions. In effect, the audits that PPI
conducts voluntarily could be used by plaintiffs to strengthen a case
against the company.

The president and management recognize the potential downside
of outside audits, but they point out that the periodic reviews are
critical to the ongoing improvement of the safety of everyone in the
plant. The purpose of the audits is to make the shop a secure place,
and that is what has occurred. Management also points out that PPI
employees have responded positively to the audits and to the changes
that result.

Questions

I. As a company, would you describe PPI as having an identifiable phi­
losophy of moral values? How do its policies contribute to this
philosophy?

2. Which ethical perspective best describes PPI ‘s approach to safety
issues? Would you say PPI takes a utilitarian-, duty-, or virtue-based
approach?

3. Regarding safety issues, how does management see its responsibilities
toward its employees? How do the attorneys see their responsibilities
toward PPI?

4. Why does it appear that the ethics of PPI and its attorneys are in
conflict?

Chapter 16 1 Leadership Ethics 443

CASE 16.3

Reexamining a Proposal

After working I 0 years as the only minority manager in a large printing
company, David Jones decided he wanted to set out on his own. Because
of his experience and prior connections, David was confident he could
survive in the printing business, but he wondered whether he should buy
an existing business or start a new one. As part of his planning, David
contacted a professional employer organization (PEO), which had a ster­
ling reputation, to obtain an estimate for human resource services for a
startup company. The estimate was to include costs for payroll, benefits,
workers’ compensation, and other traditional human resource services.
Because David had not yet started his business, the PEO generated a
generic quote applicable to a small company in the printing industry. In
addition, because the PEO had nothing tangible to quote, it gave David a
quote for human resource services that was unusually high.

In the meantime, David found an existing small company that he liked,
and he bought it.Then he contacted the PEO to sign a contract for human
resource services at the previously quoted price. David was ready to take
ownership and begin his new venture. He signed the original contract as
presented.

After David signed the contract, the PEO reviewed the earlier pro­
posal in light of the actual figures of the company he had purchased. This
review raised many concerns for management. Although the goals of the
PEO were to provide high-quality service, be competitive in the market­
place, and make a reasonable profit, the quote it had provided David
appeared to be much too high. It was not comparable in any way with the
other service contracts the PEO had with other companies of similar size
and function .

During the review, it became apparent that several concerns had to be
addressed. First, the original estimate made the PEO appear as if it was
gouging the client. Although the client had signed the original contract,
was it fair to charge such a high price for the proposed services? Would
charging such high fees mean that the PEO would lose this client or
similar clients in the future? Another concern was related to the PEO’s
support of minority businesses. For years, the PEO had prided itself on
having strong values about affirmative action and fairness in the work­
place, but this contract appeared to actually hurt and to be somewhat

(Continued)

444 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

(Continued)

unfair to a minority client. Finally, the PEO was concerned with the impli­
cations of the contract for the salesperson who drew up the proposal for
David. Changing the estimated costs in the proposal would have a signifi­
cant impact on the salesperson’s commission, which would negatively
affect the morale of others in the PEO’s sales area.

After a reexamination of the original proposal, a new contract was
drawn up for David’s company with lower estimated costs. Though lower
than the original proposal, the new contract remained much higher than
the average contract in the printing industry. David willingly signed the
new contract.

Questions

I. What role should ethics play in the writing of a proposal such as this?
Did the PEO do the ethical thing for David? How much money should
the PEO have tried to make? What would you have done if you were
part of management at the PEO?

2. From a deontological (duty) perspective and a teleological (conse­
quences) perspective, how would you describe the ethics of the PEO?

3. Based on what the PEO did for David, how would you evaluate the
PEO on the ethical principles of respect, service, justice, honesty, and
community?

4. How would you assess the ethics of the PEO if you were David? If you
were among the PEO management? If you were the salesperson? If
you were a member of the printing community?

LEADERSHIP INSTRUMENT

Eth ics and morals often are regarded as very personal, and we res ist having
others judge us about them. We also resist judging others. Perh aps fo r this
reason, very few questionnaires have been designed to measure ethical
leadership. To address this problem, Craig and Gustafson ( 1998) devel­
oped the Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PUS), which is based on utili­
tar ian eth ical theory. The PLIS attempts to evaluate leaders’ ethics by
measuring the degree to which coworkers see them as acting in accor­
dance wi th rules that would produce the greatest good for the greatest

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 445

number of people. Craig and Gustafson found PLIS ratings to be strongly
and positi vely related to subordinates’ job satisfaction, and negatively
related to their des ire to quit their jobs.

Parry and Proctor-Thomson (2002) used the PLIS in a study of 1,3 54
managers and found that perceived integrity was positively related to trans­
formational leadership. Leaders who were seen as transformational were
also seen as having more integrity. In addition, the research ers found that
perceived integrity was positively correlated with leader and organizational
effecti veness.

By taking the PLIS, you can try to assess the ethical integrity of a man­
ager you know, such as one of your supervisors. At the same time, the PLIS
\\ill allow you to apply the ideas we discussed in the chapter to a real-world
setting. By focusing on observers’ impressions, the PLIS represents one way
to assess the principle of ethieall eacl ership.

In addition, the PLIS can be used for feedback to employees in organi­
zations and as a part of leadership training and development. Finally, if
used as part of an organizational climate survey, the PLIS could be useful
as a \\·ay of iclenti~ · ing areas in an organization that may need an ethics
intervention (Craig & Gustafson, 1998).

446 LEADERSHIP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PLIS)

Instructions:The following items concern your perceptions of another person’s
behavior. Circle responses to indicate how well each item describes the person
you are rating.

Key: I = Not at all 2 = Barely 3 =Somewhat 4 =Well

I. Puts his or her personal interests ahead of the organization I 2 3 4
2. Would risk other people to protect himself or herself I 2 3 4

in work matters
3. Enjoys turning down requests 2 3 4
4. Deliberately fuels conflict between other people 2 3 4
5. Would blackmail an employee if she or he thought she or 2 3 4

he could get away with it
6. Would deliberately exaggerate people’s mistakes to 2 3 4

make them look bad to others
7. Would treat some people better if they were of the other 2 3 4

sex or belonged to a different ethnic group
8. Ridicules people for their mistakes 2 3 4
9. Can be trusted with confidential information 2 3 4

10. Would lie to me 2 3 4
II. Is evil 2 3 4
12. Is not interested in tasks that don’t bring personal glory 2 3 4

or recognition
13. Would do things that violate organizational policy and 2 3 4

then expect others to cover for him or her
14. Would allow someone else to be blamed for his or

her mistake 2 3 4
IS. Would deliberately avoid responding to e-mail , telephone, 2 3 4

or other messages to cause problems for someone else
16. Would make trouble for someone who got on his or 2 3 4

her bad side
17. Would engage in sabotage against the organization 2 3 4
18. Would deliberately distort what other people say 2 3 4
19. Is a hypocrite 2 3 4
20. Is vindictive 2 3 4
21. Would try to take credit for other people’s ideas 2 3 4
22. Likes to bend the rules 2 3 4
23. Would withhold information or constructive feedback 2 3 4

because he or she wants someone to fail
24. Would spread rumors or gossip to try to hurt people 2 3 4

or the organ ization
25. Is rude or uncivil to coworkers 2 3 4
26. Would try to hurt someone’s career because of a grudge 2 3 4
27. Shows unfair favoritism toward some people 2 3 4

Chapter 16 I Leadership Ethics 447

28. Would steal from the organization 2 3 4
29. Would falsify records if it would help his or her 2 3 4

work situation
30. Has high moral standards 2 3 4

SOURCE: Adapted from a version of the PUS that appeared in Leadership Quarterly, 9(2).
S. B. Craig and S. B. Gustafson, “Perceived Leader Integrity Scale: An Instrument for
Assessing Employee Perceptions of Leader Integrity,” pp. 143-144, 1998. Used with
permission of the authors.

Scoring

The PUS measures your perceptions of another person’s integrity in an
organizational setting. Your responses on the PUS indicate the degree to which
you see that person’s behavior as ethical.

Score the questionnaire by doing the following. First, reverse the scores on
items 9 and 30 (i.e., I becomes 4, 2 becomes 3, 3 becomes 2, and 4 becomes I).
Next, sum the responses on all 30 items. A low score on the questionnaire
indicates that you perceive the person you evaluated to be highly ethicai.A high
score indicates that you perceive that person to be very unethical. The inter­
pretation of what the score represents follows.

Scoring Interpretation

Your score is a measure of your perceptions of another person’s ethical
integrity. Based on previous findings (Craig & Gustafson, 1998), the following
interpretations can be made about your total score:

• 30-32 High ethical: If your score is in this range, it means that you see
the person you evaluated as highly ethical. Your impression is that the
person is very trustworthy and principled.

• 33-45 Moderate ethical : Scores in this range mean that you see the
person as moderately ethical. Your impression is that the person might
engage in some unethical behaviors under certain conditions.

• 46-120 Low ethical: Scores in this range describe people who are seen
as very unethical. Your impression is that the person you evaluated does
things that are dishonest, unfair, and unprincipled almost any time he or
she has the opportunity.

448 LEADERSH IP I THEORY AND PRACTICE

SUMMARY

Although there has been an interest in ethics for thousands of years, very
little theoretical research exists on the nature of leadership ethics. This
chapter has presented an overview of ethical theories as they apply to the
leadersh ip process.

Ethical theory provides a set of principles that guide leaders in making
decisions about how to act and how to be morally decent. In the Western
tradition, ethical theories typically are divided into two kinds: theories
about conduct and theories about character. T heories about conduct
emphasize the consequences of leader behavior (teleological approach) or
the rules that govern their behavior ( deontological approach). Virtue­
based theories focus on the character of leaders, and they stress qualities
such as courage, honesty, fairness, and fidelity.

Ethics plays a central role in the leadership process. Because leadersh ip
involves influence and leaders often have more power than followers, they
have an enormous ethical responsibility for how they affect other people.
Leaders need to engage followers to accomplish mutual goals; therefore, it
is imperative that they treat followers and their ideas with respect and dig­
nity. Leaders also play a major role in establishing the ethical climate in
their organization; that role requires leaders to be particularly sens itive to
the values and ideals they promote.

Several prominent leadership scholars, including Heifetz, Burns, and
Greenleaf, have made unique contributions to our understanding of ethical
leadership. The theme common to these authors is an ethic of caring,
which pays attention to followers ‘ needs and the importance of leader­
follower relationships.

This chapter suggests that sound ethical leadership is rooted in
respect, service, justice, honesty, and community. It is the duty of leaders
to treat others with respect- to listen to them closely and be tolerant of
opposing points of view. Ethical leaders serve others by being altruistic,
placing others’ welfare ahead of their own in an effort to contribute to the
common good. Justice requires that leaders place fairness at the center of
their decision making, including the challenging task of being fair to the
individual while simultaneously being fair to the common interests of
the community. Good leaders are honest. T hey do not lie, nor do they
present truth to others in ways that arc destructive or counterproductive.
Finall y, ethical leaders are committed to building community, which

I 0 16.4 Chapter Summary

Chapter 161 Leadership Ethics 449

includes search ing for goals that are compatible with the goals of follow­
ers and with socie ty as a whole.

Research on e thi cs and leade rship has several strengths. At a time
when the public is demanding higher levels of moral responsibility from
its leaders, this research pro,·ides som e direction in how to think about
ethical leadership and how to practice it. In addition, this research
reminds us that leadership is a moral process . Scholars should include
ethics as an integral part of the leadership studies and research. Third, this
area of resea rch desc ribes basic principl es that we can use in developing
real-world ethical leadership.

On the negative side, thi s research area of ethical leadership is still in
an ea rlv stage of development. Fe\\· studies have been clone that directly
address th e nature of ethical leadership . As a result, the theoretical formu­
lations about the process remain tentative . Second, this area of resea rch
relies on the \Hitings of a fe,,· individuals whose work has been primarily
descripti,·e and anecdotal. As a result, th e development of theory on lcad­
ersh ip ethics lacks th e traditional empiri cal support that usually accompa­
nies theories of human behavior. Despite these weaknesses, the field of
ethi ca l leadership is wide open for future research . T here remains a strong
need for research that can advance our understanding of the rol e of ethics
in the leadersh ip process.

Visit the Student Study Site at www.sagepub.com/northouse6e
for web quizzes, leadership questionnaires, and media links repre­
sented by the icons.

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perceived executive ethical leadership : Perceptions from inside and outside the
executi ve suite. Human Relations, 56( 1), 5-37.

Velasquez, M.G. (1992). Business ethics: Concepts and cases (3 rcl ed. ). Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Wame, L. (2009, May 30). A promise to be ethical in an era of immorality. The New
Yorl< Times. Retrieved on June 15 , 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/ 0 5/30/busincss

http://www.nytimes.com/2009

• Structure Bookmarks

\
_____..__——-….,;.. t 6
_____..__——-….,;.. t 6
Leadership Ethics .
Leadership Ethics .
DESCRIPTION
DESCRIPTION
This chapter is different from many of the other chapters in this book. Most of the other chapters focus on one unified leadership theory or approach (e.g., trait approach, path-goal theory, or transformational lead­ership), whereas this chapter is multifaceted and presents a broad set of ethical viewpoints. The chapter is not intended as an “ethical leadership theory,” but rather as a guide to some of the ethical issues that arise in leadership situations.
Probably as long ago as our cave-dwelling days, human beings have been concerned with the ethics of our leaders. Our history books are replete with descriptions of good kings and bad kings, great empires and evil empires, and strong presidents and weak presidents. But despite a wealth of biographical accounts ofgreat leaders and their morals, very little research has been published on the theoretical foundations of leadership ethics. There have been many studies on business ethics in general since the early
One of the earliest writings that specifically focused on leadership ethics appeared as recently as 1996. It was a set of working papers generated from a small group ofleadership scholars, brought together by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. These scholars examined how leadership theory and practice could be used to build a more caring and just society. The ideas of the Kellogg group are now published in a volume titled Ethics, the Heart of Leadership (Ciulla, 1998).
423
Interest in the nature of ethical leadership has continued to grow, par­ticularly because of the many recent scandals in corporate America and the political realm. On the academic front, there has also been a strong interest in exploring the nature of ethical leadership (see Aronson, 2001; Ciulla, 2001, 2003; Johnson, 2011; Kanungo, 2001; Price, 2008; Trevino, Brown, & Hartman, 2003).
Ethics Defined
Ethics Defined
From the perspective of Western tradition, the development of ethical theory dates back to Plato (427-347 B.c.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). The word ethics has its roots in the Greek word ethos, which translates to cus­toms, conduct, or character. Ethics is concerned with the kinds of values and morals an individual or a society finds desirable or appropriate. Fur­thermore, ethics is concerned with the virtuousness of individuals and their motives. Ethical theory provides a system of rules or principles t
In regard to leadership, ethics has to do with what leaders do and who leaders are. It is concerned with the nature of leaders’ behavior, and with their virtuousness. In any decision-making situation, ethical issues are either implicitly or explicitly involved. The choices leaders make and how they respond in a given circumstance are informed and directed by their ethics.
Ethical Theories
Ethical Theories
For the purposes of studying ethics and leadership, ethical theories can be thought of as falling within two broad domains: theories about leaders’ conduct and theories about leaders’ character (Table 16.1 ). Stated another way, ethical theories when applied to leadership are about both the actions of leaders and who they are as people. Throughout the chapter, our discus­sions about ethics and leadership will always fall within one of these two domains: conduct or character.
Ethical theories that deal with the conduct of leaders are in turn divided into two kinds: theories that stress the consequences of leaders’ actions and those that emphasize the duty or rules governing leaders’ actions (see Table 16.1). Teleological theories, from the Greek word telos,
I ~16.1 Practical Ethical Theory
Table 16.1 Domains of Ethical Theories
Conduct Character
Consequences (telelogical theories) Virtue-based theories
•
•
•
Ethical egoism
•
•
Utilitarianism

Duty (deontological theories)
meaning “ends” or “purposes,” try to answer questions about right and wrong by focusing on whether a person’s conduct will produce desirable consequences. From the teleological perspective, the question “What is right?” is answered by looking at results or outcomes. In effect, the conse­quences of an individual’s actions determine the goodness or badness of a particular behavior.
In assessing consequences, there are three different approaches to mak­ing decisions regarding moral conduct (Figure 16.1): ethical egoism, utili­tarianism, and altruism. Ethical egoism states that a person should act so as to create the greatest good for herself or himself. A leader with this ori­entation would take a job or career that he or she selfishly enjoys (Avolio & Locke, 2002). Self-interest is an ethical stance closely related to transac­tional leadership theories (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). Ethi
A second teleological approach, utilitarianism, states that we should behave so as to create the greatest good for the greatest number. From this viewpoint, the morally correct action is the action that maximizes social benefits while minimizing social costs (Schumann, 2001). When the U.S. government allocates a large part of the federal budget for preventive health care rather than for catastrophic illnesses, it is acting from a utilitar­ian perspective, putting money where it will have the best result for
Closely related to utilitarianism, and opposite of ethical egoism, is a third teleological approach, altruism. Altruism is an approach that suggests that actions are moral if their primary purpose is to promote the best inter­ests of others. From this perspective, a leader may be called on to act in the
Figure 16.1 .Ethical Theories Based on Self-Interest Versus Interest for Others
I High • Ethical Egoism
CONCERN .FOR Medium • Utilitarianism .SELF-INTEREST .
Low .• Altruism
I
Low Medium High
CONCERN FOR THE INTEREST OF OTHERS
interests of others, even when it runs contrary to his or her own self­interests (Bowie, 1991 ). Authentic transformational leadership is based on altruistic principles (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Kanungo & Mendonca, 1996). The strongest example of altruist ethics can be found in the work of Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to helping the poor.
Quite different from looking at which actions will produce which out­comes, deontological theory is derived from the Greek word deos, which means “duty.” Whether a given action is ethical rests not only with its consequences (teleological), but also with whether the action itself is good. Telling the truth, keeping promises, being fair, and respecting others are all examples of actions that are inherently good, independent of the con­sequences. The deontological perspective focuses on the actions of the lea
In the late 1990s, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was brought before Congress for misrepresenting under oath an affair he had
In the late 1990s, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was brought before Congress for misrepresenting under oath an affair he had
maintained with a White House intern. For his actions, he was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, but then was acquitted by the U.S. Senate. At one point during the long ordeal, the president appeared on national television and, in what is now a famous speech, declared his inno­cence. Because subsequent hearings provided information that suggested that he may have lied during this television speech, many Americans felt President Clinton had violated his duty and responsibility (as a person, lead
Whereas teleological and deontological theories approach ethics by look­ing at the behavior or conduct ofa leader, a second set of theories approaches ethics from the viewpoint of a leader’s character (see Table 16.1 ). These theories are called virtue-based theories; they focus on who leaders are as people. In this perspective, virtues are rooted in the heart of the individual and in the individual’s disposition (Pojman, 1995). Furthermore, it is believed that virtues and moral abilities are not innate but
With their origin traced back in the Western tradition to the ancient Greeks and the works of Plato and Aristotle, virtue theories are experiencing a resurgence in popularity. The Greek term associated with these theories is aretaic, which means “excellence” or “virtue.” Consistent with Aristotle, current advocates of virtue-based theory stress that more attention should be given to the development and training of moral values (Velasquez, 1992). Rather than telling people what to do, attention should be dir
What, then, are the virtues of an ethical person? There are many, all of which seem to be important. Based on the writings of Aristotle, a moral person demonstrates the virtues of courage, temperance, generosity, self­control, honesty, sociability, modesty, fairness, and justice (Velasquez, 1992). For Aristotle, virtues allowed people to live well in communities. Applying ethics to leadership and management, Velasquez has suggested that managers should develop virtues such as perseverance, public-spiritedne
In essence, virtue-based ethics is about being and becoming a good, worthy human being. Although people can learn and develop good values, this theory maintains that virtues are present in one’s disposition. When
In essence, virtue-based ethics is about being and becoming a good, worthy human being. Although people can learn and develop good values, this theory maintains that virtues are present in one’s disposition. When
practiced over time, from youth to adulthood, good values become habit­ual, and part of the people themselves. By telling the truth, people become truthful; by giving to the poor, people become benevolent; by being fair to others, people become just. Our virtues are derived from our actions, and our actions manifest our virtues (Frankena, 1973; Pojman, 1995).
Centrality of Ethics to Leadership
As discussed in Chapter 1, leadership is a process whereby the leader influences others to reach a common goal. The influence dimension of leadership requires the leader to have an impact on the lives of those being led. To make a change in other people carries with it an enormous ethical burden and responsibility. Because leaders usually have more power and control than followers, they also have more responsibility to be sensitive to how their leadership affects followers’ lives.
\Vhether in group work, organizational pursuits, or community proj­ects, leaders engage subordinates and utilize them in their efforts to reach common goals. In all these situations, leaders have the ethical responsibil­ity to treat followers with dignity and respect-as human beings with unique identities. This “respect for people” demands that leaders be sensitive to followers’ own interests, needs, and conscientious concerns (Beauchamp & Bowie, 1988). Although all of us have an ethical respon­sibility to
Ethics is central to leadership, and leaders help to establish and rein­force organizational values. Every leader has a distinct philosophy and point of view. “All leaders have an agenda, a series of beliefs, proposals, values, ideas, and issues that they wish to ‘put on the table”‘ (Gini, 1998,
p. 36). The values promoted by the leader have a significant impact on th e values exhibited by the organization (see Carlson & Perrewe, 1995; Schminke, Ambrose, & Noel, 1997; Trevino, 1986). Again, because of their influence, leaders play a major role in establishing the ethical climate of their organizations.
In short, ethics is central to leadership because of the nature of the process of influence, the need to engage followers in accomplishing mutual goals, and the impact leaders have on the organization’s values.
I ~16.1 Consequences
The following section provides a discussion of some of the work of prominent leadership scholars who have addressed issues related to ethics and leadership. Although many additional viewpoints exist, those pre­sented are representative of the predominant thinking in the area of ethics and leadership today.
Heifetz’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership
Based on his work as a psychiatrist and his observations and analysis of many world leaders (e.g., President Lyndon Johnson, Mohanclas Gandhi, and Margaret Sanger), Ronald Heifetz ( 1994) has formulated a unique approach to ethical leadership. His approach emphasizes how leaders help followers to confront conflict and to address conflict by effecting changes. Heifetz’s perspective is related to ethical leadership because it deals with values: the values of workers and the values of the organizations and com
For Heifetz ( 1994), leaders must use authority to mobilize people to face tough issues. The leader provides a “holding environment” in which there is trust, nurturance, and empathy. In a supportive context, followers can feel safe to confront hard problems. Specifically, leaders use authority to get people to pay attention to the issues, to act as a reality test regarding infor­mation, to manage and frame issues, to orchestrate conflicting perspectives, and to facilitate decision making (Heifetz, 1994, p.
Burns’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership
As discussed in Chapter 9, Burns’s theory of transformational leadership places a strong emphasis on followers’ needs, values, and morals. Transfor­mational leadership involves attempts by leaders to move followers to higher standards of moral responsibility. This emphasis sets transformational leader­ship apart from most other approaches to leadership because it clearly states that leadership has a moral dimension (see Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999).
Similar to that of Heifetz, Burns’s ( 1978) perspective argues that it is important for leaders to engage themselves with followers and help them
I 0
16.1 Ethical Norms
in their personal struggles regarding conflicting values. The resulting con­nection raises the level of morality in both the leader and the follower.
The origins of Burns’s position on leadership ethics are rooted in the works of such writers as Abraham Maslow, Milton Rokeach, and Lawrence Kohlberg (Ciulla, 1998). The influence of these writers can be seen in how Burns emphasizes the leader’s role in attending to the personal moti­vations and moral development of the follower. For Burns, it is the respon­sibility of the leader to help followers assess their own values and needs in order to raise them to a higher level of functioning, to a level that will
Burns’s position on leadership as a morally uplifting process has not been without its critics. It has raised many questions: How do you choose what a better set of moral values is? Who is to say that some decisions rep­resent higher moral ground than others? If leadership, by definition, entails raising individual moral functioning, does this mean that the lead­ership of corrupt leaders is not actually leadership? Notwithstanding these very legitimate questions, Burns’s perspective is unique in that it mak
Principles of Ethical Leadership
In this section, we turn to a discussion of five principles of ethical lead­ership, the origins of which can be traced back to Aristotle. The impor­tance of these principles has been discussed in a variety of disciplines, including biomedical ethics (Beauchamp & Childress, 1994), business ethics (Beauchamp & Bowie, 1988), counseling psychology (Kitchener, 1984), and leadership education (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 1998), to name a few. Although not inclusive, these principles provide a foundation for the de
Ethical Leaders Respect Others
Ethical Leaders Respect Others
Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that it is our duty to treat others with respect. To do so means always to treat others as ends in themselves and never as means to ends. As Beauchamp and Bowie
I ~16.2 Teaching Ethical Leadership
Figure 16.2 Principles of Ethical Leadership
ETHICAL .LEADERSHIP .
( 1988, p. 3 7) pointed out, “Persons must be treated as having their own autonomously established goals and must never be treated purely as the means to another’s personal goals.” These writers then suggested that treating others as ends rather than as means requires that we treat other people’s decisions and values with respect: Failing to do so would signify that we were treating them as a means to our own ends.
Leaders who respect others also allow them to be themselves, with cre­ative wants and desires. They approach other people with a sense of their unconditional worth and valuable individual differences (Kitchener, 1984). Respect includes giving credence to others’ ideas and confirming them as human beings. At times, it may require that leaders defer to others. As Burns ( 1978) suggested, leaders should nurture followers in becoming 111 integrating these with the leader’s needs, values, and purposes.
aware of their own needs, values, and purposes, and assist followers
Respect for others is a complex ethic that is similar to but goes deeper than the kind of respect that parents teach little children. Respect means that a leader listens closely to subordinates, is empathic, and is tolerant of opposing points of view. It means treating subordinates in ways that con­firm their beliefs, attitudes, and values. When a leader exhibits respect to
I !j 16.1 Ethical Role of Management
subordinates, subordinates can feel competent about their work. In short, leaders who show respect treat others as worthy human beings.
Ethical Leaders Serve Others
Ethical Leaders Serve Others
Earlier in this chapter, we contrasted tvvo ethical theories, one based on a concern for self (ethical egoism) and another based on the interests of oth­ers (ethical altruism). The service principle clearly is an example ofaltruism. Leaders who serve are altruistic: They place their followers’ welfare foremost in their plans. In the workplace, altruistic service behavior can be observed in activities such as mentoring, empowerment behaviors, team building, and citizenship behaviors, to name a few (Kanungo &
The leader’s ethical responsibility to serve others is very similar to the ethical principle in health care of beneficence. Beneficence is derived from the Hippocratic tradition, which holds that health professionals ought to make choices that benefit patients. In a general way, beneficence asserts that providers have a duty to help others pursue their own legitimate interests and goals (Beauchamp & Childress, 1994 ). Like health profes­sionals, ethical leaders have a responsibility to attend to others, be
In the past decade, the service principle has received a great deal of emphasis in the leadership literature. It is clearly evident in the writings of Block (1993), Covey (1990), DePree (1989), Gilligan (1982), and Kouzes and Posner ( 1995 ), all of whom maintained that attending to others is the primary building block of moral leadership. Further emphasis on service can be observed in the work of Senge ( 1990) in his well-recognized writing on learning organizations. Senge contended that one of the importa
The idea of leaders serving others was more deeply explored by Robert Greenleaf (1970, 1977), who developed the servant leadership approach. Servant leadership, which is explored in depth in Chapter 10, has strong
I fl) 16.2 Ethical School Leadership
altruistic ethical overtones in how it emphasizes that leaders should be atten­tive to the concerns of their followers and should take care of them and nurture them. In addition, Greenleaf argues that the servant leader has a social responsibility to be concerned with the have-nots and should strive to remove inequalities and social injustices. Greenleaf places a great deal of emphasis on listening, empathy, and unconditional acceptance of others.
In short, whether it is Greenleaf’s notion of waiting on the have-nots or Senge’s notion of giving oneself to a larger purpose, the idea behind service is contributing to the greater good of others. Recently, the idea of serving the “greater good” has found an unusual following in the business world. In 2009, 20% of the graduating class of the Harvard Business School, consid­ered to be one of the premier schools producing today’s business leaders, took an oath pledging that they will act responsibly and eth

Ethical leaders Are Just
Ethical leaders Are Just
Ethical leaders are concerned about issues of fairness and justice. They make it a top priority to treat all of their subordinates in an equal manner. Justice demands that leaders place issues of fairness at the center of their decision making. As a rule, no one should receive special treatment or special consideration except when his or her particular situation demands it. When individuals are treated differently, the grounds for different treat­ment must be clear and reasonable, and must be based on moral
For example, many of us can remember being involved with some type of athletic team when we were growing up. The coaches we liked were those we thought were fair with us. No matter what, we did not want the coach to treat anyone differently from the rest. When someone came late to practice with a poor excuse, we wanted that person disciplined just as we would have been disciplined. If a player had a personal problem and needed a break, we wanted the coach to give it, just as we would have been given a break
I 0 16.2 Ethics in Management
When resources and rewards or punishments are distributed to employ­ees, the leader plays a major role. The rules that are used and how they are applied say a great deal about whether the leader is concerned about jus­tice and how he or she approaches issues of fairness.
Rawls ( 1971) stated that a concern with issues of fairness is necessary for all people who are cooperating together to promote their common interests. It is similar to the ethic of reciprocity, otherwise known as the Golden Rule-“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”­variations of which have appeared in many different cultures throughout the ages. If we expect fairness from others in how they treat us, then we should treat others fairly in our dealings with them. Issues of fairness become prob
Beauchamp and Bowie ( 1988) outlined several of the common princi­ples that serve as guides for leaders in distributing the benefits and burdens fairly in an organization (Table 16.2). Although not inclusive, these prin­ciples point to the reasoning behind why leaders choose to distribute things as they do in organizations. In a given situation, a leader may use a single principle or a combination of several principles in treating subordinates.
To illustrate the principles described in Table 16.2, consider the fol­lowing hypothetical example: You are the owner of a small trucking com­pany that employs 50 drivers. You have just opened a new route, and it
Table 16.2 Principles of Distributive Justice
These principles are applied in different situations. To each person
•
•
•
An equal share or opportunity
•
•
According to individual need
•
•
According to that person’s rights
•
•
According to individual effort
•
•
According to societal contribution
•
•
According to merit or performance

promises to be one that pays well and has an ideal schedule. Only one driver can be assigned to the route, but seven drivers have applied for it. Each driver wants an equal opportunity to get the route. One of the drivers recently lost his wife to breast cancer and is struggling to care for three young children (individual need). T\vo of the drivers are minorities, and one of them feels strongly that he has a right to the job. One of the drivers has logged more driving hours for three consecutive years, and
As the owner of the company, your challenge is to assign the new route in a fair way. Although many other factors could influence your decision (e.g., seniority, wage rate, or employee health), the principles described in Table 16.2 provide guidelines for deciding who is to get the new route.
Ethical Leaders Are Honest
Ethical Leaders Are Honest
When we were children, grown-ups often told us we must “never tell a lie.” To be good meant we must be truthful. For leaders the lesson is the same: To be a good leader, one must be honest.
The importance of being honest can be understood more clearly when we consider the opposite of honesty: dishonesty (see Jaksa & Pritchard, 1988). Dishonesty is a form of lying, a way of misrepresenting reality. Dis­honesty may bring with it many objectionable outcomes; foremost among those outcomes is the distrust it creates. vVhen leaders are not honest, oth­ers come to see them as undependable and unreliable. People lose faith in what leaders say and stand for, and their respect for leaders is diminished.
When we relate to others, dishonesty also has a negative impact. It puts a strain on how people are connected to each other. When we lie to others, we are in essence saying that we are willing to manipulate the relationship on our own terms. We are saying that we do not trust the other person in the relationship to be able to deal with information we have. In reality, we are putting ourselves ahead of the relationship by saying that we know what is best for the relationship. The long-term effect of this typ
I e 16.3 Developing Leadership Character
that it weakens relationships. Even when used with good intentions, dis­honesty contributes to the breakdown of relationships.
But being honest is not just about telling the truth. It has to do with being open with others and representing reality as fully and completely as possible. This is not an easy task, however, because there are times when telling the complete truth can be destructive or counterproductive. The challenge for leaders is to strike a balance between being open and candid while monitoring what is appropriate to disclose in a particular situation. Many times, there are organizational constraints that prevent leader
Dalla Costa ( 1998) made the point clearly in his book, The Ethical Imperative, that being honest means more than not deceiving. For leaders in organizations, being honest means, “Do not promise what you can’t deliver, do not misrepresent, do not hide behind spin-doctored evasions, do not suppress obligations, do not evade accountability, do not accept that the ‘survival of the fittest’ pressures of business release any of us from the responsibility to respect another’s dignity and humanity” (p. 164 ). In a
Ethical Leaders Build Community
Ethical Leaders Build Community
In Chapter 1, we defined leadership as a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. This defini­tion has a clear ethical dimension because it refers to a common goal. A common goal requires that the leader and followers agree on the direction to be taken by the group. Leaders need to take into account their own and followers’ purposes while working toward goals that are suitable for both of them. This factor, concern for others, is the distinctive feature that
Burns ( 1978) placed this idea at the center of his theory on transforma­tional leadership. A transformational leader tries to move the group toward
Burns ( 1978) placed this idea at the center of his theory on transforma­tional leadership. A transformational leader tries to move the group toward
a common good that is beneficial for both the leaders and the followers. In moving toward mutual goals, both the leader and the followers are changed. It is this feature that makes Burns’s theory unique. For Burns, leadership has to be grounded in the leader-follower relationship. It can­not be controlled by the leader, such as Hitler’s influence in Germany. Hitler coerced people to meet his own agenda and followed goals that did not advance the goodness of humankind.
An ethical leader takes into account the purposes of everyone involved in the group and is attentive to the interests of the community and the culture. Such a leader demonstrates an ethic of caring toward others (Gilligan, 1982) and does not force others or ignore the intentions of oth­ers (Bass & Steidlrneier, 1999).
Rost (1991) went a step farther and suggested that ethical leadership demands attention to a civic virtue. By this, he meant that leaders and fol­lowers need to attend to more than their own mutually determined goals. They need to attend to the community’s goals and purpose. As Burns ( 1978,
p. 429) wrote, transformational leaders and followers begin to reach out to wider social collectivities and seek to establish higher and broader moral purposes. Similarly, Greenleaf ( 1970) argued that building community was a main characteristic of servant leadership. All of our individual and group goals are bound up in the common good and public interest. We need to pay attention to how the changes proposed by a leader and followers will affect the larger organization, the community, and society. An ethi

STRENGTHS
STRENGTHS
This chapter discusses a broad set of ideas regarding ethics and leadership. This general field of study has several strengths. First, it provides a body of timely research on ethical issues. There is a high demand for moral leadership in our society today. Beginning with the Nixon administration in the 1970s and con­tinuing through George W. Bush’s administration in the last decade, people have been insisting on higher levels of moral responsibility from their leaders. At a time when there seems to be a va
Second, this body of research suggests that ethics ought to be consid­ered as an integral part of the broader domain of leadership. Except for
I 0 16.3 Ethical Issues in Nursing I ~~~ 16.2 Ethical Dilemmas
servant, transformational, and authentic leadership, none of the other leadership theories discussed in this book includes ethics as a dimension of the leadership process. This chapter suggests that leadership is not an amoral phenomenon. Leadership is a process of influencing others; it has a moral dimension that distinguishes it from other types of influence, such as coercion or despotic control. Leadership involves values, including showing respect for followers, being fair to others, and building commu­
Third, this body of research highlights several principles that are impor­tant to the development of ethical leadership. The virtues discussed in this research have been around for more than 2,000 years. They are reviewed in this chapter because of their significance for today’s leaders.
CRITICISMS
CRITICISMS
Although the area of ethics and leadership has many strengths, it also has some weaknesses. First, it is an area of research in its early stage of development, and therefore lacks a strong body of traditional research findings to substantiate it. As was pointed out at the beginning of the chapter, very little research has been published on the theoretical foun­dations of leadership ethics. Although many studies have been pub­lished on business ethics, these studies have not been directly related to ethical
Another criticism is that leadership ethics today relies primarily on the writings of just a few people who have written essays and texts that are strongly influenced by their personal opinions about the nature of leader­ship ethics and their view of the world. Although these writings, such as Heifetz’s and Burns’s, have stood the test of time, they have not been tested using traditional quantitative or qualitative research methods. They are primarily descriptive and anecdotal. Therefore, leadership ethics
APPLICATION
APPLICATION
Although issues of morality and leadership are discussed more often in society today, these discussions have not resulted in a large number of programs in training and development designed to teach ethical leader­ship. Many new programs are oriented toward helping managers become more effective at work and in life in general, but these programs do not directly target the area of ethics and leadership.
Yet the ethics and leadership research in this chapter can be applied to people at all levels of organizations and in all walks of life. At a very mini­mum, it is crucial to state that leadership involves values, and one cannot be a leader without being aware of and concerned about one’s own values. Because leadership has a moral dimension, being a leader demands aware­ness on om part of the way our ethics defines om leadership.
Managers and leaders can use the information in this research to better understand themselves and strengthen their own leadership. Ethical theo­ries can remind leaders to ask themselves, “What is the right and fair thing to do?” or “vVhat would a good person do?” Leaders can use the ethical principles described in this research as benchmarks for their own behavior. Do I show respect to others? Do I act with a generous spirit? Do I show honesty and faithfulness to others? Do I serve the community? Finally, w
——CASESTUDIES—–­
——CASESTUDIES—–­
The following section contains three case studies (Cases 16.1, 16.2, and 16.3) based on actual situations in which ethical leadership was needed. Case 16.1 describes the owner of a small business and the ethical problems he faces during a difficult period of consolidation. Case 16.2 is concerned with one manufacturing company’s unique approach to safety standards. Case 16.3 deals with the ethical issues surrounding how a human resource service company established the pricing for its services. At the end of
I ® 16.3 Ethical Case Study
CASE 16.1
A Struggling Company Without Enough Cash
A Struggling Company Without Enough Cash
Joe Woodman bought a small, struggling computer company. After several difficult years, revenues started to grow, and it seemed that profits were growing as well, at least according to the financial statements. In reality, though, the business did not have enough cash to function.
The company’s key stakeholders, such as the bank, vendors, and inves­tors, were applying pressure on Joe to improve earnings and cash flow. They threatened to take over the business if major changes were not made. About the same time, making matters worse, Joe was notified that several contracts, constituting about 25% of his top-line revenues, would be lost to the competition.
Joe responded by laying off employees, freezing wages, and closing several marginal operations, but these efforts were not enough. Joe was still badly in need of more cash and professional management. To remain viable, he had three options:
• .
• .
• .
He could negotiate a “capital for control” type of exchange with the investor and the banks. If he did this, the banks could help recruit new talent and offer interim financing to support the company while restructuring occurred. On the downside, with this option his status in the organization would change significantly: Instead of being the owner, Joe would become more of a senior manager.
• .
• .
Joe could maintain control and hire turnaround management, explaining to new managers that the company was in a critical turnaround phase and that the organization’s future depended on their ability to generate credibility and positive performance within a year. He would have to disclose the wage freezes of the past 2 years and explain that he could not initially offer competitive salaries or certain traditional benefits. If he took this option, Joe would have difficulty recruiting skilled managers because
• .
• .
Joe could remain in control and hire turnaround management with­out fully explaining the serious situation. He might say that the company is one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry, and that it just completed an operational turnaround, had regained

profitability, and was upgrading staff to take the company to the next level. He could support this positive picture by representing pro forma financial information as though it were actual. This approach probably would be successful initially in gaining new qualified staff, but the new managers might join only to leave soon afterward. They would probably not develop into loyal, long-term employees because of Joe’s dishonesty. This option would give Joe the oppor­tunity to maintain control and keep all his
Questions
Questions
I. .Of the three options available to Joe, which is the most ethical?
2. .
2. .
2. .
How does egoism come into play in this case? In which of the three options is altruism most apparent?
3. .
3. .
Which option would provide the greatest good for the greatest num­ber? From an ethical perspective, what is Joe’s duty in this situation?
4. .
4. .
What pressures does Joe face regarding honesty and telling the truth about his situation?

CASE 16.2

How Safe Is Safe?
How Safe Is Safe?
Perfect Plastics Incorporated (PPI) is a small injection molding plastics company that employs 50 people. The company is I 0 years old, has a healthy balance sheet, and does about $4 million a year in sales. The company has a good safety record, and the insurance company that has PPI’s liability policy has not had to pay any claims to employees for several years. There have been no major injuries of any kind since the company began.
Tom Griffin, the owner, takes great pride in the interior design and working conditions at PPI. He describes the interior of the plant as being like a hospital compared with his competitors. Order, efficiency, and cleanliness are top priorities at PPI. It is a remarkably well-organized manufacturing company.
(Continued)
(Continued)
PPI has a unique approach to guaranteeing safe working conditions. Each year, management brings in outside consultants from the insurance industry and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to audit the plant for unsafe conditions. Each year, the inspections reveal a variety of concerns, which are then addressed through new equipment, repairs, and changed work-flow designs. Although the inspectors con­tinue to find opportunities for improvement, the overall safety improves each year.
The attorneys for PPI are very opposed to the company’s approach to safety. The lawyers are vehemently against the procedure of having out­side auditors. If a lawsuit were to be brought against PPI, the attorneys argue that any previous issues could be used as evidence of a historical pattern and knowledge of unsafe conditions. In effect, the audits that PPI conducts voluntarily could be used by plaintiffs to strengthen a case against the company.
The president and management recognize the potential downside of outside audits, but they point out that the periodic reviews are critical to the ongoing improvement of the safety of everyone in the plant. The purpose of the audits is to make the shop a secure place, and that is what has occurred. Management also points out that PPI employees have responded positively to the audits and to the changes that result.
Questions
Questions
I. As a company, would you .describe PPI as having an identifiable phi­losophy of moral values? How do its policies contribute to this philosophy?
2. .
2. .
2. .
Which ethical perspective best describes PPI’s approach to safety issues? Would you say PPI takes a utilitarian-, duty-, or virtue-based approach?
3. .
3. .
Regarding safety issues, how does management see its responsibilities toward its employees? How do the attorneys see their responsibilities toward PPI?
4. .
4. .
Why does it appear that the ethics of PPI and its attorneys are in conflict?

CASE 16.3
Reexamining a Proposal
After working I 0 years as the only minority manager in a large printing company, David Jones decided he wanted to set out on his own. Because of his experience and prior connections, David was confident he could survive in the printing business, but he wondered whether he should buy an existing business or start a new one. As part of his planning, David contacted a professional employer organization (PEO), which had a ster­ling reputation, to obtain an estimate for human resource services for a startup com
In the meantime, David found an existing small company that he liked, and he bought it.Then he contacted the PEO to sign a contract for human resource services at the previously quoted price. David was ready to take ownership and begin his new venture. He signed the original contract as presented.
After David signed the contract, the PEO reviewed the earlier pro­posal in light of the actual figures of the company he had purchased. This review raised many concerns for management. Although the goals of the PEO were to provide high-quality service, be competitive in the market­place, and make a reasonable profit, the quote it had provided David appeared to be much too high. It was not comparable in any way with the other service contracts the PEO had with other companies of similar size and function.
During the review, it became apparent that several concerns had to be addressed. First, the original estimate made the PEO appear as if it was gouging the client. Although the client had signed the original contract, was it fair to charge such a high price for the proposed services? Would charging such high fees mean that the PEO would lose this client or similar clients in the future? Another concern was related to the PEO’s support of minority businesses. For years, the PEO had prided itself on having str
(Continued)
(Continued)
unfair to a minority client. Finally, the PEO was concerned with the impli­cations of the contract for the salesperson who drew up the proposal for David. Changing the estimated costs in the proposal would have a signifi­cant impact on the salesperson’s commission, which would negatively affect the morale of others in the PEO’s sales area.
After a reexamination of the original proposal, a new contract was drawn up for David’s company with lower estimated costs. Though lower than the original proposal, the new contract remained much higher than the average contract in the printing industry. David willingly signed the new contract.
Questions
Questions
I. .What role should ethics play in the writing of a proposal such as this? Did the PEO do the ethical thing for David? How much money should the PEO have tried to make? What would you have done if you were part of management at the PEO?
2. .
2. .
2. .
From a deontological (duty) perspective and a teleological (conse­quences) perspective, how would you describe the ethics of the PEO?
3. .
3. .
Based on what the PEO did for David, how would you evaluate the PEO on the ethical principles of respect, service, justice, honesty, and community?
4. .
4. .
How would you assess the ethics of the PEO if you were David? If you were among the PEO management? If you were the salesperson? If you were a member of the printing community?

LEADERSHIP INSTRUMENT
LEADERSHIP INSTRUMENT
Ethics and morals often are regarded as very personal, and we resist having others judge us about them. We also resist judging others. Perhaps for this reason, very few questionnaires have been designed to measure ethical leadership. To address this problem, Craig and Gustafson ( 1998) devel­oped the Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PUS), which is based on utili­tarian ethical theory. The PLIS attempts to evaluate leaders’ ethics by measuring the degree to which coworkers see them as acting in accor­dance
Ethics and morals often are regarded as very personal, and we resist having others judge us about them. We also resist judging others. Perhaps for this reason, very few questionnaires have been designed to measure ethical leadership. To address this problem, Craig and Gustafson ( 1998) devel­oped the Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PUS), which is based on utili­tarian ethical theory. The PLIS attempts to evaluate leaders’ ethics by measuring the degree to which coworkers see them as acting in accor­dance
number of people. Craig and Gustafson found PLIS ratings to be strongly and positively related to subordinates’ job satisfaction, and negatively related to their desire to quit their jobs.
Parry and Proctor-Thomson (2002) used the PLIS in a study of 1,3 54 managers and found that perceived integrity was positively related to trans­formational leadership. Leaders who were seen as transformational were also seen as having more integrity. In addition, the researchers found that perceived integrity was positively correlated with leader and organizational effecti veness.
By taking the PLIS, you can try to assess the ethical integrity of a man­ager you know, such as one of your supervisors. At the same time, the PLIS \\ill allow you to apply the ideas we discussed in the chapter to a real-world setting. By focusing on observers’ impressions, the PLIS represents one way to assess the principle of ethiealleaclership.
In addition, the PLIS can be used for feedback to employees in organi­zations and as a part of leadership training and development. Finally, if used as part of an organizational climate survey, the PLIS could be useful as a \\·ay of iclenti~·ing areas in an organization that may need an ethics intervention (Craig & Gustafson, 1998).
Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PLIS)
Instructions:The following items concern your perceptions of another person’s
Instructions:The following items concern your perceptions of another person’s
behavior.
Circle responses to indicate how well each item describes the person
you are rating.
Key: I = Not at all 2 = Barely 3 =Somewhat 4 =Well
Key: I = Not at all 2 = Barely 3 =Somewhat 4 =Well
I. .
I. .
Puts his or her personal interests ahead of the organization I 2 3
4 .
2. .
2. .
Would risk other people to protect himself or herself I 2 3
4 .
in work matters .
3. .
3. .
Enjoys turning down requests 2 3
4 .
4. .
4. .
Deliberately fuels conflict between other people 2 3
4 .
5. .
5. .
Would blackmail an employee if she or he thought she or 2 3
4 .
he could get away with it .
6. .
6. .
Would deliberately exaggerate people’s mistakes to 2 3
4 .
make them look bad to others .
7. .
7. .
Would treat some people better if they were of the other 2 3
4 .
sex or belonged to a different ethnic group .
8. .
8. .
Ridicules people for their mistakes 2 3
4 .
9. .
9. .
Can be trusted with confidential information 2 3
4 .
10. .
10. .
Would lie to me 2 3
4 .
II. .
II. .
Is evil 2 3
4 .
12. .
12. .
Is not interested in tasks that don’t bring personal glory 2 3
4 .
or recognition .
13. .
13. .
Would do things that violate organizational policy and 2 3
4 .
then expect others to cover for him or her .
14. .
14. .
Would allow someone else to be blamed for his or .her mistake 2 3
4 .
IS.
IS.
Would deliberately avoid responding to e-mail, telephone, 2 3
4 .
or other messages to cause problems for someone else .
16.
16.
Would make trouble for someone who got on his or 2 3
4 .
her bad side .
17. .
17. .
Would engage in sabotage against the organization 2 3
4 .
18. .
18. .
Would deliberately distort what other people say 2 3
4 .
19. .
19. .
Is a hypocrite 2 3
4 .
20. .
20. .
Is vindictive 2 3
4 .
21. .
21. .
Would try to take credit for other people’s ideas 2 3
4 .
22. .
22. .
Likes to bend the rules 2 3
4 .
23. .
23. .
Would withhold information or constructive feedback 2 3
4 .
because he or she wants someone to fail .
24. .
24. .
Would spread rumors or gossip to try to hurt people 2 3
4 .
or the organization .
25. .
25. .
Is rude or uncivil to coworkers 2 3
4 .
26. .
26. .
Would try to hurt someone’s career because of a grudge 2 3
4 .
27. .
27. .
Shows unfair favoritism toward some people 2 3
4 .

28. .
28. .
28. .
Would steal from the organization 2 3 4
29. .
29. .
Would falsify records if it would help his or her 2 3 4 work situation
30. .
30. .
Has high moral standards 2 3 4

SOURCE: Adapted from a version of the PUS that appeared in Leadership Quarterly, 9(2).
S. B. Craig and S. B. Gustafson, “Perceived Leader Integrity Scale: An Instrument for Assessing Employee Perceptions of Leader Integrity,” pp. 143-144, 1998. Used with permission of the authors.
Scoring
Scoring
The PUS measures your perceptions of another person’s integrity in an organizational setting. Your responses on the PUS indicate the degree to which you see that person’s behavior as ethical.
Score the questionnaire by doing the following. First, reverse the scores on items 9 and 30 (i.e., I becomes 4, 2 becomes 3, 3 becomes 2, and 4 becomes I). Next, sum the responses on all 30 items. A low score on the questionnaire indicates that you perceive the person you evaluated to be highly ethicai.A high score indicates that you perceive that person to be very unethical. The inter­pretation of what the score represents follows.
Scoring Interpretation
Scoring Interpretation
Your score is a measure of your perceptions of another person’s ethical integrity. Based on previous findings (Craig & Gustafson, 1998), the following interpretations can be made about your total score:
• .
• .
• .
30-32 High ethical: If your score is in this range, it means that you see the person you evaluated as highly ethical. Your impression is that the person is very trustworthy and principled.
• .
• .
33-45 Moderate ethical: Scores in this range mean that you see the person as moderately ethical. Your impression is that the person might engage in some unethical behaviors under certain conditions.
• .
• .
46-120 Low ethical: Scores in this range describe people who are seen as very unethical. Your impression is that the person you evaluated does things that are dishonest, unfair, and unprincipled almost any time he or she has the opportunity.

SUMMARY
SUMMARY
Although there has been an interest in ethics for thousands of years, very little theoretical research exists on the nature of leadership ethics. This chapter has presented an overview of ethical theories as they apply to the leadership process.
Ethical theory provides a set of principles that guide leaders in making decisions about how to act and how to be morally decent. In the Western tradition, ethical theories typically are divided into two kinds: theories about conduct and theories about character. Theories about conduct emphasize the consequences of leader behavior (teleological approach) or the rules that govern their behavior ( deontological approach). Virtue­based theories focus on the character of leaders, and they stress qualities such
Ethics plays a central role in the leadership process. Because leadership involves influence and leaders often have more power than followers, they have an enormous ethical responsibility for how they affect other people. Leaders need to engage followers to accomplish mutual goals; therefore, it is imperative that they treat followers and their ideas with respect and dig­nity. Leaders also play a major role in establishing the ethical climate in their organization; that role requires leaders to be particula
Several prominent leadership scholars, including Heifetz, Burns, and Greenleaf, have made unique contributions to our understanding of ethical leadership. The theme common to these authors is an ethic of caring, which pays attention to followers ‘ needs and the importance of leader­follower relationships.
This chapter suggests that sound ethical leadership is rooted in respect, service, justice, honesty, and community. It is the duty of leaders to treat others with respect-to listen to them closely and be tolerant of opposing points of view. Ethical leaders serve others by being altruistic, placing others’ welfare ahead of their own in an effort to contribute to the common good. Justice requires that leaders place fairness at the center of their decision making, including the challenging task of being fair t
I 0
16.4 Chapter Summary
includes searching for goals that are compatible with the goals of follow­ers and with society as a whole.
Research on ethics and leadership has several strengths. At a time when the public is demanding higher levels of moral responsibility from its leaders, this research pro,·ides some direction in how to think about ethical leadership and how to practice it. In addition, this research reminds us that leadership is a moral process. Scholars should include ethics as an integral part of the leadership studies and research. Third, this area of research describes basic principles that we can use in developing real-
On the negative side, this research area of ethical leadership is still in an earlv stage of development. Fe\\· studies have been clone that directly address the nature of ethical leadership. As a result, the theoretical formu­lations about the process remain tentative. Second, this area of research relies on the \Hitings of a fe,,· individuals whose work has been primarily descripti,·e and anecdotal. As a result, the development of theory on lcad­ersh ip ethics lacks the traditional empirical support that
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REFERENCES
REFERENCES
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Block, P. (!993). Stewardship: Choosing service over self-interest. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Bowie, N. E. (1991 ). Challenging the egoistic paradigm. Business Ethics Quarterly, 1(1 ), 1-21.
Burns, J. M. ( 1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.
Carlson, D. S., & Perrewe, P. L. (1995). Institutionalization of organizational ethics through transformational leadership. Journal ofBusiness Ethics, 14(10), 829-838. Ciulla, J. B. ( 1998). Ethics, the heart of leadership. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Ciulla, J. B. (200 1). Carving leaders from the warped wood of humanity. Canadian Journal ofAdministrative Sciences, 18(4), 313-319.
Ciulla, J. B. (2003). The ethics of leadership. Belmont, CA: Wadsworthffhomson Learning. Covey, S. R. (1990). Principle-centered leadership. New York: Fi reside. Craig, S. B., & Gustafson, S. B. (1998). Perceived Leader Integrity Scale: An instru­
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De Pree, M. (!989). Leadership is an art. New York: Doubleday.
Frankena, W. (1973). Ethics (2nd eel.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Gilligan, C. (!982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s develop­ment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gini, A. (!998). Moral leadership and business ethics. In J. B. Ciulla (Eel.), Ethics, the heart of leadership (pp. 27-46). Westport, CT: Greenwood. Greenleaf, R. K. (!970). The servant as leader. Ne11ton Centre, MA: Robert K. Greenleaf Center. Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Sen>ant leadership: A ioumey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. New York: Paulist. Heifetz, R.
Kitchener, K. S. (1984). Intuition, critical evaluation, and ethical principles: The foundation for ethical decisions in counseling psychology. Counseling Psycholo­gist, 12(3), 43-55.
Komives, S. R., Lucas, N., & McMahon, T. R. (1998). ExfJloring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference. San Francisco: J ossey-Bass. Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (1995). The leadership challenge: How to keep getting
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Parry, K. W., & Proctor-Thomson, S. B. (2002). Perceived integrity of transforma­tional leaders in organisational settings. Journal of Business Ethics, 35, 75-96. Pojman, L. P. (1995 ). Ethical theory: Classical and contemporary readings (2nd eel.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Price, T. (2008). Leadership ethics: An introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Boston: Harvard University Press. Rost, J. C. ( 1991 ). Leadership for the twenty-first century. New York: Praeger. Schminke, M., Ambrose, M. L., & Noel, T. W. (1997). The effect of ethical frame­
works on perceptions of organizational justice. Academy of Management Jour­nal, -10(5), 1190-1207. Schumann, P. L. (200 1 ). A moral principles framework for human resource man­agement ethics. Human Resource Management Review, 11 , 93-111. Senge, P. M. ( 1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning orga­nization. New York: Doubledav. Trevino, L. K. (1986). Ethical decision making in organizations: A person-situation interactionist model. Academy of Management Review, 11 (3), 601-617.
Trevino, L. K., Brmm, M., & Hartman, L. P. (2003). A qualitative investigation of perceived executive ethical leadership: Perceptions from inside and outside the executi ve suite. Human Relations, 56( 1), 5-37.
Velasquez, M.G. (1992). Business ethics: Concepts and cases (3 rcl ed. ). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Wame, L. (2009, May 30). A promise to be ethical in an era of immorality. The New Yorl< Times. Retrieved on June 15, 2009, from / 0 5/30/busincss http://www.nytimes.com/2009

Copyright © 1969 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.
Stephenson, Jr., M. O. 2010. Considering the relationships among social conflict, social imaginaries,
resilience, and community-based organization leadership. Ecology and Society XX(YY): ZZ. [online] URL:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/volXX/issYY/artZZ/

Research, part of a Special Feature on Resilience Through Multi-scalar Collaboration
Considering the Relationships among Social Conflict, Social Imaginaries,
Resilience, and Community-based Organization Leadership

Max O. Stephenson, Jr. 1

ABSTRACT. This article focuses on the question of what role community-based organization leaders play
in shaping the possibility for the emergence of new social imaginaries. It argues that deep social conflicts
and efforts to secure purposive change are likely to demand strong civil society organization response and
that certain forms of imagination are necessary and must be actively employed among community-based
leaders if new imaginaries are to be discerned and effectively shared in ways that encourage sustained
dialogue and the development of new social understandings. The article explores these briefly and draws
illustratively upon two relevant examples from the peacebuilding literature to contend that such imagination-
led leadership is necessary to catalyze new social imaginaries that can lead to more resilient social orders.

Key Words: post-conflict situations; resilience; social imaginaries

INTRODUCTION

Bercovitch (1996) has observed that the lion’s share
of enduring social conflicts revolve around
dissensual issues over values. These may undermine
group capacities even to imagine “the other” with
anything besides distrust and disdain. Long-term
experience with efforts to address intractable
differences has suggested that such antagonism may
rest in terror, isolation, and/or ignorance, and that
these understandings and the behaviors they imply
must change if a new social condition is to obtain
(Lederach 1995, 2005). What is less clear is how
best to bring about such change and the ways of
knowing or understanding such connotes. Some
analysts have offered prescriptive processes for
mediation while others have embraced so-called
Track One or Track Two diplomatic forms and
forums of negotiation to address this challenge. This
article focuses instead on the question of what role
community-based organizations and their leaders
may play in shaping the possibility for the
emergence of new social imaginaries (Taylor 2004).
It argues social conflicts and significant social
change are likely to demand strong civil society
organization response and that certain forms of
imagination are necessary and must be actively
employed among community-based leaders if new
imaginaries are to be discerned and effectively

shared in ways that permit sustained dialogue and
the development of new social understandings.

The article explores these briefly and draws upon
two relevant examples from the peace-building
literature to contend that such imagination-led
leadership is necessary to create and to catalyze new
social imaginaries that can overcome social conflict
and encourage social change, leading to more
resilient social orders. The article concludes by
identifying characteristics of leadership required to
elicit new imaginaries that may successfully address
enduring values dissensus in communities.

SOCIAL IMAGINARIES AND SOCIAL
CONFLICT

The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that
community populations come collectively to
imagine their lives in specific and often
unconsciously shared ways. He labels these “social
imaginaries” and suggests that they are variegated
and subtle, but no less powerful for possessing those
characteristics:

Our social imaginary at any given time is
complex. It incorporates a sense of the
normal expectations we have of each other,

1Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance

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the kind of common understanding that
enables us to carry out the collective
practices that make up our social life. This
incorporates some sense of how we all fit
together in carrying out the common
practice. Such understanding is both
factual and normative; that is, we have a
sense of how things usually go, but this is
interwoven with an idea of how they ought
to go, of what missteps would invalidate the
practice. (Taylor 2004:24)

In this view it is quite possible for a community’s
social imaginary broadly to embrace norms that
exclude specific populations from enjoying a full
share of their human rights, or to include a
conception that one or more groups must exist in
conflict for whatever constellation of social,
political, economic, or other reasons. As Taylor has
observed:

At any given time, we can speak of the
‘repertory’ of collective actions at the
disposal of a given group of society. … The
discriminations we have to make to carry
these off, knowing whom to speak to and
when and how, carry an implicit map of
social space, of what kinds of people we can
associate with in what ways and in what
circumstances. (Taylor 2004:25-26)

Importantly, imaginaries are not theories and, unlike
theories, they are held by large groups of people and
in the form of widely shared narratives:

I adopt the term imaginary (i) because my
focus is on the way ordinary people
‘imagine’ their social surroundings, and
this is often not expressed in theoretical
terms, but is carried in images, stories and
legends. (Taylor 2004:23)

For example, much of the population in the South
in the United States in the pre-civil rights movement
years ascribed to a social imaginary that could not
conceive that Rosa Parks, an African-American
woman, should possess the right to sit wherever she
wished in a public transit bus. Similarly, many
families in Northern Ireland during the long years
of the “Troubles” acculturated their children to
norms that Roman Catholics could not associate
with Protestants, and vice versa, and that people
from certain neighborhoods in Belfast, Londonderry,
and other communities could not associate with

those from nearby locations. Violations of these
norms were often met with violence, whether the
horror unleashed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965 during the
Martin Luther King, Jr.-led march for civil rights,
or the frequent murders and bombings in Northern
Ireland during the Troubles, when Loyalist
paramilitaries or members of the Irish Republican
Army believed that their social understandings had
been abridged.

These examples suggest several critical attributes
of social imaginaries. First, these conceptions
constitute a critical way in which those holding them
make sense of their worlds. They represent alternate
ways of knowing. Second, however significant and
powerful, the rationale or rationales underpinning
them often go unarticulated. Rather, they are
espoused and motivate action because they
constitute widely shared views of the world and how
it ought properly to be ordered among members of
specific groups or communities. Third, imaginaries
govern the possibility and portent of human
relationships. Many in the American South could
not conceive that African Americans could or
should enjoy equal legal rights and social equality.
Fourth, imaginaries may be changed, but only if
those espousing them are given reason to bring them
to consciousness, reflect afresh on their foundations,
and embrace an alternate conception.

That is, new imaginaries do not just happen; they
are socially constructed. Changing them requires
emotional and cognitive work built on interactive
processes of individual and social awareness and
reflection. That dynamic set of processes may entail
violence and sacrifice of the sort experienced by the
Selma marchers, as those responding to voices for
change lashed out in favor of existing imaginaries.
Social change is hard won because it demands both
emotional and intellectual work of populations and
at a deep level. It demands a shift in values, and
therefore in how individuals and populations make
sense of their lives.

COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS,
RESILIENCE, AND ADAPTIVE WORK

In a recent work on disaster and resilience, Paton
and Johnston (2006) argued that catastrophic natural
or human events might be seized as opportunities
for communities to catalyze the adaptive work
necessary to secure long-lived change in their

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capacities to respond to future such occurrences.
Their argument parallels Taylor’s philosophic
inquiry, but focuses on social response to the
aftermath of disaster-induced change rather than on
the dynamic construction of potential for change:

In this book, resilience is a measure of how
well people and societies can adapt to a
changed reality and capitalize on the new
possibilities offered. To accommodate the
former the definition of resilience here
embodies the notion of adaptive capacity. …
Neither a capacity to adapt nor a capacity
for post-disaster growth and development
will happen by chance. Achieving these
outcomes requires a conscious effort on the
part of people, communities and societal
institutions to develop the resources and
processes required to ensure this can
happen and that it can be maintained over
time. (Paton and Johnston 2006:8)

These authors recognize that effectively reacting to
disaster and creating conditions for sustainability in
its aftermath typically requires broad scale
adaptation, learning, and change in a community’s
values. Values and norms inhere first in individuals
and must change there, and those new conceptions
must be shared and adopted by others thereafter if
they are to constitute a new way of knowing in a
community. That is, individual perspectives must
change and those new views must be diffused across
relevant geographic populations before a change in
imaginaries may occur. Community-based
nongovernmental organizations and their leaders
are well situated to play significant roles in
mobilizing constituencies to promote new values
and ways of knowing because they are generally
trusted by their supporters and often mediate
between them and public and international
organizations in their areas of service and employ
locally legitimate mechanisms as they do so
(Menkhaus 1996).

Governments and international organizations also
often give these organizations a role by dint of
employing many as direct agents of contracted
program implementation or by relying on them as
first responders in the event of disaster (Paton and
Johnston 2006). These roles allow interested NGOs
opportunities to offer new paths for future
community action and to articulate challenges to
existing ones in ways that governments may not
always be situated to press. For example, southern

state governments were unwilling to change
existing Jim Crow practices without substantial civil
society organization pressure and then only with the
active engagement of the national government. This
change process unfolded over time and was surely
not the lone product of civil society organization
action, but it is unclear whether or when it might
have occurred without sustained advocacy efforts
by such groups.

Ronald Heifetz has developed the idea of dynamic
and evolutionary adaptive change implicit in such
efforts in his conception of leadership:

When we teach, write about and model the
exercise of leadership, we inevitably
support or challenge people’s conceptions
of themselves, their roles and most
importantly their ideas about how social
systems make progress on problems.
Leadership is a normative concept because
implicit in people’s notions of leadership
are images of a social contract. (Heifetz
1994:14)

This study examines the usefulness of
examining leadership in terms of adaptive
work. Adaptive work consists of the
learning required to address conflicts in the
values people hold, or to diminish the gap
between the values people stand for and the
reality they face. Adaptive work requires a
change in values, beliefs, or behavior.
(Heifetz 1994:22)

Both adaptive work and adaptive capacity imply
purposeful efforts to secure change in existing social
imaginaries to further social change (Heifetz et al.
2009). Both require management of the conflicts
that arise from any challenge of dominant ways of
knowing in a community. Leaders are expected to
envision these possibilities and to create conditions
that allow their communities to address them. Paton
and Johnston argue that such engagement is
necessary both to cope effectively with disasters
and, in their aftermath, to create resilient
communities. Heifetz contends that adaptive work
represents the essence of democratic leadership as
those charged with community responsibility seek
to catalyze community awareness and capacity to
secure social learning to address pressing social
challenges.

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All three authors agree that the necessary change
can occur only if ways and means are found to permit
the broader population to reflect on existing social
assumptions, consider those in light of current
conditions and competing values, and adopt fresh
views based on that reflective process. Adaptive
work and adaptive capacity alike require that
relevant populations come to consider anew their
basic assumptions concerning an important issue or
issues and often, shift their stance and values
concerning those to address changes in social,
political, or economic conditions or to realize more
fully their own stated aspirations. Heifetz argues
that we look to leaders foremost to help frame such
choices and their implicit conflicts, and to manage
those disputes when they are manifest. Paton and
Johnston contend that disaster-afflicted communities
must accomplish just such work if they are to create
resiliency.

For his part, Twigg has suggested similarly that
nongovernmental organizations and other community
leaders must work to create what he dubs an
“enabling environment” for the development of
disaster resilience (Twigg 2007). Enabling
environments exhibit a number of characteristics,
including political and policy consensus concerning
the importance of disaster risk reduction and strong
community support for the steps necessary to secure
resilience (Twigg 2007). This last requirement
suggests a key role for leaders who must attain such
outcomes. Heifetz contends that leaders engaged in
adaptive work must obtain a number of conditions,
including the following, if they are to succeed in
overcoming deep social dissensus or to change
existing imaginaries:

● Provide those communities affected an
opportunity to test their assumptions against
current conditions, e.g., to conduct a “reality
test” of their perspectives.

● Secure ways and means by which to bring all
parties involved to respect the perspectives of
all sides to existing conflicts and seek means
for those groups to come at least to understand
the views of those with whom they see
themselves in disagreement.

● Seek mechanisms by which to increase
community cohesion around a macrolevel set
of shared aspirations.

● Develop shared norms of responsibility
taking and learning among all groups
involved in community change processes
(Heifetz 1994:26-27).

Leaders successful in prompting adaptive work in
their communities create thereby an enabling
environment for the development of increased
community resilience.

LEADERS, ADAPTIVE WORK, AND
FORMS OF IMAGINATION[1]

Whatever their character and responsibilities, we
ask leaders to help us make sense of our
environments. People want to make sense of the
world and leaders are pressed to help them do so.
To address those claims, however, leaders must first
understand the imaginaries or ways in which others
are viewing their lives. This they do by exercising
a variety of facets of imagination. Four of these
capacities, i.e., aesthetic imagination, cognitive
imagination, affective imagination, and moral
imagination, are briefly catalogued here. Although
each is treated as if separate, these forms of
imagination overlap and are interrelated in practice.
Each aspect of imagination yields information and
addresses a dimension or dimensions that are critical
for leaders as they engage in the dialectical process
of seeking to catalyze adaptive work. The point of
this discussion is not that civil society organizations
alone can catalyze social change, but that the leaders
of such entities are neatly positioned to press for (re)
examination of prevailing views when even
government officials cannot and that they exercise
a variety for forms of imagination as they do so.
Again, they are not alone in employing these
capacities, but their efforts may help to elicit
changes in attitudes or understanding when these
are necessary to secure purposive social change.

Aesthetic imagination

Leaders are expected to see possibilities and to
discern and develop paths of action that otherwise
might go unexplored. One primary mechanism both
to comprehend existing perspectives and to
challenge those claims is via the aesthetic
imagination. As Taylor observed concerning social
imaginaries, no form is more powerful than
narrative, story, theatre or, poetry, or its equivalent,

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to challenge existing claims. As Maxine Greene has
suggested about aesthetics, imagination, and
learning:

None of our encounters can happen,
however, without the release of imagination,
the capacity to look through the capacities
of the actual, to bring as-ifs into being in
experience. … Imagination may be our
primary means of forming an understanding
of what goes on under the heading of
“reality:” imagination may be responsible
for the texture of our experience. (Greene
1995:140)

In his final book, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse
offered a thoughtful critique of Marxist aesthetics
that suggested similarly that those who exercise
high order aesthetic imagination necessarily subvert
accepted social norms and mores; that is, they often
contest accepted imaginaries. As he observed in The
Aesthetic Dimension,

Thereby art creates the realm in which the
subversion of experience proper to art
becomes possible: the world formed by art
is recognized as a reality, which is
suppressed and distorted in the given
reality. This experience culminates in
extreme situations (of love and death, guilt
and failure, but also joy, happiness and
fulfillment) which explode the given reality
in the name of a truth normally denied or
even unheard. (Marcuse 1978:6)

We look to leaders to provide just such
conceptualizations of possibility and these, as
Marcuse would contend, typically “subvert”
existing conditions and assumptions. Leaders are
expected to see possibilities and to discern and
develop paths of action that otherwise might go
unexplored. They are further required to undertake
these actions in ways that are “visionary,” that is,
that chart new ways of thinking about a concern.
Thus, leaders are asked to address received ways of
understanding and not merely to accept them.

Leaders also employ the aesthetic imagination in at
least two other ways. First, they are asked to capture
the complex in simple and readily graspable terms.
This is perhaps especially true in democratic and
fast-paced industrialized societies. They are
enjoined not merely to spin slogans, which may
sadly often be substituted, but to capture in a few

words or a brief narrative or symbol a complex
reality to obtain a connection and shared aspiration
with those with whom they are engaged. Societies,
communities, and organizations alike demand these
accountings and they stipulate likewise that these
renderings be concise, resonant, and powerful, that
they be in a word, elegant. Second, leaders are often
called upon to identify the criteria by which stories
or claims are judged. This powerful role is linked
closely to whether leaders are to succeed when they
attempt to change the dominant frame or imaginary
of the organization, community, or other entity with
which they are engaged. In such instances, it may
not be sufficient to offer a compelling narrative or
story alone. It may also be necessary to provide an
alternate set of criteria by which competing claims
ought rightly to be understood.

Cognitive imagination

Although cognitive imagination is not identified
solely by raw intelligence, it nonetheless appears
unassailable that leaders must possess the necessary
acumen to sort through complex concerns,
understand them, and suggest mechanisms by which
they might reasonably be addressed (Northouse
2007). This facet of imagination also requires
leaders to help citizens or stakeholders make sense
of their environments at various analytical scales,
whether these are nations, subnational political
jurisdictions, communities, or organizations.
Organizations, whether for-profit, nonprofit, or
public, may not change course unless alternate
conceptions of shared purpose or processes are
brought to the fore and present conceptions are
challenged. Citizen and stakeholder groups
implicitly, and often explicitly, ask leaders to see
relationships among ideas, concerns, or connections
they might not, to suggest how those claims are
related and then to use their aesthetic imagination
to provide a narrative of meaning linked to what
they seek to describe.

This set of capacities demands high-order analytical
thinking at what some scholars have dubbed the
metacognitive level (Turiel 1983, Kohlberg and
Candee 1984). Metalevel analysis suggests that
leaders are not only expected to grasp and wrestle
with complexities and to make sense of them, but
also to stand above them to be able to describe in
compelling ways their underlying structure and
relationships to allied concerns. That is, they must
make plain to their constituents their understanding

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of how the issues under consideration might be
viewed and why in convincing ways. Addressing
that imperative requires strong cognitive reasoning.

Affective imagination

Leaders are expected to exercise high-order
interpersonal communication capacities (Graen and
Uhl-Bien 1995). These typically require that they
be able to function comfortably with diverse
individuals and communicate clearly and
effectively as they do so (Fisher and Ellis 1990,
Senge et al. 2004). In addition, these capacities
demand at their core two additional capabilities.
First, many leadership scholars suggest that leaders
must operate from profound self-knowledge (Burns
1978, Heifetz 1994, Senge et al. 2004, Northouse
2007). Such self-awareness may allow them to
control their reactions and to discipline themselves
as they relate to others with whom they may have
differences, or who present difficult challenges
emotionally or intellectually. Second, successful
leaders exude and practice actively what has been
variously labeled other-regardingness or empathy
(Turiel 1983, Hoffman 2000). They appear able to
perceive the needs of those with whom they interact
and genuinely to appreciate and act on those
requirements. Each of these matters merits brief
consideration.

Self-knowledge provides leaders a dais on which to
stand as they consider possibilities and the views of
others with whom they are engaged. Self-
knowledge permits leaders to listen actively and to
discern the assumptions as well as articulated needs
of constituents and stakeholders (Fisher 1997).
Personal awareness also permits leaders to negotiate
alternate ways of knowing and to craft metalevel
cognitive possibilities because it implies self-
knowledge of just these concerns. Self-knowledge
permits a more open and empathetic response to
other ways of knowing because one understands
one’s own imaginary well. Listening attentively and
openly to those ideas and epistemologies offered by
others, even when these deeply contravene one’s
own, is made possible, if not always comfortable,
by that personal knowledge and continuing process
of reflection (Gilligan 1982).

The moral imagination

In a thoughtful book concerned with international
peacebuilding efforts in which he reflected on
decades of seeking to resolve deep impasses and
conflicts, John Paul Lederach defined the moral
imagination generally as “… the capacity to imagine
something rooted in the challenges of the real world
yet giving birth to that which does not yet exist”
(Lederach 2005: 29). For his part, and similarly, the
influential critic and thinker Russell Kirk
popularized the idea of the moral imagination in
recent years. Wesley McDonald has sought to
capture Kirk’s understanding of the moral
imagination:

Kirk described the moral imagination “as
that power of ethical perception which
strides beyond the barriers of private
experience and events of the moment,
especially the higher form of this power
exercised in poetry and art. … A uniquely
human faculty, not shared with the lower
forms of life, the moral imagination
comprises man’s power to perceive ethical
truth, abiding law in the perceived chaos of
many events.” Without the moral
imagination, man would live merely from
day to day, or rather moment to moment, as
dogs do. “It is the strange faculty—
inexplicable if men are assumed to have an
animal nature only—of discerning greatness,
justice and order beyond the bars of
appetite and self-interest.” (McDonald 2004:55)

McDonald’s characterization suggests that exercise
of the moral imagination demands that its
practitioner act on behalf of a collectivity beyond
self. The moral imagination is therefore innately
creative and intuitive even as it is concerned with
needs beyond those that serve the leader alone.
Artful use of the moral imagination will cause
leaders first to consider alternate social assumptions
and second, to seek creatively to deepen mutual
awareness of what they discover in so doing. As
they do this, they will seek to look outside
themselves both to ascertain needs and to justify and
legitimate how they act to address them. As such,
the moral imagination is at once an attitude, a moral
claim, and an acuity.

If community-based NGO leaders employ these
facets or forms of imagination, they will do so in a
specific historical, social, and economic context.

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The analysis turns next to a discussion of the roles
of NGOs as they seek to catalyze adaptive work and
address long-lived social conflicts. Following an
introduction, the discussion highlights two case
examples to suggest the ways in which contexts may
shape NGO capacity and scope for action.
Thereafter, the paper turns to a discussion of the
characteristics of community-based leadership and
the role of the various forms of imagination in
securing adaptive change.

ENDURING SOCIAL CONFLICT,
PEACEBUILDING NGOs, AND ADAPTIVE
WORK

It is unfortunately not difficult to develop a list of
nations and communities in which various forms of
long-lived social conflict have led to violence and
varying degrees of breakdown of civil order. Recent
examples include Northern Ireland, Kenya, Ivory
Coast, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Israel/Palestine, and the
former Yugoslavia. This roll suggests no dearth of
opportunity for NGO leaders to engage in the
exercise of the forms of imagination treated above
and to press efforts to create enabling environments
that permit the adaptive work necessary to allow the
conflicting parties and their communities to come
to acknowledge the imaginaries of “the others” in
their conflicts. These disputes are multifaceted and
rooted deeply in historical conditions and
perceptions (Goodhand and Lewer 1999, Shirlow
and Murtagh 2006). Some are tied to ethnicity,
others to economic conditions, some to religious
beliefs, still others to conflicts over territory, and
some exhibit elements of all of these factors and
more. Indeed, most perduring social conflict is
multivalent. The role of community-based NGOs in
two such conflicts, in Northern Ireland and in the
former Yugoslavia, is treated briefly below to
suggest the ways in which each raised prevailing
imaginaries to view and articulated alternatives for
public consideration.

What is most pressing in addressing any abiding
social conflict is the development of mechanisms
that allow the parties both to grasp and respect the
imaginaries of the other and to act on that knowledge
in good faith thereafter to create new and shared
possibilities that may then guide new behaviors and
efforts to change community conditions. This may
occur in any number of ways and generally must
obtain among actors across analytic scales as well
(Elliott 2002). NGO/civil society organization

leaders may play important roles in allowing for the
evolutionary social learning processes aimed at
securing a modicum of understanding across social
divides. Cochrane (2000) has argued, for example,
that peace and conflict resolution, community-
based organizations were cumulatively key to the
development of the historic 1998 Good Friday
Agreement in Northern Ireland. These organizations’
efforts were not always obvious and frequently,
indeed, were not visible to the general public, but
they were nonetheless vital:

Consequently, it is important to make some
assessment of the impact of the P/CRO
(peace and conflict resolution organizations)
sector on the ‘peace process’ in Northern
Ireland and its contribution to civil society
generally. Actually doing this is extremely
difficult in practical terms. In reality, much
of the most useful activity in this field is
conducted invisibly and is not tied to
particular events. It is often not appreciable
when it is carried out, its value only
becoming apparent in combination with
other events and actions when viewed over
time. … While undramatic, it is fair to
conclude that the greatest long-term impact
of the sector was provided at the micro-level
by ‘unsung heroes’ who provided the glue
which held society together during the
worst periods of conflict. (Cochrane 2000:17-18)

One such organization in Northern Ireland is the
Community Arts Forum. The Forum, the 1993
brainchild of Belfast artists Tom McGill and Martin
Lynch, sought self-consciously to devise
community-based art that transcended the typical
cultural divide that separated even artistic efforts in
that divided province. One such initiative,
conceived in 1997 by Lynch and playwright Jo Egan
and researched and written with broad community
involvement in 1998 and 1999, was a cross-
community play, the “Wedding Play,” produced in
late 1999 by 11 different Catholic and Protestant
arts groups (Cleveland 2008). As its title suggests,
the play featured a wedding, in this case between a
young couple from Catholic and Protestant working
class Belfast neighborhoods respectively, and was
staged in multiple neighborhoods while featuring
60 performers from both sectarian communities.

The Wedding Play’s creators exercised affective
imagination in bringing the disparate groups
involved across sectarian lines in a joint production

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whose staging required travel and set-up among
several private residences in Protestant and Catholic
neighborhoods. The two demonstrated empathetic
imagination in building the trust necessary to cross
long-standing animosities to produce a theatrical
event that dealt with the improbable and difficult
challenges of Catholic-Protestant intermarriage as
metaphor for a broader social possibility and its
related dilemmas. Egan and Lynch practiced
cognitive imagination by envisioning the possibility
of the collaboration, despite obvious specific
roadblocks among neighborhood subpopulations,
ongoing community violence, and prevailing social
assumptions. These leaders also exercised moral
imagination by persevering in a vision of hope and
normative change anchored in an alternate social
imaginary and symbolically represented by the play.

Finally, in undertaking the play’s production and
the cross-community resident involvement it
entailed, these artist-leaders created an enabling
environment for continuing dialogue concerning
how deeply divisive and enduring social conflicts
might be addressed and what factors, precisely,
fostered their continuation.

The feminist Yugoslav peace-organization Women
in Black-Serbia (WIB) defined peace not simply as
the absence of social conflict, as had their Irish
counterparts, but also as the replacement of a regime
perceived as illegitimate with one dedicated to
social justice rooted in political equality. This need
arose as a result of the atrocities committed by and
in the name of the Milosevic regime during the
Yugoslav war in the 1990s. WIB advocated for
regime change from its founding in 1995 until the
conflict’s end, and thereafter has pressed for
governmental accountability for atrocities by a
variety of public advocacy-related activities. These
have included the collection and publication of oral
histories of women who lost their children to the
horrors of that Balkan conflict and who often still
do not know their loved ones’ whereabouts (Zajovic
et al. 2007). The group has also led a long series of
symbol-laden public demonstrations and street
events aimed at raising the salience of the Srebrenica
massacre and demanding a formal regime apology
for that horrific event (achieved in 2010, although
controversy still reigns regarding the adequacy of
that formal statement) and partnered with
community-based arts organizations, including the
theatre company DAH, to highlight the tragedies
wrought by the war and to call for transitional
justice. Most recently, WIB has teamed with a

variety of other NGOs to press for creation of a civil
society-based Regional Fact Finding Commission
on the Victims of Wars in Former Yugoslavia to
secure accountability across the war zone for those
who perpetrated war crimes. WIB has also pursued
a publications program in English as well as Serbian
to highlight its claims (Vuskovic and Trifunovic
2008).

The group’s leaders have systematically employed
aesthetic imagination to design symbolic events to
highlight their claims and to garner public dialogue,
including a partnership with the Belgrade based
DAH theatre. WIB has similarly employed
cognitive imagination both to develop the evidence
necessary, often oral histories, to press its claims in
the public square and to position those as effectively
as feasible in the broader public’s consciousness.

Stasha Zajovic and other WIB leaders have built
coalitions among an array of NGOs around calls for
justice for victims of genocide, military rape, and
other war crimes. These have required a capacity to
reach a variety of constituencies and elicit their
cooperation and support even as it has demanded
often intricate interorganizational communication.
Both of these have required continuing exercise of
affective imagination.

Finally, Women in Black-Serbia has tied its
advocacy efforts to a vision of an alternate society
in which those wronged by the war attain justice and
a new social order is created that removes the
various social tensions and fissures that
underpinned the conflict. Creating and sustaining
this vision has required moral imagination.

In Northern Ireland, the Community Arts Forum
worked tirelessly to address the fear, hatred, and
historical divisions that separated the contending
parties to produce a play designed self-consciously
to stimulate public dialogue on those concerns. The
aim was to convince those who experienced the
production at least to imagine the possibility of
living as family with those whose outlook and
upbringing did not match their own. Each had to
accord negotiating status and legitimacy to the other
and at least to countenance the development of a
new imaginary. In Serbia, WIB has employed a wide
variety of often symbolic advocacy activities both
to obtain justice for victims of war crimes and to
argue for a changed social imaginary that would
ensure those atrocities would not be repeated. As in
Northern Ireland, WIB’s leaders had not only to

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envision, but also to press for development of
processes aimed at securing peaceable opportunities
for ongoing dialogue among contending groups to
address latent assumptions that constituted the
existing social architecture of shared community
meaning. That is, each group’s leaders has led
efforts to challenge existing widely held
assumptions about “the other” and to press for
dialogue about what the assumptions of a new social
imaginary might be.

CHARACTERISTICS OF NGO
LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

These brief sketches of the roles played by these
two NGOS in two disparate contexts and geographic
locations that have addressed long-lived social
conflicts illustrate the ways these organizations and
their leaders sought to encourage adaptive work in
their communities. In each case, and despite very
different circumstances, these entities sought to
contribute to the construction of more peaceful
social conditions and thereby greater social
resilience. In each instance, leaders of these
organizations employed a variety of processes and
means to address the foundational assumptions that
underpinned the perspectives that needed
consideration if social change was to occur.

Whatever the mechanism employed, leaders had to
devise creative strategies and narratives to bridge
the divides that split their populations and subverted
existing understanding (aesthetic imagination); had
to be able to articulate perspectives that “made
sense” to their community’s residents, but that
nonetheless offered new ways of knowing
(cognitive imagination); had to share those ideas in
ways that could be heard by all, even if that message
was challenging (affective imagination); and had
finally to make ethical and moral claims that could
be understood and be seen as sufficiently
compelling (moral imagination) so as to elicit the
prospect of respectful dialogue from all concerned.

NGO leaders and their organizations had, in short,
to address their community’s divides while securing
conditions for social learning. Such change
demanded new ways of knowing and did not come
easily. The mechanisms these organizations
employed to address this principal goal were
diverse. Whatever the strategy and audience,
however, NGOs and their leaders had to understand
the values and claims that underpinned the social

imaginaries at play in their contexts and find
alternate ways of viewing their roles in the commons
that the community’s population could consider and
that held the prospect for offering an alternative to
broadly shared existing ways of knowing
(Goodhand and Lewer 1999).

CONCLUSIONS

Instead of focusing on strategies or tools for
redressing conflict, this article has explored the
nature of the challenge confronting NGOs as they
seek to address enduring social divisions in their
communities. When long-lived, these social
conflicts are typically architectonic in character and
ultimately require that these organizations and their
leaders work to create conditions in which those on
different sides come first to reflect on their own
ways of knowing and thereafter to consider
respectfully those of their perceived “opponents.”
Either of these challenges alone is daunting, but
when highlighted together, the enormity of the
obstacles becomes clear. Would-be peacebuilding
leaders must chart contrasting imaginaries, must
craft approaches to bring individuals and competing
leaders alike to reflect on them, and must manage
the conflict these steps are almost certain to create.
But they must do more. Even as they uncover
assumptions for fresh scrutiny in the name of new
possibilities, they must also convince those
involved that the risks implicit in changed
assumptions and behaviors are worth bearing and
can be justified on grounds that make moral and
cognitive sense. This set of responsibilities is
addressed necessarily in a dynamic historic and
social context in which missteps can create large
setbacks and the possibility of ruinous conflict.
There is no substitute for thoughtful and sustained
engagement that builds trust and allows for the
possible development and articulation of different
social imaginaries.

Accordingly, this article has argued that community
NGO leaders seeking to secure peace employ a
variety of facets or forms of imagination as they
seek to meet these challenges. They must employ
aesthetic imagination literally to conceive of ways
of knowing that possess the power to subvert
existing claims. They must utilize affective
imagination in countless meetings and public events
to broker trust and legitimacy and to come to
understand more fully the hopes, fears, and
assumptions of all sides to their community’s

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central conflict. They must also use their cognitive
imagination to analyze possibilities for future action
and to craft strategies aimed at eliciting their
discussion and refinement. Finally, and overarchingly,
their efforts must be driven by a moral attachment
to the common good of their community and to the
hope represented by the effective amelioration of
the conflict dividing it. They must be driven by a
passionate regard for the future and for the ethical
mitigation of conflict in their midst.

Paton and Johnston (2006) suggested that post-
disaster efforts to build community resilience
requires the rethinking of the ways of life and of
living that antedated specific disaster events. This
may require living in alternate locations, changing
the mix of economic activities that sustain
community life, or overcoming long-standing
dissensus among different social groups, or all of
these. Community resilience in short demands more
than effective disaster planning, as important as
such efforts may be. It demands social learning and
artful leadership aimed at creating enabling
environments for just possibilities to occur.

Given the complexity and interdependent array of
actors involved in creating, sustaining, and
changing community social imaginaries, these are
unlikely to shift magically with adoption of one or
another strategy, tool, or technique by either
political or civil society actors. However, sustained
efforts to clarify and articulate differences and
similarities among the parties as well as to identify
their hidden and often unarticulated assumptions
concerning existing ways of knowing and
community organization may allow civil society
leaders to play important roles in these critical
processes. To the extent they do so successfully,
they can contribute significantly to the development
of public consideration of social imaginaries and
their self-conscious (re)creation over time around
new assumptions and claims. There can be no
gainsaying how difficult such efforts are, but their
attainment, as reflected through alternate
imaginaries, is critical to the long-term resilience of
disaster afflicted and conflict-ridden communities
alike. This goal, as the old axiom had it, is well worth
the candle expended to pursue it.

[1] This section is adapted from Stephenson Jr., M.
O. 2009. Exploring the connections among adaptive
leadership, facets of imagination and social
imaginaries. Public Policy and Administration 24
(3):417-435.

Responses to this article

can be read online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/volXX/issYY/artZZ/
responses/

Acknowledgments

:

The author acknowledges with sincere thanks Leah
Wickham’s research assistance in the development
of this article.

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• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Social imaginaries and social conflict
• Community-based organizations, resilience, and adaptive work
• Leaders, adaptive work, and forms of imagination[1]

Aesthetic imagination
Cognitive imagination
Affective imagination
The moral imagination

• Enduring social conflict, peacebuilding ngos, and adaptive work
• Characteristics of ngo leadership for social change
• Conclusions

Responses to this article
Acknowledgments

• Literature cited