Cultural and Ethical Contingencies of Leadership - Term Paper Example

Table of Contents Introduction 2 Imbibing Ethics within Leaders 4 Organisation’s Moral Environment 8 References 10 Bibliography 10 Introduction In the early days it was the human society that gave rise to the need of organisations. The organisations started functioning as small but closed well-knitted units that strictly adhered to the culture and the value system of the society responsible for its evolution. As times changed, the human societal structure witnessed a rapid transformation which subsequently altered its ethical values. As organisations reflect the changes that the society is undergoing, the ethical standards of the organisations also started witnessing a sea-change. As businesses started growing, various market forces started operating and changing the ways businesses were conducted. The industry was now being regulated by fierce competitive forces and various external and internal challenges and this change gradually faded the distinction between moral and immoral standards. ‘Survival of the fittest’ has become the rule of the game. It became the ultimate objective of the organisations. This led to the gradual erosion of the ethical concepts which was once the building blocks for the development of organisations. One of the main causes which has led to such changes and which can be considered as an obstacle to altruism is the change in the size of business structure and in ownership pattern. At the time of inception of most of the businesses, they were mostly run by a single person. However, in the present times, most of the organisations are run by a large management body consisting of heterogeneous members belonging to disparate cultures. This leaves them with little knowledge about the culture or the society which had given rise to the organisation once. With globalisation setting in, businesses have stretched outside their domestic boundaries to explore international markets. Over the years, the domain of importance for the organisations have changed from performing acts in accordance with the ethical standards to deploying strategies intended for strengthening its competitive edge. Today, stress is given on the government regulations rather than personal standards of ethics. The prime concern of today’s organisations is to maximise profitability and productivity by ensuring optimum utilisation of resources. The main factor which is responsible for such erosion of moral ethics is the weakening of the link between the community and the organisation arising out of it (Exhibit I). Leaders of today are found to deviate from the moral standards of society and prioritise the business needs of the organisation. In the present scenario, the growth of an organisation is fueled by the unethical practices that managers are resorting to in order to ensure higher profits from their businesses. Though corporate ethics have been underlined by most of the organisations and a need of adopting the value of “You have to do good to do well’ is being stressed on, yet strong personal ethical standards are found to be mostly absent in many of the managers of today (Bellingham R., 2003). Exhibit I: With years, the changing relationship between organisation and ethics Source: Bellingham R., 2003, Introduction-p. 11 Imbibing Ethics within Leaders It has not been possible for leaders of today to maintain the ethical standards while performing their managerial functions. Need to retain an organisation’s market position and to grow with an increasing momentum have gradually eroded the moral principles which once used to guide human action. Different theories established by researchers have argued whether the leaders should prioritise the moral standards and adopt a relationship-oriented approach or a task-oriented approach. According to the different behavioural leadership theories and the research results of the Ohio studies and Michigan studies, there has been a considerable debate about the approach that must be adopted by a leader in order to have a more profound effect on his subordinates. After a thorough research, Ohio studies identified two aspects that helped in determining a leader’s behaviour and they were categorised as ‘initiating structure’ and ‘consideration’. ‘Initiating structure’ described those leaders who prioritise work and meeting of deadlines than anything else. They can also be termed as task oriented or production oriented leaders, as pointed out in the Michigan studies. These leaders are very particular about employee productivity and are always devising methodologies to organise the work in such a way so that the subordinates are able to increase their performance standards. On the other hand, ‘consideration’ prioritises the need for the establishment of mutual trust and defines the role played by a leader in relationship-building. This feature prioritises the need of a leader to abide by the ethical dimensions and to emerge as a friend, philosopher and guide for the subordinates. This trait helps one to understand the need of a leader to be friendly and approachable and the effect of such a relationship on the overall performance of the employees. This feature has the same characteristics as employee-orientation in pointed out in the Michigan studies. It was found that people who scored high on both the categories of ‘initiating structure’ and ‘consideration’ were the most effective leaders and they were able to maximise employee productivity and render greater employee satisfaction. This also minimised grievances amongst employees and decreased the rate of absenteeism appreciably. It is found that leaders who are more concerned about their subordinate’s welfare are more morally stable than those concerned with making greater profits. Leaders prioritising business objectives belong to that section of people who consider the subordinates to be just productivity units. They completely disregard them as humans who have socialising needs and are on the lookout for not only financial benefits but also non-financial incentives. This not only triggers disbelief but leads to misinterpretation and building of grievances amongst the subordinate employees. Leadership is a trait which can be possessed even by a subordinate, as pointed out by the ‘Servant Leadership’ theory of Robert Greenleaf. It is not that managers are always effective leaders; it can be a person working under him who possesses true leadership qualities. The ability to differentiate between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ helps one to become a true leader. A leader is not just an authoritative person but he / she must be a person who can change his/her role according to the situational needs. He must be a person who can be delegative, supportive or participative according to the demands of the present situation. He must understand the need of his subordinates and try to devise strategies by which the individual objectives can be aligned with the organisational needs. He must be able to make his subordinates understand the role played by them in benefiting the larger society. He should understand that an organisation is not an isolated body but a part and parcel of the society. So, he must acknowledge the fact that an organisation cannot take such measures which would ruin the ethical standards of a given community. A leader should not be selfish and should not express self-interest. He must exhibit qualities of a transformational leader who would go out of his way to motivate and help his employees. Ethical leaders are those leaders who are usually humble and down-to earth. They believe in appraising others and motivating them to perform better. They act as a source of inspiration for their subordinates. James McGregor Burn has defined ethical leadership and the traits that a leader believing in morality should possess with the help of his transformational and transactional leadership theory (Ciulla J. B., 2004). His theory is based on Maslow’s Motivation Theory. He pointed out that leaders possess a greater urge to satisfy their needs and they have a higher value system than their subordinates. So they are able to generate a sense of higher responsibility within their followers/subordinates. Transformational leaders are considered to have a strong value system and they believe in transforming their subordinates into efficient leaders. They play the role of a change agent. They imbibe the values of equality, fraternity, justice and brother-hood amongst their subordinates. Along with this, transactional leaders believe in fair treatment, trust worthiness and honesty. These leaders help their subordinates to identify the higher order needs and gradually move towards them by satisfying their existing lower level needs. Burn’s theory helps in identifying the traits that a leader should possess to be ethical. His theory can be classified as a one of the theories that speak about the ethical leadership concepts and the ways in which these characteristics can be adopted by managers at large. Researchers have pointed out that it is ethics that determines whether a leader possesses good leadership skills or not. So, according to researchers to emerge as true leaders, managers of today cannot compromise on ethics and moral principles. They should remember that ethics and a strong value system helps one to understand the difference between a correct and an incorrect action. So, to become good leaders it is necessary to have strong ethical awareness. People need to understand that no business can be successful without adhering to the basic human principles. Therefore, enterprises need to acknowledge the fact that only ethically strong leaders can lead to the formation of strong task forces which will not only improve the performance standards of the organisation but will also lead to the formation of organisations having a strong corporate ethics. Organisation’s Moral Environment To ensure that an organisation abides by the ethical standards of the society, it is important that all the employees of the organisation possess strong moral standards. It is the responsibility of the managers to frame the corporate ethical standards and ensure that all the subordinates adopt such principles. An organisation should identify the employees who have the potential to become strong leaders and who would contribute to the making of a strong organisation. The organisation has to ensure that it functions profitably within the changing business scenario but it should not neglect the role played by ethics in building the overall corporate culture and in defining the performance standards of an organisation. An organisation which is ethically unsound cannot contribute to the betterment of the society. It cannot instill confidence and a sense of belongingness and trust amongst its employees. To strengthen the moral environment, an organisation must reinforce the value system which was framed during its inception. It must instill these values within its employees and make it clear that the organisation would continue to grow adhering to this value system. It is necessary to make the employees aware that ethical code and practices are one of the vital factors which contribute to the successful functioning of a company. If managers having strong ethical backgrounds run an organisation, then it would ideally lead to the formation of a morally strong organisation. The employees would be motivated to follow the principles identified by the leaders of the organisation and thus the total employee culture of the organisation would get modified accordingly. So, to build a moral organisation, it’s absolutely necessary that the leading forces of the organisation concerned have a clear understanding of what to adopt and exercise. They should remember that their actions would be considered benchmarks by the other employees and it would act as guidelines for them to follow. If the employees realize the fact that they are accountable for every action they perform and are indirectly or directly responsible for molding the employee culture of the organsiation, it is felt that an organisation would become more ethically conscious. Leaders should modify their behavioural attitudes to imbibe a sense of belongingness, respect and mutual trust amongst the employees. This would gradually change their perception and they would realize that they are the indispensable part of the organisation and solely responsible for its good or bad. This would make them more responsible and ethically conscious. To become ethical, an organisation needs to understand its present culture and needs to ascertain the type of behavioural change that they want to bring about in the organisation. This would help them to adopt specific behavioural changes which would gradually help in remodifying the culture of the organisation making it ethically sound. At the end, it should be remembered that value system is responsible for the type of behaviour shown by the employees. Values determine a person’s attitudes and play a vital role in building perceptions. So while recruiting new people, a manager should find out ways to assess the value system of the person. It is ultimately the managerial leaders who would enable an organisation to become ethical by imbibing within the employees a sense of fairness, justice and equality. References Bellingham R., 2003, Ethical Leadership: Rebuilding Trust in Corporations, Human Resource Development Press, ISBN 0874257387, 9780874257380 Ciulla J. B., 2004, Ethics, The Heart of Leadership, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0275982521, 9780275982522 Bibliography Bishop P., et.al., 2003, Management Organisation And Ethics In The Public Sector, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., ISBN 0754622800, 9780754622802 Brown M. T., 2005, Corporate Integrity: Rethinking Organisational Ethics And Leadership, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521844819, 9780521844819 Cabral-Maly M. and Hardy K. A., No Date, Maintaining High Standards: Ethical Leadership, Global Citizenship and Mentoring, Florida Community College – Jacksonville, [Online] Available:http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/community/chair/conference/2007/papers/maintaining_high_standards.pdf, [10May 2009] Cornelius N., 2002, Building Workplace Equality: Ethics, Diversity And Inclusion, Cengage Learning EMEA, ISBN 1861525850, 9781861525857 Elearn, 2006. 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L., 2006, Understanding Ethical Failures In Leadership, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521837243, 9780521837248 Rickards T. and Clark M., 2006, Dilemmas Of Leadership, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0415355850, 9780415355858 Siebens H., 2007, Facilitating Leadership, Garant, ISBN 9044120484, 9789044120486 Read More