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Ethical and Relational Leadership Read chapter Read first chapter

2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Moral Development for Authentic Leadership Effectiveness

Author : Olivier Serrat

Published in: Leading Solutions

Publisher: Springer Singapore

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Abstract

This précis argues that leadership and ethics are inherently intertwined: for higher effectiveness, leader development needs to foster moral capacity, efficacy, courage, and resiliency.

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Footnotes
1
Ethics, a branch of philosophy, preoccupies itself with systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct.
 
2
Here, the term “nature” refers to the influence of genes and hereditary factors; the term “nurture” refers to the influence of external factors after conception, viz., upbringing, learning, surrounding culture, social relationships, life experiences, etc.
 
3
“Institutionalization [is] the process by which corrupt practices are enacted as a matter of routine, often without conscious thought about their propriety; rationalization [is] the process by which individuals who engage in corrupt acts use socially constructed accounts to legitimate the acts in their own eyes; and socialization [is] the process by which newcomers are taught to perform and accept the corrupt practices” (Ashforth & Anand, 2003, p. 3).
 
4
In this paper, the term “leadership” refers to the action of leading a group of people or an organization with emphasis on the leader (but not the characteristics of the followers or the circumstances of the situation).
 
5
Carucci (2016) cautioned that organizations can needlessly provoke good people to make unethical choices when “[I]t is psychologically unsafe to speak up, … there is excessive pressure to reach unrealistic performance targets, … conflicting goals provoke a sense of unfairness, [and] … a positive example is not being set.”
 
6
The importance of empowering ethical relationships at individual, team, and organization levels cannot be understated: only by acting at these three levels of organizational life can an organization become “a community of people working together in an environment of mutual respect, where they grow personally, feel fulfilled, contribute to a common good, and share in the personal, emotional, and financial rewards of a job well done,” that is, an ethical organization (Berghofer & Schwartz, n.d.). Some organizations formulate strategies for ethics management; some focus on core values of integrity that reflect basic social obligations; and, others emphasize ethically desirable aspirations (Paine, 1994).
 
7
For sure, there are also more leaders who intend to act authentically than actually end up doing so.
 
8
Intuitively, May, Chan, Hodges and Avolio (2003) concluded that self-awareness and reflection engender moral capacity and moral efficacy, and that moral efficacy is the fount of moral courage and moral resiliency.
 
9
Per Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May and Walumbwa (2005) authentic leadership is characterized by transparency, openness, and trust; guidance toward worthy objectives; and an emphasis on follower development (p. 345).
 
10
In complementary interpretation, reproduced here for purposes of comparison only, Rate, Clarke, Lindsay, and Sternberg (2007) defined moral courage as a willful, intentional act, executed after mindful deliberation, involving objective substantial risk to the bearer, and primarily motivated to bring about a noble good or worthy end despite, perhaps (emphasis in original), the presence of the emotion of fear (p. 95).
 
11
Notwithstanding May et al. (2003) profession to help develop the moral component of authentic leadership, we are not to assume that moral capacity, efficacy, courage, and resiliency are the exclusive preserve of leaders and their development and that the less exalted individuals who comprise the near-entirety of organizational personnel cannot be agents or, indeed, prime movers of their moral fates.
 
Literature
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Gardner, W., Avolio, B., Luthans, F., May, D., & Walumbwa, F. (2005). “Can you see the real me?” A self-based model of authentic leader and follower development. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 343–372.CrossRef
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May, D., Chan, A., Hodges, T., & Avolio, B. (2003). Developing the moral component of authentic leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 32(3), 247–260.CrossRef
Paine, L. (1994). Managing for organizational integrity. Harvard Business Review, 72(2), 106–117.
Rate, C., Clarke, J., Lindsay, D., & Sternberg, R. (2007). Implicit theories of courage. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2(2), 80–98.CrossRef
Rest, J. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory. New York, NY: Praeger.
Treviño, L., Brown, M., & Hartman, L. (2003). A qualitative investigation of perceived executive ethical leadership: Perceptions from inside and outside the executive suite. Human Relations, 56(1), 5–37.CrossRef
Metadata
Title
Moral Development for Authentic Leadership Effectiveness
Author
Olivier Serrat
Copyright Year
2021
Publisher
Springer Singapore
Book
Leading Solutions

Print ISBN: 978-981-336-484-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-981-336-485-1

Copyright Year: 2021

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6485-1_25