Responsible Leadership: Pathways to the Future

After defining the essential elements of Aristotelian citizenship, the article proposes to apply these criteria in its search for the equivalent of a citizen within the corporate polis. It argues that shareholding managers are the best positioned among a firm’s constituents or stakeholders in fulfilling the role of corporate citizens. Greater participation by management not only in the control but also in the ownership of firms brings about benefits for the firm as a whole and for the managers themselves, as organizational citizenship behavior literature, among others, suggests.     

Efficiency and Ethically Responsible Management

One common justification for the pursuit of profit by business firms within a market economy is that profit is not an end in itself but a means to more efficiently produce and allocate resources. Profit, in short, is a mechanism that serves the market’s purpose of producing Pareto superior outcomes for society. This discussion examines whether such a justification, if correct, requires business managers to remain attentive to how their firm’s operation impacts the market’s purpose. In particular, it is argued that the value of efficiency, despite views to the contrary, cannot be fully separated from the planning and intentions of business managers as long as those managers direct their firms in an ethically responsible fashion. This position is inspired by, and serves as a supportive clarification of Joseph Heath’s so-called “market failures approach” to business ethics.     

Ethically Related Judgments by Observers of Earnings Management

Merchant and Rockness (1994, p. 92) characterize earnings management as "probably the most important ethical issue facing the accounting profession" and provide initial evidence of the ethical judgments of various organizational members. The current study extends their work by examining the extent to which an individual's ethically-related judgments in response to earnings management activities are associated with the individual's role.In an experimental study, evening MBA students read three hypothetical scenarios involving a manager engaging in earnings management. The scenarios involved a gain from an operating activity, a gain from an accounting activity, and a loss from an accounting activity. Before reading the cases, however, participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles: a shareholder, another manager from the company who is unfamiliar with the manager in the case, or another manager from the company who is familiar with the manager in the case. Following each case, participants made four ethically related judgments.Participants assuming the role of another manager from the company who is unfamiliar with the manager in the case were expected to reach more unfavorable ethically related judgments than were shareholders or a manager who is familiar with the manager in the case. Generally, the results supported these predictions for accounting based earnings management activities but not for the operating based case.     

Managing Ethically Cultural Diversity: Learning from Thomas Aquinas

Cultural diversity is an inescapable reality and a concern in many businesses where it can often raise ethical questions and dilemmas. This paper aims to offer suggestions to certain problems facing managers in dealing with cultural diversity through the inspiration of Thomas Aquinas. Although he may be perceived as a voice from the distant past, we can still find in his writings helpful and original ideas and criteria. He welcomes cultural differences as a part of the perfection of the universe. His systemic approach leads one to place the problem in its proper context, and to reflect on it from the perspective of virtue ethics, with a central role for practical wisdom and giving primacy to neighborly love and natural moral law. Rather than a set of rigid standards with no consideration of diversity Aquinas focuses on the common human ground, which allows for the indispensable dialogue between different positions. When dealing with practical questions, the problem is one of finding the right balance between general principle and cultural specifics, tolerance, and dialogue, always guided by practical wisdom. In this way, Aquinas’ approach is neither rigid ethical universalism with no consideration for diversity nor moral relativism with no place for any transcultural and absolute morals.     

中国共产党领导的财政事业:历史回顾与未来展望

学习百年党史,要做到学史明理、学史增信、学史崇德、学史力行.中国共产党领导的财政事业的发展是百年党史的重要组成部分.文章结合财政事业发展,谈学习百年党史的体会,并思考财政事业发展中的一些重要问题,主要内容包括四个方面:党领导的财政事业成功的原因;财政事业发展中克服困难增强信心信念;财政事业探索中的忠诚与专业能力;财政更好地服务于党和国家的事业全局.学党史、悟思想、办实事、开新局,对于财政理论工作者来说,就是要对照现实,创新财政理论,按照加快构建中国特色哲学社会科学的要求,加快构建中国财政学.     

Responsible Leadership as Virtuous Leadership

Responsible leadership is rare. It is not that most leaders are irresponsible, but responsibility in leadership is frequently defined so that an important connotation of responsible leadership is ignored. This article equates responsible leadership with virtuousness. Using this connotation implies that responsible leadership is based on three assumptions—eudaemonism, inherent value, and amplification. Secondarily, this connotation produces two important outcomes—a fixed point for coping with change, and benefits for constituencies who may never be affected otherwise. The meaning and advantages of responsible leadership as virtuous leadership are discussed.     

The Social Identity Approach to Effective Leadership: An Overview and Some Ideas on Cross-Cultural Generalizability

When employees identify with the groups and organizations they work for, this typically has positive implications for work-related attitudes and behaviors. The present paper provides a focused overview of the social identity approach to leadership and some ideas on its cross-cultural generalizability. To this end, we will first outline the basic tenets of the social identity approach and summarize the relations of organizational identification with work-related variables. Then, we will discuss the role of social identity-related concepts for effective leadership. In particular, we will present empirical studies on the following three aspects: (1) the transfer of leader identification onto their followers, (2) the role of leader prototypicality, and (3) the ways for leaders to actively manage the identities of the groups they lead. Finally, we will provide some suggestions on how to implement the principles of identity management into practice and offer suggestions for future research, with a special focus on China.     

Attitudes Toward Ethically Questionable Negotiation Tactics: A Two-Country Study

Current research has identified five discrete US negotiation tactics, a traditional one considered to be ethical, and four considered to be ethically questionable. Scholars have independently used culture to explain how the endorsement of these five negotiation tactics varies across nations. They have also independently used interpersonal trust and ethics propensity to explain antecedents of the endorsement of those five negotiation tactics. This research combines all those variables into one model that investigates the influence of horizontal and vertical individualism–collectivism, ethical idealism, and trust propensity on employees’ attitudes toward ethically questionable negotiation tactics in Israel and Kyrgyzstan. A survey questionnaire was translated from English to Hebrew and Kyrgyz, and 615 responses were collected from employees in various industries in the two countries. We empirically confirmed three types of questionable negotiation tactics discovered in previous one-nation studies, namely, pretending, deceiving, and lying. Vertical individualism was found to be positively, and horizontal collectivism was found to be negatively, related to pretending, deceiving, and lying. Ethical idealism was found to be negatively related to the endorsement of the lying tactics, while trust propensity was negatively related to the pretending tactics. Compared with Israel, employees’ endorsement of ethically questionable negotiation tactics was significantly higher in Kyrgyzstan. Contribution to theory and practice is discussed.     

Motivating Employees to Act Ethically: An Expectancy Theory Approach

Employees face an array of moral issues in their everyday decision making. Environmental concerns, employee and community welfare, and the interests of other companies (competitors, customers, and suppliers) are only a few examples. Yet, businesses do not always address the issue of how employees should assess the moral import of their actions and incorporate these considerations into their decisions. As a result, moral considerations are often ignored, leading to unethical practices which may hurt the long-term interests of the company. In this paper, we present a model to help eliminate this problem. Our model uses expectancy theory, a process theory of motivation, to show that teaching employees to engage in moral reasoning, and creating a corporate culture in which ethical behavior is both encouraged and rewarded, can increase the likelihood that a company's employees will act ethically.     

Leadership for Sustainability: An Evolution of Leadership Ability

This article examines the existing confusion over the multiple leadership styles related to successful implementation of corporate social responsibility/sustainability in organisations. The researchers find that the problem is the complex nature of sustainability itself. We posit that organisations are complex adaptive systems operating within wider complex adaptive systems, making the problem of interpreting just in what way an organisation is to be sustainable, an extraordinary demand on leaders. Hence, leadership for sustainability requires leaders of extraordinary abilities. These are leaders who can read and predict through complexity, think through complex problems, engage groups in dynamic adaptive organisational change and have the emotional intelligence to adaptively engage with their own emotions associated with complex problem solving. Leaders and leadership is a key interpreter of how sustainability of the organisation ‘links’ to the wider systems in which the organisation sits, and executing that link well requires unusual leaders and leadership systems.     

中国共产党领导下的百年减贫实践及未来走向

经过百年实践,历经革命、建设与改革,中国共产党最终取得脱贫攻坚战的历史性胜利.始终坚持以人民为中心,以现代化道路为基础,充分发挥制度优势,探索形式多样的贫困治理模式是成功的关键.脱贫成绩固然令世人瞩目,但认清现代社会贫困背后的不同逻辑,更有助于对中国减贫实践进行正确定位.在普遍交往日益密切的现代世界,不同类型的贫困往往相互交织,只有自觉把握世界历史进程,认清中国社会贫困的逻辑,才能找准未来发展的方向.     

战略性领导

卓越的领导才能包括诸多因素,其中之一就是能够识别真正的市场机会并通过组织的调整抓住机遇。这一战略才能使得商业活动不断产生并相互关联。最近,我在蒙大拿州待了几个星期,在那里我继续对飞钓进行探索,并试图弄明白人们为何对其如此狂热。可以毫不夸张地说,一个优秀的飞钓者就是一个战略家。他们对这项运动的热爱与我对获取战略机遇的热情难分高下,下面就是我从这些垂钓大师身上学到的。1.这些人是狂热的垂钓者:飞钓者们会整日整夜地钓鱼。他们通过因特网获取河流中的信息。从河流的流量(流速)到水温,他们努力获取所有的细节,一杯啤酒过后他们会侃侃而谈水温下降了10度的各种原因。他们每个人不只有一根钓竿,而是有很多根。他们不仅有一些鱼饵,而是有数百个。     

Is Guanxi Orientation Bad, Ethically Speaking? A Study of Chinese Enterprises

Guanxi as one of the key factors leading to business success in China (PRC) has ironically been synonymous with bribery. This raises some serious questions: should Western foreign firms do business in China? How should they do business with Chinese firms? This study investigated the relationship between guanxi orientation and cognitive moral development in an attempt to determine whether the level of guanxi orientation of Chinese business people affects their ethical reasoning. Based on a classification of Chinese enterprises (Nee, 1992), it was found that Chinese enterprises rely on guanxi for business to different extents. However, their levels of cognitive moral development are not significantly different, suggesting that guanxi orientation has very little to do with ethical reasoning (as captured through an established measure of cognitive moral development). Furthermore, time in profession was found to positively affect guanxi orientation; however, age failed to predict guanxi orientation and education turned out to be a negative predictor of guanxi orientation.     

Constructing Good Decisions in Ethically Charged Situations: The Role of Dramatic Rehearsal

This paper develops a pragmatist approach to ethical business decision-making. It draws primarily on the work of John Dewey and applies his deliberative approach to ethics to the challenges of business practitioners. In particular the paper proposes the value of Dewey’s concept of dramatic rehearsal in emphasizing the task of “constructing the good” in ethical decision-making. The contribution of the paper is, first, to build on recent foundational work to bring American pragmatism into the mainstream business ethics literature; second, to offer a perspective that is accessible to practitioners and integrates ethics into their daily tasks; and third, to identify a number of related research imperatives – in particular the importance of focusing efforts on gaining a deeper understanding of the deliberative process itself.     

Plato on Leadership

The purpose of this paper is to identify the various dimensions of leadership emerging in Plato'ss discussions on ideal political governance and then generalize them to fit in with current discussions. The consideration will also cover some areas of organizational ethics, managerial discourses on rhetoric, management of meaning an charismatic leadership are presented. Also the possibility to evaluate the ethically "dark" sides of leadership (like totalitarian and truth-manipulating aspects) is sketched.     

Service Opinion Leadership

No abstract available for this article.