Traits of Ethical Leaders

Question:

Discuss about the Management and Organization for Ethical Leadership.

Ethical leadership is one of the most important traits that every leader must have within them. The leaders are the face of the organizations and they have to represent the values of the organization. This is because the new job candidates and the current employees are attracted towards several policies that makes them stay at the organization and makes it easier for the organization also for effective employee retention (Fleming and Spicer 2014). It is upon the leaders on how they will be able to handle the difficult situations that very effectively. The leaders have to act very ethically in dealing with every minute matter. Some common traits are embedded in the leadership traits of the leaders. These are justice to the employees; honesty in dealing with every work; respecting the other people like the stakeholders of the organization; showing humanity and not considering the employees as resources for profitability; focusing on building an effective team; proper decision making at the risky situations; encouraging the initiatives for innovation; leading the workforce by example and not tolerating any violations regarding to the ethics (Drori, Höllerer and Walgenbach 2013). These are the basic traits that the ethical leaders must possess.

An ethical leader must not tolerate any violations of the ethical matters that are intrinsic for the development of the organization. They should be able to motivate the employees by their talk; A sense of inspiration must be felt by the employees by the way an ethical leader deals with the situations. The ethical leaders also believe that the employees should grow and flourish in their professional careers. The primary focus of the leaders should be on building a proper team that should work together in spite of any diversity among themselves. The leader should be behaving on the moral aspects and the human aspects as well (Pässilä and Vince 2015). He should be able to respect other people whom he meets regarding his work. He should be compassionate and value the contribution of the employees.

The case studies that have been provided with are very much in line with these leadership traits. The leaders like Lynne Doughtie and Tim Cook has also shown these aspects within their corporate citizenship. Lynne Doughtie has been very much vocal about the interconnectivity of the respecting other people in the workforce and paying justice to their contributions. She has highlighted time and again that lifelong learning is one of the major aspects in the professional career and proper education so that it can eradicate the poverty and unemployment (Chowhan,  Pries and Mann 2017). The other issues like the diversity have a special place in KPMG as Lynne has portrayed. They give special focus on managing diversity in various aspects from the employees’ perspective. Leader like Tim Cook has showed his efficiency in showing the moral and humane aspects and serving their duties towards the society. They have introduced the Swift coding curriculum in the community colleges and focus on growth of the company. They want to grow more jobs and help the economy to grow as well. These leadership traits have been very much evident in the workings of Lynne Doughtie and Tim Cook (Kreimeier et al. 2014). It has also been seen that Apple has requested to stop the use of the harmful chemicals in the making of their phones and other products. These harmful chemicals are identified as solvent n-hexane and benzene in their manufacturing process.

Case Studies of Successful Ethical Leaders

According to Kirkpatrick and Locke, several parameters can be attributed to the ethical leadership. An intensified matter could be extremely important for the success of an organization (Felin, Lakhani and Tushman 2014). Great leaders like Lynne Doughtie and Tim Cook have also been very conscious about the success of their respective organizations like KPMG and Apple.  The power motives are one of the most important traits in this aspect. The power motives are personalized power motive, socialized power motive, exercising the power over the subordinate employees, comparing the socialized power motive and personalized power motive in respect to the emotional maturity, honesty and integrity at the workplace, self-confidence of the successful leaders and many more. All these traits are very important since the leaders portray what things are properly needed for the success of the organizations (Westwood and Rhodes 2013).

The leaders must have honesty and integrity within themselves that will be the proof of how well and organized they are. Leadership in organizations will not be as per the requirements of the organizational leaders if they do not exercise honest practices within their domain.  The leaders and their followers or the subordinate employees should be sharing a relationship of trust and faith among themselves. These things are very much important in the course of the success of the organizations like KPMG and Apple. The creative leadership of the organization seeks certain parameters like self-confidence of the leaders.

If the leaders themselves are not confident how well they can execute the tasks and assign the tasks to the persons best suited for that according to their skills (Foster, Mills and Weatherbee 2014). There are some kinds of leadership styles within the organizations like autocratic style, democratic style, and others. The decision making process of the leaders have to be prolific in most of the senses. These traits have to be followed by the leaders so that they can lead the organizations to success. It is, therefore, important for the leaders to include the subordinate employees into the decision making process. This is an instance of the participative leadership. In an organization like KPMG, Lynne Doughtie has portrayed that they have supported each other in the lifelong learning process that is an important part of the organization (Collings 2014). The support has to be there so that the employees can gain the success. Unemployment has to be an issue that they are dealing with along with a leader like Tim Cook. They are intending to bridge the skill gap seriously. They are also keen on shifting their focus on the moral side by collecting funds for the betterment of the society. Tim Cook also thinks that they have a responsibility towards the nation to grow its economy. They want to contribute to other countries as well along with contributing to USA.

Parameters of Ethical Leadership according to Kirkpatrick and Locke

It is being said that it is the responsibility of the leaders of whatever happens in the organization. They may be directly responsible by influencing the incident or they might be indirectly responsible. However, the leaders sometimes focus only on the profitability of the organizations (Johansen et al. 2015). If the leaders only focus on the profits, they might indulge in committing some activities that will be not as per the ethical conditions of the organizations that should be maintained. If Tim Cook had opted for signing the deal of $89.6 million for 10 years as a part of an incentive relating to the product, it cannot be identified as an ethical thing at all. These things will have to be treated as very important case since Tim Cook has practiced his own interest to collect the incentives. However, this case cannot be termed as a severe violation of the regulations thinking that as the CEO of the company, he thought it to be his duty to focus on the increased profits in the product line areas (Abernathy 2014). Apple was supposed to bring out the new iPhone 8 and the iPad so that they could reach the customers with an approach that they should not worry about the quality of the products.

He had realized that he had built a huge reputation for the Apple brand and noticed that the S&P index had risen to a whole new level. Tim Cook had eyed for a growth of his business in alarge manner so he thought of signing that deal that could work in two ways. Firstly, it could benefit the organization in a huge way by raising the share prices and secondly, it could be very much effective in collecting his incentives.

It has been seen also that the conditions that the workers work in are not safe for the health of the workers for the Apple suppliers. The suppliers are very important stakeholders and the management of the organization should have a close look at their working ethics (Mládková 2015). It has been reported that the people who work in those conditions tend to suffer from various diseases like nerve damage, paralysis and cancer. The chemicals such as benzene and n-hexane are used for the manufacturing of the products of Apple. If I were Tim Cook, I will be looking at these issues seriously and take into account the problems that the employees would be facing the troubles. The hazardous situations have to be tackled and I would be taking the responsibility to ban the harmful chemicals from being used. I would also look to the fact that the employees should get the proper wages from their employers. There should be fixed working hours and the employees must be allowed to leave the workplace after the ending of the shift. In this way probably, the ethical leadership can be exercised into the organizations properly (Cherkesova et al. 2015).

References and Bibliography

Abernathy, W.B., 2014. Beyond the Skinner box: the design and management of organization-wide performance systems. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 34(4), pp.235-254.

Cherkesova, E.Y., Belikova, S.S., Popova, E.M., Sukhova, A.A. and Demidova, N.E., 2015. Mechanism of development of human capital within human resources management of modern organization. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(5), p.399.

Chowhan, J., Pries, F. and Mann, S., 2017. Persistent innovation and the role of human resource management practices, work organization, and strategy. Journal of Management & Organization, 23(3), pp.456-471.

Collings, D.G., 2014. Management to Organization Success. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Training, Development, and Performance Improvement, p.247.

Drori, G.S., Höllerer, M.A. and Walgenbach, P. eds., 2013. Global themes and local variations in organization and management: Perspectives on glocalization. Routledge.

Felin, T., Lakhani, K.R. and Tushman, M., 2014. Special issue of Strategic Organization:“Organizing crowds and innovation”. Strategic Organization, 1, p.2.

Fleming, P. and Spicer, A., 2014. Power in management and organization science. Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), pp.237-298.

Foster, J., Mills, A.J. and Weatherbee, T.G., 2014. The new deal, history, and management & organization studies: Constructing disciplinary actors and theories. Journal of Management History, 20(2), pp.179-199.

Johansen, S.T., Olsen, T.H., Solstad, E. and Torsteinsen, H., 2015. An insider view of the hybrid organisation: How managers respond to challenges of efficiency, legitimacy and meaning. Journal of Management & Organization, 21(6), pp.725-740.

Kreimeier, D., Morlock, F., Prinz, C., Krückhans, B., Bakir, D.C. and Meier, H., 2014. Holistic learning factories–A concept to train lean management, resource efficiency as well as management and organization improvement skills. Procedia CIRP, 17, pp.184-188.

MacIntosh, R., Maclean, D., Stacey, R. and Griffin, D. eds., 2013. Complexity and organization: Readings and conversations. Routledge.

Mládková, L., 2015. Knowledge Workers and the Principle of 3S (Self-management, Self-organization, Self-control). Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 181, pp.178-184.

Pässilä, A. and Vince, R., 2015. Critical reflection in management and organization studies. Researching Critical Reflection: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, p.48.

Westwood, R. and Rhodes, C. eds., 2013. Humour, work and organization. Routledge.