Yes, it should be. A sense of ethics and the commitment to abide by a set of ethical and moral standards should transcend cultural boundaries. It can and should be cultivated on a cross-cultural, cross-sectoral platform. As such, it can be made universal, morally acceptable and applicable to all, under most circumstances, in any part of the world.
I was led to writing this post after some profound and deeply-moving discussions with my business students in Nepal. These discussions included a healthy dose of soul-searching and experience-sharing. It also brings to memory a number of personal experiences with organizations in the education field, particularly academic institutions that I have served over the past 2 decades.
At present, I practice two seemingly very different professions: as a professor in Nepal’s education sector, and as a security expert for a global security company operating in the Central-and-South Asian region. Though seemingly separate from each other, these two fields are, in truth, closely linked because they serve the needs of “human security.” Human security – the freedom from fear and want – is a universal human right. It refers to the most basic ingredient that makes us human. To be free from fear of injury. To be free from hunger. To be free from ignorance.
Because they refer to people’s basic human rights, the fulfillment of these needs must abide by the highest standards of moral and ethical values. Private education, for instance, must not be put in the hands of those of questionable moral character, or whose business practices are purely driven by profit, or whose methods are dubious in that they lack integrity. Cutting across cultures and national boundaries, I have observed how moral standards were either forgotten, or diminished to a minute role, when an educational institution is driven more by the goal of profit than by service.
Security services pose another example. So much of ethics and morality suffer a blow in the security industry today. The original intent of security – to keep people and their assets safe from harm – is drowned in the drive for profits and the challenge of beating the competition. There do exist security companies that put a premium on integrity and the resilience of human values. Such jewels of a company are worth preserving if the security industry is to be rescued from the quagmire of doubt, the lack of credibility, and the public cynicism in which it finds itself.
This post sets aside the discussion surrounding unscrupulous individuals and organizations who exhibit a total and deliberate disregard for ethical values and standards. Instead, I draw attention to the sins of omission and neglect, the ones that still deserve some benefit of the doubt. In today’s competitive world, burdened with the drive for profits and worries over company closures and lay-offs, a discussion on ethical standards takes a back seat. People simply have no time or mental/emotional resources left to delve into the topic. But by neglecting to give it serious time and consideration, leaders fail to institutionalize ethical standards in their organizations. There persists a general lack of education on the matter, a lack of awareness and understanding. Hence a lack of appreciation.
This exacerbates the need for a fully directed and conscious effort to educate people about ethical standards. In the last few months, I have been incorporating ethical themes into my MBA lectures, no matter if I am teaching a course on Marketing or English or Communication. I also gave special lectures on ethical leadership, and thereupon I observed the lack of depth with which business students perceive ethical leadership. A look of perplexity pass over their faces when asked the question: “would you agree that rule-breaking by leaders is justified if they are faced with a difficult decision that affects the common good?” Such dilemma is something that we often think is faced by others, not by us. And so when asked about it, students are at a loss. Those who did attempt an answer usually confined themselves to the idea that “it depends on the situation” and “it depends on the leader’s personality.”
The more profound question is: “How can leaders and managers resist rule-breaking and, as a result, raise the ethical standard?” This leads to a discussion on normative leadership, that is, a leader is identified as such because of his behavior, not by virtue of traits, personal characteristics, situational necessities, or social contracts. How they behave makes them leaders. In this category, one of the most profound types of normative theories ever introduced to the subject of leadership is Servant Leadership. When I introduced this idea to my students, they became fascinated, as though discovering a long-lost jewel from the murky waters of forgotten values.
According to Craig Johnson (2009, p. 176), a servant leader is one who subsumes his/her needs beneath those of followers. The principle is simple yet profound: Put the needs of followers first. The leader is judged therefore through the standards of how his/her actions have improved the lives of followers. This type of leadership has its roots in both Western and Eastern thought (Johnson, 2009, 176). In the East, one prominent example is that of Burmese leader and activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 15 years under house arrest for advocating freedom and opposing military rule.
In the West, the modern-day concept of servant leadership was developed by organizational specialist and researcher Robert Greenleaf. He wrote that leadership begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first, after which conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. This leader first ensures that other people’s needs are being served. The best test, Greenleaf taught, is also the most difficult to administer: “Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wise, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what about the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or at least not be further deprived?” (Johnson, 2009, 176).
In my studies on ethical leadership, and after looking at various norms and models, I have come to favor the practice of servant leadership the most. It is the best way to counter the tendency of necessity-based justification to rule-breaking. Because it is transformational, it counters the tendency of justifying privilege. Servant leadership also helps to stem off the sense of being over-burdened by weight of responsibility for the common good, because servant leaders know that it is the followers, not the leader, who shape the path to success.
I have yet to see convincing examples of ethical leadership in the educational institutions that I have served, whether in the United States, in Europe, or in Asia. I am not drawing conclusions based on the few I have served; I am merely sharing my experience of working in several private business schools, an experience that crosses continents.
Not long ago, I wrote a paper about ethical leadership which ended with the following conclusion: Leadership that lacks ethical conduct can be dangerous, destructive, and even toxic (Toor & George, 2009), and everyday leaders are not justified in breaking the rules. Rule-breaking can easily transform itself from a “one-time” exception to habitual practice by leaders. People, especially leaders, should limit the extent to which they put themselves, their goals and interests, their groups, and their causes, ahead of others. To what extent has a leader subsumed his interests to that of the followers? This is a question which we should pose to the CEOs of private institutions, regardless of the industry in which they operate, from education to security, from NGOs to corporations to governments.
References:
1. Johnson, Craig E. (2012). Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
2. Toor, S & Ofori, G. (2009). Ethical Leadership: Examining the Relationships with Full Range Leadership Model, Employee Outcomes, and Organizational Culture. Journal of Business Ethics 90. Retrieved on Nov. 15, 2011 from http://search.proquest.com/docview/198023864?accountid=8289.
