Unit 9 Overview of Ethical Leadership - How to Develop a Responsible Leadership Business

When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You haven’t! ~Robert H. Schuller

Overview

In this unit, we look at the overview of Ethical Leadership and how to develop responsible leadership business. A crisis is any major unanticipated event that poses a significant threat. Such events are rare (making them difficult to prepare for), they generate a good deal of uncertainty (their causes and effects are unclear), and they are hard to resolve (there is no set formula for determining how to act).

Learning Outcomes

When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:

Explain the five ethical principles and strategies that are essential to fulfilling moral duties.
Analyze why cross-cultural collaboration is a primary transformational vehicle as a powerful organizational modality for contributing to societal well-being.
Describe challenges with growing a business and how to maintain a distinctive culture.

Topics

This unit is divided into the following topics:

Crisis: An Overview
Components of Ethical Crisis Management
The Ethical Demands of Extreme Leadership

Activity Checklist

Here is a checklist of learning activities you will benefit from in completing this unit. You may find it useful for planning your work:

Learning Activities

Read & Reflect: Read Chapter 12 from your Meeting the Ethical Challenge of Leadership text.
Read & Reflect: Read Chapters 13 & 14 from your Responsible Leadership text.
Read & Reflect: Here, we have three readings for you to focus on. These articles focus on the principles moral leader’s embrace in a time of crisis.
Read & Reflect: This article focuses on the Transformative Leadership model and how embracing it in our practice can help us better act ethically in a time of crisis.
Learning Lab: First, you will be asked to complete the Self-Assessment from the text - you will provide a reflection on your findings and post them in a Discussion Forum. Next, we will engage in a group discussion the focuses on responsibility as a cornerstone to leadership.

Gibbs Analysis Reflection #2: This assessment will be your second Gibbs Analysis reflection paper. For more information, please select the Assessment tab for this unit.

Resources

Here are the resources you will need to complete this unit.

Johnson, C. E. (2021). Meeting the Ethical Challenge of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow. 7th Ed, Sage Publication Inc. - ISBN: 9781544351643 (alk. paper)
Maak, T.& Pless, N. M. (2006). Responsible Leadership. Routledge. - ISBN: 978-0-415-35581-0
Other online resources will be provided in the unit.

9.1 Crisis - An Overview

As we reach the end of the course, we turn our studies to a rare, but inevitable, reality facing leaders: dealing with a crises. In essence, a crisis is any major unanticipated event that poses a significant threat. What makes these events so challenging, is that they are incredibly difficult to resolve due to the fact that there is no “formula” that can be followed.

We highlight these circumstances in Unit 9 because they tend to bring out the best, and the worst, in leaders. While a crisis cannot be anticipated, we can be aware of our behaviours, as leader’s, as we resolve these events. Ultimately, the goal is to navigate these circumstances while maintaining the ethical principles that we practice during more certain times.

The video below will explore crises in more depth. Given that a crisis is a complex and dynamic event, you will also be introduced to the stages of a crisis and some of the characteristics that define it. Watch more:

Learning Activity - Read and Reflect

We begin with our first reading from our Meeting the Ethical Challenge of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow text. Read Chapter 12 and think about how it connects to some of the concepts and examples discussed in the video above.

Learning Activity - Read and Reflect

Take a moment to read through Chapter 13 and 14 in your Responsible Leadership text. Again, as you read through this chapter, try to think of experiences in your own life and how this content relates to our study in Unit 6.

9.2 Components of Ethical Crisis Management

Now that we have identified the stages of a crises, the focus shifts to managing the crisis. The need to engage the heart and as well as the head are crucial in successfully navigating crisis. According to (Johnson 2021), leaders responding to crises also need to employ ethical rationality. Rationality is defined as “a firm’s ability to make decisions based on comprehensive information and analysis.” Ethical rationality serves firms well in crisis management. Ethically rational companies (and nonprofits) are more likely to make sound moral choices during a crisis because leaders are in the practice of incorporating ethical principles into routine decision making.

In a general sense, crises are typically either a technical problem, or they are an adaptive problem:

Technical Problems:

Problems or challenges for which the problem-solving resources already exist.
These resources have two aspects: specialized methods and specialized expertise.

Adaptive Problems:

Problems that cannot be solved using currently existing resources and ways of thinking.
Can be difficult reaching a common definition of what the problem really is.
Solving such problems requires that the systems facing them make fundamental changes of some kind.

In the video for this section, you will be introduced to seven principles that moral leaders embrace at times of crises to navigate these problems. It is important to start thinking about these principles and how you, as a leader, might practice them in times of a crisis. As mentioned in the previous section, one cannot anticipate when a crisis will occur, but one can certainly practice personal reflection to prepare for when that time might come. Take a look:

Learning Activity - Read and Reflect

While the primary focus of this section has been on exploring the principles that moral leaders embrace in times of a crisis, we also touched on the idea of the importance of incorporating ethical principles into routine decision making. Ethical organizations, those who have adopted this practice, tend to make sound moral choices in a times of crisis because this process is already embedded into their culture. Below are some research articles that present some pragmatic findings supporting the importance of such focused attention to consistent ethical behaviour:

9.3 The Ethical Demands of Extreme Leadership

As you might imagine, the demands on leader’s, in times of crisis, become overwhelming - extreme situations, however, require extreme leadership. An extreme leader is not someone who retreats from fatigue or the pressures a crisis brings. Extreme leaders, in actuality, are those leaders who actually perform even better as the pressure increases. Without surprise, extreme leaders demonstrate a high level of competency with respect to fulfilling their duties as a leader. However, a critical separating quality of extreme leader’s is that they exhibit characteristics that go beyond normal expectations. These include:

Courage
Optimism
Integrity
Loyalty
Compassion
Humility

In our final video, we look at some examples of a crisis and how extreme leader’s respond. We also draw together some important themes from the course as we begin developing strategies to take with us in our own practice. Watch the video:

Learning Activity - Read and Reflect

In this final section, we learned about extreme leader’s and the qualities they demonstrate in times of crisis - these qualities extent beyond just competency! This article examples the role of the Transformative Leadership model we discussed earlier in the course. By incorporating this model into our own ethical practice, leader’s increase the likelihood of acting ethically in challenging times. Read below:

Transformative Leadership: Achieving Unparalleled Excellence

The Learning Lab for this unit will focus on our understanding of the importance of strong, ethical leadership in a time of crisis. In our first activity, we will be conducting an assessment of our own organization and its readiness. Next, we will be shifting to a discussion that focuses on the importance of incorporating some of the qualities, discussed in this unit, into our own practice.

Self Assessment

For our first activity, we will be using your Meeting the Ethical Challenge of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow text. For this activity, you will be asked to assess the readiness of your own organization by completing:

Self Assessment - The Crisis and/or Disaster Preparedness Scale

Once you have completed the self-assessment, you will write a 500 word reflection on the outcome.

Please ensure you attach you combine your self-assesment AND your reflection in one document.

Submit this reflection by scrolling to the bottom of the screen and clicking on the Unit 9 Self-Assessment Reflection link.

Next, we turn our attention to a group discussion. Your Facilitator will help organize and guide the discussion, but each student is expected to contribute by drawing about their own understanding and experiences. The questions below will help you prepare:

Group Discussion

Using your understanding of the readings, videos, and content for Unit 9, discuss the following prompt:

Explain why assuming responsibility is the foundation of ethical crisis leadership.
Define transparency and explain why transparency is critical to ethical crisis management.

Be sure to arrive ready to discuss the above!

Assessment

GIBBS Analysis Paper #2

Your second Individual Assignment is due following Unit 9. For this assignment, you are expected to read an article, perform a GIBBS analysis, and write a reflective paper.

To Begin…

Download and read the following article from the Journal of Business Ethics:

Three Levels of Ethical Analysis

Next…

After reading the article above, your task is to write a reflective paper that discusses the following:

Discuss Your Understanding of the Model Presented in the Article and How It Relates to Leadership

As a foundation for your reflection, you will also be using the Gibbs Reflective Cycle to discuss concepts in the article and relate them to how you personally deal with these types of situations. The Gibbs Reflective Cycle can be downloaded here:

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Provide example(s) to substantiate concepts from the Three Levels of Ethical Analysis paper - Discuss how your actions relate to the three levels in the paper.

It is expected that you final submission is 6-7 pages long (at least 1400 words).

In addition, please refer to the rubric below.

Grading Rubric - Click to expand

Criteria	Attempted	Minimal	Satisfactory	Excellent
Reflection Component	Reflective paper is limited to a description of the learning outcomes, with little or no personal reflection.	Reflective paper contains a limited personal reflection of the learning outcomes.	Reflective paper contains attempts to engage in personal reflection of the learning outcomes , and there is usually a moderate effort to discuss personal perceptions, assumptions, response/reaction, behaviour, thoughts and/or feelings.	Reflective paper consistently contains a strong effort to engage in personal reflection of the learning outcomes with a focus on the student’s own perceptions, assumptions, involvement, response/reaction, behaviour and/or thinking, and considerations of underlying reasons.
Application Component	Reflective paper contains little or no evidence of application of learning from the reflective process.	Reflective paper contains a minimal attempt at applying learning from the reflective process.	Reflective paper contains a moderate effort to apply learning in considering future implications.	Reflective paper consistently contains a strong effort to apply learning in considering what implications this has for the future (e.g., plans for personal knowledge acquisition, behaviour intention or change, personal improvement, etc.).
Mechanics	Poor grammar, punctuation, spelling and neatness.	Consistent evidence of grammatical or other writing errors.	Small number of minor grammatical or other writing errors.	Consistently uses correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Citation	APA citation of 0-3 resources. Documentation is inaccurate.	APA citation of 4-5 resources that are documented accurately. Documentation has a few inaccuracies.	APA citation of 6-7 resources that are documented accurately.	APA citation of 8-10 resources (or more) that are documented accurately.

This assignment is worth 15% of your overall grade for the course.

For more information, and to submit your assignment, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the “Gibbs Analysis Reflection #2” dropbox.

Checking for Learning

Before moving on to the next unit, be sure you are able to:

Explain the five ethical principles and strategies that are essential to fulfilling moral duties.
Analyze why cross-cultural collaboration is a primary transformational vehicle as a powerful organizational modality for contributing to societal well-being.
Describe challenges with growing a business and how to maintain a distinctive culture.