This article was interesting to me because it brought up relevant question in today's business environment; who is responsible for individual unethical decisions in organizations, the individual or the organization? The paper talks about how most ethical discussions take into account only the "individualistic approach" to moral responsibility. This says that each individual is responsible for their own actions and are in charge of changing the behavior themselves. On the other hand, the paper mentions a less talked about approach in the "communal approach." Here individuals are viewed not by themselves, but as members of communities that are partially responsible for the behavior of their members. The article says that it is necessary to take both of the approaches into account to explain ethics in the organization.
I think this relates closely to our discussion about virtue-based leadership and utilitarianism. Virtue based leadership tells leaders not to tell people what to do, but who to be. While utilitarianism is creating the greatest good for the greatest number of people. These are relevant to this article because they are how I feel a leader should act in an organization. Rather than focus on whether or not to look at the individualism approach or communal approach, look at both. Leaders need to strive to be virtue-based leaders and preach to their followers how to act, but also to be utilitarianism and have their organization create the greatest amount of good for the most people. By doing this, they cover both parts of ethical leadership, rather than placing the blame on the organization or individual.
This is closely related to the google executive who supposedly created all the turmoil in Egypt. Who's fault is this really? The organizations? Or the individual? Do you think that Utilitarianism and Virtue based leadership is a good match for this article, or do you feel there are better theories to help leaders in organizational ethics?
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v2n1/
-Ryan Schaumburg
I definitely think that Utilitarianism and Virtue based leadership seems to be a good match for this article. That´s a match that take care of the ethical consequence of a leader’s action and helping the follower to be more virtuous. I can also like the idea to have a deontological approach, whether the leader’s action itself is good. That is an interesting discussion about individual unethical decisions in organization. Even if each individual is responsible for their own actions, they can be influence on a leader which also make to organization responsible.
ReplyDeleteAnother theory to help leaders in organizational ethics is the transformational approach. Leader can idealized influence and act as strong role models. Transformational leaders are also often ethical and can use their charisma to make their followers to emulate.
- Eva-Lena Juhlin