NS-203: Chapter 5

Four Biases that affect moral decision making:

1. Implicit prejudice: One by nature is unconscious of it 2. In-group favoritism: tendency to favor people in your group/that are like you. 3. Overclaiming credit: the tendency to overrate the quality of our own work and our contributions to the groups and teams we belong to. 4. Conflicts of Interest: we misjudge our own ability to discount the extent t which the conflict actually biases our perception of the situation in our own favor.

Characteristics of servan leadership:

1. Listening 2. Empathy 3. Healing 4. Awareness 5. Persuasion 6. Conceptualization 7. Foresight 8. Stewardship 9. Commitment to others' growth 10. Building community

Moral potency

1. Moral ownership: a felt of responsibility not only for the ethical nature of one's own behavior but also for one's commitment not to allow unethical things to happen within their broader sphere of influence including others and the organization. 2. Moral courage: the fortitude to face risk and overcome fears associated with taking ethical action. 3. Moral efficacy: belief or confidence in one's capability to mobilize various personal, interpersonal. and other external resources to persist despite moral adversity.

Four ethical dilemmas

1. Truth vs Loyalty: such as honestly answering a question when doing so could compromise a real or implied promise of confidentiality to others. 2. Individual vs Community: such as whether you should protect the confidentiality of someone's medical condition when the condition itself may pose a greater threat to the larger community. 3. Short term vs Long term: such as how a parent chooses to balance spending time with children now as compared investments in a career that may provide greater benefits for the family in the long run. 4. Justice vs Mercy: such as deciding whether to excuse a person's misbehavior because of extenuating circumstances or a conviction that he or she has "learned a lesson".

Four qualities of leadership that engender trust:

1. Vision 2. Empathy 3. Consistency 4. Integrity

Ethical leadership has two core componenets:

1. moral person 2. moral manager

Ethical dilemma

A far more common yet still challenging ethical dilemma involves choosing between two "rights".

Advantageous comparison

Advantageous comparison lets one avoid self-contempt for one's behavior by comparing it to even more heinous behvaior by others.

Attribution of blame

Attribution of blame: justifying immoral behavior by claiming it was caused by someone else's actions.

Authentic leadership

Authentic leadership is grounded in the principle found in the familiar adage "to thine own self be true". Authentic leaders exhibit a consistency between their values, their beliefs, and their actions.

Care-based thinking

Care-based thinking describes what many think of as the Golden Rule of conduct common in some form to many of the world's religions: "do what you want others to do to you".

Dehumanization

Dehumanization is still another way of avoiding the moral consequences of one's behavior.

Diffusion of responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility: whereby behavior becomes easier to engage in and live with if others are behaving the same way.

Ends-based thinking

Ends-based thinking is often characterized as "do what's best for the greatest number of people". (known as utilitarianism in philosophy)

Ethical climates

Ethical climates refer to those in which ethical standards and norms have been consistently, clearly, and pervasively communicated throughout the organization and embraced and enforced by organizational leaders in both word and example.

Dual-process theory

He [Joshua Greene) has proposed a dual-process theory of moral judgment wherein moral judgements dealing primarily with "rights" and "duties" are made by automatic emotional responses while moral judgements made on a more utilitarian basis are made more cognitively.

Ethics

Leaders should internalize a strong set of ethics- principles of right conduct or a system of moral values.

Moral manager

Make ethics an explicit part of their leadership agenda by communicating an ethics and values message, by visibly and intentionally, role modeling ethical behavior.

Moral Justification

Moral Justification involves reinterpreting otherwise immoral behavior in terms of a higher purpose.

Moral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning refers to the process leaders use to make decisions about ethical and unethical behaviors.

Principle-centered leadership

Principle-centered leadership postulates a fundamental interdependence between the personal, the interpersonal, the managerial, and the organized levels of leadership.

Rule-based thinking

Rule-based thinking is consistent with Kantian philosophy and can be colloquially characterized as "following the highest principle or duty".

Servant leadership

The leader's role is to literally serve others.

Moral person

The moral person is seen as a principled decision maker who cares about people and the broader society.

Upward ethical leadership

The term upward ethical leadership has been used to refer to "leadership behavior enacted by individuals who take action to maintain ethical standards in the face of questionable moral behaviors by higher-ups.

Theory X

Theory X reflects a more pessimistic view of others. Managers with this orientation rely heavily on coercive, external control methods to motivate workers, such as pay, disciplinary techniques, punishments, and threats.

Theory Y

Theory Y, on the other hand, reflects a view that most people are intrinsically motivated by their work. Rather than needing to be coaxed or coerced to work productively, such people value a sense of achievement, personal growth, pride in contributing to their organization, and respect for a job well done.

Displacement of responsibility

Through displacement of responsibility people may violate personal moral standards by attributing responsibilities to others.

Disregard or distortion of consequences

Through disregard or distortion of consequences, people minimize the harm caused by their behavior.

Unethical climates

Unethical climates are those in which questionable or outright unethical behavior exists with little action taken to correct such behavior, or (worse) where such misbehavior is even condoned.

Euphemistic labeling

Using cosmetic words to defuse or disguise the offensiveness of otherwise morally repugnant or distasteful behavior.

Values

Values are "constructs representing generalized behaviors or states of affairs that are considered by the individual to be important".