BUSI 345 Week 8 Discussion Board Forum 4 Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 4 Replies: Leadership Ethics

BUSI 345 Leadership Theory and Practices, Discussion Board Forum 4 Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The forum prompt, the two classmates and their threads are composites; the textbooks, research and Scripture cited are real.

Reply to Caleb

Caleb, your thread argued that a company's ethics depend first on its senior leaders, and your example of the bank whose executives pushed impossible sales quotas made the point painfully clear. Northouse (2016) writes that leaders carry a special ethical responsibility because of the influence they hold over others, and your example showed how that influence can corrupt as easily as it can build.

Research supports your argument and shows how it works. Mayer et al. (2009) surveyed employees, supervisors and executives across many work groups and found a trickle-down effect: when top managers were seen as ethical leaders, supervisors were more likely to lead ethically too, and supervisors' ethical leadership was in turn linked to fewer harmful acts and more cooperative ones among their employees. Executives did not influence frontline behavior only directly; they shaped the supervisors who shaped the teams.

That has implications for this module/week's chapter on teams. Northouse describes team leaders as monitoring and intervening to keep a team effective. If supervisors learn their ethical standards from the executives above them, then a company that wants ethical teams has to develop ethical supervisors, not just write a code of conduct. Training supervisors in how to handle ethical pressure, and promoting those who handle it well, would carry the executives' example down to the teams.

Jesus said that a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when fully trained will be like his teacher (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Luke 6:40). Leaders reproduce themselves, for good or ill, and the reproduction runs through every layer of an organization. The bank's executives produced supervisors who pressured their teams, and those teams produced the misconduct the public eventually saw.

In your view, what should a supervisor do when the pressure from above conflicts with what is right for the team? Is there a way to protect the team without simply defying the executives?

Reply to Hailey

Hailey, your thread argued that the best ethical leaders model integrity quietly rather than lecturing people about values, and I agree that nothing undermines an ethics talk faster than a leader who does not live it. Northouse (2016) places character at the center of ethical leadership, and your example of the manager who returned an overpayment to a customer without making a show of it was a good picture of character.

I would question, kindly, whether quiet example is enough, though, at least for someone responsible for a team. Brown et al. (2005) defined ethical leadership as both living out sound conduct and actively encouraging it in others, by discussing standards, rewarding them and applying them in decisions. The scale they validated across several studies includes items such as discussing business ethics or values with employees and disciplining those who violate ethical standards, alongside items about the leader's own trustworthiness. By that definition, integrity that is never spoken about is only half of ethical leadership. Employees may admire a quiet leader's honesty without knowing what standard the leader expects of them.

Paul told Titus to show himself in all respects a model of good works, and also to teach with integrity and sound speech that cannot be condemned (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Titus 2:7-8). Modeling and teaching went together. Paul did not assume Titus's example would explain itself; he expected words to interpret the deeds, and deeds to make the words believable.

Your manager's quiet honesty would have even more effect if the team heard why it mattered. Do you think a short conversation about the overpayment, without boasting, would have helped the team understand the standard? It might also have prepared them to make the same choice when the manager was not there to model it, which is where a team's ethics are really tested.

References

Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Mayer, D. M., Kuenzi, M., Greenbaum, R., Bardes, M., & Salvador, R. (2009). How low does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickle-down model. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.04.002

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). SAGE Publications.