1 - Volitional and Cognitive Accounts of Ethical Failures in Leadership

Summary

INTRODUCTION

One surprising feature of ethical failures in leadership is that, very often, the immorality of the relevant decision, action, or policy was never in doubt. Unfortunately, this is true across leadership contexts: in public, private, and non-profit sectors. For example, when Senator Trent Lott waxed nostalgic recently over our segregationist past, there was little debate about the immorality of his remarks, which ultimately resulted in his resignation as Senate majority leader. Similarly, we hardly needed sophisticated moral theory to determine whether Enron executives were wrong to engage in accounting irregularities in order to inflate profits. Finally, lest we think that high-profile leaders outside of politics and business are immune to straightforward ethical failure, recall that William Aramony was forced to step down as president of the United Way under allegations that “he lived lavishly and romanced women with thousands of dollars of the charity's money.” In these cases and others like them, when ethical failures in leadership are exposed, we look for an explanation of the leader's behavior, not a moral analysis of the moral status of what was done.

Much of moral theory, however, is preoccupied with questions about how to figure out what morality requires. In an effort to answer these questions, moral theorists work to locate those features of decisions, actions, and policies that make them morally good or morally right. This focus seems to imply that a more complete characterization of ethical success would put leaders in a better position to behave morally.