HOW LEADERSHIP AFFECTS ORGANIZATIONS

How leadership affects organizations

How leadership affects organizations

Introduction

Leaders are the most important and powerful influence on the culture of an organization and are responsible for creating credibility and trust. It is obvious that employees contribute more when they are working for something they believe in. There is more to work than is commonly assumed. There is rich opportunity here for leaders to appeal to more than just the material rewards. (Budziszewski, 2006, 45) Great leaders, like great companies and countries, create meaning, not just money.

Literature Review

Leadership entails ethics because leaders have responsibilities. Persons in positions of leadership make a difference; they can bring about changes in behavior that would not occur without their presence and actions. Leading is not always linked to official authority; in fact, leadership opportunities exist throughout political and organizational life. Individuals or institutions rely on leaders to accomplish tasks. Fellow citizens, colleagues, and subordinates depend on the leader and arc vulnerable to the consequences of his or her actions. They rely on the leader's competence and promises. Citizens depend on official leaders to protect their security, welfare, and basic interests. Colleagues and other officials depend on leaders to enable them to perform their work. Leaders who hold office are responsible for respecting that reliance, vulnerability, and dependence. (Sherman, 2005, 16)The ethics of responsibility requires leaders to attend to the consequences of their actions. (1) Their first responsibility, however, resides in what Adam Smith called self-mastery. All virtues and the personal capacity to live up to promises, obey the law, and follow directives depend upon this primary moral capacity (Sherman, 2005, 16). People in positions of responsibility have an obligation to control their passions and overcome temptations. Without this basic self-discipline they could abuse their power for their own purposes. Thoughtless, rash, or impulsive actions could harm or exploit those who depend on the leader or cause the leader to fail in performing vital responsibilities. When internal or external stimuli affect leaders, they should have the self-control not to react instantly. Their actions should be based on reflection, not driven by reactive emotions. Without safe-command moral life remains impossible (Cooper, 2006, 328). Self-mastery, however, only lays the groundwork for ethical leadership. Virtue ethics extends self-mastery to the way people should develop their character and patterns of reaction and engagement with life. It attempts to identify the characteristics required by a person who has responsibilities (Cooper, 1987). A virtue embodies a pattern of habitual perception and behavior. The patterns and habits arise from how a person is raised, but also from his or her training and self-development.

To possess a virtue such as prudence means that a person's emotions and perceptions are trained and aligned with moral purposes so that they support rather than subvert responsible judgment. Personal actions play out over time as choices that react back and form habits. The choices build a Pattern of judgments that habitually identify and internalize the morally important aspects of a situation (Cooper, 2006, ...