8.2 Business and moral leaders  (Page 2/13)

"culpably negligent leading"

• "absence of explicitly intended leadership vision"
• "inefficiently coordinated leadership style matches"
• "leading that is rigidly unresponsive to emergent contingencies"
• "inadequately realized leadership opportunities"
• "unintegrated patterns of leadership processes and actions"
• "leading that misdirects core business processes"
• "leadership that persists in disrespecting people"
• Consider some of the key words in this list as well as their opposites: vision, inefficiency (efficiency), unresponsiveness (responsiveness), unintegrated (integrated), misdirection (direction), and disrespecting (respecting). This negative list implies a positive list that includes values and virtues. Good leadership here is morally good leadership because it includes vision, integrity (integrating " processes and actions ")responsiveness (and taking responsibility), and respect, especially respect for owners, customers, and employees.

The table just below compares a list of leadership traits identified by Petrick and Quinn with a list of engineering ethical virtues identified by Pritchard and Jaska. There are many values in common such as creativity, cooperativeness, persistence, and integrity. One important discrepancy: while the engineering list includes "willingness to sacrifice self-interest" there is no reference to this in the business list. (In fact, much of the research in business in academia assumes that humans necessarily act on the basis of self-interest; their actions can be predicted on the basis of assuming that they are rational self-interest maximizers.) There are also differences in emphasis; compare ambition to "not being too ambitious" and think about the subtle difference expressed here. (See Pritchard, M. (1998). “Professional Responsibility: Focusing on the Exemplary.” Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 4, Issue 2: 215-233.)

Pritchard and Jaska’s list came about when they asked morally exemplary engineers to list the traits they would look for were they conducting a job search for hiring engineers for newly opening positions. (A certain degree of modesty or humility prevented those engineers interviewed from attributing these traits to themselves.) Now, think about the following questions. What traits do business leaders and morally exemplary engineers have in common? What traits lay out their differences? Why would engineers and business leaders have certain traits in common? What new skills do engineers have to learn in order to become successful business managers?