Ethical leadership in business organizations

Ethical Leadership in Business

The foundation of any successful enterprise over the long-term is the ability to continually sustain and grow trust in the vision, mission, objectives and strategies of its leaders. To the extent a leader is ethically solid and makes decisions that take into account the entire organizations' well-being is the extent to which they maintain a high level of ethical standards in their organizational cultures (Toor, Ofori, 533). The intent of this analysis is to define the concepts of ethical leadership in business, including a definition of standards for moral and ethical conduct. As the ethics of a leader become the new norm for conduct in the organizations they manage (Brown, Trevino, 595) it is clearly a critical issue for every organization to consider and continually evaluate. Ethics of leaders permeate organizational structures and cultures over time, redefining ethical boundaries over years of decisions made to a certain ethical level, in effect modeling the culture to their own ethical standards (Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, Salvador, 108).

Ethical Leadership in Business

Given the power of a leaders' ethics to have a direct and lasting impact on their organizations' approach to managing decisions in the short run and culture in the long-run, a thorough definition of ethical leadership is critical. An ethical leader is one that seeks through accountability, transparency and trust to ensure each member of the organization they manage have a clear understanding of the ethical boundaries they need to operate under. Ethical leadership also is defined by a lack of tolerance for actions or decisions that fall outside these boundaries as well. In short, an ethical leader is one that seeks to define a culture of ethical decision making first (Toor, Ofori, 533). This is done so that the foundational elements of an ethical organizational culture are well-defined and have exceptional levels of resiliency and strength to withstand resistance to these changes over time (Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, Salvador, 108).

An ethical leader is also one that concentrates on how best to align their organizations; strengths and insights to the needs of the market, and do it with open, honest processes that mitigate any potential for conflict of interest or corruption. The ability of a leader to create cultures where full disclosure is not only tolerated by promoted is key. When organizational leaders can create a high level of trust in an organization, the adoption of ethical practices gets accelerated at a much faster rate (Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, Salvador, 108). Excellent leaders know trust and transparency can act as performance accelerators if used well.