Al Gini

Moral Leadership and Business Ethics

Leadership is hard to define, and moral leadership is even harder. Perhaps, like pornography, we only recognize moral leadership when we see it. The problem is, we so rarely see it. Nevertheless, I am convinced that without the witness of moral leadership, standards of ethics in business and organizational life will not occur or be sustained.

Moral Leadership: An Overview

This paper develops and examines the distinctions between the process of leadership, the person of the leader, and the job of leading. I argue that leadership is a delicate combination of the process, the techniques of leadership, the person, the specific talents and traits of a/the leader, and the general requirements of the job itself. The concept of leadership can and must be distinguishable and definable separately from our understanding of what and who leaders are, although the phenomenon of leadership can only be known and measured in the particular instantiation of a leader doing a job.

Business, Ethics, and Leadership in a Post Enron Era

Conventional wisdom paradoxically tells us that even though change is constant, certain things never really change. Or even when things appear to change, they wind up coming back again. Not all of conventional wisdom is just a casual cliche, or a cosmetic bromide. Things do and can repeat themselves. Similar kinds of situations and events regularly insinuate themselves into our collective time-space continuum. And as George Santayana has so famously warned us: &dquo;Those who cannot

Work: The process and the person

For the most of us, work is an entirely non-discretionary activity, an inescapable and irreducible fact of existence. According to E. F. Schumacher one of the darkest aspects of contemporary work life is the existence of an appalling number of men and women condemned to work which has no connection with their inner lives, no meaning for them whatever. Work for too many people is perceived as down-time, something that has to be done, but seldom adding to who they are. And yet recent surveys indicate that 74% of the work force would chose to work even if they were not financially required to do so. Why?This paper contends that people want to work because they are intuitively aware that work, be it “bad” or “good,” helps to shape them. It gives them a sense of direction and allows them the opportunity for personal creativity and fulfillment. Work is the “axis of human self-making.” Work molds the person and work is the mark of a person. Satisfaction with life seems to be related to satisfaction with our work and the quality of our lives seems dependent on the quality of work that we do.

The case method: A perspective

The task of preparing a case is similar to writing a legal brief or an essay insofar as all three should contain a thesis or main point and argumentation or logically arranged facts and inferences. However, different from a brief or an essay, case studies should not contain a conclusion. A case should lead the reader through the facts, but it should not offer a firm or fixed resolution or moral judgment. Ideally it should leave the reader with the opportunity to create and insert their own conclusion.A good case study should be amenable to the following kinds of questions or analysis procedures:A.What is the problem? or What is at stake?B.What are the non-normative or factual issues involved?C.What are the normative or ethical issues involved?D.What are the alternatives available?E.What decision would you make?

Bad Leaders/Misleaders

Although we need the good witness of others to form our best selves, an argument can be made that we need to study the dark side of the equation as well. The understanding and analysis of bad leaders/misleaders is an important component of leadership studies. However, we argue that bad leaders should never be defined as leaders. Leadership aims at the good of its communities, while misleaders do not. Ethics, therefore, is not only essential to the practice of leadership but to the very meaning of the term.

When Being a Good Company Isn’t Good Enough: The Malden Mills Case

The story of Aaron Feuerstein is now old news but it was so spectacular in the late 1990s that it quickly made it into dozens of business ethics textbooks and anthologies. Until under his leadership as the President and CEO of Malden Mills Industries, Inc., a textile company (best known for Polartec) in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Malden Mills was taken by many CSR proponents to be the archetype of the socially responsible firm. However, the very virtues for which Malden Mills is lauded among CSR proponents are recognized also to be significant causes of Malden Mills’ recent bankruptcy and Feuerstein’s fall from leadership. Consequently, there is a strong argument to be made that passing the CSR test meant, for Malden Mills, failing the market test. Our discussion explores the implications of the principle ought implies can for CSR. If the Feuerstein-led Malden Mills is the archetype of a socially responsible firm, Malden Mills’ subsequent bankruptcy suggests some cherished notions of CSR must be reexamined in light of their failure to satisfy ought implies can. A CSR worth paying attention to ought to be mindful not just of the intentions that inform socially responsible action but also the effects of that action.

AIDS in the Workplace : Options and Responsibilities

Scientists now believe that no one is safe from AIDS. AIDS is no longer “the disease” of a small fringe segment of society. It is now a disease that can touch us in our personal, family, and professional lives. AIDS is, as columnist Ellen Goodman has suggested, an “equal opportunity infector” that does not discriminate on the basis of race, age, sex, or sexual orientation. Although statistics indicate that most of us will probably not experience AIDS in our private or family lives, a significant number of us will be forced to grapple with AIDS in the workplace. This article is an attempt to examine the business communitys response to AIDS, and the possible options and strategies that larger corporations especially might use in responding to the medical, legal, and ethical dimensions of the disease. According to Nancy L. Merritt, vice-president and director of equal opportunity for Bank of America, AIDS raises at least three fundamental issues in the workplace: How do you handle an employee with AIDS? How do you educate and ensure the safety and morale of your other employees? How do you balance the needs of business with the human, ethical considerations raised by the disease? Such questions, Merritt maintains, will become more and more pressing as the AIDS epidemic continues to spread.

Woman's Work: Seeking Identity through Occupations.

Most adult women now hold full-time jobs outside the home, and the proportion is growing. While womens labor market experiences and successes have come closer to mens experiences and successes, their attachment to a labor market career, at least for married women, is not the compulsion that it is and has been for men. While many women have won the right to go off to the corporate citadel every morning, they have more often than not retained the obligation to bear most of the responsebility for the home. Ideally, postfeminist women woumen would like to be able to strike a balance between the responsibilities of the job and home. In reality, they are forced to choose between the two. Women have a right to seek identity through work as well as through parenthood-as men have always done. Those few women who insist on the right to meaningful work and the right to a family will have to push for changes in the work place as hard as they had to push to gain admittance to the jobs in the first place.