Ethical Leadership and Sustainable Business

Enesi Aliu MBA 710 Ethical Leadership and Sustainable Business Fall 2012

Manifesto 1

1. Effective Leadership: The term “effective leadership” can better be explained by separately defining the two words: (I).effective and (ii).leadership: The word “effective” as defined by the Webster’s dictionary is ;having the intended effect or producing the result that is expected or wanted. The term “leadership” is defined as a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid or support of others in achieving a stated or unstated goal. Hence, effective Leadership can be defined as the ability of an individual to aid or enlist a group of people to achieve a goal, in which the goal achieved can be interpreted as the best possible outcome. For Leadership to be effective, the leader must be able to develop a high level of loyalty amongst his subordinates. Assume we have two European soccer teams A and B, with their respective captains. A goal has been set for the 2012/2013 soccer season to win 90% of the 38 games to be played .If team A is able to win only 21 games(55%),but team B wins 35 games(95%),then the captain of Team B can be described as an effective leader, as not only did he lead his team, the effort or outcome exceeded the desired result(90% success rate).However we should note that effective leadership can only be possible with loyal and dedicated followers, as a leader can be effective in his own right, but without a team that is ready and willing to work with him/her, the efforts to succeed would be greatly undermined.

2. Ethical Leadership: Having previously defined Leadership, we focus on the term “Ethics” defined as the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture. The term “ethical” as an adjective can best be described as “pertaining to or dealing with morals or principles of morality; pertaining to right or wrong in conduct. With this framework of the concept of ethics and...