Philosophical methodology and leadership ethics

Abstract

Many leadership researchers aim to advise organizations about how to select and develop ethical leaders, to tell business educators how to teach people to be ethical, or to describe ethical leadership. Yet for these tasks, empirical approaches that address questions about ethics with surveys, experiments, and case studies are insufficient on their own in answering the question, “what should a leader do?” I first argue that descriptive approaches to leadership ethics, such as conceptual analysis, case studies, survey research, and lab experiments, cannot on their own tell us what a leader ought to do when he or she faces a morally difficult circumstance. I then show that the question “what should a leader do?” can be addressed through philosophical analysis. Though philosophers disagree about the nature of morality, most agree that there are truths about morality and that we can make progress in learning about how to live and lead ethically. To close, I consider and respond to the objection that philosophical approaches to leadership ethics are intolerant or authoritarian. I conclude that philosophical approaches to leadership ethics are essential to our evolving understanding of what a leader ought to do.