Transcript 09/15: EthDescriptivex

WHAT’S RIGHT?
DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH
Ethical Dimensions of Leadership
Virginia Tech MBA
Andrew Watson
Agenda
• School Newspaper Club case
• No prep was required from you
• Descriptive approach to “What’s right?”
• Break during this material
• Pinto Fires case
• Looking ahead
Newspaper Case: Setting
• Inverness Elementary School
• In an affluent Maryland county, near DC
• K-5, 3 classes in most grades
• < 500 students
• PTA activities are many and various, including
• Organizing clubs, including
• Newspaper
Newspaper Case: Club
• Runs in each of the three terms
• Fall, Winter, Spring
• Separate registration for each term
• For each term
• 8 1-hour meetings
• 2 20-page issues
• Very popular
• With readers: each student gets a printed copy
• With student journalists
• Restricted to 24 students from grades 3-5
• Constraints: computer room, editor attention
• Run by: two journalist parents; one teacher
Newspaper Club: Fills Up
• Early 2015:
• All 24 places filled
• Some journalists from previous terms were not registered in time
• PTA Clubs Coordinator: they should be able to register late
• Good: experienced journalists back on the beat, happy to be so
• Bad: > 30 students in the 24-student club
• Fall 2015, start of new school year
• All 24 places filled
• Not registered, but wanted to be:
• Some experienced journalists
• Some rookies
• Some parents emailed to request admission, or place of waitlist, or…
Newspaper Club: Perspectives
• One perspective is that of new Clubs Coordinator
• What other perspectives are relevant?
• What course material is most relevant here?
• From this course? From OB? From other courses?
• Your recommendations
• What?
• Why?
• We’ll probably go to group discussion for some of these
questions
• Not necessarily groups for assignment(s)
• Discussion may include text’s account of IP
Ethical Awareness
• Definition: recognition of ethical concerns
• Required for ethical judgment, and hence for ethical behavior
• Prompted by:
• Belief that peers will recognize ethical concerns
• Use of ethically-changed language to frame decisions
• Belief that decision may harm others
Ethical Judgment
• Definition: making a decision about “what’s right”
• Individual differences
• Including cognitive moral development
• Facilitators and barriers
• Situational factors
• Covered in later chapters
Cognitive Moral Development
• A developmental theory about ethical judgment
• Due to Lawrence Kohlberg
• Three levels, each with two stages
• Some people never advance beyond the first level
• Cognitive moral development and:
• Leadership
• Training
• Examples of various stages and levels:
• Exercise on p. 104
Cognitive Moral Development: Stages
• Level I: Preconventional
• Stage 1: avoid punishment
• Stage 2: seek rewards and exchanges
• Level II: Conventional
• Stage 3: consider salient others
• Stage 4: consider wider society; recognize importance of rules
• Level III: Postconventional
• Stage 5: willing to question rules in the light of principles
• Stage 6: “thought to be a theoretical stage only”
Other Individual Differences
• Ethical decision-making style, in terms of:
• Idealism: concern for others
• Relativism: emphasis on specific situation
• Machiavellianism
• Behavior driven by self-interest, may involve deception
• Moral disengagement, using mechanisms such as:
• Euphemistic language
• Displacement of responsibility
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Dehumanization
• Locus of control
• Text makes disturbing reading for externals
Ethical Judgment Is Human
• Ethical judgment is influence by our human nature
• Our perception, decision making,…
• More specifically
• Bounded rationality
• Text refers to “reduced number of consequences”
• Overconfidence in various forms
• Unconscious biases
• Emotions
• But shouldn’t we listen to our gut?
Pinto Fires
• Dennis Gioia’s reflection
• Discussion questions from text
• Other issues
• From Pinto case?
• More generally?
• Automobiles?
• Other transportation?
• Other?
Looking Ahead
• Due from you before we meet next week
• Skim Ch. 4
• Contribute to discussion: “Does this course involve an appropriate
amount of work?”
• On Canvas
• Due from me before 6am on Saturday
• My first contribution to the “amount of work” online discussion
Standard Closing
• Anything else I should say to the whole class?
• Rest of evening
• Safe home
• Enjoy
• Anything you’d like to discuss with me?
• As individual or group