Rev. Dr. Timothy Ewest, Associate Professor of Management, Prince-Chavanne Chair in Christian Business Ethics and Chair, Department of Management, Marketing and Business, has been invited by Information Age Publishing, a publisher committed to academic publications, to be the series editor of “Management Research” book series.
His first contribution is a request for scholarship regarding ethical leadership. Specifically, the first book will consider the importance of developing leaders within organizations is generally assumed, and explicitly demonstrated by the overwhelming financial investment in leadership development training, estimated to be at 50 billion dollars annually, far outpacing other forms of organizational training (Prokopeak, 2018). Broadly, the primary goal of leadership training is to enhance human capital (Day, 2001; Lepak & Snell, 1999) as a means to better enhance employee skills that contribute to the value creation process (Collins, 2001; Kanaga & Lafferty,2010; Murphy & Riggio, 2003). McCauley, et al, (2010) suggests that organizations engage in leadership development for one of three reasons: Performance improvement, succession management and organizational change, which often precludes ethical considerations. For example, Bird (2013) surveyed the existing global leadership literature and found over 20 authors who recommended 160 content domain areas regarded as necessary for global leadership competencies. Out of the 160 global leadership capacities, there are only six competencies that could be considered ethical. The result is that ethical considerations regarding leadership training and development are given only tacit consideration.
Add to this the widely held assumption that adequate ethical leadership attained as soon as a person has a patent understanding of the desired normative leadership principle(s) and their corresponding behavior(s), then acts accordingly. Specifically, this assumption ignores the willingness and ability of the leader derived from the leader’s formative experiences, the need for moral development, and finally, has no direct reference to the multiple philosophical grounding metaethics, which justifies normative ethical beliefs and behaviors. (Janson, 2008; McDermott, Kidney & Flood, 2011). Since this assumption is replete within ethical leadership theories, any investigation into antecedents is marginalized and there is a scant amount of literature on leadership development, and even less literature on ethical leadership development (Hasnas, 1998; Smith, 2009).
This publication intends to address these concerns. The book is guided theatrically by Veatch (2016) who suggests that ethical dialogue should include the particulars of a situation, normative principles, as well as metaethical considerations. And, this book is guided methodologically by Potter (1972) and Day (1991) who suggest that moral reasoning should involve an accurate depiction of the ethical situation, followed by analysis and consummated by an ethical decision. To accomplish this, these chapters will follow the following format.
For more information, visit the Infoagepub.com website.