When choosing the future leaders of our county, should past and present ethical decisions be part of the equation? If the past has shown to be an example, typically the United States votes for the lesser of two evil, but what if the candidates had to prove their worth prior to running, what if there was a standards of practice bar or an ethical review? Listening to the nightly news, you would see that the people have lost faith in their leader’s ability to show honesty and integrity.
If we got rid of the party system and simply voted on the individual who had experience and a utilitarian view. A leader who sought not to please big business, but to do the “greatest good for the greatest number of people,” who does the “morally correct action, the action that social benefits while minimizing social costs”. (Northouse, 2016, p.334). If every American had the same possibilities, due to leadership that paid as much attention to the poverty ridden as they do to the elite, a leader who understood that greatest comes in all forms, society could benefit greatly from all points of views.
I believe as Carlson and Perrewe did that the “values promoted by the leader have a significant impact of the values exhibits by the organization (Carlson & Perrewe, 1995). As an example, the current White House administration is run by a man, President Donald J. Trump, who constantly lies to the American people. His staff (followers) is then encouraged to do the same if a tough topic comes up in a press conference. In this example Because the leadership is dishonest, many Americans no longer trust the information coming from the White House, the most powerful building in the free world.
Leaders have a moral responsibility to do the right thing and not infringe on the rights and progress of others. A leaders ethical or moral belief can change how the world sees an organization, and in turn the profits or gains of that organization, causing goals to not be met in the long run.
References
Carlson, D.S., & Perrewe, P.L. (1995). Institutionalization of organizational ethics through transformational leadership. Journal of Business Ethics, 14(10), 829-838
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice, Seventh Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications
jlj47 says
Both of you make very compelling arguments. The need for ethically and morally sound individuals to lead the country can not be understated. To combine both your original blog post and the previous response, I would like to ask, from where should the American people find the facts to determine the morality of our elected officials? It stands to reason that conducting extensive background check on every candidate by individuals can not be performed. A publicly disseminated background check by an alleged independent organization can not be counted on. Does anyone really believe such a thing as an unbiased independent organization exists? This leads to the same source most every American uses for information about our political leader, the media. Possibly the most biased and unethical group of “fact finders” and “truth tellers” there is. According to Baron (2004), in 1999 78% of the American public believed news reporting was biased. This phenomena brings in to question the ethics of news organizations as a whole. As the leaders of current events information, news organizations and more specifically the deliverers of the news, be it news paper authors or television news casters truly are leaders that need to be held to an ethical standard in their reporting. Northouse (2016) stated it best, “to be a good leader, one must be honest” (p.345). Reporters have consistently shown they are not and the effects are dramatic.
Using President Trump as an example, consider the reaction to the video he retweeted that allegedly had someone shouting white power in it. I say allegedly to prove my point. I personally have not seen the video, nor the President’s retweet of it. And given the press’s reputation I have trouble believing what they claim to be true. In reality I do believe the video existed, and I believe the President retweeted it the subsequently took it down. However, current polarization in America based off which side of the press you believe results in two very distinct explanations.
If someone believes what they hear from the liberal leaning press organizations, then the tweet is proof that the President is a racist and the explanations but conservatives for anything he may or may not have said previously that could be considered racist are worthless. On the other hand, if some believes what they hear from conservative leaning press organizations then the tweet was just an innocent mistake and like always, the liberals are exaggerating the story in an attempt to make him seem racist. This is just one example of how the morality of our elected leaders is at best extremely difficult to assess. Not withstanding the last comment about getting a consensus on what would be considered ethical behavior. I think the concept ethically qualifying, or disqualifying, individuals for public office is great in theory. But the practicality of its application I’m skeptical of.
References
Baron, D. P. (2006). Persistent media bias. Journal of Public Economics, 90(1-2), 1-36. Retrieved from https://www.wallis.rochester.edu/assets/pdf/conference11/mediabias.pdf
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles: Sage.
eas6066 says
This is a very interesting post. This U.S. has a population of over 325 million people. It doesn’t seem unreasonable that out of those people, the one person who is elected to lead the country has a strong ethical foundation and has made moral decisions in the past. However, the challenge comes in how is that determined. To have some sort of “a standards of practice bar or an ethical review” as you mention in your post, the society as a whole would first have to agree to a set of ethical standards that the whole society agrees is appropriate. This would be an incredibly difficult process. Determining a “correct” set of morals and ethics is a problem that ethical analysts face far outside just the realm of politics. In some of the most basic forms of ethical analysis in terms of leadership, theories are questioned in terms of “How do you choose what a better set of moral values is? Who is to say that some decisions represent higher moral ground than others?” (Northouse, 2016, p. 328). The decisiveness and argumentative nature of American politics today would suggest that different groups of people do have different feelings on ethics. President Trump has emphasized that divide. Some people say that many of his actions, such as his treatment towards women and minorities is unethical. Others don’t have a problem with his behavior and believe him to be the right leader for our times. This one example exemplifies the difficulties that would accompany attempting to develop a single set of ethical standards that would apply to the entire population of the U.S.
However, it would be interesting to hear more about your ideas for a test like this. You are hardly the first person to have expressed displeasure at the current state of ethics in politics and the nature of the party system. The first president of the U.S., George Washington, said in his farewell address that the growing party system (then represented by the Federalists and the Republicans) represented a danger to the ideals on which America was founded (Jacoby, 2019).
To some extent though, the decisiveness of the current political climate is a result of the democratic nature of politics in the U.S. People are free to express their opinions and share any thought they have, whether or not it is ethical or appropriate. I would be interested to hear any ideas you have on how we could make much needed improvements in that area without imposing on the free speech and democratization of the political process that are a large part of the reason this country is the way that it is. Nice post – this is an interesting topic that is very deserving of further discussion.
References:
Jacoby, J. (2019, July 12). George Washington was right about ‘baneful’
two-party politics. Boston Globe. Retrieved July 5, 2020, from
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/07/12/
george-washington-was-right-about-baneful-two-party-politics/
2eLxM2oXRtMvDG7VjWP5eM/story.html
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.