ETHICS AND LEADERSHIP - SOC355/SOC555 Spring 2025
Course
One of the most universal cravings of the human spirit is for leadership that is grounded in character, one that reaches beyond success to significance. Many say that our times are defined by a leadership crisis, a void of courageous voices that inspire through the integrity of their lives. Contemporary leadership theorists have sought to define this inner quality that is the bedrock of values-based leadership, refusing to describe it as an amoral activity. Our purpose is to create a bridge between the ability to lead others and moral character. Using an interdisciplinary approach to understand leadership, we will explore the lives, values, and philosophies of eight leaders, examining both successes and failures. This course seeks to hone students’ analytical capabilities, to foster their understanding of key concepts of the leadership literature, to help them develop a set of systematic ideas regarding moral leadership, and to stimulate their capacity for self-awareness as potential leaders and as informed and responsible followers.
“Character matters, we believe, because without it, trust, justice, freedom, community, and stability are probably impossible.”
– James Davison Hunter, sociologist
Fall 2023 Syllabus is here: /files/6204760/SOC355-555-Ethics_and_Leadership-F23-Hayden.docx.pdf
Here is the course outline:
1. The Challenge of Ethical Leadership
3.26
We begin this course with a case study from which to draw out some challenges involved in good leadership. This will set the tone for the framework of this course, which includes the intersection of learning from history, sociology and philosophical ethics—the lived experiences of leaders and their followers within historical, social, and cultural contexts. Also to include a short introduction to the field of leadership ethics. |
2. Virtue ethics and the study of leadership through biography
Feb 6, 3.26
Reading biography and the study of leader’s lives is a promising way to understand leadership as a particular kind of relationship. This session will focus on defining our study of leaders and followers through political, social and economic contexts in which they live(d). Sometimes the study of authentic leaders is illusive, the character of the leader and the image projected to followers may be two different things. We will examine the social pressures inherent in leadership and preview the ethical challenges we will explore throughout this course. |
3. Magnanimity: Nelson Mandela
Feb 13 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
We will examine how Mandela struggled to build trust with a divided country instead of overinvesting in crafty public relations. He was a leader who has a dramatic sense for the symbolic, making powerful gestures toward reconciliation between black and white South Africans. We will look closer at how Mandela developed a larger, magnanimous vision for his country and embodied it. Our personal application will consider how we as ethical leaders can put emphasis on a process of building magnanimity and navigating the challenges of authentic leadership. |
4. Self-Control: Steve Jobs
Feb 20 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
Jobs was a brilliant person and innovator but the record is not so good in terms of how he treated people. On the other hand, Jobs exemplified the discipline of simplicity and self-control of Zen Buddhism, to which he ascribed throughout his career. Self-control is the virtue that keeps the other virtues grounded as it implies a long-term perspective and patience towards others and one’s work. Yet his biographer, Walter Issacson explains that Jobs often treated his employees as means to an end. We will consider here Emmanuel Kant’s philosophy and apply it to Job’s leadership as well as our own. |
5. The problem with charisma and traits
Mar 6 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
Often we identify exemplary leaders by the way they make us feel. We are inspired or magnetically drawn to certain figures and the Western obsession with heroes is a powerful myth many grow up with. Yet, is charisma a helpful notion when it comes to understanding the emotional relationship that is at the heart of leadership? We consider in this session the dynamics of trust and the justification based on ability or virtue that can drive leaders and followers to unethical ends. This will include our first set of group discussions where we will explore these issues in more depth. |
6. Courage: Delores Huerta
Mar 13 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
Delores Huerta was a somewhat overlooked and vital leader in the Farm workers movement in California in the 20th Century. Along with Caesar Chavez, she led a small group of dedicated Mexican-Americans who worked strategically for impoverished worker communities launching a movement for labor rights among powerful growers and state government. We will watch a recent documentary called Delores, which captures her dedication and sacrifice but more importantly her practice of the virtue of courage. |
7. The ethics of followership: when to support, when to challenge, when to oppose
Mar 20 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
James MacGregor Burns seminal work Leadership placed conflict as a central role in the moral relationship between leaders and followers. Yet, most of us could make a long list of instances where conflict has gone awry and even been counterproductive. Many of us would just like to avoid it altogether. Yet, much evidence finds that the most productive and meaningful leadership is marked not by the absence of conflict, but its presence. How do we go about addressing conflict? When is it right to stand up to leaders and/or authority figures? How do we become advocates for others? How can we balance obedience and challenge as followers? |
8. Compassion: Jacinda Ardern
Apr 3 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
As the youngest prime minister in New Zealand’s history, Jacinda Ardern could be seen as an example of a new paradigm of leadership in government. She faced several crises including a terrorist attack on a NZ mosque and COVID-19. Leading right up to her resignation as Prime Minister, Ardern also faced misogynistic assertions of her opponents, as well as the media, as she sought to address some of the most difficult issues facing any government. We will discuss the ethics of compassion in public leadership in this session. |
9. Justice: Indra Nooyi
Apr 10 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
As CEO of PepsiCo, Indian-born Indra Nooyi introduced social responsibility into her multinational corporation in a way few have done before. Some say the purpose of business is simply to maximize profits, some say the balance of profits and social responsibility, but Nooyi found ways to take a soft drink company and make it responsive to a health and environmental crisis. We will discuss how she accomplished this and why in a competitive business environment. |
10. Wisdom: Aung San Suu Kyi
Apr 17 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Noble Peace Prize in 1991 and experiences a metioric rise to the top of her Myanmar government after decades of military dictorship. She was appluded by Western countries, but fell from power saddled by allegations of supporting genocide of the Rohingya (muslim) minority and backing the military. She was arrested in 2021 following a military coup detat. Myanmar continues to struggle with democracy and her legacy is yet uncertain. We will look at a complex context of post-colonial relationships, sanctions from the West, internal tumoil, and struggle for wisdom in deep uncertainty. |
11. Hope: Václav Havel
Apr 24 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
We will discuss the life of Václav Havel as a playwright, community-builder, founder of Charter 77, failure and imprisonment, intellectual influences, and Civic Forum facilitator and moral force. He was nicknamed “The Carbon” because of his ability to bond people together for a common purpose, but he also challenged his countrymen to take responsibility and shoulder the work of recovery from 40 years of a repressive communist system. We will discuss the theological virtue of hope in the context of spiritual leadeership in the dissident actions of Havel that brought him into the Presidency of the Czech Republic. |
12. Hope & Prophetic Leadership: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
May 1 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
German pastor and professor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is considered one of Europe’s all-time greatest theological thinkers, but he was more than that. A life-long pacifist, he became involved in a plot during WWII to assassinate Adolf Hitler and resisted Nazism in underground communities during the war. He was one of the few to protest the German church’s (Catholic and protestant) capitulation to Hitler’s regime. He has been called a “prophet” and a “martyr” for his life work and imprisonment and execution weeks before the war ended. |
13. The Ethics of spiritual and religious leadership in a pluralistic society
May 8 11:30am .. 2pm, 3.26
In a global and increasingly pluralistic society the issue or religion and spirituality as a uniting and dividing force has received a lot of attention, but we are no closer to finding a way forward that respects all belief and practices in modern society. Hicks proposes a “respectful pluralism” framework that may hold promise for leaders and followers. |
14. Ethics and Leadership: The lessons from experience
May 13 11:30am .. 2pm, 2.07
Students will share their insights from their comparative ethical leadership analysis research papers. We will draw out some commonalities and students will be asked to write in class about the dominant themes about ethics and leadership that they have observed across the leaders we have studied. |