ON LEADERSHIP ETHICS
Terms like ‘leadership
ethics’ or ‘business ethics’ are viewed by many
people
as oxymorons. The reason for this is not only because they represent prima
facie a contradiction of goals and
intentions – profit vs. generosity, egoism vs. altruism – but because
of the confusion
between morality (Greek: ethos) and
ethics. The term ethos – or mores,
from which our modern term
‘morality’ derives – refers to (habitually) practised customs,
i.e.,
behavioural rules and values in a given society with regard to what is
considered as good or bad for oneself, for others, for the firm, for
the
society or for the environment. Some of these rules and values are
codified
by law.
In the Western tradition, monotheism plays an important role, even in
secularized
societies, as a foundation of morality (Assmann 2000). Ethics
(Greek “philosophia ethiké”) is the field of
philosophical research that has morality as its object
of study.
Leadership
ethics, understood as the study of moral rules and values particularly
in
economics and politics, is both a new (Ciulla et al. 2005; Johnson
2004;
Ciulla 1999) and a very old field of philosophical research, dating
back
to pre-Socratic
philosophy as documented for instance in the famous dicta by Periander
(600
BC): “meleta to pan“ (“take care of the whole”) or Pittakus (600
BC): „kairón
gnothi“ (“know the right moment”). The question of the education of
the good ruler as a question of “taking care
of oneself” (“epimeleia heautou”) was
one of the main topics of Western political and moral philosophy since
Plato
(Foucault 1988).
Today’s
quest for global moral responsibility on the part of economic and
political leaders
and
institutions has become crucial because of the increasing violence
arising from
cultural struggles, global media, ecological disasters, economic
injustice and
political
oppression. This is the reason for the relevance of international
declarations
and conventions as well as of corporate codes of ethical behaviour with
either
a moral or a quasi-legal status.
Intercultural
ethical research faces two dangers: either we are satisfied with merely
juxtaposing concepts or we stall at an early stage of the dialogue,
relying on
what may look like either common ground or an incompatible
view. In
the light of further dialogue, however, such obstacles to deep mutual
understanding might dissolve into far more complex interrelationships.
As
Nietzsche remarked, we live in the “era of comparison” (Nietzsche 1999,
44).
The ethical quest for a global morality is a never-ending task.
Universal
codified principles and values of moral behaviour are subject to
problematization not only from the viewpoint of different cultural
traditions
but also from new social, political, economic and technological
developments.
Within this background, industry has become more and more aware of its responsibility towards society as a whole. Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) is a key issue of leadership ethics.
The
following thoughts on the intercultural ethics of leadership are based
on
the
research of the French sinologist and philosopher François Jullien
particularly in his comparison on efficacy in Western and Chinese
thinking (Jullien 2004 and 2006). This
comparison is
particularly relevant because Chinese philosophy was developed during
thousands
of years without (almost) any influence from the West.
LEADERSHIP ETHICS: WEST
AND EAST
The
essence of the Western perspective on leadership is grounded in the
concept of efficacy.
According to Jullien, the thinking on efficacy is characterized since
its very
beginning by the Greek concepts of:
- goal (telos) and
means (di’ou)
- action (praxis/poiesis)
and will (boulesis)
- the model (eidos)
- the leader (hegémon;
demiourgós)
- actualization (enérgeia).
The
goodness of the action of a leader is conceived of with regard to a
model (eidos) or goal that the leader is
supposed to achieve through theoretical (nous)
and practical reason (phronesis) on the basis of a plan or an
idea(l) in
order to master or ‘in-form’ a situation. Efficacy is the power or
capacity to
produce a desired effect. It is based on a project that anticipates a
process
towards a goal. It is direct, based on the will, the courage and the
knowledge of
the leader who tends to be a decision maker and master of the
situation. To be
a morally good leader means eventually to become a (tragic) hero.
Nature (physis)
itself is conceived as a production process donducted by a pottery god (demiourgós).
Good leaders are god-like.
In
contrast, the key leadership concepts in classical Chinese thinking are:
- process („dao“)
- situation
- non-action (“wu
wei”)
- the sage
- potentiality
The
key underlying idea is that of the potentiality of the situation.
This
potentiality, and not primarily the will and knowledge of a leader is
'efficient' which means that the main task of the leader is to evaluate
this potentiality according
to the
changing factors affecting the situation but not in advance according
to a plan
or model as in the case of the concept of 'efficacy'. There is a
tendency of the situation from the very beginning
but
there is no model to follow. Instead of the view of the leader as a
hero
mastering the world through his action, Chinese thinking puts
the role of
the human actor into perspective so that he becomes almost invisible. A
Chinese sage
follows the prescription of Laozi “do nothing (wu wei)
and let nothing be left undone”
which means that he does not impose his plans on the situation but
emerges in the spontaneous course of things.
If
the Western tradition has a tendency to mysticise action, Chinese
thinking relies
on the virtue of immanence – either the one of the
“way” (dao)
as in the case of Daoists, or of morality or inner rectitude, as
with Confucians. According to Daoists, good is not a norm
outside the
world and imposed on it but is the virtue or efficacy of something
that is
immanent, the notion of immanence being common to both schools of
thought
(Jullien 2004, 94). In both cases, morality, understood as inner
rectitude
and/or spontaneous course of things, is more effective than
violence of
(individual) action. The sage allows the effect to come about instead
of
claiming to be its origin or making it proprietary. He lets
things ripen
and has no plan or dream of mastery. The ripening process of nature is
called
“heaven,” which spontaneously interacts with “earth” in an unending
process of initiative and receptivity, yin
and yang. Interaction with the
process is indirect or gradual. There are no blockages based on
models or final achievement or full actualization of potentiality.
Efficacy derives from emptiness which is “quite simply that which
allows an
effect to pass.” (Jullien 2004, 111)
The logic of
emptiness is
neither material nor spiritual but
functional. This
kind of (non-)action without a specific goal is in fact a reaction
more than an action. Aiming, for instance, for a specific moral
effect such as “equity” also incorporates a global principle, namely
“humanity,”
that allows equity to be fulfilled in a particular case without coming
to full effect (Jullien 2004, 122). Non-action takes place upstream,
not with regard to the end but to the beginning of a
process. It works as an efficient
strategy that allows the necessity for efficacy and action to diminish
as the process
advances instead of having to act directly or downstream
on the situation.
Instead
of resting upon the efficacy of a leader or a (transcendent) god as in
the
West, the Chinese tradition roots human action on situative adoption
and
emphasises the constant and immanent transformation or transition of
reality. For
the Chinese sage, efficacy is at its best, i.e., fully efficient, when
it
becomes invisible. This is the reason why China gives primacy to
indirect
speech while in the West the principle of free speech (parrhesia)
plays a fundamental role in the conception of Greek
democracy and later on in the modern principles of freedom of the press
and
freedom of access (Capurro 2007a; Foucault 1983). In China
the sage speaks less and
gives signs. He calls attention, instead of transmitting a message.
Instead
of a speculative moral theory we find a logic of the path and
fluctuating
speech accompanying the process of the dao.
The
spirit of Chinese strategic thinking is to avoid the trap of
particularity or individuality
by getting the opponent to adapt and keeping oneself open to
adaptability. Chinese
efficacy might be used to defeat the enemy in war as well as to achieve
political despotism through the “logic of manipulation” far more than
in
Machiavelli. This is the moral price of conceiving everything,
including human
behaviour, as a process: “there is no room here for values of any
kind.”
(Jullien 2004, 152).
PROCESS AND VALUE
The
shortcomings of Chinese leadership ethics have to be confronted with
the
Western quest for ethical principles and values in such a way that a
dialogue
might lead to a mutual understanding and dissolve prima
facie incompatibilities into a theory of complex
interrelationships. The West would face the Chinese challenge of
focusing on
being rather than doing, on efficiency rather than efficacy, on
processes and
potentialities of situations rather than on leaders and actions. With
regard to
the Western history of leadership, we can easily realise that taking
values and principles
as absolute can lead and has lead to violence, intolerance and
totalitarianism.
Learning leadership ethics from China
means, in this regard, learning to see values not as something
transcendent and
permanent but within a process by which we continuously and efficiently
evaluate everything that is in between us (natural and artificial
things) as well as our interplay
itself.
In
fact, value is not a property of things but the effect of our
relationship with
others. Things, natural or artificially produced, are per
se worthless, no less than humans are per se
invaluable. Economy arises out of an evaluating process. “Diamonds
are essentially worth nothing” says Mordechai Rapaport (Walt 2006). As
the
Australian philosopher Michael Eldred remarks, things are not
intrinsically
valuable, but they are good for something. Their usefulness, which is
reflected
and temporarily fixed as exchange value in money, arises only in the
context of
usages as a way of our living together or ethos in the sense of
customary
practice. The same can be said with regard of our own abilities or
capabilities. As Eldred, following Hegel, underlines, value is a
“determination
of reflexion” (“Reflexionsbestimmung”) or a “mirror relation” and not a
property of things (Eldred 2004). Things are validated as valuable
within the
social interplay. This does not mean that the valuator would be able to
assign
a value ad libitum according to
arbitrary preferences. Things are
really valuable, but we are always dealing with their value-for-others
and in
the mirroring of others not with some kind of value-in-itself. When the
evaluation
play takes place – and it does permanently from the very moment of our
presence
in the world as co-players – it refers also to the players themselves,
their
capabilities no less than their unique role as co-players. In this case
we
speak of moral values, i.e., of our mutual recognition of our
capabilities as
well as of our special role as co-players. Both aspects of our moral
lives,
i.e., of our lives as validators within a community, are indirectly
reflected in
the “interplay” (Eldred 2006) of evaluating things.
The
difference between both interplays is that in case of the interplay of
our
mutual valuation we can become aware of the invaluable source we bring
into the
play that is also the source for the determinate value we ascribe to
the
productive action we call labour. This, as we can call it, ethical
difference between both interplays makes plausible why
evaluating things and products leads to a potential,
i.e., non-definite determination of the value of what we produce or
encounter. The
productive and evaluating action itself is part of embracing social and
natural
processes in which we are intertwined on the basis of our specific way
of being
as valuators.
This
being intertwined in such an evaluating process of ourselves as well as
of the
things we encounter and/or produce is, to put it in Kantian terms, our
dignity
(“Würde”) which is then not grounded metaphysically on our being
members of a transcendent
world of noumenal beings, but
phenomenologically as the immanent interplay in which we are volens nolens engaged. The origin of
morality as the dimension of special attention and respect we owe or pay to each other, lies thus not merely
in the autonomy of the person but, more radically, in the intertwining
of the
worthless nature of things with our own evaluating presence by letting
appear
the potentiality of what remains indeterminate in the process of being (dao). From this perspective, economy, conceived
as an interplay of evaluation, is something not only not opposed to
morality but
it belongs to the very essence or privilege of human existence.
In
other words, the economy is a key anthropological feature that
indirectly mirrors
the moral play of ascribing values in which we are embedded as
evaluating players.
To exist as a human being is then not only to be able to evaluate
natural and
artificial products but also to reflect that capability to ourselves
and
ascribe it to each other. No economic value reflects directly the
invaluable mirrors
as well as the process that gives origin to the whole and keep it
alive. When
we lose sight for the players and the feeding process, we become merely objects of our own evaluation. We
then often react with the affirmation of a so-called canon of (Western)
values that
are supposed to be out there visible
and permanent like physical objects, made symbolically explicit in
declarations
of human rights and codes of ethics. But it is our own evaluating
existence
which is out there mirroring the process of life. We, humans, are
evaluating
beings (ens aestimans). We estimate the price of
things no less than we esteem each other, learning thus to esteem
ourselves.
There is a whole range of possibilities between, say, love and price
estimation.
LESSONS LEARNED
If
we take moral and economic values for granted they can become thinking and business killers in so far as they block
and eventually hinder the process of mutual and asymmetric recognition
no less
than the process of evaluating natural and artificial things. In other
words,
they hinder sustainability. By contrast, they become a source of
efficiency
and efficacy when we learn to see them as what they are, namely a
mutual ascription
coming from the other in the case of moral values and a product of the
interplay with regard to natural things and artificial products in
between us.
To put this insight into Chinese terms: it is the dao
in-between us that makes effectively and efficiently possible
our engagement with and detachment from things and products, which are
fundamentally
worthless but potentially valuable, as well as of our mutual
recognition as
invaluable co-players.
The leader
who draws on
Chinese as well on Western insights in the
quest for a truly intercultural leadership ethics is capable of
avoiding the
pitfalls either of reducing values to processes or of blocking
processes on the
basis of absolute values. Through our interplay we become aware of the
worthless potentiality of things and products no less than of the
invaluable
contribution of the players themselves. We are devoted to the
non-determination
of the economic interplay that arises
from the dao and to responsible and
invaluable co-players who are asymmetrically reflected in their mutual
moral
recognition.
What
can we learn methodologically from
this short detour through ancient China?
- Changing the „place of
thinking“ (Jullien) helps overcoming ethnocentrism
- We become aware of
different paths of thinking
- We learn to take a
distance of ourselves
- We learn to meet the other
where he/she is, instead of ‚trans-lating,‘ or taking him him/her into
our own.
Westernization
and Easternization produce hybrid cultures. China
has ambitious goals and the
West is taking care of sustainability as a process of evaluating our
relation
to our products in their interplay with nature and society. This
hybridization
of the ethical perspective seems indispensable for successfully
negotiating
with Chinese partners (Graham and Lam 2004). The
motto of intercultural leadership ethics is therefore ‘go glocal,’
i.e., open your minds to intercultural dialogue, grow successfully by
crossing
borders, learn
from China
without giving up your roots and values. „Feed your life“
(Zhuangzi, cited in Jullien 2005) and the life of your company, your
society,
and our
common world
through a sustainable process of moral and economic evaluation of your
actions
and goals. Become aware that values are neither objects out
there nor a product of your subjectivity. They arise in the
social interplay that is in itself invaluable and which allows for
evaluating
not only natural and artificial things but also our specific dignity.
Good leadership is consequently based upon the capacity of an
efficient economic evaluating process, on the one hand, and, on the
other, awareness of the
invaluable human contribution to it within the background of the dao of nature.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks
to Dr. Felix Weil (Stuttgart, Germany), Dr. Michael Eldred (Cologne, Germany)
and
Prof. Thomas
Froehlich (Kent, USA)
for their criticisms
and encouragement.
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Last update: March 14, 2022