The state of leadership ethics and the work that lies before us

Abstract

The editors of this special issue asked me to write an article on the state of leadership ethics. In some ways, this is an easy assignment because the literature in this area is still quite small. In other ways, it is very difficult because I am not sure that there is a consensus on what constitutes the field of leadership ethics or whether it is a field rather than simply a topic. People might also disagree on what counts as an academic book or article on leadership ethics. As leadership ethics is still new and the approaches to it are quite fragmented, I would not presume to speak for everyone who works in this area. So what follows is a personal account of how I see the field, based on work that I have performed alone and with others over the last 14 years. I will highlight the problems that I have encountered, some areas that beg to be explored and, most importantly, some of the excellent new contributions to the field. Again, I emphasize that the field is still young and wide open for development. Please regard my take on it as a heuristic and not as something set in stone. The goal of this paper is to stimulate research. I am eager to see more scholars from outside of the USA writing on leadership ethics. We cannot begin to understand subjects like ethics and leadership without research from a variety of disciplines, cultures and points of view. Background