Developing Ethical Leaders: the Contribution of Philosophy and Spirituality

Following Enron, the scandal of politicians' expenses, and other examples of organisational failure, much has been made of what appears to be a failure of leadership in institutional life. Business Schools have been criticised for contributing to a moral malaise by reinforcing notions that ends justify means and that delivery on-time, on-budget is all that really matters. Both in-house management development programmes and MBAs have been critiqued for over-emphasising methodologies and models over more human qualities such as judgement, wisdom and morality. So, organisations are asking themselves, how can we develop our leaders to be successful at delivery without compromising their human values?
The response of government and policy makers to ethical failings is typically an attempt to introduce new rules for compliance - despite evidence that these have only limited effect. At the same time those researching and writing in the area of leadership have expressed a growing interest in the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of ethical leadership. Three levels of analysis can be discerned. First, at an organizational practice level, this can be seen in the growth of such workplace initiatives as mindfulness and meditation. Many organizations across the world now use these practices to promote health, stress management and improved performance. Georgetown McDonough Business School now have an MBA module 'Leadership and Meditation'.
Secondly, at a theoretical level, lie a range of approaches, informed by a rainbow of disciplines (from economics to theology, from Greek philosophy to OB theory) which seek to recover the spiritual roots of effective leadership. Of particular prominence is Spiritual Leadership Theory (SLT) that brings together individual spirituality and the creation of an innovative, motivated learning organization with impact on the 'triple bottom line'. However, critics maintain that SLT renders organizational spirituality as theologically denuded, disenchanted and concerned exclusively with performance. At a third level are the belief systems which support practical and theoretical exploration. Recent years have seen articles, conferences and special issues of journals devoted to everything from Maori, American Indian, existentialist and Taoist contributions to understanding leadership to those informed by Confucian, Judeo-Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions. All this points to a moral vacuum at the heart of leadership studies and a desire to look beyond Western, instrumentalist worldviews.
What we so far lack is any systematic scrutiny of these practices, theories and traditions in terms of their contribution to more ethical leadership in the workplace. Further, given the tendency to focus upon performativity, this scrutiny needs to be critically informed by non-functionalist discourses in order to discover other ways of framing and understanding ethical leadership. In the proposed seminar programme, the first seminar will introduce interpretive, dialogic and critical discourses as analytic lenses and set the agenda for the series. Seminars 2-7 will focus on particular sectors (business, education, health, SMEs, business schools) and interrogate the intersection between leadership, philosophy and spirituality in the context of the particular ethical challenges facing key stakeholders in that sector. The final two seminars will consolidate the learning gained throughout the series and seek to summarize and shape the pathways of impact that have already been laid. Each seminar will comprise a mix of senior and more junior academic scholars, leading agencies and organizations from the sector concerned. Invited international speakers will: (i) provoke intense debate which will challenge and explore orthodoxies and recent innovations, (ii) promote understanding of philosophically and spiritually informed approaches to ethical leadership and (iii) identify pathways of impact in their respective sectors.

Business Schools. Internationally and within the UK a number of Business Schools have begun to experiment with more radical approaches to leadership development, both in the content and style of teaching/learning, many drawing upon ethical, philosophical and/or spiritual mindsets. The Seminar Series will provide a more systematic assessment of such initiatives, enable a forum for the exchange of 'good practice' and track the impact of such initiatives amongst students and their employers. The seminar series will also contribute directly to the mission of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative. The Principal Investigator's, all Co-Investigators' and several partner institutions are members of PRME. These institutions have made a commitment to directly contribute to the continuous improvement of management education with the aim of developing a new generation of business leaders capable of managing the complex challenges faced by business and society in the 21st century. The mission of PRME includes working with member institutions to make progress in embedding ethical leadership, corporate responsibility and sustainability in the mainstream of business-related education by encouraging Business Schools and management educators to adapt their curricula, research, teaching methodologies and institutional strategies in a gradual but systemic manner. One of the CIs, Anita Gulati, will base her action learning PhD on the above.

Professional Bodies. The Association of Business Schools, the Chartered Management Institute and the Quality Assurance Association are currently conducting a consultative study on 21st Century Leaders by reviewing Business School curricula in the UK. This Seminar Series will take up the preliminary findings of this review, critically evaluate the outcomes and define more clearly the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of leadership practice. Other bodies partnering this Series like the Agape Workplace Initiative and the World Community for Christian Meditation will also contribute their expertise and the dissemination of combined wisdom will prompt more enlightened policy-making, training and leadership development for each of the professional bodies involved.

Leadership Development Providers (professional services firms, consultancies and in-house programme design/delivery) have been critiqued for over-emphasising methodologies, models and tool-kits over more human qualities such as judgement, intuition, wisdom and morality. There is an urgent call for leadership development providers to take diversity of worldview more seriously if programmes are to support businesses in this multi-cultural, multi-vocal context. With input from KPMG and other professional service organizations, this series will clarify how concepts like authentic leadership, the compassionate organisation, and values-based ethics as wells as practices like, mindfulness and meditation, can contribute to improved leadership development in organizations across a range of sectors (business, health, SMEs, business schools, professional services).

The business community has increasingly embraced the importance of a more ethical stance in the way they treat their staff, the wider community and ecological issues (CSR, triple-bottom line performance, mindfulness and so on). However such initiatives have a tendency to be spasmodic, tokenistic and slide back to instrumentalism. In large part this is because the conceptual, philosophical and spiritual belief-systems underpinning such practices remain unexamined and not articulated. By addressing this lack, this series will provide a more robust rationale and motivation for virtuous and socially responsible leadership, and so increase the likelihood of thoughtful and enduring socio-economic impact. In addition, it will contribute to the other ESRC strategic priorities of: 'Influencing behaviour and informing interventions' and 'A Vibrant and Fair Society'