Ethical Leadership as Portrayed by Mahatma Gandhi

Abstract

Ethical leadership appears to be missing in most organizations. Despite the undeniable fact that almost all organizations have a publicly-displayed, perfectly structured ethics statements, ethical behavior is still missing. Ethical leaders are said to be self-aware, trustworthy, humble, and peaceful. The life and leadership of Mahatma Gandhi serve as the biggest example in this paper. The search for ethical leadership has led many organizations to incorporate training programs tailored to meet these needs, but the challenge persists. This paper suggests that leaders can borrow a thing or two from Gandhiâ€™s leadership example. There is a limited understanding of what constitutes ethical leadership. Ethical behavior fails to make an impact in an organization if the leaders do not exemplify it in their words and actions. This paper focuses on the various components of ethical leadership to deconstruct its meaning. This paper also uses Mahatma Gandhi as a great example of ethical leaders whose qualities can be borrowed by todayâ€™s leaders.

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Ethical Leadership as Portrayed By Mahatma Gandhi

In the recent past, many organizations have had their track records shattered by major scandals that range from inappropriate behavior to financial scandals. More often than not, these organizations trace their woes to the choices made by the people in power to behave unethically. There could be several reasons why organizations choose unethical methods to make business decisions, including shareholder pressure for huge returns, very high goals for senior managers, the impending loss of profits, or simply greed. Surprisingly, most of these organizations have a properly structured and spelled-out code of ethics. Something goes wrong between these code of ethics and the unethical acts. Possibly, the organizational ethical filter leaks, where the ethical values stated by the organization, fail to permeate the organizationâ€™s entire system. Often, the buck stops with the leadership of the organization. The people who are in power and the solution can be as simple as having ethical leaders in place.

This paper aims to reveal a deep understanding of the qualities, effectiveness, and characteristics of ethical leadership. In order to achieve this, the paper adopts a qualitative approach to find as much information on what made Mahatma Gandhi ethically tick. The reality is that there is not a complete study that shows that Gandhi indeed possessed all the qualities of an ethical leader. For that reason, various texts are used to examine Gandhiâ€™s leadership. The paper begins by briefly defining ethical leadership from the perspectives of researchers. It is then followed by a candid investigation to find out whether Gandhi exemplified these qualities based on available information on his leadership. The paper concludes with a discussion on how contemporary leaders can borrow some ideas on ethical leadership from this great Indian leader.

Deconstructing Ethical Leadership

Organizations are facing a unique challenge that can barely be solved with modern technology: unethical leadership. Corporate scandals, financial crises, existing leadership mishaps and such, have led to much criticism, and one might say it is well deserved. Barnabas and Clifford (2012) believe that the shortcoming of todayâ€™s leadership stems from limited studies and research on the topic.

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