Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Ethical decisions and ethical dilemmas

Some leaders are highly ethical, fair, and transparent, some are not. How ethically or unethically leaders exercise their power and influence can have major implications for followers and organizations. However, while ethical questions are not separable from the use of power, it can be difficult to speak about them in a neutral or value-free manner. For example, Bill Clinton’s escapades with a female White House intern and with another woman in Arkansas were seen by some people as not relevant to the conduct of his job as U.S. president. Many thought that jobs and prosperity were more important. Others, including the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who impeached him largely along party lines for perjury and obstruction of justice, disagreed. They thought Clinton had abused his power and pointed to the moral responsibilities of the presidency and to distractions caused by the episodes with Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones. Opinion polls at the time underscored the division in value judgments: two-thirds of Americans did not believe Clinton should be convicted. After the vote to convict did not pass, polls showed that over 40 percent disapproved of the Senate’s decision to keep him in office.⁵⁶ Clinton’s job approval actually rose during the Lewinsky episode, although the same surveys gave him low marks for his integrity and honesty.⁵⁷ Ethics and morality are not easy topics to broach due to such differences in perspective and moral ...