Leadership and Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Leadership and Ethics - Essay Example The task and duty of managers, leaders and administrators is to apply moral and ethical principles to business world and meet social responsibility issues and take into environmental concerns. As a decision maker experiences the outcome of a moral choice, not just the external outcome but the internal one as well, the entire decision-making process can be affected. Self-esteem may increase or decrease, leading to modifications (or not) in the perceptual net, the analytic tools, the approach to synthesis, choice, and action planning. Such a learning process is clearly, if slowly, unfolding with the implementation of affirmative action programs in the United States. Racial and gender discrimination are perceived and analyzed differently by most of us today than they were twenty years ago (Crane and Matten 2004). In order to know what the business can do for the community, it must first thoroughly know and understand its own resource capability in the areas of money, manpower, equipment, space, and managerial and technical expertise. Once this is known, then it can be correlated with the various community needs to determine how helpful, if at all, the company can be to the c ommunity. It may be as simple as supplying a few employees for local volunteer work to assisting the community in an in-depth study program or building program in a particular area. It is just as important to know the community and its needs as it is to know the company's capabilities. Someone within the company must work with the community to become familiar with the community needs, or the company must establish some type of internal committee or board to study community problems (Sims, 2003). The committee or board should be composed of people from the company and various representatives of community organizations. Finally, once a program selection has been made it must be carefully monitored; this must involve both review and control. Proper monitoring will enhance the image of the company and improve the chance of program success. Project feedback and follow-up will ensure that the project is being executed within time and funds limitations (Beauchamp and Bowie 2003). Courage is necessary if one is to improve the world. Once you open the door on differences, you have crossed into new intellectual territory forever. There is no turning back to the simple pleasures of taxonomies and typologies about who human beings are. Competitor selection policies contain provisions by which the corporate strategist seeks to consolidate his control over the competitors in his colony (Crane and Matten 2004). He can consolidate control, according to Porter, by placating good competitors, turning bad competitors into good competitors, and attacking bad competitors who could not become good competitors. The corporate strategist who governs this colony is no fool when it comes to dealing with good competitors. According to Porter, the effective corporate strategist "must allow good competitors enough successes to lead them to perpetuate their strategies" (Beauchamp and Bowie 2003). This allowance is a central feature of the strategic convention by which the strategist and his good competitors get along. The upshot is that the difference between successful and unsuccessful competitor selection is the strategist's ability to placate and to punish his