In the late twentieth century, many leadership scholars explored the link between ethics and leadership. The ethical component was portrayed not only as adherence to particular principles, but also as character giving rise to virtue ethics and integrity. Unfortunately, neither character nor integrity are leadership skills; hence our topic goes beyond the apparently easy fix of training. This puts the emphasis on the hiring process, which can be dominated by positional experience and a candidate’s vision for the organization. Upper-echelon leadership, such as of a business, government, religious organization, or university, involves the articulation of a broad vision that can include even societal norms and values. Steve Jobs’ vision, for instance, was of a society in which communications would be done entirely differently. Although ethical principles and virtues were not salient in his vision, any head of an organization can highlight ethical principles in his or her vision.[1] Having such an emphasis and a societal-transformational vision can both resonate with people whose interests go beyond organizational effectiveness. Such visions are fun. My focus here is on integrity in ethical leadership, whether virtues or ethical principles are salient in the vision. Of particular difficulty is determining whether integrity has ethical content or is merely consistency between word and action. I contend that if integrity is interpreted as only the consistency, the ethical leadership may not really be ethical.
Ethics can play an important role in leadership. Because the first basic ingredient of leadership is vision, the use of it to highlight virtues and ethical principles is important to exercises of ethical leadership.[2] To be sure, ethical or character attributes not in a vision, but rather in the leader, are also important, including dedication, magnanimity, and humility.[3] Well within an organization, where formulating a vision is less relevant, such person-specific attributes may help to distinguish intra-organizational leadership from management.
In terms of virtue ethics, "developing character and vision is the way leaders invest themselves."[4] By this Warren Bennis may mean that such leaders invest in themselves as leaders. Both such leaders and their respective visions can become easily identified as a “brand.” Character may enhance a leader's ability to change paradigms, which suggests a link between character and the sense-making task in formulating a vision.[5] A paradigm, which comprises basic assumptions and a structure between founding ideas, which in turn can include ethical principles and virtues, undergirds a vision. Those visions whose respective paradigms significantly differ from that of the status-quo can be said to be transformational in nature. Visions founded on transformational paradigms may change not only an organization’s place in a society, but also a society itself. For example, Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church laid out a vision of conservation and ending poverty that would utterly transform how the world was being run. Besides the ethical principles on which the pope drew, his character was crucial because people tend to closely relate a leader with his or her ethical visions. So a leader without integrity can inadvertently sabotage the theoretically separate ethical content in his or her vision (as well as the vision itself).
It is perhaps a matter for debate whether this coupling done by the human mind is reasonable and thus justifiable. It is said that Mussolini made the trains run on time in the 1930s in Italy. Is it right that his vision of an effective and efficient train system succumb to his sordid qualities as a tyrannical leader? Was the virtue of industriousness (or effectiveness) somehow no longer a virtue? Similarly, Hitler ended the problem of unemployment, which had plagued Germany under the weight of excessive war reparations (i.e., unlimited debt) from World War I. Is the utilitarian ethic of reducing suffering thus invalid? Of course, Hitler caused a lot of suffering, and his cumulative record over all may not survive the utilitarian calculus of “greatest good for the greatest number” of people. A weakness of the calculus is that even the obliteration of few groups in society can be outweighed by the pleasure given to many more people. Even considering this weakness of utilitarianism, reducing the suffering of the unemployed can still be reckoned as ethical in itself, even if the leader is unethical in other matters. Even so, a leader’s lack of integrity can register in the human mind as disqualifying an otherwise ethical vision or action, so it is important to look at integrity itself.
Integrity, which is from the Latin integritas meaning wholeness, coherence, rightness, or purity, can fulfil a vital role in not only vision-oriented upper-echelons leadership, but also distinguishing implementing-oriented managers as leaders of principle even if having a vision is muted by the small scale and focus on implementation.[6] Integrity can be instrumental to effective leadership.[7] Two scholars even claim that “(i)ntegrity lies at the very heart of understanding what leadership is.”[8] Several theorists have viewed integrity as a central trait of effective organizational leaders.[9] Other scholars have argued that integrity is important in highly effective charismatic and transformational leadership.[10] Empirically, integrity has been found to be a very desirable trait of leaders.[11] Two scholars found a significant positive correlation between a leader’s integrity and organizational effectiveness.[12]
Unfortunately, what counts as integrity has differed. This has been a problem because viewing integrity as merely consistency between word and deed can be compatible with unethical visions (and paradigms thereof). Integrity has been defined as "a consistency and coherence among a leader's aspirations, personal values, and actions."[13] Yet this bare-bones definition leaves the content of the aspirations and values to the leader. Hitler had integrity, for example, because he acted on his vision. It could be said that the more integrity that he had in this sense, the less morality that he evinced. This is perhaps why it has been said that a more substantial notion of integrity applied to leadership is superior to leadership based on charisma, which can facilitate the sort of unethical integrity that Hitler had as head of Germany (1933-1945).
Furthermore, integritas means wholeness, coherence, rightness, or purity. The wholeness can refer the consistency between word and deed, but the wholeness could also include a person’s virtues and ethical principles—a person’s ethical personality. How many voters see an audit of a candidates ethical persona? How many organizational hiring processes include x-rays of the applicants’ respective ethical composites? Moving on, rightness may be applied to the consistency of word and deed as such consistency is ethically laudable, but rightness could also include or point to the content of the words and deeds being right, or ethical in nature. Likewise, purity could refer to the consistency alone, or include ethical contents.
Let’s have a look at what ethical content may be necessary in integrity. According to Bennis, integrity involves standards of moral and intellectual honesty. Ethics is implied as integrity involves candor besides self-knowledge and maturity.[14] Even this does not get us very much further, as even a tyrant can be honest and yet have an unethical vision, such as Europa ohne Juden. Put another way, standards of honesty can refer to how often a person is honest, rather than to there being moral substance in the person’s honest statements. Honesty and even devotion to principle can themselves be virtuous even if the content of a vision or related actions are not. No one doubts that Hitler was devoted to his principles even if he withheld elements of his vision such as taking over Europe and exterminating the Jews. Some scholars have even figured out that it is possible to be dishonest in acting with integrity.[15]
It is only when we get to Bennis’ inclusion of dedication, which means a passionate belief in something, and magnanimity, which means being noble of mind and heart, hence being above revenge or resentment, that we find Bennis bringing in the requirement of moral substance to integrity.[16] Hitler was not above revenge or resentment; in fact, his vision was largely made up of it, whether the antagonists were the Allies of World War I, communists, homosexuals, the mentally ill, or Jews. Being noble of heart, enforced by mind, implies that specific virtues are involved. Put another way, being noble normatively does not merely mean that a person’s words match one’s deeds.
We can go on from Bennis to read various ways of filling in the moral content of moral integrity. Becker states that the principles in integrity must be “morally justifiable.” He bases the moral justification on a rational universal truth or reality rather than on an agreed-upon set of morals—integrity itself being loyalty to rational principles qua general truths.[17] Somewhat arbitrarily, he reduces this to the long-term survival of our species. Contrary to the objectivist philosophers who claim that by reason our finite minds can have direct access to truth itself even as a reality, Augustine wrote concerning divine revelation that it comes through to us as through smoky stained glass. Furthermore, Nietzsche argued that the contents of ideas and even reasoning itself are instinctual urges, which are hardly objective enough to grasp truth or reality. It can also be noted that even a system of logic requires basic subjective choices (e.g., the principle of non-contradiction). Therefore, Becker’s version of moral justification is hardly trouble-free. Even his claim that the long-term survival of homo sapiens (literally, the wise species of the human genus) qualifies as universal truth ignores the fact that people following a covenant theology of a creator deity can rationally believe that extinction of our species from climate change could be God’s verdict on the species whose task it is to cultivate rather than abuse the environment, including its oceans and atmosphere. Without reference to a deity, other people could reasonably claim that because our species would not or could not self-regulate itself on carbon emissions, our destruction may be ethical as it will have come from our own hands. Something may seem universal to us finite globs of instinctual urges and yet not be so. We may not be as objective as we may suppose.
Shelton suggested that “genuine leaders reflect a home-grown character, a respect for roots, prizing light, knowledge, virtue and industry.”[18] To be genuine is to be sincere and honest, which can be understood as being two elements of integrity—honesty having already been discussed. Sincerity suffers from the same weakness as does dedication to one’s principles; namely, even a sociopath can be sincere. Similarly, to say that someone has a home-grown character does not mean that one is virtuous. Being raised in a dysfunctional family or neighborhood (e.g., high crime) can result in a sordid character. The reference to light is too vague, unless it stands for divine revelation or something else in particular. As for knowledge, a person can be well-educated and yet be very unethical. Not even passing a business ethics course necessarily changes a student’s bad character and unethical demeanor, as these things are too deeply ensconced to be so superficially upended.
Shelton did better in writing: "From a wellspring of love and trust, great leaders perform anonymous acts of service, even sacrifice."[19] Ethical leaders trust others and act out of the sentiment of love or compassion, being more interested in doing so than taking credit. Ferris, too, related love and trust to leadership: "When a person makes the connection between love, trust, and energy, he or she is then able to make the shift from management skills to leading people. . . . In the absence of love I can envision only control, manipulation, and the use (or abuse) of power."[20] Thus, it seems that ethics mediates, or holds back, leadership from becoming manipulation and control, which are salient in management. Unfortunately, both scholars were writing about ethical leadership rather than integrity. Of course ethical leadership has ethical conduct, but this does not mean that such content is in integrity. We cannot conclude that love and compassion are necessary elements. We are a little wiser, however, on ethical leadership.
Similarly, Horniman claims that a “good” leader is one who creates excellent relationships, which in turn are built on four moral dimensions: honesty, promise-keeping, being fair, and respecting the individual.[21] These imply not only character (i.e., virtues), but also some moral content in the form of the ethical principles of fairness and respect. Of respect being due, Kant claimed all rational beings deserve not merely as means, but also as ends in themselves. Kant related this imperative to the Golden Rule. Who wants to be treated just as a means to someone else’s end? The institution of slavery, which goes back at least to the archaic period of human history, does not quality, and thus under this rendering an ethical leader could not advocate slavery. Unfortunately, this is not to say that integrity contains honesty, promise-keeping, fairness, and respect for others. The presumption that a person of integrity must be fair is especially common, but such a claim needs support. Not even wholeness requires fairness. As per the weakness of the utilitarian ethic, a whole pie can be distributed unfairly and yet be wholly distributed.
Hitler had integrity in the bare sense that he was devoted to implementing his vision; he did not practice fairness even though relieving Germany of the unlimited debt of World War I can be regarded as fair. He was unfair in his prejudices and his related lack of compassion. His undoing in terms of moral integrity (i.e., with necessary ethical content) may have been that he did not sacrifice expediency and his own self-interest. In fact, keeping the real function of the concentration camps secret, he demonstrated that he would allow expediency to compromise the consistency between his words and deeds, and thus his basic integrity.
Watson (not the discoverer of DNA) saw organizational attachment as possibly being in tension with integrity to the extent that the latter involves adhering to what one believes to be right, especially when a price is paid in foregone immediate gain to the organization.[22] The moral value of sacrifice and the prerequisite of self-discipline in the moral self-governance of integrity provides integrity with its inherent moral value. In fact, several scholars have claimed that the hallmark of integrity is an acted out commitment to principled behavior in the face of adversity or temptation at great cost to oneself (or presumably one’s organization).[23] For integrity to endure, the core values of a vision should not be compromised for financial gain or short term expediency.[24]
Organizational managers are not generally inclined to implement a leader’s vision while ignoring financial gain and expediency, hence those managers who do may be reckoned as leaders by virtue of their integrity. The ethical content of integrity is attributed here only to the manager in thus being a leader. Here too, however, the human brain can extrapolate to the manager’s tasks and even effectiveness as not only being ethical, but also qualifying as leadership tasks.
It is important for our purposes here that use of self-discipline to forgo instant or even intermediate gratification has ethical substance, because it inheres even as a hallmark in integrity. We can even bring in conflict-of-interest theory, which holds that exploiting a wider distribution of benefits by limiting them to an organization or a person is unethical, especially if the wider distribution (e.g., to society) is a duty. The deontological term, duty, means that ethical content is in the acting out of principled behavior at the expense of self- or organizational-interest, and such an acting out is the hallmark of integrity. Therefore, integrity inherently has ethical content; consistency between word and deed is not enough for integrity in operation and in theory. Perhaps it can even be said that people with integrity love the principle of standing for x when doing so runs contrary to expedient or narrow self-interest. This is not to say that x is therefore loved. Hence the ethical content of integrity is delimited.
For more, see Skip Worden, "The Role of Integrity as a Mediator in Strategic Leadership: A Recipe for Reputational Capital," Journal of Business Ethics, 46 (2003): 31-44. See also S. Worden, The Essence of Leadership: A Cross-Cultural Foundation.
1. P. Madsen, “Managing Ethics,” Executive Excellence 7, no. 12 (1990): 11-12.
2. W. Bennis, “Leaders Invent Themselves,” Executive Excellence, 6, no. 9 (1989).
3. W. Bennis, “Replacing Pornography with Leadership Virtue,” Executive Excellence, 7, no. 12 (1990): 13-16.
4. W. Bennis, “Leaders Invent Themselves,”4.
6. This is precisely why I am hesitant to apply visionary leadership to managerial functions. For the head of a department, including “guest” services, in a Target retail store to claim to be a visionary leader stretches the latter term beyond recognition. Moreover, the democratization of leadership throughout an organization stretches the word too thin.
7. B. Bass, Bass and Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research and Managerial Applications (NY: Free Press, 1990); W. Bennis and B. Nanus, Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge (NY: Harper & Row, 1985); J. Kouzes and B. Posner, The Leadership Challenge: How to Get Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987); S. Kirkpatrick, and E. Locke, “Leadership: Do Traits Matter?” Academy of Management Executive, 5 (1991): 24; R. Solomon, A Better Way to Think about Business: How Personal
Integrity Leads to Corporate Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 62.
8. J. Badaracco and R. Ellsworth, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1993).
9. B. Bass, Bass and Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research and Managerial Applications (NY: Free Press, 1990); T. Becker, “Integrity in Organizations: Beyond Honesty and Conscientiousness,”Academy of Management Review, 23 (1998): 154-161.; Kirkpatrick and Locke, “Leadership: Do Traits Matter?”; G. Yukl and D. Van Fleet, “Theory and Research on Leadership in Organizations,” In M. Dunnette and L. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2nd Ed., Vol. 3. (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1992): 147-97.
10. B. Bass, Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations (NY: Free Press, 1985); K. Parry and S. Proctor-Thompson, “Perceived Integrity of Transformational Leaders in Organizational Settings,” Journal of Business Ethics, 35 (2002), 75-96.
11. L. Atwater, R. Penn, and L. Rucker, “Personal Qualities of Charismatic Leaders,” Leadership & Organization Development Journal 12, no. 2 (1991):7-10; G. Morgan, G. 1989. Reliability and validity of a factor analytically derived measure of leadership behavior and characteristics. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 49:911-919.; Posner, B. Z., & Schmidt, W.H. 1984. Values and the American manager: An update. California Management Review, 26 (3): 202-216.
12. Parry and Proctor-Thompson, “Perceived Integrity of Transformational Leaders in Organizational Settings.”
13. J. Badaracco and R. Ellsworth, “Quest for integrity,” Executive Excellence, 7, no. 2 (1990): 3-4; see also Bennis, “Leaders invent themselves.”
14. Bennis, “Replacing Pornography with Leadership Virtue”; “Leaders Invent Themselves.”
15. L. McFall, “Integrity,” Ethics 98, no. 1 (1987): 5-20; Solomon. A Better Way to Think about Business.
16. Bennis, “Leaders Invent Themselves.”
17. Becker, “Integrity in Organizations”: 157.
18. K. Shelton, “Counterfeit leadership,” Executive Excellence, 6, no. 7 (1989): 4.
19. Ibid.
20. R. Ferris, “How Organizational Love Can Improve Leadership,” Organizational Dynamics, 16, no. 4 (1988): 49.
21. A. Horniman, “Moral Dimensions of Leadership,” Executive Excellence, 6, no. 7 (1989): 5.
22. C. Watson, C. E.:1991, Managing with Integrity: Insights from America’s CEOs (NY: Praeger, 1991): 186.
23. L. Paine, L. S.: 1997, Cases in Leadership, Ethics and Organizational Integrity: A Strategic Perspective (Chicago: Irwin, 1997); McFall, “Integrity”; B. Mayo, “Moral Integrity,” In G. Vesey (ed.) Human Values (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978): 27.
24. J. Collins and J. Porras, Built to Last (NY: Harper Collins, 1994).
