Moral Platform of Business Leadership
Mills (2005) notes that, “Few things are more important to human activity than leadership” (p. 10). The validity of this assertion is confirmed by experts who examine the myriad of roles performed by leaders in modern organizations. Leaders promote organizational change and advancement by acting as communicators, thinkers, decision-makers, team-, and image-builders (Akbar, 2012; Greaves, 2012). They are considered to be pillars of any organization.To compete in today’s realities, companies aimed at sustainable development seek to ensure that their leadership is moral. According to Bass (1985), moral leadership instills in cohort a sense of stability and balance, as it “helps followers to see the real conflict between competing values, the inconsistencies between espoused values and behavior and the needs for realignments in values, changes in behavior, or transformations of institutions” (p. 182).
This citation allows assuming that the main virtue of a moral business leader is an ability to maintain alignment between the declared values and actions.To verify the validity of this assertion, this report compares between two business leaders – Jack Welch, General Electric’s CEO in the years 1981-2001, and M., chief director of a local construction company. Comparison between the leader from history and current business leader allows tracing transformations in moral leadership over time. To ensure an accurate comparison, the author approaches both leaderships in terms of alignment of values and actions, impact of actions on organizations’ performance, sort of followers, and the effect of cultural influences on business actions. To illustrate findings, the author will quote excerpts from the interview with the current business leader.Jack Welch Jack Welch is a legendary figure in the business world. A chemical engineer, he took over General Electric in 1981, and became the youngest CEO in the company’s history.
When Welch entered on his position he aimed to transform General Electric into the world’s most competitive enterprise, and managed to come very close to this vision. In just two decades, the value of the company rose 4,000% (Leung, 2005). When Welch retired, he took the highest severance payment in history that totaled $417 million.
A man of many talents, Welch willingly shared his vision with others pursuing success in business. To have an understanding of his values, one is recommended to familiarize with The Welch Way written by Krames (2001). In it, Krames (2001) summarizes twenty four values that preconditioned Welch’s business success. Taking into consideration a limited scope of this report, only five, intuitively most important, values are described, and their alignment with Welch’s actions is analysed.One of the values promoted by Welch is a belief in human potential. To demonstrate this belief, Welch emphasized a demarcating line between management and leadership. According to Welch, the former involved keeping people in dark, oppressing, and depressing them (Krames, 2001).
The latter in turn meant nurturing talents who could offer good ideas, as well as energize, excite, and inspire (Krames, 2001). Although Welch was often criticized for a discrepancy …