Moral Recovery and Ethical Leadership
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Moral Recovery and Ethical Leadership John G. Cullen1 Received: 7 February 2019 / Accepted: 15 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Research on ethical leadership generally falls into two categories: one celebrates individual leaders and their ‘authentic’ personalities and virtuous stewardship of organizations; the other decries toxic leaders or individuals in positions of power who exhibit ‘dark’ personality traits or dubious morals. Somewhere between these extremes, leadership is ‘done’ by imperfect human beings who try to avoid violating their own ethical standards while at the same time navigating the realities of social and organizational life. This paper discusses the concept of ‘Moral Recovery’ as an ethical leadership process that begins in moral failure, but enables eventual personal, organizational, and social change. It builds on the concept of ‘Moral Injury’ from the work of the psychiatrist Johnathan Shay and refers to the experiences of armed service personnel traumatized by experiences where either they, or their leaders, violated their own values. ‘Morally injured’ parties recover their sense of wellbeing through engaging with restorative communal actions which address the social causes of unethical practices. The process of Moral Recovery requires restorative communal actions which address the social causes of unethical practices. This paper will outline the concept of ‘Moral Recovery’ as a form of practical ethical leadership and change. It will illustrate its relevance to ethical leadership practice with reference to one high-profile case; Ray Anderson of Interface. As this paper is primarily conceptual, avenues for future research are identified, and implications for teaching practice are discussed. Keywords Moral recovery · Ethical leadership · Moral injury · Communal responses · Social action · Reparation · Guilt
Introduction The idea of being ‘sick’ or becoming ‘injured’ as a critical step in personal, organizational, and transformational leadership has received little treatment in the ethical leadership literature. Instead of assuming that leaders are either ethical or destructive, this article proposes that the process of realizing that one has unintentionally violated personal ethical standards and caused injury or harm to another individual, or group of individuals, can be recovered from by creating social, organizational, or environmental benefits. The theoretical foundation for this process, ‘Moral Recovery,’ builds on the work of the American psychiatrist Johnathan Shay. Shay described armed service personnel traumatized by experiences where either they, or their leaders, violated their own values as being ‘Morally Injured.’ Morally Injured people can recover their sense of wellbeing through engaging * John G. Cullen [email protected] 1
with restorative communal actions which address the social causes of unethical practices. This paper proceeds as follows. First, reviews of research on the concept of ethical leadership are discussed. Although ‘bei
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