Leaders function in many different contexts, i.e., formal organizations, informal groups, learning teams, etc. As you have read and assessed your ethical perspectives what do you think are the primary characteristics of an ethical leader? You may want to discuss this in the context of the leadership in your current organization or the city of Chicago.
As we continue our exploration of the influence of values and ethics in organizations, we need to examine the affects of organizational culture as it relates to leadership, ethics and critical decision-making. For example, describe the decision making process in your organization. Further, how do the elements of your organization’s culture, whether explicitly or implicitly, shape our perceptions on these key concepts? Provide your answer to this question.
And I responded by sending them the draft paragraph below. Am I anywhere on the mark? Or does this make sense?
In order to understand the culture of an organization is to know what rules have been setup to define how an organization will function. There is always a pre-set notion of how an organization is ideally supposed to function. But it is up to decision-makers to create tasks and place into action the steps needed for workers to follow through on those tasks. In other words, upper-level managers, who are in leadership postions, always predefine the culture of an organization. They determine how workers should dress, how workers relate and interact with one another, how workers are locally or globally positioned across the company, and in some cases how the voice mail greeting should be spoken and how the signature on an email should read. Are these ideas of how an organization’s nomenclature should be set? Is this ethical? Yes and maybe, if it all ties to the financial bottom-line of the company. And, in most cases, these aforementioned ideas always are. However, it takes a great leader to recognize “gaps” within his/her organizational culture. For example, the word “diversity” has lots of baggage attached to it, but placed in the context of a work environment (prior experience), when someone, who is deemed to have great leadership abilities, cannot commit to providing his workers with diversity experiences, and cannot hire a staff composed of mixed ethnicities and cultural differences, that leader is overlooking the organization’s culture. If the work force is not diverse, where do new ideas come from? How do you produce a product that will sell to other cultures and ethnic groups? The leader will find that the business will not flourish because of this. An organization’s culture, explicitly and implicitly shapes its financial bottom line. And as a consumer, I am drawn to products where I can see myself. In other words, if I come across a product that I can’t see myself using, why invest. Also, if you look at the organizational build of most fortune 500 companies, you’ll find a diverse workforce. This is how an organization’s culture can shape our perceptions.