Leadership and Change: The Case for Greater Ethical Clarity (Bernard Burnes • Rune Todnem) - LI10

Organisations that want to implement changes need to have leaders who have earned the trust of the workforce. If making a change was easy nobody would have to do anything about it and if there was a manual for a particular change, organisations wouldn't need a leader to implement the change. But, as that is not the case change processes require leaders and it is often beneficial if they were around for a long time. When workforce trusts their leader it means that they believe he/she will do all in his/her powers to make the whole organisation better and not just his own position. In this learning item, I explain the value of leadership and discuss one of the areas where external advice might not offer the best solution.

Becoming a leader is what many strive for, but having a leader is an organisational need too. Leaders need to prove to their workforce that they will indeed follow organisational goals and not just individual ones. Leaders face all sorts of problems including ambiguity of change, resistance to change, organisational culture and ethical standards of change. Therefore, Burnes and Todnem (2011) point out, if leadership and change were easy, they would not attract so much attention or be seen as so important. Furthermore, managers and workers can be sacked for breaking the rules, but leaders, on the other hand, can be sacked for not breaking the rules. Likewise, the performance measures for holding managers to account are relatively clear and short-term whilst the criteria for holding leaders to account are far fuzzier and can span over a longer period of time.

The inability to define leaders is very common and best described by Burnes and Todnem (2011): ‘’Stakeholders can judge the trustworthiness of managers by their adherence to specified and monitored objectives and rules, but the trustworthiness of leaders is often based on faith, sometimes blind faith, engendered by their magnetic personality.’’ However, a magnetic personality is common to both saints and conmen and doubt, often seen in workers eyes, sometimes is justified by the end result.

In my view, organisational change requires trust and good communication between leaders and the workforce. As argued, good leaders are trusted but need time to get to that level so having an external party implement the change is not always feasible, but managers know that external views are extremely valuable. Perhaps, advisory services from external parties rather than a full leadership role are something that can take out the best from both sides. Companies have a hard time seeing the problem solely taking the internal perspective into account, therefore, I would argue that external consultants are welcome, but external change leaders possibly bring more harm than good.

A workforce that is familiar with its leader generally can spot changes in their behaviour and possibly identify when something goes wrong. In this way, unethical behaviour by leaders can be avoided and effective changes can take place. The second aim of the article from Burnes and Todnem (2011) was to show that some approaches to change are more likely to lead to ethical outcomes than others, but that not all approaches to change make clear their ethical basis. As a consequence, many leaders have been unchallenged in putting their own egos and interests ahead of the interests of the other stakeholders in their organisation, in some cases with disastrous results.

To concluded, plans and standards need to be in place for both leaders and workers to feel safe. In order to build trust between leaders and the workforce, time is one of the crucial factors and this the main point companies need to understand. Good communication is predicated on past communication and if there is no previous record of communication between external consultants and the workforce it is highly likely that the change will be hindered. This article helped me realise the value of leaders and good leadership with regards to the change processes. Sometimes companies need to rely on that thing called faith as external views can be beneficial on multiple different occasions but tend not to serve well as the only guideline for change.

Reference:

Burnes, B. and Todnem, R. (2011). Leadership and Change: The Case for Greater Ethical Clarity. Journal of Business Ethics, 108(2), pp.239-252

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