REVIEW: Claas Florian Engelke/Richard B. Swegan — The Practice of Ethical Leadership (BOOK)
The best way I would describe Claas Florian Engelke and Richard B. Swegan’s new book is an altruist’s guide to ethically maintaining the bottom line. Titularly, they call it The Practice of Ethical Leadership: Insight from Psychology and Business in Building an Ethical Bottom Line. Part of what makes Engelke and Swegan’s new book so interesting is just that, the concept of an ethical bottom line. In the eyes of Reaganite Wall Street, those two terms would be considered oxymoronic in pairing, at best.
But as Engelke and Swegan brilliantly demonstrate, the sociological aspect they advocate for in business relations in part and parcel not only to success in the modern world, but in building a model continuing said success for generations. The idea of an ethical bottom line is the grail to strive for, step one, they argue. It essentially forms the crux of a successful, and self-sustaining business enterprise. Such informed sentiments and statistically-backed points may remind one slightly of the Lean system, embracing a utilitarian set of ideals for corporate success strategies rather than hierarchal components in ensuring vision.
Essentially, the idea of a company’s core concept(s) being embraced and strived for by a collective body, top to bottom, so that everyone feels personally and professionally invested in doing their part to bring about the target endgame. But Engelke and Swegan, while highlighting the merits of such a philosophy, go deeper. They really get to the guts of what this kind of ideological set of implementations really are all about.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Ethical-Leadership-Insights-Psychology/dp/1032397241
“The Practice of Ethical Leadership essentially started as a question. At its most basic, we were both intrigued by the question of why otherwise ethical people misbehave in certain circumstances. In other words, why do good people do bad things? In asking this question, we fully recognized that some people may have psychological disorders that remove guilt or that they are criminals. By and large we are not talking about them.
Our focus is on those that are otherwise ethical and the individuals that lead them. More to the point, our focus is on leaders — those that aspire to be ethical, those that want their organizations to be ethical, and the organizations who want to hire and develop ethical leaders,” the duo writes, in aforementioned fashion. “…If you are looking for a book on compliance and ethics, this is not the book for you. While we have a great deal of respect for organizations that have a compliance group or ethics officers, we intentionally stayed away from that arena. Fundamentally, we believe that compliance and ethics are a necessary starting point. Particularly if one is in or working with a large organization, moving toward compliance is crucial.
At a bare minimum, organizations should strive to obey the laws of their land and expect that their employees will do the same. And we know that is not always an easy task. Moving toward legal equilibrium can be a challenging task. For many leaders of fast moving, entrepreneurial organizations, moving to compliance can be a daunting task as the organization culture may encourage pushing legal and ethical boundaries in the name of growth.”
Colin Jordan
