Ethical Leadership: Moral Decision-Making under Pressure

Ethical leadership does not simply emerge from a code of conduct, a good school, or a host of good intentions. It is an individual choice, or rather a series of choices that emerges from the complex interaction of personal values with social imperatives. This book explores how and why some people become ethical leaders in morally challenging and complex social environments.

In Ethical Leadership, Aidan McQuade provides insight into the concept of human agency – the individual’s choice of a course of action in response to the options posed by that individual’s engagement with the social world. He puts forth a new model of human agency – the "cruciform of agency" – which recognises that the potential range of individual action emerges from the nature of the resonance that social options strike with personal thoughts. Every action adds to the individual’s personal biography in ways that influence subsequent choices by confirming or changing personal values and hopes, hence influencing the way the individual subsequently thinks about the world.

In explaining the potential and limits of human agency for ethical leadership, the book establishes a basis for executives, policy makers and academics to conceptualise and develop more robust and realistic approaches for the mitigation of some of the most pressing moral issues facing humanity today. These include the inter-related challenges of modern slavery and global warming, which pose such critical threats to the Earth itself.

In this book McQuade not only sets an agenda for action but empowers individual leaders to find the moral courage to better advance human rights and preserve the environment even when such action requires unpopular choices.

Events around the book

Link to a De Gruyter Online Event in which the author and independent human rights consultant Aidan McQuade together with Bernd Vogel, Director of the Henley Centre for Leadership at Henley Business School, Joanne Murphy, Director of Research & Co-Director of the Centre for Leadership, Ethics & Organisation at Queen’s Management School; Ambassador Luis C. deBaca, Professor from Practice, University of Michigan Law School discuss topics such as: what potentially deters leaders from making ethical decisions; what can they draw upon both internally and externally to do the right thing when doing so may be unpopular; how, in the light of fake news, can leaders communicate ethically; and much more: https://youtu.be/EYAAGiCX4cI

• Explores classical philosophical questions of freedom, determinism and moral responsibility by using a social science empirical research methodology
• Provides practical insights into the challenges of ethical leadership for contemporary professionals

About the Author

Dr Aidan McQuade is an independent consultant on human rights and humanitarian response. He was CEO of Anti-Slavery International from 2006 to 2017, and prior to that worked extensively in development and humanitarian operations for 13 years, including 5 years leading emergency responses to the brutal civil war in Angola.

He is an experienced researcher on business and human rights, with a PhD on the subject of ethical choice-making in professional practice. He is also an acknowledged expert on slavery and forced labour, with an honorary OBE for his work on elimination of modern slavery. His work has included extensive and sustained engagement with international businesses, advising them on strategies to eliminate forced and child labour in supply chains and operations. He has also undertaken ground-breaking work that has exposed caste and gender aspects of modern slavery, and, particularly in Myanmar and Bangladesh, on slavery as a development and humanitarian issue.

He is the author of a novel, The Undiscovered Country, described by Claire Hanna, MP for South Belfast, as, "A cracker read about morality and ethics in a time of conflict . . . A really accessible way of getting into complex stuff on nation-building and justice."

Watch our book talk with the author here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqWd00USopM