Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership [Paperback]

Price brings a multi-disciplinary approach to an understanding of why leaders fail ethically.This book brings a multi-desciplinary approach to bear on the general question of why leaders fail ethically. Its main thesis is that ethical failures in leadership are best understood in terms of mistaken beliefs that leaders hold about whether they are justified in making exceptions of themselves and excluding others from commonly accepted protections of morality. Although scholars within the social sciences and humanities have long sought to understand leadership behavior, this book takes as its rationale the need for a comprehensive ethical analysis that can be applied across leadership contexts---in public, private, and non-profit sectors.This book brings a multi-desciplinary approach to bear on the general question of why leaders fail ethically. Its main thesis is that ethical failures in leadership are best understood in terms of mistaken beliefs that leaders hold about whether they are justified in making exceptions of themselves and excluding others from commonly accepted protections of morality. Although scholars within the social sciences and humanities have long sought to understand leadership behavior, this book takes as its rationale the need for a comprehensive ethical analysis that can be applied across leadership contexts---in public, private, and non-profit sectors.Why do leaders fail ethically? In this book, Terry L. Price uses a multi-disciplinary approach to an understanding of immorality in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. He argues that leaders can know that a certain kind of behavior is generally required by morality but still be mistaken as to whether the relevant moral requirement applies to them in a particular situation and whether others are protected by this requirement. Price demonstrates how leaders make exceptions of themselves, explains how the justificatory force of leadership gives rise to such exception-making, and develops nol£1