MORAL IMPERATIVES

The dominant paradigm of leadership suffers from contradictions. Because of its almost exclusive focus on profitability, it fails to address issues of ethics and morality. The result became clear with the outbreak of scandals perpetrated by corporate managers once praised as visionary leaders.

The dominant paradigm is also limited in its usefulness because it continues to associate leadership with power and authority at a time when hierarchical structures are giving way to more democratic forms of governance in the public sector and more diffused, power-sharing arrangements in the private sector.

Value leadership is based on the commonly accepted notion that the most important moral imperatives are the sanctity of life itself and the value of social, cultural, personal, and economic human development. It does not require scientific measurement and does not rely on a limited number of behavioral descriptions. It is not associated with power and authority and is democratic in the sense that any person can exercise leadership by engaging in activities that add value to life.

For the public sector, this may mean the commitment of elected officials to improve the social, cultural, and economical development of not just their own constituencies but of all people. For corporate managers, it may mean adopting a corporate social responsibility strategy that makes them and their companies accountable to not only shareholders but also everyone whose life is affected by the company's operations. It may also mean a commitment to the human development of the workforce through relationships and connections that celebrate the diversity and uniqueness of people and the richness of life. For students, it may mean engaging in community service activities. For civil society—non-governmental organizations such as community groups, labor unions, and charitable organizations—it may mean sustained commitment to defending the human rights of all, coming to the rescue of the less fortunate, and helping empower people to help themselves.

People around the world, from Poland in the late 1980s to Ecuador in 2005, have understood that they need to empower themselves in order to practice value leadership. They did so in the largest antiwar demonstrations in history, against the war in Iraq. They did so in Brazil, where tens of thousands gathered in 2002 for the World Social Forum to affirm their commitment not to the primacy of the economic order inherent in the dominant leadership model but to the value of making human development the priority.

The dominant model uses people to increase productivity; value leadership uses knowledge to empower people and advance human development. The dominant model focuses on competition and the struggle for increased power; value leadership focuses on relations—people to people and people and organizations to communities. The dominant paradigm seeks to achieve universal applicability through the global advancement of the capitalist culture; value leadership is truly universal by definition because it addresses common human concerns and seeks to achieve common human aspirations.

The skills promoted by the dominant leadership paradigm are useful but should be part of a leadership model that is larger than the one that promotes power and domination. These skills should facilitate the harnessing of human and material resources and the mobilization of creative human energies to advance human development. They should help build a culture of value leadership that forges human connections, constructs meaning, and adds to life.