Are You a Caring Leader? (1)
Are you a caring leader? If so, do you care about? Or do you care for? Or do you care with? Can a caring leader be an effective leader? Is the idea of a caring leader incompatible with leading formal organizations, especially businesses? Is an ethic of care viable in our current society and polity?
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted me to examine the nature of caring leadership. Unlike other adjectives, like heroic, or authentic, or transactional, or transformational, one seldom sees the adjective caring modifying the noun leadership. Even the adjective relational, as in relational leadership, does not approach the nature of caring leadership although relationships are very important to caring.… Read the rest
Care Ethics and Business Management (2)
Are you a caring manager? Do you work for a caring company? This post may help answer these and related questions. It follows the first post, which outlined the ethics of care.
The relationship between business management and care ethics goes back a relatively long time but in a relatively silent way. The early, and to this day probably the most significant context, for care ethics in business focuses on stakeholder theory within the more general context of corporate governance.
Introduction
Care ethics challenges the neoclassical understanding of business. Friedman promulgated the principle that business organizations should focus solely on increasing shareholder value.… Read the rest
Leadership and the ethics of care – a philosophical analysis (4A)
This two-part post continues the series of posts on caring leadership by focusing on a paper by Tomkins and Simpson titled “Caring Leadership: A Heideggerian Perspective.” A philosophical perspective requires leadership studies to examine what happens “when there is no functionalist blueprint, no clear sense to be made, no comfort in transparency.”
The authors suggest that caring leadership is largely practiced in one or the other of two modes of intervention. One mode is a “leaping-in” intervention and the other is “leaping-ahead” intervention. Overall, the authors posit that much of the care ethics literature provides “too tempting a recipe to follow.”
The first part of this post discusses the paper.… Read the rest
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