Responsible Leadership and the Reflective CEO: Resolving Stakeholder Conflict by Imagining What Could be done

Nicola M Pless; Atri Sengupta; Melissa A Wheeler; Thomas Maak

doi:10.1007/s10551-021-04865-6

Responsible Leadership and the Reflective CEO: Resolving Stakeholder Conflict by Imagining What Could be done

J Bus Ethics. 2022;180(1):313-337. doi: 10.1007/s10551-021-04865-6. Epub 2021 Jun 23.

Authors

Nicola M Pless¹, Atri Sengupta², Melissa A Wheeler³, Thomas Maak⁴

Affiliations

¹ Professor of Management, Chair in Positive Business, Director Centre for Business Ethics & Responsible Leadership, University of South Australia, UniSA Business, North Terrace, Elton Mayo Building, Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia.
² Assistant Professor, Area Chair, OB & HR, Indian Institute of Management Sambalpur, Sambalpur, Odisha - 768019 India.
³ Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Law, Swinburne University of Technology, John St, Hawthorn, VIC 3122 Australia.
⁴ Professor of Leadership, Director Centre for Workplace Leadership, University of Melbourne, 198 Berkeley Street, Melbourne, VIC 3010 Australia.

Abstract

In light of grand societal challenges, most recently the global Covid-19 pandemic, there is a call for research on responsible leadership. While significant advances have been made in recent years towards a better understanding of the concept, a gap exists in the understanding of responsible leadership in emerging countries, specifically how leaders resolve prevalent moral dilemmas. Following Werhane (1999), we use moral imagination as an analytical approach to analyze a dilemmatic stakeholder conflict (between indigenous communities in rural India and an emerging market multinational enterprise headquartered in the same country) through the lense of different responsible leadership mindsets and in light of different ethical principles and moral background theories. Based on this analysis, we arrive at a tentative moral judgement, concluding that the instrumental approach is morally inferior and recommending the integrative approach as the morally superior choice. In the subsequent discussion-focussed on what "could" (instead of "should") be done, we apply the integrative script and use moral imagination as a pathway for generating morally justifiable solutions. Through this analysis, we provide novel insights on how to apply an integrative responsible leadership approach to a stakeholder conflict situation, using the single case study to expand the responsible leadership discussion to emerging markets.

Keywords: Business ethics; Corporate social responsibility; Cross-sector collaboration; Emerging country multinational; Grand societal challenges; Indigenous communities; Moral imagination; Responsible leadership; Social justice; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Sustainable development.