Leadership and the Ethics of Influence

Terry L. Price

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138327641
• eBook ISBN: 9780429829857
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

How do leaders influence others? Although they sometimes appeal directly to good reasons, which we associate with rational persuasion, leaders also use guilt, pressure, flattery, bullying, and rewards and punishment—all to get the behaviors that they want. Even when leaders refrain from outright lying, they are nevertheless known to practice something approaching, perhaps reaching, the level of manipulation. Influence therefore presents a serious ethical problem across leadership contexts.

Leadership and the Ethics of Influence argues that influence puts leaders at risk of using people. It is generally disrespectful of autonomy to figure out what makes people "tick" in an effort to "handle" them. In contrast with physical force, influence works through agency, not around it. Despite this feature of influence—and, to a large extent because of it—the everyday influence associated with leadership is often morally troublesome. What matters morally is not only whether agency is bypassed or overridden but also who is ultimately in control. This book uses philosophy and leadership studies to show how leaders across different contexts can be justified in getting followers to do things.

Connecting moral theory to leadership theory, and especially to charismatic leadership, authentic leadership, transforming leadership, and ethical leadership, this book is essential reading for leadership scholars, students, and practitioners.

1
ETHICAL STARTING POINTS

A large part of a leader’s job is knowing the right way to exercise influence. In one sense, what tactics are “right” for leaders will depend on what works. It is for this reason that leadership scholars spend a lot of time trying to understand which methods are actually effective when it comes to getting people to do things. In his popular textbook on organizational leadership, Gary Yukl devotes the better part of a chapter to a discussion of the effectiveness of the influence tactics, which he catalogs as follows: rational persuasion, apprising, inspirational appeals, consultation, exchange tactics, collaboration, personal appeals, ingratiation, legitimating tactics, pressure, and coalition tactics.¹ Yukl concludes that, in the end, the right tactics are determined by features of the context in which influence is being exercised—for example, the formal authority of the person exercising influence and the relationship between this individual and the person being influenced.² We can also ask, though, whether these methods are “right” in a second sense. Here, the rightness of any particular tactic refers to its moral permissibility. Do the influence tactics represent ethical ways of getting people to do things?

1 Gary Yukl, Leadership in Organizations, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006), 164ff.

2 Yukl, Leadership in Organizations, 174.

Moral problems surrounding the techniques that leaders use are hardly new to philosophical discussions of leadership. In the early sixteenth century, Niccolò Machiavelli pointed to the contrast between the tactics leaders actually use—indeed, the tactics he believed leaders must use—and the ones we might think they morally ought to use.³ Being realistic about leadership, Machiavelli asserts, demands that we “set aside fantasies … and consider what happens in fact.”⁴ He famously comes down on the side of treating followers (and others) however it takes to achieve a leader’s ends—even “to act immorally when this becomes necessary.”⁵ The argument for these methods appeals to the fact that leaders are “surrounded” by people who themselves fall well short of the ideal.⁶ First, people are naive and easily deceived.⁷ Second, they are “unscrupulous” or hardly “upright.”⁸ Putting the two together, Machiavelli concludes that a leader need not follow the moral rules—for example, the requirement that he “keep his word”—when it does not suit his purposes.⁹

3 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 54.

4 Machiavelli, The Prince, 55.

5 Machiavelli, The Prince, 55. When Machiavelli does offer absolute prohibitions—for example, on taking “womenfolk” or property, it is for instrumental reasons—namely, to do what is conducive to the leader achieving his ends (59).

6 Machiavelli, The Prince, 54.

7 Machiavelli, The Prince, 62.

8 Machiavelli, The Prince, 54, 62.

9 Machiavelli, The Prince, 61.

In philosophical ethics, the answer to Machiavelli is Immanuel Kant. When the necessities of leadership conflict with the demands of morality, morality must win out. The central value in Kant’s moral theory is the value of autonomy, and this value sets moral limits on all behavior, including the behavior of leaders.¹⁰ For Kant, autonomy is identified with our capacity for reason.¹¹ Morality therefore requires that we respect this capacity both in ourselves and in other rational agents. First, we can use our own reason to derive generally applicable moral rules.¹² It would be the height of unreasonableness for any of us—including our leaders—to see ourselves as “special,” as exceptions to ethical demands.¹³ Second, we must respect other rational agents.¹⁴ This feature of Kantian ethics identifies why it is wrong for leaders or anyone else to use people. Against Machiavelli’s advice, then, leaders are not justified in engaging in behaviors such as making false promises to achieve their ends.¹⁵ Leaders are bound by generally applicable moral rules, and they must treat other rational agents with the respect such agents deserve.¹⁶

10 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), 108.

11 Kant, Groundwork, 68–69.

12 Kant, Groundwork, 88.

13 Terry L. Price, “Kant’s Advice for Leaders: ‘No, You Aren’t Special’,” The Leadership Quarterly: Special Issue on Leadership in the Humanities 19 (2008): 478–487.

14 Kant, Groundwork, 96.

15 Kant, Groundwork, 89–90, 97.

16 Kant was also aware of our weaknesses—specifically, that we cannot achieve our ends on our own and that “we have so many characteristics and tendencies that are objectionable to others,” which justifies “reserve and concealment. … [I]f all men were good, nobody could hold anything back” (see, respectively, Groundwork, 91; and “Moral Philosophy: Collins’s Lecture Notes,” in Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 37–222 at 201). James Edwin Mahon reads the second argument this way: “[I]f people were candid with others, it would be possible for others to take advantage of them” (“Kant and Maria von Herbert: Reticence vs. Deception,” Philosophy 81 [2006]: 417–444 at 422). Instead of exploiting these weaknesses as Machiavelli recommends, Kant’s theory uses morality to respond to them.

Kant’s commitment to autonomy provides a philosophical foundation for thinking about the ethics of influence. Yet it turns out that simply telling leaders to follow the moral rules and show respect for others will not solve the ethical problems associated with the influence tactics. Although there are commonly accepted moral prohibitions on behaviors such as making false promises, ethical expectations are much less clear when it comes to the exercise of influence. Even less clear, perhaps, is a determination of which tactics would constitute proper respect. Machiavelli was well aware of this indeterminacy, and part of his brilliance was in his recognition of the fact that leaders could use the indeterminacy to their advantage.¹⁷ In other words, Machiavelli does not ignore morality and the interests of followers altogether. Far from it: leaders can use morality and exploit followers’ interests to achieve their own ends.¹⁸ Although Machiavelli is notorious for the moral permissiveness he allows, his account is equally instructive for its instrumentalism about morality. One challenge for the ethics of influence is to make sense of this kind of instrumentalism and, ultimately, to constrain it.

17 Machiavelli, The Prince, 63.

18 Machiavelli counseled leaders to be moral to the extent that they can and also to get results that advance the good of the community (The Prince, 55, 63fn b). I thank Kevin Cherry for helping me articulate this point.

Autonomy is not the only moral value to which the ethics of influence might appeal. Machiavelli’s prioritization of results shows that it is possible to evaluate the means leaders use in terms of the ends they achieve.¹⁹ Consequentialist theories such as utilitarianism also use results to justify leadership behavior. Utilitarianism holds that actions are right or wrong depending on whether they maximize overall well-being. Influence will accordingly be justified to the extent that it gives rise to benefits that we cannot get without it. Virtue ethics, another prominent approach, looks not to the actions in which leaders engage but, rather, to the character traits on which leaders act.²⁰ Advocates of this approach would not be surprised to find out that there are no clear rules regarding the ethics of influence.²¹ They deny that any kind of “technical manual” exists for morality.²² Instead, the key to ethical influence for virtue ethicists is having the intelligence—the practical wisdom—to know the right circumstances in which to use particular tactics.²³ This kind of intelligence would include an understanding of the nature of the particular relationships in which influence might justifiably be exercised.

19 In fact, there is a reading of Machiavelli that sees him as making a moral case for unconventional measures based on the good consequences that issue from his recommendations. For example, actions that seem stingy or cruel might be all-things-considered generous or kind because of their effects on the larger society for which a leader is responsible. According to this reading, leadership behavior gets its justification by reference to “the vast majority” or “a whole community” (The Prince, 56, 58).

20 Virtuous leaders are disposed to find the mean between the vice of excess and the vice of deficiency (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985], 44 [1107a1–4]).

21 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 35 [1104a1–2]: “[E]very account of the actions we must do has to be stated in ou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• CONTENTS
• Series Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Ethical Starting Points
• 2 Using Influence Tactics
• 3 The Special Case of Rational Persuasion?
• 4 Rethinking the Ethics of Authenticity
• 5 Leadership Theory and the Role of Moral Valence
• 6 Autonomous Relationships
• Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Index