Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership

Why do leaders fail ethically? In this book, Terry L. Price applies 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 nonetheless 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 articulates how leaders make exceptions of themselves, explains how the justificatory force of leadership gives rise to such exception-making, and develops normative prescriptions that leaders should adopt as a response to this feature of their moral psychology.

• The first book-length, philosophical treatment of leadership • Draws on cognitive and social psychology, history of political thought, leadership studies, management, organizational theory, and religion • Comprehensive ethical analysis that can be applied across leadership contexts -- in public, private, and non-profit sectors

1. Volitional and cognitive accounts of ethical failures in leadership; 2. The nature of exception making; 3. Making exceptions for leaders; 4. Justifying leadership; 5. The ethics of authentic transformational leadership; 6. Change and responsibility; 7. Ignorance, history, and moral membership.