Management education and the ethical mindset: Responsibility to whom and for what?

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of leadership responsibility associated with differing models of the firm. Following a critique of the classical economic and conventional stakeholder theories of the firm, we proposes an interactive stakeholder theory that better facilitates the kind of ethical responsibility demanded by twenty-first century challenges. Our analysis also leads us to conclude that leadership education and development is in need of urgent reform. The first part of the paper focuses on what it means to lead responsibly, and argues that leading is essentially the practice of responsibility. The second part of the paper challenges standard assumptions about the ‘business of business’, while the third section examines in more depth how leadership education might be configured as a preparation for the enactment of responsible leadership. KEYWORDS: responsible leadership, ethics, leadership education, mindsets, stakeholder theory