=七月流火=小组第6次小组作业 A 43 by CHERRYKISS

CHERRYKISSUID: 2677770

ISSUE 43:
To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.



Is it a must for each public official to keep the highest ethical and moral standards in order to become an effective leader? The author claims so. However, in my point of view, while the high ethical and moral standards are essencial, it is an overstatement that any effective leader need to maitain them.

To begin with, a standard of ethic and moral serves as the rule to distinguish between right and wrong, bad and good in human society. Since public officials are in charge of the society and in duty of people's well being, ethical and moral standards are significant to their job. Due to the fact that officials are wielding power but do not benefit directly according to the efficency of their work, there is a better chance for them to abuse authority for personal gains or vested interest groups. By constraining people's behavior, ethical and moral standards are an effective way to prevent delinquencies from happening.

Still, question remains, such as how to define "the highest” ethical and moral standards? As an abstract and uncomparable conception, it is difficult to tell whether a standard is the highest or not. To put as an example, comparing Chinese sage Confucius with Laotse, who is of higher ethical and moral standards? And is he the one with the highest ethical and moral standards ever in the past and contemporary world as well? How to support the judgement by evidence? Different people may have differen ideas. Consequently, even a saint dose not for sure maintain the highest ethical and moral standards, leave along an effective leader.

When it comes to ethical and moral standards in terms of the one's family, then there is no necessity of these standard to become an effective leader. History has witnessed many great leaders who failed to manage the domestic affairs by justified means, for instance, led to a miserable end to the marriage by commiting domestic violence. However, considering policy, he or she may be of excellent and admirable leadership. This illustrates that under certain conditions ethical and moral standards have nothing to do with the ability of an effective leader, neither do them affect a public official to become such effective leader.

In sum, we should not come to a hasty conclusion without first indentifying the concept of highest ethical and moral standards and analyzing under different circumstances. However, relatively high ethical and moral standards have been what the masses expected to see from their leaders, also what many public offiicals were pursuiting for, and it should remain the same in the foreseeable future.