Issue43 by zephyrqq

zephyrqqUID: 2260290

ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
字数：375  610    用时：00:45:00    加了25分钟 日期：2008-2-22 19:22:31


观点：基本赞成
1. 具有高度道德和伦理标准的政治领导容易得到人民的尊敬和信任
2. 高度道德伦理标准能够帮助商业领导和他们的企业取得成功
3. 虽然领导也是人， 他们在道德和伦理上难以完美，但是，道德伦理还是重要的

What makes an effective public leader? Does an effective leader merely mean prominent capacity and insightful viewpoints, without having something to do with ethics and morality? When faced with these question, I fundamentally agree with the speaker who insist that the ethical and moral standards are essential for an effective leader. However, I deem it is rather difficult for them to maintain the highest morality.

To begin with, it is easy for a political leader with high ethical and moral standards to enjoy respect and trust from his or her people. Such is human nature: people are more likely to follow a decent leader who value morality than a immoral one. The reason is simple: the former often have a strong sense of responsibility to public welfare and the interests of the whole society, while the latter tend to abuse his or her power to get private profits and seldom think the well-being of masses. What is understandable is that ethics together with morality make a leader more reliable and more respectable, and therefore he or she could earn more support and compliance from his or her people. How could a political leadership be effective without the support of the subordinates? What is better, public leaders with adherence to morality and ethics would achieve more accomplishments for they would serve their people heart and soul and concern themselves in the improvement of people’s living levels and the prosperity of our society.

When it comes to the realm of business, it is the situation is quite similar. As a successful manager of a big corporation, one must try to gain as much profits as possible for this corporation through his or her leadership. Nevertheless, this does not imply that it is justifiable for one to achieve this goal by any means. Actually, ambitious but immoral, business leaders, who turn a blind eye to the restrictions of laws and social moral and ethical standards would end up with fiasco in the long run, though they might excel others in a short time. To enhance the benefits of their own companies or factories by using substandard raw materials for products and compromising the interests of their customers, or doing nothing to treat with industrial pollutants for reducing their costs would create counterproductive effects, because these behaviors could ruin the reputation of their corporations. Contrarily, those leaders who maintain high ethical standard and view the social responsibility as one of the most indispensable duties of their firms would have more chance to win the recognition and praise from their customs and therefore their leadership would become more successful and effective.

Nonetheless, leaders are human beings themselves, and they cannot expect to be prefect, no matter ethically or morally. As an old saying goes ( and I paraphrase), " To err is man."  It is almost impossible for all the public leaders to maintain the highest moral and ethical standards. However, this does not say there is no need for them to be leaders with morality, which is extremely important to remind them their responsibility for the interests of others and for the whole society. In a word, high moral and ethical standards is the fundamental elements of a effective leadership.

For all these foregoing reasons, one does not have to go very far to see that it is necessary for public officials to maintain high ethical and moral standards, though they could hardly have the highest ones sometimes. A leader, no matter how competent and smart, would doom to be ineffective if he or she view morality and ethics as something which make no sense.


[ 本帖最后由 zephyrqq 于 2008-3-6 19:17 编辑 ]