【辉太郎杀G大队】7/30业 Issue43 by MC dragonfly

lmcdragonflyUID: 2601914

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."


Should a public official maintain the highest ethical and moral standards when managing their enterprises on their way for maximizing the benefits? The speaker claims that they should do this in order to be effective. As for me, the speaker's opinion goes to the extremes and leaders needn't be constrained too strictly on the moral standards. An effective leader should be feasible within proper boundaries of morality to lead the enterprise to weather changeable challenges.

Basically, it is beyond anyone's ability, including the strong-willed and cool-minded leaders, to be saints in morality.
Common sense tells us that the so-called highest moral standards are established by people rather than conducted by people. It is unfortunate but true that no man is flawless. To some extent, the saints in morality are living in the legends. It is unfair to request too much on the morality of the leaders just because they are on the guiding place of the enterprise.

Moreover, the supreme in ethnical and morals are not essential to be an effective leader. It involves many aspects such as the ability of organizing, managing, inspiring and other basic skills to be an effective leader. Many successful leaders we generally recognize are far from perfect in morality. We all admire Martin Luther King as a great leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Peace Movement. But he is also blamed for his profligacy in personal life. The former president of USA, Bill Clinton, is another vivid example. His sexual sandal with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, leaves him under the denunciation of the public. But Americans seldom disparage him as a president for all his contributions to America like the rapid economic growth. So it is nature that a good leader will also have deficiency in morality.

In larger sense, when it comes to the general interest of the whole nation and organization, the leaders should be feasible in face of moral problems rather than sticky to the so-called highest moral standards stupidly. For instance, honesty is certainly a good and important virtue for everyone. But sometimes it isn’t the case like the occasions that the military commanders are at war with enemies. The Art of War by Sun Zi mentioned (and I translated )that “the military is the art of deception.” It is ridiculous to be sticky to the rules of honesty for the commanders. Similarly, when a political leader are considering the general welfares of the whole nation, it is normal not be as honest as the morality request. In the realm of diploma, the strategy the nation use may be immoral by the high standards of moralists, but it deserves no criticism.

However, the feasibility in face of morality doesn’t mean the public officials are free from the restriction of the morality. Instead, there are still many baselines of morality couldn’t be broken up. If so, the leaders will lose his reputation as an responsible leader and fall. The Nixon’s Watergate gives us a vivid example. Maybe an improper conduct in privacy of the leader can be forgiven, the deeds destruct the basic principles of justice are beyond this range.

In sum, the speaker’s assertion goes too far away when evaluating the morality. Effective leaders don’t need to be saints and may be feasible in morality in face of certain condition. Yet there are still the boundaries they shouldn’t step across.