Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow (7th Edition)

Description

Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow, 7th Edition

Craig E. Johnson treats the ethical challenges of leadership as the subject of the book rather than a chapter near the back of one. His organizing image is that a leader casts either light or shadow over the people they lead. The seventh edition is built around that split and what it takes to stay on the light side of it.

The book is unusually willing to look straight at leadership failure. Abuse of power, privilege, mismanaged information, inconsistency, misplaced loyalty and irresponsibility are each named and worked through instead of being left as general warnings.

The shadow side gets its own treatment

Most leadership texts describe good practice and stop there. Johnson spends real space on the specific ways leaders cause harm, which gives a reader the vocabulary to say what actually went wrong in a case. That vocabulary is what makes the decision-making material later in the book usable.

Character before rules

A second thread runs through the book: what kind of person a leader has to become, not just which rules to follow. Character and virtue sit beside the normative theories, utilitarianism and Kant among them, so the reader meets both versions of the question. The approach is interdisciplinary, pulling from philosophy, psychology, communication and organizational studies, and it stays applied. Students are asked to make decisions, not to recognize dilemmas and move on.

What the book covers

• The shadow side of leadership: the specific ways leaders cause harm, named and analyzed.
• Character and virtue, and what a leader has to develop rather than memorize.
• Ethical decision-making formats for working through hard calls.
• Normative theories, including utilitarianism and Kant.
• Cases drawn from business, politics, education and non-profits.
• Self-assessments that make the material personal rather than theoretical.
• Applications and exercises built around judgment under pressure.

Who it is for

Undergraduate and graduate students in leadership, management and organizational communication, along with MBA and executive education participants. Outside the classroom it is read by managers, non-profit directors and public administrators who face these decisions in practice, and by leadership development and ethics trainers who teach them.

Book details

• Title: Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow
• Author: Craig E. Johnson
• Edition: 7th
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• ISBN-13: 9781544351643
• Format: Paperback, 536 pages

Questions buyers ask

Is this only for business students?

No. The cases come from business, politics, education and non-profits, and the readership named in the book includes public administrators and non-profit directors as well as MBA students.

Does it cover ethical theory or only practice?

Both. Normative theories such as utilitarianism and Kant are covered, then put to work through decision-making formats, cases and exercises.

Which edition is this, and who publishes it?

This is the seventh edition, published by SAGE Publications, Inc. The ISBN-13 is 9781544351643.

Is there anything to work through, or is it read-only?

There are self-assessments, applications and exercises throughout. The self-assessments are the part that turns the theory into something personal.

What format does it ship in?

Paperback, 536 pages.