LDR 305 Week 5 Ethical Leadership Practices Example

The Example Set at the Top Reaches the Pay Station: Ethical Leadership Practices and a Leadership Plan for a Car Wash Company

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

LDR/305: Foundations of Leadership

Week 5 Final Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Brightwater Express Car Wash, its incidents and its plans are composites written for a model paper.

Four earlier papers have looked at leadership at Brightwater, the invented car wash chain, from different angles: theories that explain site managers' results, the styles of its regional managers, a new vision and a focused program of corporate responsibility. Last summer, it faced an ethical test. To boost growth, leadership ran a membership sales contest with cash prizes for the top sites. Memberships rose 18 percent in two months, but complaints tripled. Some customers said crew members had told them a membership was a one-time discount, and several older customers discovered monthly charges they did not expect. Two site managers had encouraged crews to skip explaining the terms when lines were long. This paper analyzes the incident through research on ethical leadership and presents an ethical leadership plan that integrates the course.

Defining Ethical Leadership

Brown et al. (2005) described ethical leaders as people who act rightly in their own dealings and relationships and who spread that standard to others through conversation, reinforcement and the choices they make. Their reasoning came from social learning theory: followers learn what is expected by watching leaders, especially what leaders reward and punish. Their measure of ethical leadership related to followers' perceptions of leader fairness, satisfaction with the leader and willingness to report problems.

How Ethics Flows Downward

Mayer et al. (2009) tested whether ethical leadership trickles down in organizations. In a study of many work units, they found that top management's ethical leadership influenced supervisors' ethical leadership, which in turn related to employees' behavior, including fewer deviant acts and more helping. Top managers also affected employees directly. The finding means that ethical problems at the pay station often begin with signals from the top.

Moral Person and Moral Manager

Trevino et al. (2000) interviewed executives and ethics officers and concluded that people judge a leader's ethics on two separate grounds. Leaders must be moral persons, honest and fair in their own conduct, and moral managers, who make ethics visible through role modeling, communication about values and use of rewards and discipline. A leader who is personally ethical but silent about ethics is seen as ethically neutral, and employees then look to other signals, such as incentives, to decide what matters.

Analyzing the Contest

Brightwater's executives are, by most accounts, honest people; they did not intend customers to be misled. But in the terms of Trevino et al. (2000), they acted as moral persons without acting as moral managers. The contest rewarded the number of memberships sold, not how they were sold. Nothing in the contest communicated that clear explanations mattered. When two site managers cut corners, the message spread, consistent with the trickle-down effect. Crew members, mostly teenagers in first jobs, learned from what managers rewarded.

The contest did not ask anyone to mislead customers; it simply made misleading them the fastest way to win.

The Response So Far

Leadership ended the contest, refunded affected customers and spoke with the two site managers. These were necessary steps, but they addressed the symptoms. The plan below addresses the system.

Integrating the Course: Theories and Styles

Week 1 showed that path-goal behaviors, clarifying how to do the job, drive results with inexperienced crews. Ethical practice must be part of that clarity: crews should be trained on exactly how to explain a membership, including the monthly charge and how to cancel. Week 2 showed that the regional managers use one style each. Ethical issues call for clear standards, where Monica's directive approach helps, combined with open discussion of gray areas, where Jamal's participative approach helps.

Integrating the Course: Vision and Responsibility

The Week 3 vision describes a company that cares for every customer and gives young people a first job they are proud of. Misleading customers violates both. The Week 4 commitment to easy online cancellation removes one source of customer harm and must be completed.

The Ethical Leadership Plan: Executives

Executives will act as moral managers. The chief executive will discuss the contest openly at the company gathering, explaining what leadership got wrong. Future incentives will reward both memberships and customer satisfaction, with complaints subtracting from contest scores.

The Ethical Leadership Plan: Supervisors

Regional and site managers will receive training on ethical leadership, including how incentives shape behavior. Each site manager will hold a short monthly discussion with crews about a real customer situation, such as an elderly customer confused about charges.

The Ethical Leadership Plan: Crews

Every new crew member will learn a short, honest membership explanation and practice it. Crew members who raise concerns will be thanked, and a simple way to report problems anonymously will be posted at every site.

Why Good People Cut Corners

The two site managers who encouraged shortcuts were not known for dishonesty. Both were under pressure to win, both had crews short of staff during the summer and both believed other sites were doing the same. Pressure, a sense that everyone does it and a reward focused only on numbers are a familiar combination behind ethical lapses. Seeing the incident this way does not excuse the behavior, but it shows leaders where to intervene.

Accountability

Managers who encourage misleading sales will face consequences, while those who maintain honest practices under pressure will be recognized. These actions make the company's values visible.

Measures

The plan will track membership complaints per 1,000 new members, refund requests within 30 days, a short ethical climate survey of crews twice a year and the number of concerns reported.

Conclusion

Ethical leadership requires leaders to be ethical and to manage ethics actively through example, communication and reinforcement, and research shows that leaders' signals flow down to the front line. Brightwater's contest showed what happens when results are rewarded without attention to how they are achieved. A plan that ties incentives to customer care, trains supervisors and crews, connects ethics to the company's vision and responsibilities and measures results can make ethical practice part of how Brightwater grows.

References

Brown, M. E., Trevino, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002

Mayer, D. M., Kuenzi, M., Greenbaum, R., Bardes, M., & Salvador, R. (2009). How low does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickle-down model. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.04.002

Trevino, L. K., Hartman, L. P., & Brown, M. (2000). Moral person and moral manager: How executives develop a reputation for ethical leadership. California Management Review, 42(4), 128-142. https://doi.org/10.2307/41166057