LDR 711A Week 6 Values-Based Leadership Example

Reporting the Near Miss: Ethical, Authentic and Servant Leadership When Safety and Reputation Collide at a Regional Airport

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

LDR/711A: Leadership Theory and Practice

Week 6 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Cascade Valley Regional Airport, its people and the incident are composites written for a model paper.

By now the invented Cascade Valley airport has weathered a storm, rebuilt its partner ties and gained a charismatic new director, Grant Ellison, who is selling a large expansion. In June, a maintenance vehicle crossed an active runway without clearance from the control tower while a regional jet was on final approach. The pilot executed a go-around, and no one was harmed. Federal rules required the tower to report the incursion, and it did. The question for airport leadership was how much more to do: whether to conduct a full internal investigation, share findings with staff and partners and discuss it publicly at the next board meeting, or treat it as a routine report while the expansion campaign was in the news. Grant suggested the latter. Director of operations Marisol Vega, who oversees the maintenance staff involved, disagreed. This paper examines values-based leadership approaches through this dilemma.

Three Moral Approaches

Lemoine et al. (2019) conducted an integrative review of ethical, authentic and servant leadership, which they called moral approaches to leadership. They argued that each draws on a different ethical tradition: ethical leadership on deontology, emphasizing conformity with moral norms; authentic leadership on virtue ethics, emphasizing being true to oneself; and servant leadership on consequentialism, emphasizing outcomes for stakeholders. The approaches overlap in their positive effects but differ in what they emphasize and in some outcomes, with servant leadership showing a stronger focus on multiple stakeholders and community.

Authentic Leadership Defined

Walumbwa et al. (2008) built and tested a measure of authentic leadership resting on four pillars: knowing oneself and one's effect on others, being open and genuine with people, steering by one's own moral compass rather than outside pressure and weighing all relevant facts, including unwelcome ones, before choosing.

Ethical Leadership's Validity

Ng and Feldman (2015) conducted a meta-analysis of ethical leadership and found that it was related to followers' job attitudes, performance and counterproductive behavior, and that it showed incremental validity beyond transformational leadership and other leadership styles for several outcomes. The effects were stronger in some contexts, such as where trust in the leader was high.

Why the Pressure to Stay Quiet Was Strong

The pressure to minimize the incident did not come from bad intentions. Grant believed the expansion would bring jobs and service to the region, and he feared that opponents would use any safety story to stall it. Some board members had told him privately to avoid surprises. The maintenance department worried about blame. In such conditions, quiet handling can feel like protecting the organization, which is why values-based theories emphasize standards that hold under pressure rather than in calm.

The Stakeholders

Stakeholders include the maintenance driver and his coworkers; airfield operations staff; the control tower and federal regulators; airlines and their crews; the traveling public; the authority's board and the community, whose support the expansion requires; and the airport's reputation and its leaders.

The Pressures

The pressures are real. Public discussion of a near miss could feed opponents of the expansion and embarrass the authority. The driver, a 20-year employee, feared blame. Grant argued that the required report fulfilled the authority's obligations.

The Ethical Leadership Lens

Ethical leadership emphasizes conforming to and promoting moral norms. Aviation's safety culture rests on norms of open reporting and learning from errors without blame. An ethical leader would follow these norms beyond minimum requirements, investigate fully and communicate openly, modeling the behavior expected of staff.

The Authentic Leadership Lens

Authentic leadership asks whether leaders act in line with their values under pressure. Marisol has long told staff that safety comes before schedules and image. An internalized moral perspective would hold her to that standard despite pressure from her boss. Relational transparency would call for sharing what happened with staff. Balanced processing would require considering Grant's concerns seriously before deciding.

The Servant Leadership Lens

Servant leadership weighs outcomes for all stakeholders. Passengers and crews benefit from an airport that learns from near misses; staff benefit from a culture where reporting is safe; the driver benefits from a process focused on systems rather than blame; and the community's long-term trust depends on honesty.

All three lenses pointed the same way; what differed was the reason each gave for walking in that direction.

Where the Lenses Diverge

The lenses converged on the decision but differed in emphasis. Ethical leadership stressed norms and modeling; authentic leadership stressed Marisol's consistency with her own stated values; servant leadership stressed outcomes for passengers, staff and the driver. The servant lens raised one point the others did not emphasize: protecting the driver from scapegoating while still learning from the event.

What Marisol Did

Marisol met privately with Grant, acknowledged his concern about the expansion and presented the case for a full, nonpunitive investigation, citing the airport's safety commitments and the reputational risk if the incident became known later. Grant agreed. The investigation found that a temporary construction sign had obscured a hold line and that radio procedures for vehicles were unclear. Findings were shared with all airfield staff and partners, the sign and procedures were corrected and Grant described the incident and corrective actions at the board meeting.

Outcomes

The board responded positively to the transparency. The driver returned to work after retraining and said he felt supported. Two other near-miss reports came in over the next month, suggesting staff felt safer reporting.

Lessons for Safety Culture

The incident also illustrates how leaders shape safety culture. Staff watch what leaders do when an error occurs. A quiet response would have taught them that reporting brings trouble; an open, nonpunitive response taught them that reporting is valued. The increase in near-miss reports afterward is a sign that the lesson was learned. Values-based leadership, in this sense, is not only about the leader's own integrity but about the norms the leader creates for everyone.

Distinctiveness Revisited

The case supports Lemoine et al.'s view that the approaches share positive effects but rest on different foundations. In practice, a leader may draw on all three: norms provide standards, authenticity provides consistency and service keeps attention on everyone affected.

Personal Reflection

Looking back, Marisol noted that her first impulse was frustration with Grant rather than curiosity about his reasons. The dilemma tested Marisol's willingness to disagree with a new boss she wanted to support. Balanced processing helped: by taking Grant's concerns seriously, she found a way to meet them through transparency rather than against them.

Conclusion

Ethical, authentic and servant leadership offer distinct moral foundations for leadership, with evidence that ethical leadership adds value beyond transformational leadership and that authentic leadership can be measured through four dimensions. Applied to a runway near miss, all three supported full investigation and openness, while each highlighted different reasons and stakeholders. The outcome strengthened safety culture and trust, showing how values-based leadership can resolve rather than worsen a collision between safety and reputation.

References

Lemoine, G. J., Hartnell, C. A., & Leroy, H. (2019). Taking stock of moral approaches to leadership: An integrative review of ethical, authentic, and servant leadership. Academy of Management Annals, 13(1), 148-187. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2016.0121

Ng, T. W. H., & Feldman, D. C. (2015). Ethical leadership: Meta-analytic evidence of criterion-related and incremental validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(3), 948-965. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038246

Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). Authentic leadership: Development and validation of a theory-based measure. Journal of Management, 34(1), 89-126. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307308913