Change Management: Leadership, Values and Ethics

Change Management: Leadership, Values and Ethics

RUNE TODNEM BY∗, BERNARD BURNES∗∗ & CLIFF OSWICK†

∗Staffordshire University Business School, UK, ∗∗Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, UK, †Cass Business School, City University London, UK

Where We Are and Where We Are Going

On behalf of all Associate Editors, Editorial Advisory Board and Editorial Board members: welcome to the 12th volume of Routledge’s Journal of Change Management (JCM). First, let us take this opportunity to wholeheartedly thank you all for your contribution to the Journal’s development over the last year, being that as a colleague, submitting and published author, reviewer, guest editor, reader, author and teacher utilizing work published in JCM, member of the Routledge team or librarian subscribing to the title. Without your personal support and contribution JCM would not be in the strong position it is today – Thank you!

Second, let us report back to you: we are on track! The aims of securing inclusion in Thomson Reuter’s Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and 3∗

ABS are both realistic targets thanks to the ongoing active support of a growing and diverse community of scholars, students and practitioners with an interest in the complex field of change management. Enjoying SSCI and ABS success in itself is not an aim to us. However, the acknowledgement provided and removal of the barrier of not ‘being on the list’ is crucial to JCM’s, and indeed the whole field’s further development.

It is, therefore, somewhat disappointing that the Association of Business Schools (ABS) Executive Committee has decided not to publish a new version (v5) of their biannual ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide until after the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), despite of their promise in the current version (v4, 2010) to provide a new and updated version in 2012. In the 2010 version it is indeed stated that ‘The rankings made in the ABS Guide are not

Journal of Change Management

Vol. 12, No. 1, 1–5, March 2012

Correspondence Address: Rune Todnem By, Staffordshire University Business School, College Road, Stoke-on-

Trent, ST4 2DE, UK. Email: r.t.by@staffs.ac.uk

1469-7017 Print/1479-1811 Online/12/010001–5 # 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2011.652371

fixed, but have been reviewed annually, and from 2010 onwards biennially in light of available evidence’ (Association of Business Schools, 2010, p. 5). The decision of delaying the publication of version 5 of the ABS Guide, most likely taken under considerable pressure and lobbying by special interest groups defending status quo and vested interest, may very well delay the well deserved acknowledgment of all the hard work undertaken by younger journals such as JCM. Based on feedback from a range of stakeholders, including editors of journals highly ranked by both ABS and SSCI, we would in fact expect JCM’s ABS ranking to increase from 1∗ to 2∗ in 2012, and we find this highly unjustifiable delay to be regretful. However, in this Journal we don’t take anything for granted and we don’t cry over spilt milk. We move upwards and onwards and take control over what we can actually control.

We held two highly successful Editorial Board meetings in 2011. One at the EGOS conference in Gothenburg, where we also ran a ‘Meet the Editor’ session, and one at the AOM conference in San Antonio (hot, hot, hot . . .). The support, passion and ambition of individual board members took our breath away, and it made us appreciate all the more what an honour it is to be the caretakers of this great Journal with an even greater potential. We have yet to decide on the approach for 2012, but we will at least be aiming at having a strong presence at the AOM conference in Boston.

We take great pride in having a highly effective and efficient double-blind peer review process where all articles that are desk approved are forwarded for review by at least two colleagues. With an annual accept ratio of 12.9%, the average time from submission to first decision in the prior 12 months was 19 days, and the average time from submission to final decision in the prior 12 months was 25 days. Combined with the fact that authors receive extensive and high-quality reviews this is somewhat of an achievement which provides clear evidence of the enthusiasm and buy in from our fantastic reviewers.

So, what is on the JCM menu for 2012? Well, we can promise you exciting special issues, starting with this first issue and new contributions to our highly suc- cessful ‘Reflections’ series. We can also promise you a range of high-quality, interesting and hopefully at times provocative articles.

For the remainder of this annual editorial article we would like to focus on what so often is overlooked when it comes to change management: leadership, values and ethics.

We Are All In This Together

According to Barker (2001, p. 491), ‘. . . leadership is all about change’ and no change is value free (Macleod and By, 2009). Burnes and Jackson (2011) argue that all approaches to leadership and change are underpinned by a set of ethical values that influence the actions of leaders and the outcomes/consequences of change initiatives for good or ill. Ethics are not set in stone – there is no rule book. They are, however, highly individual beliefs – some of which may be per- ceived as being universal – distinguishing between what is right or wrong, good or bad. These beliefs provide a basis for judging the appropriateness of motivation

2 R. T. By et al.

and consequences of behaviour and they guide people in their dealings with other individuals, groups and organizations.

The argument that leadership and change need an ethical foundation is far from new. Such arguments can be found in the work of Barnard (1938) on leadership in the 1930s and in the work of Lewin (Burnes, 2004, 2009) on change in the 1940s. Even before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, there had been an increasing volume of calls for organizations to act in an ethical fashion. Prominent in this respect was the promotion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, this did not necessarily lead to a diminution of unethical behaviour. As Joseph Sti- glitz (2010), the Nobel Prize-winning economist, observed in his book on the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the reverse seems to have been the case. Unethical and criminal behaviour appears to have mushroomed out of control in many organiz- ations as society seems to have encouraged the individualistic motto of ‘every man for himself’ in replacement of ‘one for all, all for one’. This development can hardly be blamed on individual leaders – good or bad, right or wrong. That is a far too simplistic, if not naı̈ve understanding of a rather complex situation in which we all have a role to play and responsibility to take. We are not just dealing with a few rotten apples. We are in fact dealing with human nature, and this regretful development of greed must be seen as a reflection of the wider societal embracement of the individual at the cost of others. A development we are all part of.

We are still living in an era where organizational leaders are allowed to, and even rewarded for putting their own egos and self-interests ahead of the interests of the many, often with disastrous results and consequences. As Stiglitz (2010) observed, the short-term performance incentives of mortgage salesmen, of the investors and purveyors of complex and ill-understood financial instruments and of the corporate leaders who were supposed to supervise them were not aligned with the long-run interests of the institutions for which they work. To put it suc- cinctly, the long-term, sustainable interests of the many are sacrificed to the short- term greed and arrogance of the few.

To avoid this in the future, we need to highlight the importance of promoting the ethical dimension of change as a means of ensuring that leaders and their followers act in the interests of the many rather than the few. If followers and other stake- holders are not to be so dazzled by the attraction of charismatic–transformational leaders that any change is seen as good change, they need to ensure that leadership and change are underpinned by a clear and transparent system of ethics and accountability. That is to say, leaders must be instilled with a moral compass fitting the organization of which they are in charge. Leaders of tomorrow must indeed be expected to make decisions in the interest of the many rather than the few, and refrain from abusing the faith that is placed in them and the unique free- doms that they enjoy. This is a point made forcibly by Barker (2001, p. 491) when he states that leadership is ‘a process of transformative change where the ethics of individuals are integrated into the mores of a community as a means of evolution- ary social development’. Therefore, a key question is how we can lead and manage change more ethically?

The danger of not only allowing, but encouraging unethical leadership and change can be reduced where there is openness about and alignment of values

Leadership, Values and Ethics 3

and objectives, transparency in decision-making and truly independent external scrutiny. The axis on which acceptable and unacceptable outcomes revolve is the ethical values which underpin and link together particular combinations of lea- dership and change. We believe the fundamental flaw in some approaches to change is that not only are they not explicit about values, but they give the impression that it is somehow unworldly or naı̈ve even to mention ethical con- siderations (Burnes and By, 2011).

Organizations have to move beyond general statements of ethics, such as those found in CSR statements and policies, and actually evaluate the ethical values of leaders and their actions and determine whether they are compatible with the wider interests of the organization and its stakeholders. This requires an under- standing of ethics both in policy and practical terms, and clarity about the ethical basis of different approaches to leadership and change.

Consequently, followers and other stakeholders should not be passive observes, but have a positive and active role to play in identifying and ending unethical prac- tices. In terms of new directions in organizational change, it is perhaps apposite to re-think the notion of ‘stakeholders’ in the process of ethically motivated forms of change. In particular, it could be argued that an often-overlooked group of stake- holders who are committed to the development of ethical practices in organiz- ations are social activists. King and Soule (2007) have argued that we should see ‘social movements as extra-institutional entrepreneurs’ (p. 413). Indeed, we would go further and assert that in some circumstances activists are synonymous with external management consultants. The only major difference being that they are generally unpaid and they typically have a passionate commitment to the specific moral imperatives or social values they encourage an organization or organizations to embrace. Hence, social activists can play an important part in sti- mulating value-driven change within organizations through constructive processes of engagement and generative dialogue (Den Hond and Bakker, 2007).

A critical issue in the involvement of different groups of stakeholders (e.g. employees, customers, clients and activists) is the extent to which it is possible for them to recognize what is ethical and unethical. Most stakeholders would agree that child labour is clearly unethical, but would they recognize which leader- ship and change practices are unethical? If stakeholders are to be able to monitor leaders’ behaviour, they must have a yardstick for judging whether it is potentially unethical or not. In order to do this, those of us who develop and promote particu- lar approaches to leadership and change have to be clear about the ethical impli- cations of these. Currently, there is often a damaging lack of clarity regarding the ethical values underpinning approaches to change and its management.

A prime example is the famous quotation attributed to Charlie Wilson, who was President of General Motors in the early 1950s: ‘What’s good for General Motors is good for the country’. Many leaders appear to interpret this to mean: ‘What’s good for me is good for the organization’. But what Wilson actually said was: ‘For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa’ (Time Magazine, 1961). Therefore, a more accurate interpretation of Wilson’s words would be: ‘What’s good for the organization is good for me’, which is a very different matter entirely.

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As Franklin D. Roosevelt (1937) commented on the causes of the Great Depression of the 1930s:

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that

it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their

practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.

However, this ‘economic morality’ will only prevail if all organizational stake- holders are able and prepared to ensure that ethical rather than unethical behaviour is pursued by leaders, and this can only be achieved if those of us in the change field do our part to identify ethical and unethical approaches to such change.

References

Association of Business Schools (2010) ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide, version 4 (London: ABS).

Barker, R.A. (2001) The nature of leadership, Human Relations, 54(4), pp. 469–494.

Barnard, C. (1938) The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Burnes, B. (2004) Kurt Lewin and the planned approach to change: a re-appraisal, Journal of Management

Studies, 41(6), pp. 977–1002.

Burnes, B. (2009) Reflections: ethics and organisational change – time for a return to Lewinian values, Journal of

Change Management, 9(4), pp. 359–381.

Burnes, B. and By, R.T. (2011) Leadership and change: the case for greater ethical clarity, Journal of Business

Ethics (published online 2 November 2011, doi 10.1007/s10551-011-1088-2). Burnes, B. and Jackson, P. (2011) Success and failure in organisational change: an exploration of the role of

values, Journal of Change Management, 11(2), pp. 133–162.

Den Hond, F. and Bakker, F.G. (2007) Ideologically motivated activism: how activist groups influence corporate

social change activities, Academy of Management Review, 32(3), pp. 901–924.

King, B.G. and Soule, S.A. (2007) Social movements as extra-institutional entrepreneurship: the effects of pro-

tests on stock price returns, Administrative Science Quarterly, 52(3), pp. 413–442.

Macleod, C. and By, R.T. (2009) Organizational change management in public services: key findings and emer-

ging themes, in: R.T. By and C. Macleod (eds) Managing Organizational Change in Public Services: Inter-

national Issues, Challenges and Cases, pp. 241–249 (Routledge, UK: Milton Park).

Roosevelt, F.D. (1937) Second Presidential Inaugural Address, 20 January. Available at www.bartleby.com/124/

pres50.html.

Stiglitz, J. (2010) Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy (London: Allen Lane).

Time Magazine (1961) Armed Forces: Engine Charlie, Time Magazine, October 6. Available at www.Time.com.

Leadership, Values and Ethics 5

www.bartleby.com/124/pres50.html
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www.Time.com
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