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Virtuous Leadership

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Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics
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Synonyms

Character-based leadership; Virtues-based leadership

Introduction

As part of wide-ranging efforts to better incorporate moral considerations into leadership practice (Lemoine et al. 2019), virtuous leadership is a leader-follower relationship wherein a leader’s situationally appropriate expression of virtues triggers follower perceptions of leader virtuousness, worthy of emulation (Wang and Hackett 2016). Although there are many perspectives concerning the meaning of virtue (Newstead et al. 2018), leadership based on the character-based virtue ethics school of moral philosophy (MacIntyre 1984) places less emphasis on the articulation of ethics-related principles and rules (e.g., regulations, codes of conduct, and audits) in favor of focusing on developing and nurturing moral character in leaders themselves, through the self-cultivation of moral virtues − character traits disposing a leader to achieve excellence (Wang and Hackett 2020).

Virtuous leadership includes three...

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References

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Correspondence to Gordon Wang .

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Wang, G., Hackett, R.D. (2021). Virtuous Leadership. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1264-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1264-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1

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