THE MAIN ARGUMENT

This book articulates the intuition behind the charge that leaders think that they are special, that ordinary rules do not apply to them, and that followers should be expected to do as the leader says, not as the leader does. My central thesis is that ethical failures in leadership are fundamentally cognitive, not volitional. In arguing for this thesis, I reject the standard view that leaders behave unethically simply because they are selfish. Leader immorality is more a matter of belief and knowledge than a matter of desire and will. As such, the unethical behavior of leaders cannot be fully understood in terms of self-interest and the choices leaders make to put self-interest ahead of what they know to be the requirements of morality. So, for example, leadership ethics is not just about adjudicating between the interests of leaders and followers. An account of ethical failures in leadership must assign a primary role to mistaken moral beliefs.

The argument for the cognitive account of ethical failures in leadership appeals directly to the beliefs leaders hold about the importance of their ends. Of course, we all believe that our ends are important; otherwise we would not have them as ends. Leaders are no different in this respect, but the collective nature of the ends to which leaders are committed gives added justification to these ends. This is what makes leadership ethics distinctive.