I am, I can, I ought, I will: responsible leadership and the failures of ethics

Stanberry, Joanna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1184-2874 (2025) I am, I can, I ought, I will: responsible leadership and the failures of ethics. International Journal of Ethics and Systems .

Preview

PDF - Accepted Version Available under License CC BY-NC Download (488kB) | Preview

Abstract

Purpose: This paper aims to develop a heuristic ethical stance as a provocation for responsible leadership scholarship and practice within entangled human–environment systems. Through consideration of the failures of ethics – in particular Uyghur mass atrocities and their residues in global supply chains – the stance offers a reflexive pathway between the inner value orientation of leaders and the scope of interconnected interests affected by leader action and inaction.

Design/methodology/approach: Through an autoethnographic narrative, the applied ethic brings together work by the contemporary Holocaust philosopher John Roth with a motto spread by Anglican educational philosopher and social entrepreneur Charlotte Mason (1842–1923). The failures of ethics centre material, sensorial, religious and relational tensions that are explored through three conversational vignettes relating to the current mass atrocities of Uyghur Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China.

Findings: The resulting ethical stance relates individual personhood to meso and macro levels through Mason’s motto –I am, I can, I ought, I will –and is developed to contain self-reflexivity and identity, conscience informed by testimony, consciousness of the power to protest and resist and intention to pivot. The failures of ethics highlight the apparent centrality of religious ethical traditions to considerations of responsible leadership.

Originality/value: The lack of serious and sustained attention to the ethics in responsible leadership, in particular ethical failures and religious ethics, limits its relevance within entangled systems. The paper brings to responsible leadership novel philosophical perspectives to link reflexivity between individual and governance level responses and enliven the imagination of conscience through the ubiquity of complicity.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	International Journal of Ethics and Systems
Publisher:	Emerald
ISSN:	2514-9369
Departments:	Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership > Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS)
Additional Information:	Joanna Stanberry, postgraduate researcher, Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability, University of Cumbria, UK.
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	04 Mar 2025 10:58
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2025 10:15
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8668

Downloads