Ethical Leadership

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Across
  1. 3. Wrongdoing or misconduct, especially by a person in a position of public trust or authority — a stronger term than merely 'poor judgment,' implying active, knowing, and harmful action rather than error or negligence.
  2. 6. The condition in which the consequences of decisions flow back to the people who made them in ways that are real, proportionate, and visible — the difference between being technically responsible for something and actually facing meaningful consequences for it.
  3. 7. The state of following rules, regulations, and legal requirements — a minimum standard of organizational behavior that is sometimes confused with ethics, though an organization can be technically compliant with every applicable law while behaving in ways that are seriously harmful.
  4. 8. The act of making information available to those who have a right or need to know it — often involving a deliberate decision about when, how much, and to whom to reveal something that was previously not public, which is one of the core ethical decisions in the story.
  5. 11. The use of force, threat, or pressure to compel someone to do something against their will or judgment — in organizational ethics, the sometimes subtle pressure that makes people feel they have no meaningful choice about whether to comply with ethically questionable practices.
  6. 13. The practice of yielding to someone else's judgment, authority, or preferences — in an organizational context, the tendency of people in lower positions to accept the decisions of those above them even when they have concerns, which is one of the mechanisms through which ethical problems propagate.
  7. 15. The process of constructing seemingly reasonable explanations or justifications for actions that were actually driven by other motives — a mental process so common in ethical failures that it often operates without the person rationalizing being aware of it.
  8. 16. The capacity and freedom to make one's own decisions and act according to one's own values — in an organizational context, often in tension with hierarchy and deference, and an important factor in whether individuals are able to exercise ethical judgment in practice.
  9. 17. The degree to which a person or organization is deserving of blame or moral responsibility for something that went wrong — a concept that is more nuanced than simple fault, because it involves both what was done and what should have been known or foreseen.
  10. 19. Anyone whose interests are legitimately affected by an organization's behavior — including employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and the environment — in contrast to the narrower concept of the shareholder, who has only a financial relationship to the company.
  11. 20. The process of correcting, repairing, or compensating for harm that has been done — in a business context, the steps taken to address a problem that has been identified, which may include financial compensation, policy changes, or public acknowledgment.
Down
  1. 1. The system of rules, practices, and processes by which an organization is directed and controlled — including the structures of accountability, decision-making authority, and oversight that determine how power is exercised and checked within an institution.
  2. 2. An action, decision, or case that establishes a pattern that others are likely to follow — in the context of ethical drift, the accumulation of decisions that were individually rationalized but collectively expanded the range of what an organization considers acceptable.
  3. 4. Relating to the legal and ethical obligation to act in the interests of another party rather than your own — as in the obligation of a company director to the shareholders, or a trustee to the beneficiaries of a trust.
  4. 5. The quality of operating in an open way that makes information, decisions, and processes visible to those who have a legitimate interest in them — a prerequisite for genuine accountability and often the first casualty of organizational ethical failure.
  5. 9. A situation in which two or more options are available and each carries real costs or conflicts with a legitimate value — meaning that the difficulty is not ignorance of the right answer but the genuine conflict between things that both matter.
  6. 10. The alignment between stated values and actual behavior — not just the possession of good values but the consistency with which those values are actually enacted, especially under pressure and when the cost of enacting them is real.
  7. 12. The distribution of decision-making authority and power away from a central point to smaller units or individuals throughout an organization — with implications for both efficiency and accountability, since distributed power can make oversight more difficult.
  8. 14. The act of reporting misconduct, illegal activity, or dangerous practices within an organization to an authority or the public, typically at significant personal and professional cost to the person doing the reporting.
  9. 18. The power or advantage one party has over another in a negotiation or relationship — relevant in the article's discussion of cross-cultural ethics, because the party with more leverage usually gets to define the standards that apply, which is not necessarily the same as those standards being just.