Foundations of Responsible Leadership: Asian Versus Western Executive Responsibility Orientations Toward Key Stakeholders

Abstract

Exploring the construct of social-responsibility orientation across three Asian and two Western societies (Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and the United States), we show evidence that top-level executives in these societies hold fundamentally different beliefs about their responsibilities toward different stakeholders, with concomitant implications for their understanding and enactment of responsible leadership. We further find that these variations are more closely aligned with institutional factors than with cultural variables, suggesting a need to clarify the connection between culture and institutions on the one hand and culture and social-responsibility orientations on the other.

China’s Triple Bottom-line (TBL) Challenge: Exploring How Demographics and Values Shape Preferences of Future Managers and Engineers toward Profit, People and Planet

“…Furthermore, the well-documented evidence on the negative effects of materialism on environmental ethics clearly delineates its potential repercussions for environmental values, as well as attitude toward TBL (planet). Witt and Stahl's [54] cross-national study also found that stakeholder salience or values (e.g., people and environment) often lies at the bottom of priority list in China, as managers single-mindedly pursue economic values above all functions. Kolodinsky et al [31] also found support for materialism as a leading cause that exerts negative impact on students' business ethics preference with respect to society and environment e.g., community participation and green/eco-friendly manufacturing.…”

Leadership: Philosophical Perspectives and Qualitative Analysis of Ethics—Looking Back, Looking Forward, Looking Around

“…The philosophical aspect of how leadership and ethics intersect is often satisfied with reference to historical and contemporary 'Greats,' such as Plato (Korabik 1990), MacIntyre (Sinnicks 2016), or Levinas and Gilligan (Grandy and Sliwa 2017). This can extend across cultures, with contributions explaining the ethical particularities of, for example, leadership in non-US (the default culture) countries such as Japan (Taka and Foglia 1994;Witt and Stahl 2016). A related series of contributions bring what are sometimes called 'traditional' (Pava 2001) or faith-based (Wang and Hackett 2016) ethics to understanding leadership.…”

A Falling of the Veils: Turning Points and Momentous Turning Points in Leadership and the Creation of CSR

“…These include notions of ethical leadership (Brown et al 2005;Schaubroeck et al 2012;Treviño et al 2003); follower-centric approaches (Shamir and Eilam 2005); responsible leadership (Doh and Quigley 2014;Maak and Pless 2006;Miska and Mendenhall 2015;Pless 2007;Pless and Maak 2011;Pless et al 2012;Voegtlin et al 2012;Waldman and Galvin 2008;Witt and Stahl 2016); servant leadership (Greenleaf 2002); distributed leadership (Bolden 2011); authentic leadership (Endrissat et al 2007;Luthans and Avolio 2003;Michie and Gooty 2005) and transformational leadership (Burns 1978;Ciulla 2004, p. 316). The overlaps and distinctions between these notions of leadership have been identified previously (e.g., Miska and Mendenhall 2015).…”

“…Some of these individuals were repeatedly cited by their colleagues as CSR leaders. However, the orientations (Hemingway, 2013;Pless et al 2012;Treviño et al 2003;Witt and Stahl 2016) of these CSR leaders varied, depending on which of the domain(s) of CSR (or which stakeholder group or groups) they championed. Notably, four of these twelve leaders articulated their sense of limitation around the company's commitment to CSR and sustainability.…”

“…Our model posits how these TPs affected the individuals concerned by re-orientating their personal values to produce socially responsible leadership behaviours and, where the TP was momentous, a completely revised modus vivendi (Archer 2000(Archer , 2003. Our article therefore addresses the calls for research into the psychological pathways of responsible leadership (Doh and Quigley 2014); the antecedents of responsible leadership (Stahl and de Luque 2014;Voegtlin et al 2012;Witt and Stahl 2016) and responsible leader 'mindsets' (Pless 2007;Pless and Maak 2011). We also recommend further work in this promising area, derived through the life story narrative, which we posit will develop our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and microfoundations of CSR (Aguinis and Glavas 2012;Christensen et al 2014).…”