Lecture
Management ethics — is a system of moral norms that determine the conduct of the subject of management in any managerial situation , and it serves as the most important resource for effective management.
Management ethics — is:
Management ethics, as a variety of applied ethics, is a humanitarian technology and a resource for increasing the effectiveness of joint activity.
Management ethics manifests itself in two guises.
On the one hand, it is an applied ethical discipline that has been developing actively in recent times, within which the propositions of theoretical ethics and fundamental ethical problems are made concrete in relation to this particular type of professional activity. Management ethics, as specialists note, "transforms general knowledge of the norms and principles of morality into humanitarian (soft, non-manipulative) technologies for transforming moral practice" . Moreover, this is not simple knowledge but knowledge that is project-oriented, embodied in projects, codes of ethics, norms, benchmarks, standards, expert opinions, ethics committees and other kinds of practical activity.
On the other hand, managerial ethics — is not only theory but also the practice of managerial activity, the standards of conduct that guide managers in the course of their work. Its essence, as defined in the educational literature, comes down to a set of rules that make it possible to express respect for colleagues and staff, and to help establish an atmosphere of mutual understanding and goodwill between a manager and subordinates .
Generalising the practice of management and the experience of the most successful managers, theorists of management have formulated the basic commandments of a manager . Let us dwell on them in more detail.
1. The personal dignity of every employee — is inviolable for a manager.
The Renaissance humanist Pico della Mirandola wrote a speech "On the Dignity of Man", in which he argued that a person's high dignity is determined by his free choice, unconstrained by divine intervention: "And you, constrained by no limits, shall determine your own nature in accordance with your own decision, into whose power I have placed you" . The great humanist's speech had a colossal influence on the understanding of the right to dignity as an inalienable right of the individual.
The teaching on human dignity and creative activity constitutes one of the most important branches of ethics. As a moral category, the concept of "dignity" expresses a person's attitude to life, to its meaning and values. The famous French philosopher, moralist and writer Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715—1747), wrote of dignity as follows: "It is not a pity that a man is born or dies, that he has lost his money, his house, his estate; none of this belongs to a person. What is a pity is when a person loses his true possession — his human dignity".
According to the dictionary of ethics, dignity — is a category of ethics denoting a person's special moral attitude towards himself and the attitude towards him on the part of society and those around him, based on the recognition of a person's value as an individual. Psychologically, dignity means the respect and self-respect of the human personality; it is not for nothing that people speak of a "sense of dignity". But the word "dignity" also has another meaning: value, worth. We speak of the denomination of money. For example, a banknote with a denomination of 1000 roubles. A sense of one's own dignity means a person's self-assessment, that is, the fact that he has evaluated his own positive qualities and believes that others should treat him accordingly.
When a person's dignity is humiliated, this shows him that the qualities of his personality have no value and that he himself is worth nothing, which is painful. It is not for nothing that the English writer John Galsworthy wrote in his novel "The Forsyte Saga": "There are blows of various kinds: a blow to the spine, to the nerves, to the conscience, but the strongest and most painful — is a blow to one's sense of self-worth!"
Managers would do well to heed the recommendation of Empress Catherine II: "Study people, try to make use of them, without trusting them indiscriminately; seek out true worth, even if it be at the edge of the world: for the most part it is modest and keeps its distance" , and also not to forget Article 21 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which establishes: "The dignity of the individual is protected by the state. Nothing may serve as grounds for its diminishment".
2. By constantly studying people, a manager must know their needs, interests, and dreams.
This precept is obvious; it is just that the Russian proverb says that in order to get to know a person, you must eat a pood of salt with him, that is, it takes a long time. How should one act in a real management situation? A manager must possess, in the words of V. M. Shepel, "human-science competence", which needs to be learned. In order to be able to judge people, besides life experience one also needs psychological literacy, a broad humanitarian education, and knowledge of ethics.
Why is it necessary to know one's employees? Is it not enough, for successful leadership, to have an idea of their level of professionalism? The strengths and weaknesses of subordinates need to be known not out of idle curiosity but in the interests of the work: to motivate them, correctly distribute assignments, and form teams while taking into account the compatibility of employees. This makes it possible to help them display their best personal and business qualities and to strengthen their belief in themselves.
3. The main thing in a manager's communication — is to win people's trust.
The ancient Chinese sage Confucius taught: "Govern the people with dignity, and they will be respectful. Treat the people kindly, and they will labour with diligence. Elevate the virtuous and instruct the unlearned, and the people will trust you" .
The moral-psychological basis of a leader's authority is the trust placed in him by subordinates, which, according to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedic Dictionary, is defined as "a mental state by virtue of which we rely on some opinion that seems authoritative to us".
Let us note: trust — is a mental state. In psychology, the concept of a mental state is used to conventionally single out, within an individual's psyche, a relatively stable component, which includes, for example, states of euphoria, excitement, depression, inspiration, fatigue, and psychological tension. A mental state — is a temporary distinctive feature of an individual's psychological activity, conditioned by the content and circumstances of his activity and by his personal attitude towards that activity. Every mental state contains physiological, psychological and behavioural aspects.
If employees trust their leader, he is perceived as honest, decent, knowledgeable, reliable, and so on. If a leader does not inspire trust, employees attribute to him such characteristics as dishonesty, a tendency to seek one-sided advantage, and an ability to shift responsibility onto others, and so on. Let us turn once again to the wise thoughts of Confucius, who asked: "How can one deal with a person who cannot be trusted? If a cart has no axle, how can one ride in it?" With such an attitude, a leader will be unable to motivate employees to honest, conscientious work or inspire them with any common goal, and so on.
One's attitude towards another person is characterised either by full trust or by its absence. As the Roman poet of the age of Caesar and Augustus, Publilius Syrus, put it so vividly: "Only once do we lose life and trust".
In conclusion, let us note that subordinates' trust in a leader is interconnected with the leader's own trust in his subordinates: a leader who does not trust his employees does not inspire trust in them either.
4. Justice and conscience allied with will — are the guarantee of a manager's integrity
How significant justice is in relations between people is shown by ancient Greek mythology, in which there was a goddess personifying justice, Dike (Ancient Greek dike — right, justice, truth), daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Themis, the last of all the deities to leave the Earth and ascend to heaven. In ancient Indian philosophy there existed a doctrine of "rita" — the order of things and the immutable universal law of justice that determines the place of everything that exists. In ancient Chinese philosophy the role of the universal law and of justice is played by the "dao" — the natural, flowing order of things.
The concept of justice was first examined by Aristotle in his work "Nicomachean Ethics", where he called justice a perfect virtue.
In different historical epochs, the concept of justice was interpreted differently. Ideas about justice changed, taking on specific content in accordance with the epoch, but the main thing remained constant — there must be proportionality between rights and duties, crime and punishment, and reward for good and evil.
The great Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky believed that "the highest and most characteristic trait of our people — is a sense of justice and a thirst for it".
5. Bringing into play the intellectual potential of people — is an indicator of a manager's professional skill.
The Russian historian and poet Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766—1826) expressed the following thought: "The talent of great souls is to recognise greatness in other people". It is in this spirit that all managers, and above all administrative leaders, need to work with personnel: to see the potential of employees and help their professional growth. An intelligent leader is not afraid of competition from subordinates and helps to unlock their talents, forming a team capable of realising his plans. If a leader is mediocre and does not shine with talent, what kind of deputies will he choose for himself?
6. A personal example of continuous personal and professional self-improvement is evidence of a manager's resource reliability.
A wellspring of wisdom on the problems of management is found in Confucius: "If you improve yourself, will it be difficult to govern the state? But if you cannot improve yourself, how will you be able to improve other people?"
The problems of personal growth and professional self-improvement are examined from psychological and ethical standpoints in the works of the psychologist M. Ye. Litvak, whose main thesis runs: "Even if you only want to stay in place — grow!", which is a paraphrase of the well-known quotation from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland": "It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place; if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Personal growth achieved through productive activity constitutes self-actualization, i.e., the development of all one's abilities. Litvak notes that when a person fails to fulfill himself in productive activity, he begins to satisfy his sense of self-importance through "downward" growth. The pursuit of power, of career advancement without corresponding professional growth, the collecting of various titles and awards, the desire to furnish one's office in a pompous style, and so on, represent an unproductive way of satisfying one's own sense of significance. Where this leads is illustrated by the example of L. I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, whose passion for collecting awards was exploited by his entourage to manipulate him, while the decorated leader himself became the target of numerous jokes on the subject.
Self-improvement is a law of life that allows a person to remain productive and stay in demand for many years, which is especially relevant for a leader. Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (1875— 1933), a revolutionary and the first People's Commissar of Education of Soviet Russia, believed that "anyone among us who supposes he can lead others must study constantly and intensively."
The great industrialist Henry Ford also wrote about the role of constant learning in a person's active life and professional growth: "Anyone who stops learning grows old, — it doesn't matter whether at 20 or 80, — while anyone else who keeps learning stays young. The most important thing in life — is to keep the mind young." A leader who is constantly engaged in self-development and self-improvement always serves as an example for subordinates and increases the trust placed in him. Unrelenting work on oneself will have a favorable effect on shaping and developing the qualities a leader needs for professional success.
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