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Leadership as Stewardship: What Does the Story of the Unjust Steward Have to Say?

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Leadership and Business Ethics

Part of the book series: Issues in Business Ethics ((IBET,volume 60))

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Abstract

With the various high-profile global debates and protests about the urgent need to address climate change, the environment and sustainability, as well as the outbreak and pandemic spread of COVID-19, the focus turns once more to the concept of stewardship as a form of leadership. This chapter outlines the key features of stewardship theory, the etymology of stewardship as a concept and some of its biblical and theological aspects. The chapter then turns its focus to the story of the unjust steward as found in the New Testament. Although his dishonesty is not commended, the steward’s prudence is. It is contended that this constructive lesson about the affirmation of the normative quality of prudence with resources in a time of crisis – despite the unethical context of dishonesty – offers an interesting position for the continuing reflection on leadership and business ethics. Using the categories of prudence to refer to ‘responsible’ and honesty to refer to ‘good’ – it is argued that with the present demand to address climate change, the environment and sustainability, prudent (responsible) rather than honest (good) leadership may become the prime focus for reflection on ethics in business and leadership as a form of stewardship.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the purpose of this chapter, I am taking a broad understanding of ‘responsible’ as found in the Online Cambridge English Dictionary: “to have control and authority over something or someone and the duty of taking care of it, him, or her”. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/responsible. I take the ‘good’ to refer to the domain of value and fundamental purpose (Murphy 2008 p. 117).

  2. 2.

    The “principal” refers to the owner(s) of the organisation.

  3. 3.

    From his research, Wasserman (2006) purports that instead of a clash between these two theories, they can complement each other in the context of new ventures.

  4. 4.

    The origin of the word “economy” has also been connected to oikonomia (Leshem 2016 p. 225).

  5. 5.

    Please see the New Revised Standard Version as presented in the online Bible Gateway. www.biblegateway.com

  6. 6.

    Also see Ireland (1992).

  7. 7.

    The first plan was entitled Good for Business, Good for Community: Ireland’s National Plan on Corporate Social Responsibility 2014–2016.

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  1. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Alan J. Kearns

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  1. Alan J. Kearns
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Correspondence to Alan J. Kearns .

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  1. Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

    Gabriel Flynn

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Kearns, A.J. (2022). Leadership as Stewardship: What Does the Story of the Unjust Steward Have to Say?. In: Flynn, G. (eds) Leadership and Business Ethics. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 60. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2111-8_25

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