Responsible Leadership Ethics

Abstract

Getting to grips with the dualistic nature of an emerging, unified Europe is very necessary for incumbent and emerging leaders where, for instance, for the most part Western European countries and companies have opted to either implement the minimum requirements, normally driven through law and legislation in its companies and societies, e.g., implement demographic targets to be achieved, or focused narrowly on context-relevant multi-culturalism. Contrasting with this approach are the newer EU members, like Baltic-located Estonia, for which diversity is a very new concept, and countries on the periphery, like Turkey, for which the concept of the individual is a blurry, changeable one due largely to their experience of heightened individualism as well as communalism throughout their long political and economic history, and finally countries like Romania which are caught in a time-warp of biculturality as they rediscover their historical economic prowess. The fundamental flaw, as we see it, is that too much of the focus has been on how to efficiently box people into certain categories, typically geographic cultural ones, and then seek to lead them through those lenses — as opposed to fully embracing the uncertainty of diversity. In a changing Europe, diversity is an ethical issue, for which leaders have a clear responsibility, if they hope to build a sustainable Europe that works for all — oneself and others. In many ways, the unwillingness by some leaders in Europe — community, organisational and institutional/governmental — to fully engage such discourse and deconstruction is a moral injustice, and erodes the precepts of a free and democratic EU.