Course : Ethical Leadership

Unit overview

In this unit, we initiate our focused study of virtue ethics and leadership by examining the classical framework established in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Moving beyond rule-based compliance and consequentialist calculations, we explore leadership as an expression of moral character and happines/human flourishing (eudaimonia). We analyze how ethical leadership depends on the teleological nature of action, the deliberate cultivation of habits, and the ''Doctrine of the Mean,'' which identifies virtue as an intelligent balance between deficiency and excess. Special emphasis is placed on phronesis (prudence, or practical wisdom), the crucial intellectual virtue that enables leaders to deliberate effectively, read context accurately, and exercise sound judgment in complex organizational crises where rigid rules fail. Through this Aristotelian perspective, students learn to view leadership not as mere techne, but as an ongoing habituation toward excellence.

Keywords

virtue ethics; Aristotle; eudaimonia; telos; character formation; moral habituation; Doctrine of the Mean; phronesis; practical wisdom; ethical leadership; moral excellence

Required readings

• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Irwin. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999. Book I (Chapters 1-7; 13), Book II (Chapters 1-9), and Book VI (Chapters 5, 7, 12-13). 

Complementary readings

• Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

• Hursthouse, Rosalind, and Glen Pettigrove. "Virtue Ethics." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition).Edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/ethics-virtue/.

• Hartman, Edwin M. "Can We Teach Character? An Aristotelian Answer." Academy of Management Learning & Education 5, no. 1 (2006): 68–81. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2006.20388386.
• Kraut, Richard. "Aristotle’s Ethics." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition). Edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/aristotle-ethics/.
• Shotter, John, and Haridimos Tsoukas. "In Search of Phronesis: Leadership and the Art of Judgment." Academy of Management Learning & Education 13, no. 2 (2014): 224–43. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2013.0201.