Five Minutes at the Kitchen Tap: Ethical Leadership and Influence Without Authority in a Utility's Lead Sampling Instructions
Student Name
American College of Education
LEAD5653: Leadership Theories, Frameworks, and Philosophies
Module 5 Assignment
Instructor Name
July 31, 2028
The Problem
Every three years, the composite water utility in this course collects first-draw tap samples from 100 homes chosen as most likely to have lead in their plumbing, and reports the 90th percentile result to the state. If that figure exceeds 15 parts per billion, the utility must notify the public and take further corrective steps. Residents collect the samples themselves, following a letter the utility mails with each bottle. The letter is owned by the compliance coordinator in the regulatory affairs office, which reports to the general manager.
The laboratory supervisor, who analyzes the samples but has no say over how they are collected, noticed a line in the letter asking residents to run the cold tap for five minutes the evening before sampling, then leave it unused overnight. Flushing before the six-hour standing period clears water that has sat against lead fittings, and so lowers the first-draw result. Federal guidance issued in 2016 advised utilities to drop that step. The utility's last round came in at 11 parts per billion. Nothing in the letter was clearly illegal, which is exactly why no one had changed it.
Why the Problem Was Easy to Leave Alone
Kish-Gephart et al. (2010), in a meta-analysis of the sources of unethical decisions at work, grouped them into three families: characteristics of the person, characteristics of the moral issue itself and characteristics of the organizational environment. Their evidence supports all three, and two of them fit this case closely. The issue was low in moral intensity: any harm from a lower reading would fall on unknown households, years later, through a statistic rather than a visible act, and the same meta-analysis linked lower moral intensity with more unethical choices. The environment rewarded silence. A higher reading might push the utility toward the action level, and with it public notice, cost and the risk of the kind of news story that followed the late boil-water notice in Module 4.
Neither of these makes anyone at the utility a bad actor. The compliance coordinator had inherited the letter, and the step had once been common practice. The analysis matters because it explains the first reaction the supervisor met, which was not resistance but a shrug.
The Influence Attempt, Tactic by Tactic
Yukl and Tracey (1992) studied how managers try to influence subordinates, peers and superiors and found that rational persuasion, inspirational appeals and consultation most often produced real commitment, while pressure, coalition tactics and legitimating tactics most often produced resistance. The supervisor's attempt, read in order, tracks that result closely.
The first move was a legitimating tactic: an email to the compliance coordinator attaching the 2016 guidance and asking that the letter be brought into line. The reply said the letter met the rule as written and that the guidance was not binding. That was accurate, and the attempt stalled. The second move was rational persuasion with the utility's own evidence. With the water quality manager's approval, the supervisor asked 30 staff members who live in older homes to collect two samples a week apart, once following the letter and once without the flushing step. The median result rose from 2 to 5 parts per billion without flushing, and four homes exceeded 15 parts per billion, against one under the letter's instructions. The supervisor presented the results to the coordinator as a question about accuracy, not about compliance.
The third move was consultation. Rather than send a revised letter, the supervisor asked the coordinator to draft the next version and offered the lab's help in testing the wording with residents. The coordinator agreed, and the revised letter went to the general manager under the coordinator's name. The supervisor did briefly consider a fourth tactic, asking the operations director from earlier modules to raise the matter with the general manager, and decided against it because the coordinator was already moving and a coalition would have looked like going around the coordinator.
What Worked and Why
The legitimating tactic failed for the reason the research predicts: it asked the coordinator to comply with an authority the coordinator did not have to accept. The data succeeded because it changed the question. Once the coordinator saw that the letter produced a less accurate picture of the homes the program was designed to find, the issue stopped being a regulatory argument the coordinator could win and became a measurement problem the coordinator owned. Pooling the studies that followed, Lee et al. (2017) found that rational persuasion was positively associated with both task and relationship outcomes across studies, while pressure tended to harm the relationship even when it produced compliance.
Consultation completed the work by giving the change a new owner. A revised letter written by the supervisor would have remained the supervisor's idea and might have been revised back the next time staff changed. One written by the coordinator became part of the compliance program. The next sampling round, under the new letter, produced a 90th percentile of 14 parts per billion, higher but still under the action level, and the utility reported the change in method alongside the result.
Was the Conduct Ethical Leadership?
Brown et al. (2005) defined ethical leadership as the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement and decision making. Their social learning argument is that followers learn ethical conduct by watching credible role models who are seen to care about it. The supervisor clearly meets the first part of the definition. The second part is less straightforward because the supervisor had no followers in this episode. The lab technicians did watch, however: two of them helped run the paired samples, and one later flagged a similar problem in the utility's bacteria sampling procedure. That is the social learning mechanism working outside formal authority.
One part of the conduct is open to criticism. The paired sampling used staff households, a sample chosen for convenience, and the supervisor presented it with more confidence than 30 homes can carry. The conclusion survived a larger round, but a careful leader would have said so at the time.
If Influence Had Failed
The harder ethical question is what the supervisor should have done had the coordinator refused. The supervisor's own plan, written before the second meeting, was to take the paired results to the water quality manager and then, if necessary, to the general manager, and to raise the issue with the state drinking water program only if the utility declined to address it. That sequence respects the organization's chance to correct itself while setting a limit on how long the correction may take. It also shows why influence without authority is an ethical skill and not only a political one: the more a person can move an organization from inside, the less often the choice between silence and going outside ever has to be made.
References
Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002
Kish-Gephart, J. J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L. K. (2010). Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: Meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017103
Lee, S., Han, S., Cheong, M., Kim, S. L., & Yun, S. (2017). How do I get my way? A meta-analytic review of research on influence tactics. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(1), 210-228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.11.001
Yukl, G., & Tracey, J. B. (1992). Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers, and the boss. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(4), 525-535. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.4.525
How this LEAD 5653 Module 5 example is structured
LEAD 5653 Module 5 typically brings ethics and influence without formal authority into one analysis; your classroom's instructions decide the episode and the frameworks. This example states the ethical problem and why it was hard to see, then follows the influence attempt in order, naming each tactic as research classifies it and matching it to the response it drew. The ethics section tests the conduct against a published definition of ethical leadership, and the paper closes on the question every such case raises: what the supervisor would have done if influence had failed.
LEAD5653 Module 5 questions, answered
What does LEAD5653 Module 5 usually ask for?
LEAD5653 Module 5 often asks students to analyze an ethical situation in which someone had to influence others without formal authority. Many sections expect the tactics used to be named and judged against research and an ethical leadership framework. Your classroom's instructions decide the episode and frameworks required.
Which influence tactics work best without formal authority?
Research on influence tactics has found that rational persuasion, consultation and inspirational appeals most often win genuine commitment, while pressure and appeals to rules or authority more often produce resistance. The right choice still depends on the relationship and the issue.
Can someone with no direct reports show ethical leadership?
Yes. Published definitions of ethical leadership center on modeling appropriate conduct and promoting it through communication. Colleagues who watch a peer act on an ethical concern can learn from that example, which is the social learning mechanism the construct relies on.
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