LEAD 5673 Module 1 Ethical Theories and Leadership Models Comparison Example

Which Kind of Leader Does a Smart Meter Program Need? Comparing Ethical Theories and Ethical Leadership Models

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD5673: Ethical Leadership

Module 1 Assignment

Instructor Name

September 6, 2027

Introduction

I manage the advanced metering program at a member-owned electric cooperative in southern Missouri, a composite organization called Ozark Valley Electric Cooperative in this course. The program will replace about 41,000 meters with digital smart meters over three years, at a cost of about $14 million. The new meters will read usage remotely, detect outages and allow service to be connected or disconnected without sending a truck. Those capabilities raise ethical questions about members' data, about how the cooperative uses remote disconnection and about how honestly the program reports its progress. This paper compares the ethical theories and leadership models that might guide me and tests them against three decisions the program will face. The program also sits inside an organization owned by its customers, whose own values shape what ethical leadership must mean here.

Four Ethical Theories

Four classic theories offer different questions. A consequentialist, or utilitarian, approach asks which choice produces the greatest overall good, for example whether remote disconnection lowers costs enough to benefit all members. A duty-based approach, drawing on Kant, asks which duties and rights are at stake regardless of results, such as a member's right to know how usage data are used. Virtue ethics turns attention to the kind of program manager I should be, focusing on honesty, prudence and fairness. Care ethics asks how decisions affect relationships and people who are vulnerable, such as elderly members living alone. Each theory captures something real, and each can mislead if used alone. Using them together, as lenses rather than rival answers, is the approach this paper takes.

Four Leadership Models

Leadership research offers several models with ethics at their core. One influential review described ethical leadership as both being a moral person, honest, fair and caring, and being a moral manager who sets ethical standards, communicates about ethics and uses rewards and discipline to uphold them (Brown & Treviño, 2006). They noted overlaps with transformational, authentic and servant leadership, especially in integrity and role modeling, but argued that ethical leadership is distinct in its explicit, transactional attention to standards. Transformational leadership emphasizes inspiring followers toward a shared vision; authentic leadership emphasizes self-awareness and transparency; servant leadership emphasizes putting followers' and stakeholders' needs first.

How Distinct Are the Models?

If the models overlap heavily, choosing among them matters less. Hoch et al. (2018), in a meta-analysis, examined whether ethical, authentic and servant leadership explained outcomes beyond what transformational leadership already explained. They found that ethical and authentic leadership were highly correlated with transformational leadership and added little beyond it for most outcomes, while servant leadership showed more distinct predictive value. For a practitioner, the lesson is not that ethical or authentic leadership are unimportant, but that their behaviors largely overlap with good transformational leadership, whereas servant leadership's focus on serving others adds something different.

Decision One: Using Member Data

Smart meters record usage every fifteen minutes, which can reveal when a home is empty or how many people live there. A vendor has offered a discount if the cooperative shares anonymized data for the vendor's product research. A utilitarian view might accept, since the discount lowers costs for all members. A duty-based view asks whether members consented, and the answer is no. Virtue and care views ask whether members would feel respected. An ethical leader in Brown and Treviño's sense would set a clear standard on data use before any offer is considered; a servant leader would ask members first. Both point toward declining until the board adopts a data policy with member input. The discount, about $60,000, is real money for a cooperative of this size, which is why the decision deserves a policy rather than a quick yes or no.

Decision Two: Remote Disconnection

Remote disconnection will save the cooperative about $85 per disconnection in truck visits and labor. It also removes a moment of human contact: today, a field technician at the door sometimes discovers that the household includes a sick child or an elderly member and alerts the office. A purely consequentialist analysis might favor remote disconnection everywhere, while care ethics highlights what is lost for vulnerable members. A transformational vision of a modern grid says little about this tradeoff. Servant leadership, with its attention to those least able to protect themselves, and ethical leadership, with its emphasis on fair standards, together suggest a policy that limits remote disconnection, a question Module 4 will examine in depth.

Decision Three: Honest Reporting

The program reports monthly to the cooperative's board. Installation is already six weeks behind because of meter supply delays, and there is pressure to report the schedule as green while hoping to catch up. Duty-based and virtue ethics are clear that misleading the board is wrong. Authentic leadership, with its emphasis on transparency, adds a personal dimension: reporting honestly is part of being the same person in the board room as in the field. Ethical leadership adds the moral manager's role, setting a standard that every team member reports problems early. Here the models agree, and the difficulty is courage rather than analysis. Reporting the delay now also gives the board time to adjust member communications and the budget, which a late surprise would not.

The Cooperative's Own Values

A cooperative adds a layer that general leadership models do not supply. The International Cooperative Alliance (n.d.) states that cooperatives rest on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity, and that members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others. Its principles include democratic member control, under which members take part in setting policies, and concern for the community. These commitments sharpen each of the three decisions. Member data belong, in an important sense, to the owners of the cooperative; disconnection policy is a matter on which members should have a voice; and honest reporting to an elected board is a duty to the members it represents. Any leadership approach I adopt has to fit inside these values rather than compete with them.

The Combination That Fits

Testing the theories and models on real decisions suggests that no single one is enough. Ethical leadership provides the standards and accountability the program needs, from a data policy to honest reporting rules. Servant leadership adds a focus on members, especially vulnerable ones, which matters in a cooperative owned by the people it serves. Among the theories, duty-based and care ethics guard against decisions that serve the majority at the expense of a few, while consequentialist reasoning keeps costs in view, since every dollar spent comes from members' bills. My working approach will combine ethical leadership's standards with servant leadership's orientation toward members.

Conclusion

The four ethical theories offer different questions, and the four leadership models overlap more than their names suggest, with servant leadership the most distinct. Tested against decisions on member data, remote disconnection and honest reporting, a combination of ethical and servant leadership, informed by duty-based and care ethics, fits a program manager accountable to a cooperative's members. Later modules will apply this approach to a professional code of ethics, trust, fairness and my own leadership framework.

References

Brown, M. E., & Treviño, L. K. (2006). Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(6), 595-616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2006.10.004

Hoch, J. E., Bommer, W. H., Dulebohn, J. H., & Wu, D. (2018). Do ethical, authentic, and servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), 501-529. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206316665461

International Cooperative Alliance. (n.d.). Cooperative identity, values & principles. Retrieved September 2, 2027, from https://ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity