LEAD 6113 Module 5 Ethical Leadership Platform Example

Reasons Given, Data Shared, Students at the Table: An Ethical Leadership Platform for an Associate Dean of Undergraduate Nursing

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD6113: Ethical Leadership and Social Justice

Module 5 Assignment

Instructor Name

November 9, 2026

Introduction

Over four modules I examined an appeal for a third attempt, a senior's falsified clinical log, five years of dismissal data and an exit examination policy at a composite Georgia BSN program where I serve as associate dean for undergraduate nursing. Each case taught something about what ethical leadership requires in an academic nursing program. This paper gathers those lessons into a platform: five commitments, each with the practice that carries it out, a way to tell whether I am keeping it and an honest note on its limits. The platform is written for my present role, but most of its commitments would apply to any leader whose decisions decide who advances and who does not.

Two Pillars

Ciulla (1995) observed that asking what good leadership is involves two meanings of good, the ethically good and the effective, and argued that leadership studies cannot separate them. Work on executives' reputations for ethical leadership made a related point concretely: being seen as an ethical leader requires being a moral person, whose own conduct is honest and fair, and a moral manager, who actively makes ethics part of the organization's agenda through role modeling, communication and rewards (Treviño et al., 2000). A leader who is personally upright but silent about ethics may be seen as ethically neutral. The platform below is built on both pillars: commitments about my own decisions and commitments about how the program's systems work.

Commitment 1: Give Reasons for Every Consequential Decision

From the appeal in Module 1: decisions about students' futures will be explained in writing with their reasoning, not only their outcome. Brown et al. (2005) described ethical leaders as people who promote ethical conduct partly through communication and through the decisions they make; a reasoned letter does both, because it teaches faculty and students what the program counts as fair. The practice is a short reasoning section in every appeal and integrity decision. The measure is simple: whether a colleague reading the letter could predict how a similar case would be decided. The limit is privacy; reasons must be shared in general terms beyond the student involved.

Commitment 2: Look for the Conditions Behind Misconduct

From the falsified clinical log in Module 2: when a student does wrong, I will ask what program conditions made the wrong choice easier, while still holding the student accountable. In that case, an end-of-term preceptor signature and a roster rule that punished falling behind both contributed. The practice is a standard question in every integrity review, "What would have made this less likely?", with any answer sent to the relevant coordinator. The measure is the number of process changes that follow from integrity cases each year. The limit is that this commitment must never become an excuse; conditions explain behavior but do not erase it.

Commitment 3: Publish Equity Data Every Year

From the equity review in Module 3: the program will report every year how often students from each group are dismissed, delayed or graduated, using the same three groupings as the Module 3 review,, to faculty and to students. Data made the two-failure rule's pattern visible after twelve years in which nobody had looked. A program that never measures who its policies burden can claim good intentions indefinitely. The practice is an annual equity report prepared with the institutional research office. The measure is whether the report appears each fall and whether faculty discuss it. The limit is small numbers; some groups are small enough that rates swing widely from year to year, and the report will show multi-year averages beside annual figures.

Commitment 4: Put Students at the Policy Table

From both the two-failure rule and the exit examination policy: no academic progression policy will be adopted or revised without student members on the committee that drafts it. Both policies were written without students, and both fall hardest on students the drafters did not resemble. The practice is two student seats, filled by election, on any committee revising progression policy. The measure is whether students' recorded comments appear in the committee's final rationale. The limit is power: students may hesitate to disagree with faculty who grade them, so their seats should come with a faculty mentor outside their courses.

Commitment 5: Never Decide a Future With a Single Number

From the exit examination analysis in Module 4: no single score, whether a course grade, a standardized test or a clinical rating, will by itself decide whether a student progresses or graduates. Decisions of that weight will rest on several indicators reviewed together. The practice is a readiness review that combines course performance, clinical evaluation and standardized test results. The measure is the proportion of progression decisions that cite more than one kind of evidence. The limit is workload: multi-indicator reviews take faculty time, and the program will need to accept that cost rather than return to the convenience of a single cutoff. The commitment also applies to me: my own annual review of faculty will draw on teaching observations and student outcomes, not on course evaluation scores alone.

Where the Commitments Collide

The five commitments will sometimes pull against each other, and a platform is more honest if it says where. Giving reasons publicly can collide with student privacy, especially in a cohort small enough that a general description identifies the student; in those cases the reasoning will go to faculty in anonymized form and to the student in full, but not to the class. Looking for conditions behind misconduct can collide with consistent accountability, since two students who did the same thing under different pressures may seem to receive different treatment; the answer is that the sanction for the act stays constant while the program's response to the conditions varies. Publishing equity data can collide with the morale of faculty who designed the policies being measured, and they may read the report as an accusation; presenting it first to the curriculum committee, with time to discuss before wider release, respects their role without hiding the numbers. Finally, multi-indicator decisions and student seats on committees both slow decisions down, which will frustrate colleagues who value speed. Some slowness is the price of fairness, and the platform accepts it.

Living the Platform

A platform is credible only if others can see it at work. I will share these five commitments with faculty and the student nursing association at the start of the spring term, explain where each came from and ask both groups to tell me when they see me depart from them. Each May I will report on the measures attached to each commitment. That practice addresses the moral manager pillar directly: ethics becomes something the program talks about and tracks, not only something I try to embody privately.

Conclusion

The five commitments, giving reasons, looking for conditions, publishing equity data, including students and refusing single-number decisions, each came from a real case and each carries a practice, a measure and a limit. Together they describe a leader trying to act rightly in person and to build right action into the program's machinery, in a setting where decisions shape whether students become nurses. The platform will be tested by the next hard appeal, and I expect to revise it then.

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

Ciulla, J. B. (1995). Leadership ethics: Mapping the territory. Business Ethics Quarterly, 5(1), 5-28. https://doi.org/10.2307/3857269

Treviño, L. K., Hartman, L. P., & Brown, M. (2000). Moral person and moral manager: How executives develop a reputation for ethical leadership. California Management Review, 42(4), 128-142. https://doi.org/10.2307/41166057