The Moral Leader

Course Number 1562

Senior Lecturer Sandra J. Sucher
Fall, 13 Sessions
Paper
Enrollment: Limited to 25 students per section

Introduction

This seminar-style version of The Moral Leader asks students to dive deeply into the complex and ambiguous questions that moral leadership raises. The combination of rich material and the intensive discussion enabled by a small group requires students to be thoroughly prepared for each session, willing to participate in continual dialogue. The course invites personal exploration and its application to managerial decision making. Emphasizing the importance of cultivating a tolerance of ambiguity, a capacity for complexity, and an ability to hold multiple perspectives, The Moral Leader is designed to be relevant to the problems facing new and experienced managers and others aiming to lead a morally responsible life.

Content and Objectives

The focus of this course is not on morality versus immorality, but on moral inquiry and decision-making. The course is comprised of three modules:

• Moral Challenge, in which students explore fundamental moral problems and the strategies used to come to terms with them;
• Moral Reasoning, in which students are introduced to methods and modes of "moral reasoning" that help in justifying, or not justifying, decisions made in complex situations.

These two modules prepare students for the final module:

• Moral Leadership, in which students confront examples of moral leadership per se, better able to learn from the positions and actions taken by people in explicit leadership roles.

In 13 sessions each two hours long, the course draws upon a series of novels, plays, historical accounts, and other readings that expose - in a multiplicity of settings ranging from ancient Greece to contemporary America - the dilemmas, complexities, subtleties, and novelties responsible leaders face in one guise or another.

Through intense classroom discussion and selected exercises students build up a view of what moral leadership is and rehearse systematic approaches to moral decision-making.

Requirements

Sixty percent of the grade for the course is based on class participation and forty percent on a paper, roughly 15 pages in length.