Ethical Leadership Failures

Ethical Leadership Failures
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Ethical Leadership Failures
One example of leadership failure was recorded in Volkswagen in 2015. Following tests, it was revealed that VW had deliberately installed software in their diesel cars to manipulate emission tests and falsely meet the required standards. The failure is an example of absence of ethical leadership and accountability in the sense that the decision to deceive authority was made by the company’s executives. The executives at the company decided against prioritizing ethical behaviors. Instead, the leadership was keen to avoid short-term losses and maintain its competitive leadership in the market (Kabeyi, 2020). While an admission that the company could not produce a vehicle that met the required emission standards would have reduced the competitiveness of the organization, the failure to disclose had far-reaching consequences that caused significant damage to the company’s reputation and resulted in legal consequences.
Notably, leadership failure can be attributed to personal and organizational factors. At the personal level, the leaders lacked ethics as they t...