WORKING PAPER
Increasing the Moral Imagination of Children through Literature:
The Key to Future Ethical Leadership?
David Boulger
Manchester Metropolitan University
UFHRD 2015
CORK
3rd – 5th June 2015
ABSTRACT
Purpose
This working paper summarises a pilot study completed within a Masters Degree in Leadership undertaken at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The purpose was to synergise the potential implications of existing research into moral imagination, child development and the use of fiction as a means of enhancing leadership ethics.
Design / Methodology / Approach
The pilot study was approached from a relativist ontological perspective, and a social constructionist epistemological paradigm.
The primary methodological approach was qualitative, complemented by a quantitative methodology to add value to the empirical evidence base as part of a mixed methodology.
Findings
The ‘moral imagination’ of young people can be increased through the use of fictional literature.
Research limitations / implications
This research was small in scale and limited in scope; The methodology was previously untested; The research provides a platform for a more extensive longitudinal study.
Practical implications
This limited pilot study has created a platform for a more in depth, longitudinal research study to explore the potential of this approach to increase the impact of leadership education in relation to ethics.
Social implications
If confirmed, the findings have implications for the role that educators within the Primary, Secondary, Further and Higher Education sectors in the UK have in equipping children and young adults with moral imagination as a key leadership attribute.
Originality / Value
The research synthesizes a range of research topics in the context of leadership ethics.
The methodology utilized was unique.
The findings contribute to an under-developed evidence base that has significant implications in the context of educating future leaders.
Keywords
Moral Imagination; Ethics; Leadership; Fiction; Children
Word Count
4878 (Excluding bibliography)
“…children learn a morality of flesh and bone and not one of vague principles”
(Kazamek, 1986, p.271)
INTRODUCTION
There is increasing interest in the concept of ‘leadership ethics’ (Kennedy, 1992; Brown and Trevino, 2006).
Recent high profile scandals have placed ethics at the forefront of leadership education (Knights and O’Leary, 2006), requiring leaders to re-evaluate existing approaches and paradigms in an ever changing world (Monahan, 2012).
There is increasing evidence of the sustained competitive advantage that can be achieved by ethical organizations, and limitations of those organizations lacking a clear sense of business ethics (Collins, 2009; Desjardins, 2009; Petrick and Quinn, 2001).
On a macro level, business leaders are expected to display greater responsibility in ensuring that their actions contribute to stability, strength and harmony in society (Mendonca and Kunango, 2007; Holden, 2000).
On a micro level, there is an increasing body of evidence highlighting the critical role that ethics play in leader-follower relationships, individual and organisational decision-making, and commitment to personal and organisational goals (Ciulla, 1995 and 2004; Kouzes and Posner, 2002).
However, leadership ‘educators’ have reflected upon a perceived failure of traditional business education approaches to equip leaders with a sound grasp of morality and ethics. (Goshal, 2005; Mintzberg, 2004; Derry and Green, 1989).
There are a number of methods utilised in ‘teaching’ leadership ethics (Morris and Wood, 2011), and one such method involves the use of fictional literature as a vehicle for enabling leaders to explore ethics (Baldaracco, 2006). There is evidence that this approach has merit.
However, one criticism of this approach is that it fails to maximize the potential to internalize morality and ethics within leaders.
Young and Annisette (2009) argue that literature can enable leaders to build their ‘unfinished self’ and to enhance their ‘moral imagination’ which will ensure that ethical leadership reflects not just what they do, but who they are.
Moral Imagination, defined as “the ability to discern the aspects embedded within a situation and develop a range of alternative solutions to the situation from a moral perspective” (Godwin, 2012, p.5), forms a key element underpinning ethical leadership.
This research argued that greater emphasis should be placed upon utilizing literature to build the ‘moral imagination’ of children and young people through building upon their ‘unfinished self and equipping them to be future ethical leaders.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This is a summary of an extensive literature review undertaken as part of this research.
Using Fiction to ‘Teach’ Ethics
In his seminal 1989 text, “The Call of Stories”, Coles contended that fiction plays a critical role in introducing, enhancing and developing morality and ethics to those in positions of leadership.
Baldaracco (2006) argued that fictional literature offers a personal and internal view of leadership:
“It opens the door to a world rarely seen…it let’s us watch leaders as they think, worry, hope, hesitate, commit, exult, regret and reflect. We see their characters tested, reshaped, strengthened, or weakened. These books draw us into leaders’ worlds, put us in their shoes, and at times let us share their experience”
(Baldaracco, 2006, p3)
Kennedy and Lawton (1992) argued that conventional approaches to teaching leadership ethics were ill-equipped for exploring the complex moral issues that contemporary leaders are required to navigate, whereas fictional narrative enables a much deeper exploration of these issues and encourages a greater level of involvement and reflection amongst leaders.
Ciulla (1997) views critical thinking as a key feature of ethical leadership as it enables leaders to develop imagination and vision, and argues that such skills are a fundamental leadership competency and that stories and literature are a vital tool in developing this skill. All of this is geared towards developing ethical leaders who are able to both “lead by the head” and “lead by the heart” (Cuilla, 1997, p111).
Ciulla (2004) further expands upon these ideas by arguing that ‘moral imagination’ is the vehicle by which ethical leaders visualize ethics and turn them into action, and that fiction is a method for enabling leaders to develop this ethical skill set.
Shaw (1992) argues that fiction provides a richer medium through which to explore ethical leadership issues and serves as an enabler for ‘imaginative sympathy’ allowing leaders to put themselves in the shoes of those involved and explore ethical and moral issues from a range of viewpoints that they would otherwise not be able to access.
Young and Annisette (2009) strongly advocate the use of literature in developing an understanding of ethics and, as identified in the introduction to this paper, they argue that literature can enable leaders to build their ‘unfinished self’ and their ‘moral imagination’, which will ensure that ethical leadership is not just what they do, but is who they are.
This research was developed around this observation.
Whilst the full iterature review largely indicated that Fiction offered a significant contribution to the understanding of leadership ethics and the enhancement of moral imagination, it is also important to consider the criticisms of this approach.
LeBaron (2009) identified 3 key criticisms of the use of literature in enhancing leadership ethics:
1. The choice of fiction, and the way in which it is used is highly subjective and this can have significant consequences in terms of advocating a particular viewpoint of the world, and in terms of promoting some voices and silencing others.
2. The approach lacks any meaningful empirical evidence base.
3. Too much value is put upon the importance of fiction, and the assumption that characters in books reflect real lives and life-like behaviours is flawed.
These points have links to a wider body of critical research (Mihelic et al, 2010;
Brown and Trevino, 2006; Bartlett, 2003) which provide a damning indictment of the current evidence base which argues that the literature around leadership ethics is fragmented, in disarray, full of controversy, based upon diverse and independent research streams, theoretically formless and empirically weak.
It is possible to hypothesize from this position, that whilst the use of fiction appears to be intuitively appropriate, it might be based upon a flawed theoretical platform.
Fiction as a tool for developing Ethics in Children and Young People
There is existing research into the use of children’s literature in exploring ethical leadership issues including Harry Potter (Rosser, 2007), Doctor Seuss (Greenwood, 2000; Comer and Holbrook, 2005) and the Hunger Games (Strom, 2012).
However, this relates to the use of children’s literature with adults.
Kazamek (1986) contends that using children’s literature as a form of moral education with children allows them to apply theory to practice as “children learn a morality of flesh and bone and not one of vague principles” (Kazamek, 1986, p.271).
This perspective has synergies with the observations of Young and Annisette (2009) about it being critical that leadership ethics are internalized within those in positions of leadership, not just conceptually understood by them.
Bennett (1993) provides examples of children’s stories that are considered appropriate for exposing moral dilemmas through literature, as do Field and Weiss (1987), but neither link it to leadership ethics.
Naylor (2010) argues that reading children’s literature during childhood can play a significant role in self-construction and presentation of self as a leader in adulthood.
At present, however, there is a paucity of research looking specifically at the use of literature with children as a means of developing more ethical future leaders.
Moral Imagination
Moral imagination is seen as an enabler of ethical decision-making, which is increasingly being seen as a key feature of sustained competitive advantage in contemporary society (Johnson, 1993a and 1993b; Moberg and Seabright, 2000; Werhane, 1998 and 1999, Godwin, 2012).
Moral Imagination is not a new concept, but there is no consensus definition. (Werhane, 1999).
After reviewing numerous definitions, a common theme emerged of Moral Imagination as a dual process that involves the ability to identify the range of options that present themselves in a given situation, and to select the option that is most morally and ethically sound.
For the purposes of this research the definition used was from Godwin (2012) who defined Moral Imagination as “the ability to discern the aspects embedded within a situation and develop a range of alternative solutions to the situation from a moral perspective” (Godwin, 2012, p.5).
Godwin elaborates that Moral Imagination involves two distinct, but inter-dependent processes:
1. Discerning – Identifying the range of moral issues that are present in a situation.
2. Developing – Formulating a range of alternative solutions from a moral perspective
An individual must be able to demonstrate both processes to be consider morally imaginative.
Identifying Synergies
Overall, there is a significant body of research exploring the value of using fictional literature as a vehicle for enhancing understanding of leadership ethics.
There is also some limited research seeking to use children’s literature, but not with children.
There will also undoubtedly be some research around the moral education of children from an educational psychology perspective, but not linked to leadership education.
This literature review did not identify any research exploring the synergies between these areas.
As such, this research could add significant value to the evidence base around the core concepts of:
· Leadership Ethics
· Moral Imagination
· Child Development
The research specifically sought to identify the synergies between these concepts in a way that is not prominent within the current evidence base and utilized fictional literature as the synergizing medium:
Figure 1: Research Focus Diagram
METHODOLOGY
Ontology
There is no consensus definition of ‘leadership ethics’, but contemporary research largely views leadership ethics, and associated concepts such as ‘moral imagination’, as social constructs (Brown and Trevino, 2005 and 2006).
Given this starting point, the ontological perspective underpinning this research was from the ‘relativist’ school of thought.
Epistemology
The epistemological paradigm of inquiry was one centred around Social Constructionism and the viewpoint that reality is determined by people rather than by objective and external factors.
As such, the primary role of the research was not to gather facts or measure patterns, but to explore the meanings that people assigned to their experiences, and to identify whether the use of literature could change participant attitude and perception.
Methodology
Research within a ‘relativist’ and ‘social constructionist’ paradigm often lends itself to qualitative research methodology. However, in order to add value to the empirical evidence base, this research also incorporated an element of quantitative research.
Method
Delivering the above methodology, within the identified ontological and epistemological paradigm required a number of methods:
· An initial semi-structured interview with each participant;
· Coding and Scoring of the Interview responses;
· A series of group workshops with all participants to explore the moral issues within a number of selected pieces of literature;
· Narrative Content Analysis of the workshops;
· A follow-up semi-structured interview with each participant;
· Coding and Scoring of the Interview responses;
· Comparison between the Initial Interview results and the Final Interview results.
Identifying a Unit of Measurement
There is no consensus view on what is meant by the term ‘leadership ethics’, which creates a challenge when undertaking quantitative research.
Research in relation to measuring leadership ethics is fragmented and there is no definitive framework (Yukl et al, 2011).
Conversely, there is also a lack of an agreed measure of unethical behaviour (Kaptein, 2008).
This posed a significant methodological challenge, which may explain the empirically weak existing evidence base.
It is within this context that focus shifted to measuring an independent variable of leadership ethics – Moral Imagination.
Measuring ‘Moral Imagination’
The definition of Moral Imagination that was utilized in this research was:
“The ability to discern the aspects embedded within a situation and develop a range of alternative solutions to the situation from a moral perspective”
(Godwin, 2012, p.5)
Moral Imagination has also proved challenging to measure (Yurtsever, 2006).
This research built upon the approach of Godwin (2012) who measured Moral Imagination using vignettes, a coded likert scale, and a coding rubric