Ethics, alterity and the rationality of leadership justice
Human Relations · 2012 · Volume 65 · Issue 10
Abstract
This article provides a critical review and re-evaluation of dominant approaches to leadership justice, arguing that they appropriate justice as a rational means to achieve organizational effectiveness. It is shown that in contemporary management thinking justice is a formal rationality rather than a substantive one. This rationalization of justice belies its masculinization and as a result human values such as love and care are sidelined. The ethical theories of Emmanuel Levinas are drawn on to consider how pre-rational affective relations between people form the basis of ethically informed justice. It is proposed that justice is not a particular variety of leadership behaviour but rather that leadership is the practice of justice . Justice is not here regarded as something to be achieved through particular leadership practices, but is an ongoing condition – an unanswerable question whose response defines the ethical quality of leadership.
Keywords
critical approaches to leadership, ethics, justice, managerialism, Levinas, Weber
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