Discussion:
Define and describe the principles of ethical leadership. Which two of the five covered in Chapter 16 do you think are the most important? Why?
This final week our focus is on culture and leadership, as well as leadership ethics. These are two very important topics in terms of understanding and working with business strategies.
Our first chapter reading this week focuses on culture and leadership. What is culture and why is it important in terms of business strategies? There are many definitions for culture. According to our textbook, "culture is defined as the learned beliefs, values, rules, norms, symbols and traditions that are common to a group of people" (Northouse, 2013, p. 384). Another definition on culture is that
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving (Texas A&M University, Culture, n.d., para. 1).
One last definition might be that "culture is the characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts (Zimmermann, 2012, para. 1).
Now that there is an understanding of what culture is, why is culture so important in terms of business strategies? There is a great interview that dives into the importance of aligning culture and strategies in organizations that is recommended to read. It can be found via this link: