What is the nature of a moral challenge? How do leaders contend with the moral choices they face?
” Sucher: When I came back to HBS as a professor, I originally wanted to do research in service business innovation. The opportunity to teach a course about leadership, values and decision making came along. This was a fascinating course. I always thought that these were the most difficult challenges any leader faces. I was then asked to teach The Moral Leader, and it was in teaching that course that I first decided to write about moral leadership. Can you give a preview of the elective course you teach: The Moral Leader? Sucher: One novel we use is Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day.” In it (the protagonist) reasons from a moral code- in this case loyalty to his boss. From this we explore the ways in which a moral code affects the decisions we make. With hindsight, indentifying moral or ethical challenges can be relatively easy. In school we have ample opportunity to study what to do when we’re faced with such a dilemma. But how can we know when there is a dilemma in our career?
