The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487

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The Leadership Quarterly

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / l e a q u a

Kant's advice for leaders: “No, you aren't special” ☆

Terry L. Price ⁎
Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: Are leaders above the law? People who ask this question usually have in mind the law of the
Ethics state. But what about the so-called moral law? Are leaders also bound by the moral rules that
Kant apply to the rest of us? In this paper, I show why leaders are not justified in breaking the moral
Rule breaking
rules. Although they may be especially inclined to think they are special, their behavior must
Rationality
Amoralism
conform to the demands of reason and show respect for the rationality of followers. In other
words, morality is equally binding on all rational agents, including leaders.
© 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Are leaders above the law? When people in leadership positions are indicted, found guilty, and sentenced to prison, prosecutors
and pundits are quick to remind us that the law applies even to leaders: “The jury has spoken and they have sent an unmistakable
message to boardrooms across the country that … no matter how rich and powerful you are you have to play by the rules.”1
Proponents of this particular claim usually have in mind the law of the state. But what about the so-called moral law? Are leaders
also bound by the moral rules that apply to the rest of us?
In this paper, I show why leaders are not justified in breaking the moral rules. Although they may be especially inclined to think
they are special, their behavior must conform to the demands of reason and show respect for the rationality of followers. In other
words, morality is equally binding on all rational agents, including leaders.

1. The universality of reason

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the primary historical exponent of deontological ethics.2 According to deontological ethics, what
makes an action right or wrong are features of the action itself, not the consequences of the action. So, if Kant is right, leaders
cannot justify rule-breaking behavior by appealing to its effects on followers or anyone else for that matter. Reason tells us that
some actions simply ought not to be done, and – in this way – it gives us our duties. The leader who nonetheless engages in
immoral behavior is being unreasonable.
What are our duties on Kant's account? Reason demands that we act only in ways that it would be possible for everyone to act.
Although people sometimes mistakenly understand this as “the golden rule,” Kant does not say that we should treat others the way
we want others to treat us. He holds the stronger view that we should act in ways that we want everyone to act toward everyone
else. In other words, it must be possible to universalize our actions. Kant puts it this way in the first version of his Categorical
Imperative: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”3
The maxim of an action is simply a description of what one is trying to do. This description must be used when imagining all
others engaging in the action. For example, a leader might think to herself: “I will lie to achieve my ends.” A leader's ends are the
goals for the sake of which she is considering deception, something that the leader sees as having value. If it turns out that the

☆ This paper is adapted from chapter 2 of Terry L. Price, Leadership Ethics: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) and used with the
permission of Cambridge University Press.
⁎ Tel.: +1 804 287 6088.
E-mail address: [email protected].
1
M. Berkowitz, director of the Justice Department's Enron Task Force, “Quotation of the Day” New York Times 26 May 2006.
2
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1964).
3
Kant, Groundwork, 88.

1048-9843/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.05.005
 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487 479

leader cannot imagine a world in which all people lie to achieve their ends, then she has a duty not to engage in that behavior. Kant
calls the result of a failed attempt at universalization a contradiction in conception.4 The attempt to universalize the action leads to a
conceptual impossibility. We cannot even think it.
Sometimes when people say, “You can't think that,” what they really mean is that it would be morally wrong to think it.
Philosophers refer to this set of moral problems in terms of the ethics of belief.5 For example, it has been said that it is wrong to think
ill of one's partner — say, that he or she is having an affair.6 But Kant is not saying that it would be morally wrong to have certain
thoughts or to engage in contemplation, even about performing actions that might be morally wrong. He is referring to a stronger
kind of impediment to thought. According to Kant, a failure to universalize the maxim of one's actions means that it is impossible to
imagine a world in which everyone does the wrong action that one is considering doing. The fact that it cannot be thought is what
makes it morally wrong. Such contradictions in conception give rise to strict duties.7 Under no circumstances is a person permitted
to engage in an action that he has a strict duty not to do.
The leader who is about to lie to achieve some end would thus try to imagine a world in which everyone lies to achieve his ends.
Kant contends there can be no such world. His reasoning is that lying cannot help us achieve our ends in a world in which everyone
uses this strategy. A strategy of deception works only when – and precisely because – people tell the truth for the most part and
similarly expect the truth from others. Strategies of deception assume background conditions of honesty. In a world in which no
one can be trusted to tell the truth, there is no incentive to tell a lie. The leader who lies to achieve his ends must therefore rely on a
system in which everyone else generally tells the truth. In other words, he must make an exception of himself and do what he
expects everyone else to refrain from doing. According to Kantian ethics, this is the paradigm of unreasonableness.
Several potential leadership behaviors – when an attempt is made at universalizing them – give rise to contradictions in conception.
Promise breaking and cheating are two prominent examples. Promise breaking can sometimes be an effective way for a leader to
achieve his ends, but only in a system of widespread promise keeping. If promises were always broken by everyone, this strategy could
not be used to advance the leader's ends. The leader would try to make his false promise to encourage an act of cooperation from
another, but the potential cooperator would know better. So there would be no incentive to make the false promise in the first place.
Similarly, in a world in which everyone cheats, there is no reason to institute assessments such as exams. The assessments
would do nothing more than provide a mechanism for people to cheat in an ultimately doomed attempt to gain a competitive
advantage over others. Like the liar, the promise breaker and the cheater must advocate a set of rules that they themselves choose
not to follow. What could be more unreasonable than that?
Other kinds of behaviors can be immoral on Kantian ethics despite the fact that an attempt to universalize them does not lead to
a contradiction in conception. This is because, as Kant would put it, they lead to a contradiction in will.8 In these cases, although we
can conceive of a world in which everyone acts as we are about to act, we cannot will that there be such a world.
For instance, Kant asks us to think about whether we ought to help others in need.9 To derive our duties in this case, we should
try to conceive of a world in which no one helps anyone. According to Kant, we can imagine such a world. To be sure, it would not be
a very attractive place — a world of pure selfishness and a nasty kind of individualism. Nevertheless, thinking of such a world is not
impossible in the way that it is impossible to imagine a world of people who lie to achieve their ends. But we cannot will a world in
which no one helps anyone. That is, we cannot intend for such a world to exist. For, in a world in which no one helps anyone, no one
helps us. Because we need the help of others – no matter what our projects and goals – we must will a world in which people help
others. We thus have a duty to help others in need.10
Here it is important to recognize the subtlety of Kant's argument. He is not saying that the duty to help others is grounded in the
fact that failing to help them now will make it unlikely that they will help us in the future. In other words, the argument is not a
consequentialist appeal to the importance of reciprocity in human relations. As an advocate of deontological ethics, Kant cannot rely
on the effects of our actions to determine what duties we have to others. More specifically, he cannot point to the effects that not
helping would have on the agent who fails to help others in need.
Rather, the duty to help others is grounded in the inconsistency between two things willed by such an agent — namely, that no
one help anyone and that someone help her. It need not even be true that the agent expects to need – and, so, must will – the help
of others in the future. It is enough that the agent wills – as all agents do – that others help her at some point, perhaps at some point
in the past. The universalization – according to which no one helps anyone – applies across time, thereby entailing a contradiction
with any past, present, or future instance in which the agent wills the help of another.
Because the duty to help others in need is derived from a contradiction in will, not a contradiction in conception, Kant concludes
that it is a broad duty, not a strict duty.11 This means that morality gives us some discretion when it comes to decisions about when

4
Kant, Groundwork, 91.
5
See Van A. Harvey, “Is There an Ethics of Belief?” Journal of Religion 49 (1969): 41-58.
6
Harvey notes a similar example (“Is There an Ethics of Belief?” 49) from H. H. Price (“Belief and Will,” Aristotelean Society Supplementary Volume [1954]: 13).
See also Jack W. Meiland, “What Ought We to Believe? or The Ethics of Belief Revisited,” American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980): 16.
7
Kant, Groundwork, 91.
8
Kant, Groundwork, 91.
9
Kant, Groundwork, 90-91.
10
In his Doctrine of Virtue, Kant writes: “The proof that beneficence is a duty follows from the fact that our self-love cannot be divorced from our need of being
loved by others (that is, of receiving help from them when we are in need), so that we make ourselves an end for others. Now our maxim cannot be obligatory for
others unless it qualifies as a universal law and so contains the will to make other men our ends too. The happiness of others is, therefore, an end which is also a
duty” (adapted from Immanuel Kant, Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1964], 53).
11
Kant, Groundwork, 91.
480 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487

to discharge this duty. What kind of discretion does morality allow? Unlike duties not to lie, break promises, or cheat – duties that
require conformity under all conditions – the duty to help others in need can be discharged without constant helping behavior. In
other words, although there are always people to whom we might offer help, morality does not require that we always be engaged
in helping behavior. For one thing, this requirement would be impossible to meet.
Although Kant does not say how regular our helping behavior must be to discharge the duty in question, there is reason to think
that Kantians must significantly limit the stringency of the corresponding requirement. The argument for this claim turns on the
derivation of broad duties. The duty to help others in need is ultimately grounded in our own ends, the ends we intend – or have
intended or will intend – to achieve. The contradiction in will is generated by the fact that we must will the help of others to
achieve these ends. Because we will that others help us achieve our ends, we cannot consistently will that no one help anyone.
However, if the duty to help others is too strong, so strong that discharging it occupies all our time and energies, it will undermine
our capacity to pursue our own ends. And it is our ends that give rise to the duty to help others in the first place.
As Kant puts it:
The law says only that I should sacrifice a part of my well-being to others without hope of requital, because this is a duty; it
cannot assign determinate limits to the extent of this sacrifice. These limits will depend, in large part, on what a person's
true needs consist of in view of his temperament, and it must be left to each to decide this for himself. For a maxim of
promoting another's happiness at the sacrifice of my own happiness, my true needs, would contradict itself were it made a
universal law. Hence this duty is only a wide one: since no determinate limits can be assigned to what should be done, the
duty has in it a playroom for doing more or less.12
Without our ends, there is nothing for the sake of which we must will the help of others and, as a consequence, there would be
nothing to prevent us from universalizing non-helping behavior. In other words, there would be no contradiction in willing a
world in which no one helps anyone. Therefore, frequent or even occasional helping behavior suffices on Kantian ethics. We must
be able to discharge the duties derived from contradictions in will by engaging in the required behaviors without undermining
the ends to which we are committed as rational agents.
Broad duties are best exemplified by the general duty to help others in need. This duty lends itself to concrete instantiation in
the leadership context. Since Kantian ethics does not specify the exact recipients of our helping behavior, it is up to us – given the
circumstances in which we find ourselves – to find ways to discharge the duty. First, the leadership context typically delineates a
group of individuals, most often followers, with respect to which the leader can exercise moral discretion to help people in need,
thereby discharging her more general duty. The most obvious, but by no means the only, recipients of a leader's helping behavior,
then, would be group members.
Second, leadership often brings with it the power and resources to provide this kind of help. What we morally ought to do
depends – to some extent – on what we are able to do, and leaders are certainly able to do what others are often unable, or less able,
to do. For example, because of what others have done for them, leaders have a more concrete Kantian duty to mentor followers
than do non-leading group members. We know that leaders themselves must have relied on the support of others in their rise to
positions of power and influence, because no one is able to achieve success on her own. To the extent that leaders willed the means
to their success, they cannot also will a world in which no one provides the support of a mentor. They therefore have a Kantian duty
to mentor other potential leaders.

2. Respect for rational agency

Respect for the development of other people – particularly their development as rational, autonomous agents – is central to
Kantian ethics. Kant makes this clear in his second version of the Categorical Imperative, which he understands as an alternate
formulation of the first version: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of
any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”13 This formulation tells us, first and foremost, that
morality prohibits bypassing the rational faculties of agents. Lying and promise breaking are morally wrong, for example, because
they are strategies for getting people to do things without appealing to their reason. According to Kant, this tactic treats people as
mere instruments or things, not as the rational agents they really are.
Does Kant think that it is wrong for leaders to ask followers to carry out a task because so doing treats followers as means? After
all, a central component of leadership is getting people to do things as a means to goal achievement. Properly understood, the
second version of the Categorical Imperative does not imply that it is morally wrong to get others to engage in behaviors directed at
the achievement of some end. Leadership would not be possible without this kind of influence. As we shall see, getting followers to
carry out a task is not the same thing as treating them as a mere means.
The notion of consent is critical to any discussion of the issue of using people. When followers are given the opportunity to
engage their own reason and to make choices to do what leaders ask them to do, they are being treated not as mere means but “at
the same time as an end.” In other words, they are being treated as rational agents with value in themselves. So the behavior of the
leader who gets a follower to carry out a task by convincing the follower that it should be done is morally different from the
behavior of the leader who uses physical force to make a follower carry out the task. In fact, the use of coercion in the second case

12
Adapted from Kant, Doctrine of Virtue, 53-54.
13
Kant, Groundwork, 96.
 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487 481

may cause us to think that this relationship does not constitute leadership at all. For example, the master–slave relation is not a
leadership relation precisely because there is nothing consensual about it.
In contrast, the use of consent in the typical leadership case reflects the facts that followers are valuable as rational agents and
that they have their own goals. Followers are not simply means to the achievement of the leader's goals. To be sure, leaders – like
everyone else – will also see their own goals as having value; otherwise, we would not expect leaders to have these goals. What the
second version of the Categorical Imperative tells us is that leaders must also give proper weight to the value of other individuals
and, in this case, to the value of followers. Followers are valuable regardless of any contribution they might make to the
achievement of the leader's goals. In fact, Kant holds that nothing could exceed the value that rational agents have in themselves.
As he puts it, they have “dignity” but no “price.”14
Questions arise, of course, about how much choice followers must have on Kant's account. Given differences in power between
leaders and followers, we will sometimes have reason to doubt whether real choice lies behind follower behavior. In fact, this
power differential threatens to undermine consent altogether. Leadership is often about getting people to do things they might not
otherwise do. In some cases, followers do not care about whether the end is achieved; in other cases, they would like to see the end
achieved but do not particularly care to be the ones to make it happen. How much power, then, can a leader exert on followers to
get them to do what he wants them to do?
For instance, is it permissible on a Kantian account to threaten to fire employees if they fail to do as they are directed? French
and Raven refer to this kind of ability to punish, sanction, or otherwise impose costs on followers as coercive power.15 They also
identify its companion, reward power — the ability to make benefits available to followers.16 As Gary Yukl puts it, reward power
includes “the authority to give pay increases, bonuses, or other economic incentives…[and] is derived also from control over other
tangible benefits such as a promotion, a better job, a better work schedule, a larger operating budget, a larger expense account, and
status symbols such as a larger office or a reserved parking space.”17 It might seem, then, that the close association between
leadership and power undermines the kind of follower choice that is necessary on a Kantian account.
If we accept the principle that an agent's behavior is based on choice only if he is not motivated by good or bad consequences, it
will turn out that much of our behavior is not based on choice. This principle makes it impossible to choose to do something for any
kind of consequentialist reasons. Now Kant does believe that actions have moral worth only if they are done from a sense of duty,
not because of the consequences that follow for the agent or anyone else.18 This understanding of moral worth implies that the
agent who behaves morally only because he wants to avoid criticism from his mother or to impress a potential employer gets no
moral credit for his behavior. Because his choice to do (what turns out to be) the moral action is independent of the morality of the
action – that is, he would have done it anyway (as long as his doing it has the expected effects) – it makes no sense to give him any
moral credit for the action.
Yet this certainly does not mean that he did not choose to do the action. It means that he chose to do it based on what Kant calls
heteronomous influences.19 Although Kant contrasts behavior based on these influences with autonomous behavior which is done
out of respect for the moral law, he cannot claim that we are responsible agents only when we act autonomously in this strong
sense. This claim would entail our being responsible agents only when we behave morally!
Autonomy is indeed threatened, however, when we act primarily on the rational agency of others. Accordingly, more morally
dangerous for the Kantian than French and Raven's coercive power is referent power, where a leader's power rests on intense
feelings of attraction or identification on the part of followers.20 In the most morally dangerous cases, followers can identify with
the leader to such an extent that they forego their own agency and substitute the agency of the leader. Leaders who play on the
non-rational feelings of followers in this way bypass the rational agency of those they lead. In so doing, they violate the Kantian
requirement that they not treat others as mere means. Charismatic leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Jim Jones, and Charles Manson
relied heavily on referent power in their relationships with followers.21
This is not to say, of course, that feelings of respect and loyalty cannot be rational. Leaders are sometimes the objects of these
feelings precisely because they have earned the respect and loyalty of followers. However, in cases in which the feelings have no
justification and leaders draw on these feelings to get followers to act, followers are treated as mere means.22
One way to ground follower feeling in rationality is to trace it back to another kind of power identified by French and Raven —
namely, legitimate power.23 Leaders have this kind of power in virtue of their positions of leadership. Here we can put a finer point
on French and Raven's notion of legitimate power by distinguishing between de facto legitimacy and de jure legitimacy. De facto
legitimacy implies only that the leader has power in virtue of his place in the organizational or constitutional structure. Why is he
justified in exercising power over followers? It is simply because he is the executive director, the CEO, or the president.

14
Adapted from Kant, Groundwork, 102.
15
John R. P. French Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Social Power,” in Studies in Social Power, ed. Dorwin Cartwright (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social
Research, 1959), 157-58.
16
French and Raven, “The Bases of Social Power,” 156-57.
17
Yukl, Leadership in Organizations, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006), 151.
18
Kant, Groundwork, 66.
19
Kant, Groundwork, 108.
20
French and Raven, “The Bases of Social Power,” 161-163. See also Yukl, Leadership in Organizations, 153-155.
21
Charles Lindholm, Charisma (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
22
For an opposing view, see Robert C. Solomon, “Ethical Leadership, Emotions, and Trust: Beyond ‘Charisma,’” in Ethics, the Heart of Leadership, ed. Joanne B.
Ciulla, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 83-102. Solomon defends “giving” trust over earning it.
23
French and Raven, “The Bases of Social Power,”158-161.
482 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487

But this kind of power does not get us very far in a Kantian justification of leadership because it makes no appeal to the rational
faculties of followers. What we need is de jure legitimacy, which implies that power is exercised over followers by right. Real
legitimacy derives not from a leader's position but rather from followers' consent. The justified exercise of this kind of power
requires that followers consent to be in the relation of leadership.
To the extent that legitimate power appeals to the rational agency of followers, it can thus be distinguished from pure referent
power. Followers identify with the agency of leaders, but not simply out of feelings of attraction. Instead, they rationally decide to
act on the agency of another person. Whatever feelings they have for the leader are grounded in a rational assessment of the
relationship.
A similar Kantian justification works for coercive power and reward power. Followers who respond to sanctions and rewards
make their choices based on rational assessments of consequences. The utilization of power, then, need not always be understood
as treating followers as mere means. When power engages the rational agency of actors, it can be distinguished from behavior such
as lying and promise breaking — behaviors that paradigmatically treat others as mere means. Neither lying nor promise breaking
leaves room for this kind of rational assessment on the part of the followers to whom a lie is told or for whom a promise is broken.
The liar and promise breaker overtakes the rational agency of followers and substitutes the leader's own agency to get them to do
what she wants.
This Kantian account of power is not immune to challenge. The most serious objection concedes that the exercise of power by
leaders is not analogous to lying and promise breaking. Still, according to this objection, choice does not guarantee respect for the
rational agency of followers. Even the person with the proverbial gun to his head has a choice. He can rationally decide to do what
he is told to do, or he can choose to be defiant and risk being killed. We nonetheless say that the person in this situation is clearly
the object of coercion.
Likewise, so the objection goes, the employee who has “consented” to join an organization and will be fired if she disobeys her
supervisor really has no choice. Perhaps this is the only job she could find and, if she loses it, her family is likely to suffer greatly
because of her unemployment. She had to take this job and she had to do what she was told to do. Therefore, according to this
objection, the “choice“ to accept the authority of a leader or to act in ways that will avoid sanctions is not sufficient for overcoming
moral worries about power in the leader-follower relation.
Is there a way to respond to this objection? Sometimes when a person claims that she had “no choice,” what she really means is
that there were no good choices. This is true of the employee in the situation just described. But would we not blame the employee
if she obeys her supervisor and engages in immoral behavior? Imagine, for example that she is asked to destroy the results of a
safety test showing that the company's product is dangerous to consumers? Surely we cannot let her off the moral hook in this
case, even if her family's financial security is the reason that she acquiesces in her boss's plan. Destroying the safety test puts the
health and lives of others at serious risk.
The fact that we blame this employee, even though she faced a very hard choice, means that her rational agency is not
undermined by the hard choice she has to make. Of course, we would also blame the employer for concocting the scheme and for
putting the employee in this difficult situation. But there is enough blame to go around.24 Follower agency is undermined in this
kind of case only if it would be unreasonable to expect the follower to do what she morally ought to do. This necessary condition is
satisfied in the gun-to-the-head case. It is not satisfied in everyday cases involving the exercise of power.
The prevalence of cases in which followers have no choice is probably exaggerated. What followers have more often are hard
choices, sometimes very hard choices. This distinction allows us to embrace the claim “following orders is no excuse,” a claim
consistently affirmed in the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–1949 and in the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961.25 The Nuremberg Trials
prosecuted representative Nazi war criminals, and Eichmann was tried for his role in the “Final Solution.” Most cases in which
leaders exercise their power do not involve followers' being asked to engage in immoral behavior, let alone the kind of behavior
carried out by the Nazis. We can nevertheless assess follower agency in everyday cases by asking a hypothetical question: would it
be appropriate to blame obedient followers if the followers' behavior actually were immoral?26
An affirmative answer to this question suggests that the followers' agency has not been undermined by the leader's exercise of
power. When the obedience of followers does not constitute any kind of wrongdoing, there is nothing for which to blame them.
However, the fact that we would be in a position to blame followers were their actions wrong assumes that the followers could be
reasonably expected to do otherwise. The fact that the followers could be reasonably expected to do otherwise assumes that the
followers had sufficient agency and were not treated as mere means.
What this Kantian analysis of power does not imply is that leaders should be unconcerned with the kinds of choices followers
have. Leaders have not succeeded on moral fronts if they simply leave followers with bad choices. Here it is important to notice that
the second version of the Categorical Imperative has both a negative and a positive component. The negative component requires
that leaders not treat followers as mere means. The positive component requires that leaders act in ways that promote the
autonomy of followers. As Kant explains, it is not enough “to agree negatively and not positively with humanity as an end in
itself.”27

24
See Michael J. Zimmerman, “Moral Responsibility and Ignorance,” Ethics 107 (1997): 410-426.
25
See Terry L. Price, “Responsibility,” in Leadership: The Key Concepts, ed. Antonio Marturano and Jonathan Gosling (London: Routledge, 2008), 143. United States
soldiers also claimed they were “just following orders” in the massacre at My Lai. For a discussion, see Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth
Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), ch. 9.
26
See Peter Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” in John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1993), 45-66.
27
Adapted from Kant, Groundwork, 98.
 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487 483

Promotion of the autonomy of followers requires that leaders help followers to pursue their ends. A precondition for the rational
pursuit of ends by followers is the development of their autonomy, and the development of autonomy ultimately requires the
exercise of choice-making capacities. The positive component of the Categorical Imperative is therefore not satisfied in situations
in which followers relinquish their agency to leaders, even though leaders with de jure legitimacy do not violate the negative
component in these situations. Because followers can hardly develop their autonomy without a rich set of choices, leaders have a
duty to create an environment of choice in their organizations so that followers might exercise their skills and talents as rational
agents.
As a result of such efforts on the part of leaders, followers will have even greater choice in their professional lives — for example,
to pursue other job opportunities and, in some cases, to take on leadership roles themselves. This outcome is a welcome side effect
of an environment of choice, and it should serve to ameliorate any remaining concerns about whether Kantian ethics is
appropriately sensitive to the importance of follower choice in its analysis of the exercise of power in leadership. When leaders
respect the positive component of the Categorical Imperative, there will be little room to question whether followers were coerced
into making the choices they must sometimes make.
In the end, the prevalence of real alternatives for followers provides the best proof that their leaders have de jure legitimacy. It
also supports the strongest kind of follower consent to the exercise of coercive and reward power by leaders. Because an
environment of choice gives followers real options, obedience in such an environment implies that followers have other reasons
besides avoiding sanctions and acquiring benefits for acting on leaders' directives.

3. The “problem” of amoralism

As we have seen, Kantian ethics is ultimately grounded in the value of reason. Here, Kant is not referring to particular reasons
for action — for example, that doing the right thing would achieve some end, thereby giving us a reason to do it. This feature of the
Kantian account therefore creates something of a puzzle: if a leader cannot appeal to particular reasons to justify action, then what
is left to ground morality? According to Kant, the answer is that we behave morally, not for the consequences of doing the right
thing, but out of respect for the law-like nature of reason: “Since I have robbed the will of every inducement that might arise for it
as a consequence of obeying any particular law, nothing is left but the conformity of actions to universal law as such, and this alone
must serve the will as its principle. That is to say, I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should
become a universal law.”28
As the reader will have noticed, Kant's answer appeals to the first version of the Categorical Imperative. Morality requires
respect for the formal structure of reason itself. The second version of the Categorical Imperative also articulates the kind of respect
morality demands that we give to reason. In the second version, the rationality of autonomous agents, not the formal structure of
reason, is the focus of our respect. The two versions of the Categorical Imperative imply that leaders – out of respect for reason –
should not make exceptions of themselves or use followers as mere instruments to achieve their ends. More than this, they have a
duty to advance the rationality of followers.
Kant famously holds that these moral imperatives are categorical in nature.29 Unlike hypothetical imperatives, categorical
imperatives apply unconditionally. Because morality does not rest on any particular reason for action, no change in circumstances
could undermine the authority of a categorical imperative. For example, the prohibition on lying applies regardless of the
consequences of not lying for the potential liar, or anyone else for that matter.
In contrast, the application of a hypothetical imperative depends importantly on the desires and interests of the actor to whom
the imperative applies. The claim that a particular student should study for an exam holds only if there is some connection to that
student's desires and interests. Specifically, she must care about making a good grade on the exam, or it must plausibly matter for
her well-being in some long-term or objective sense. If we learn that the student is planning to drop the course or drop out of
college to pursue her music career, we may also be inclined to drop our statement about what she ought to do. The claim that she
should study, then, applies only hypothetically; it applies only if doing well on the exam is dictated by her other desires and
interests.
There is nothing the student can tell us, however, to cancel the authority of a categorical imperative. The prohibition on lying
holds regardless of whether telling a lie is consistent with her career plans, even if it is a necessary component of these plans. This
absolute prohibition makes no room for a hypothetical if-statement allowing such an exception. Simply put, she should not tell a
lie — full stop. The universality of the requirement applies to her and everyone else, regardless of their circumstances.
Can reason itself support this kind of universality? Does everyone, including leaders, have a reason to follow the moral rules?
Philosophers such as Phillipa Foot have questioned the Kantian view that moral imperatives are categorical in nature, claiming that
“the problem is to find proof for this further feature of moral judgments.”30 In her famous paper “Morality as a System of
Hypothetical Imperatives,” Foot compares morality to the demands of etiquette or the rules of a club.31 As Foot points out, etiquette
and club rules look categorical in the sense that their normative force does not seem to turn on a connection between meeting
these demands and satisfying the desires and interests of the person to whom they allegedly apply.

28
Kant, Groundwork, 70 (emphasis added).
29
Kant, Groundwork, 82.
30
Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” in her Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 160.
31
Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” 160.
484 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487

To take one example, the putative authority of the etiquette should-statement “one should put one's napkin in one's lap only
after one's hostess has done so” is not diminished in the least by the fact that one would prefer to unfurl one's napkin before the
hostess has done so or that one would prefer to leave one's napkin on the table throughout the entire meal. But clearly table
manners as such have no independent normative force. They give us reasons to act – they really apply to us – only if we care about
this sort of thing. Drawing on the claim that the demands of morality are similarly hypothetical in nature, Foot concludes that we
have reason to be moral only insofar as we care about morality. In other words, amoralism does not entail irrationality. According to
this view, the leader who does not care about morality has no reason to be moral.
The character who sees himself as lacking a reason to be moral is no stranger to the philosophical literature. Historically, he has
been given very serious consideration. In Plato's (428–348 BCE) Republic, Glaucon defends the view, which must have been
common even in the ancient world, that morality does not apply when individuals are immune to the costs of immorality and are
no longer dependent upon morality's benefits.32 To make his case, Glaucon tells Socrates and others the story of the shepherd
Gyges, who finds a ring that makes him invisible. On Glaucon's telling, as soon as Gyges realizes what the ring will allow him to do,
“he at once arranged to become one of the messengers sent to report to the king. And when he arrived there, he seduced the king's
wife, attacked the king with her help, killed him, and took over the kingdom.”33
Socrates' answer to the question “Why be moral?” is that morality is an intrinsic component of well-being.34 As such, its value is
not dependent upon instrumental punishments and rewards associated with immorality and morality, respectively. That is,
morality in the individual does not lead to happiness as a separate state of the mind or soul; morality in the individual is happiness.
Thomas Hobbes's (1588–1679) Leviathan also takes up the question that Socrates and his interlocutors addressed.35 For Hobbes,
“Why be moral?” is the question asked by the fool: “The Fool hath said in his heart, there is no such thing as justice; and sometimes
also with his tongue, seriously alleging that every man's conservation and contentment being committed to his own care, there
could be no reason why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto: and therefore also to make, or not make;
keep, or not keep covenants, was not against reason when it conduced to one's benefit.”36 In contrast to Socrates, Hobbes takes a
markedly instrumentalist approach, responding to the fool that it is “against the reason of his preservation” to break his covenants
because the fool needs the support of his confederates and cannot trust his security to the chance that they will remain ignorant of
his deception.37 Even the fool, that is, has a reason to be moral.
Neither of these responses to the basic challenge to morality is entirely successful. For one thing, as Plato's most famous student –
Aristotle (384–22 BCE) – objects, we would not count as happy the virtuous person who “suffer[s] the worst evils and misfortunes,”
no matter how virtuous this person is.38 According to Aristotle, no one would do so, “except to defend a philosopher's paradox.”39
For another thing, Socrates' view ignores – because it did not have access to – modern developments in anthropology, psychology,
and sociology. Some immoral individuals to whom we put the Socratic question “How can you sleep at night?” may well offer the
reply that they sleep just fine!40 Likewise, Hobbes is probably overly optimistic in his claim that everyone has a reason to be moral in
all circumstances. It is simply unbelievable that we can never rely on the supposition that others will remain ignorant of our
deceptive or otherwise immoral behaviors.
Foot's analysis of Kantian categorical imperatives thus combines with standard objections to the Socratic and Hobbesian
responses, essentially exhausting the possibilities on which one might claim that it is always against reason to be immoral.
According to Foot, it is illegitimate to assume that
the amoral man, who agrees that some piece of conduct is immoral but takes no notice of that, is inconsistently
disregarding a rule of conduct that he has accepted; or again of thinking it inconsistent to desire that others will not do to
one what one proposes to do to them. The fact is that the man who rejects morality because he sees no reason to obey its
rules can be convicted of villainy but not of inconsistency. Nor will his action necessarily be irrational. Irrational actions are
those in which a man in some way defeats his own purposes, doing what is calculated to be disadvantageous or to frustrate
his ends. Immorality does not necessarily involve any such thing.41
This conclusion, if true, has important implications for moral theory.
But the implications of Foot's point for leadership in everyday life are less clear. Even if we concede that not everyone has a
reason to be moral, we cannot draw the stronger inference — that for many or most people it is not against reason to be immoral.
Determining the extent of the problem of amoralism in leadership will depend on the moral psychology behind unethical behavior
in everyday life. Accordingly, we should worry about the amoralist only if it turns out that the ordinary culprit of unethical
leadership is the leader who does not care about morality.

32
Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992), 35-36 [359d-360b].
33
Plato, Republic, 35-36 [360a-b].
34
See Plato, Republic, pp. 28-31 [352-353] and the book's argumentative appeal to the parts of the state corresponding to the parts of the soul.
35
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
36
Adapted from Hobbes, Leviathan, 101.
37
Hobbes, Leviathan, 103.
38
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 8 [1096a1].
39
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 8 [1096a3].
40
See the discussion of “sleep-test ethics” in Joseph L. Badaracco Jr., Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right (Boston: Harvard
Business School Press, 1997), ch. 4.
41
Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” 161-62 (first two emphases added).
 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487 485

4. Exception making by leaders in everyday life

How should we understand the moral psychology of the leader who makes an exception of herself in everyday life? That is, how
is she motivated and how does she think about her behavior? This individual is the leader who tells a lie or breaks a promise to
advance her ends, but she is also the leader who arrives late for meetings, uses her cell phone as others try to enjoy a public musical
performance, takes credit for the work of other employees, breaks the queue at the airline customer-service desk, or drives in the
emergency lane in a traffic jam.
A standard Kantian analysis would hold that these everyday behaviors are unethical in the same way that lying and promise
breaking are unethical. The liar and the promise breaker cannot universalize their actions, because lying and promise breaking are
possible only in a world in which people tell the truth and keep their promises. For Kant, lying and promise breaking are against
reason – in fact, conceptual contradictions – because lying can have no purpose in a world in which no one can be trusted to tell the
truth, and there would be no incentive to make or accept a promise in a world in which no promises are kept.
The parallel argument against lateness concedes that this behavior can be a time-saver for the leader who is late, as it ensures
that her time is not wasted waiting for others to arrive for the start of the meeting. But this strategy is morally problematic because
it must assume that everyone else arrives on time. Not everyone can engage in this behavior, any more than everyone in a group
can be a “free rider” on the work of others.42 Similarly, there is no musical performance to enjoy if all members of the audience are
using their cell phones, there is no queue in a world in which everyone unfailingly moves straight ahead to the customer-service
desk, and there would be no emergency lane if we were to universalize the behavior of leaders who drive in it.
What do these leaders have to say for themselves? What can they be thinking? One response might be that much of this behavior is
not unethical after all. The leader's style may be rude or inconvenient for others, but a charge of immorality is surely too strong. However,
the apologist's appeal to leadership style wrongly assumes that an action cannot be both rude or inconvenient and, at the same time,
immoral. Lateness, free riding, cell phone use, and queue cutting – unlike violations of norms about when to put one's napkin in one's lap
or what fork to use – also show a more serious kind of inconsideration that clearly makes them moral issues. This is truer still with
violations of the norm against driving in the emergency lane. The lack of consideration shown by the violator of this norm extends not
only to the convenience of other drivers but also to the survival of possible victims of an accident that may have caused the traffic delay.
Moral norms can thus coincide with the norms of etiquette, just as they can coincide with legal norms — in fact, the features
that make actions such as murder and rape illegal are the same features that make them immoral. Similarly, what makes behaviors
rude can also make them unethical, even if we leave open questions about their moral gravity. In these cases, the behaviors in
question are immoral in addition to being rude or inconvenient which is different from being merely rude or inconvenient.
Honking your horn in a traffic jam is merely rude, and the traffic jam itself is merely inconvenient. The leader who drives in the
emergency lane to get to his appointments and is always late when he arrives stands accused of more than having a rude or
inconvenient style. On the Kantian account at least, his behavior is also immoral.
In an exercise in moral psychology, however, the most important question is not whether such exception-making behavior is
morally wrong, but rather what the individuals who engage in it think about its morality. If it turns out that such behavior is not
unethical in the end, then that is all the more reason to doubt that the leaders who engage in it see their behavior as immoral. In
other words, there is no need to characterize these individuals as amoralists to explain behavior that might be morally permissible
in the first place.
This possibility suggests a related, and more plausible, explanation: perhaps leaders believe that such behavior is not immoral
when they engage in it.43 This explanation, too, is importantly different from explanations that appeal to amoralism. We can see
this by considering behaviors such as lying and promise breaking. The liar and the promise breaker need not be seen as adopting
the amoralist stance and proclaiming, “You be moral and I'll not.” Whereas the amoralist sees himself as permanently beyond the
scope of morality, the claim of the everyday liar or promise breaker can be that he is justified in telling a lie or breaking a promise in
the circumstances in which he finds himself. In other words, his rule breaking is discriminating and therefore does not reflect the
blanket exemption to morality that characterizes the amoralist stance.
As long as the leader concedes that his justification would equally extend to others similarly situated, his claim that he is
justified in making an exception of himself is consistent with the idea that he really does care about morality. Whereas Foot's
amoralist avoids the charge of inconsistency because he does not value morality, the everyday unethical leader, whom we can
assume does value morality, avoids the inconsistency by claiming that his behavior is not immoral after all. This kind of leader
believes he has a justification for his behavior.
In this respect, the leader who makes an exception of himself is like the author of this letter:
DEAR ABBY: I'm writing about cell phone conversations in a public eatery. Granted, most of the time it can be avoided —
and should be. However, there are exceptions, and bystanders should not be so judgmental. I'm a hospice nurse and am

42
One qualification on this claim: there can be a norm in a culture or organization according to which everyone can be “late.” The Peruvian government recently
mounted a campaign against the culture of lateness. As it turns out, officials in charge of the campaign were thirty minutes late to its ceremonial beginning, and
the Associated Press received its invitation to the ceremony over two hours after it had started! See Leslie Josephs, “Peru trying to turn fashionably late into
hopelessly passé,” Raleigh News and Observer 25 Feb. 2007; Carla Salazar, “This just in: Peru battles chronic lateness,” The Seattle Times 3 Mar. 2007; and Thomas
Catan, “Late-running nation told to wake up and start living in English time,” The Times of London 28 February 2007.
43
See Terry L. Price, Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
486 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487

often on call, yet not at the office. I must take the calls I receive and often work through complex problems on the phone,
no matter where we are or what we are doing. Sometimes the calls are quite lengthy; sometimes there are none at all.

Bystanders who might judge my cell phone use do me a great disservice, and likewise people in other professions. My
family is just glad that I can go out and enjoy time with them, even when I'm “working.” They appreciate what I do and are
proud that I give these worthy patients attention when they need it. Please consider that when you are a bystander, you
might not know the “rest of the story.” — NURSE IN ADA, OKLA.44
Perhaps the hospice nurse is justified in taking calls when dining out, even though we might still wonder why the conversation
has to be carried out in public. Engaging in phone calls outside of the dining area would be one way to minimize disruption for
other patrons of the restaurant. The problem, however, is that many people hold positions of importance and come to believe that
their businesses or legal practices or research labs cannot survive their absence even during a meal. We need only look around at
almost any restaurant to see them!
Very few people actually see their own behavior as rude, let alone sufficiently exceptional as to constitute an instance of
immorality. For instance, an Associated Press/Ipsos poll on people's views about rudeness found that only 8% of respondents
admitted that they used their cell phones in a “loud or annoying manner in public … in the last few months.”45 However, 85%
claimed that others do so either frequently (55%) or occasionally (30%).46 A compelling explanation for this phenomenon is that
when people are thinking about their own cell phone behavior, their attention is focused on the calls they receive, not on any
annoying side effects these calls might have for others. When they are thinking about the cell phone behavior of others, they again
focus on their own experience of the calls, not on any benefits to the people using their cell phones. Unlike the cell phone user,
outsiders have access to one side of a conversation that, in all likelihood, is completely irrelevant to their own lives and what they
care about.
This appeal to differences in auditory experience parallels a similar explanation social psychologists use to understand the
phenomenon of actor-observer divergence.47 Differences in the visual cues to which we have access can lead actors to see their own
behavior as a response to the situation and lead observers to see the behavior of these actors as caused by features of the actors,
features such as their character traits. This explanation of actor-observer divergence draws our attention to the fact that the
situation is the visual focus of the actors' attention, whereas the actors are the visual focus of attention for observers.
Differences in experiences are part of the explanation for the contrast between the way people see their own behavior and the
way they see the behavior of others. But these differences fail to give us the whole story. Another difference is in the way people
judge the importance of their own behavior compared with the importance of the behavior of others. Notice that public cell phone use
by others would be annoying even if we were privy to both sides of the conversation. Our own behavior tends to matter more to us
than the behavior of others. Leaders may be especially susceptible to these divergent attitudes about importance. Their positions
often demand that they focus their attention nearly exclusively on the goals they are trying to achieve. This kind of focus cannot
help but feed leaders' beliefs about the importance of their goals and the importance of their own behavior in achieving them.
Technological advances such as the cell phone and e-mail, which make it possible for leaders to be perpetually involved in their
leadership activities, have certainly done little to keep leaders from overestimating their own importance.
One objection to this general way of thinking about exception-making behavior in everyday life is to question the extent to
which people are generally committed to standard moral prohibitions such as the prohibition against lying and promise breaking.
According to the recent work of Alan Wolfe, “The defining characteristic of the moral philosophy of the Americans can … be
described as the principle of moral freedom.”48 For example, Wolfe appeals to the fact that 60% of survey respondents agreed that
“lying is sometimes necessary, especially to protect someone's feelings,”49 and he concludes that people “know that one cannot
always be honest, but instead of concluding that one can never tell the truth, they try to create informal rules that govern when
truth is required and when it is not.”50 In effect, “people [have got] it into their heads that they can determine for themselves when
to be honest and when not to be …”51
The idea that people can decide morality for themselves, Wolfe thinks, “is so radical an idea … that it has never had much
currency among any but a few of the West's great moral theorists.”52 According to Wolfe, even Kant – autonomy's chief exponent –

44
“Dear Abby: Rude cell phone patrons should learn etiquette,” Richmond Times-Dispatch (22 Nov. 2005. Interestingly, the author's tone is one that Kurt
Eichenwald finds to be common in corporate scandals: “‘You don't understand’ is a phrase that has emerged in every single one of these cases where you would
see people raising warning signals, raising flags early on, and the response of senior management is , ‘You don't understand’” (Kurt Eichenwald, “Kurt Eichenwald
discusses the collapse of energy giant Enron,” Fresh Air 17 Jan. 2002).
45
Associated Press/Ipsos, “The decline of American civilization, or at least its manners,” 14 Oct. 2005. Available from Polling the Nations (poll.orspub.com).
46
Associated Press/Ipsos, “The decline of American civilization.”
47
Edward E. Jones and Richard E. Nisbett, “The Actor and the Observer: Divergent Perceptions of the Causes of Behavior,” in Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of
Behavior, ed. Edward E. Jones, David E. Kanouse, Harold H. Kelley, Richard E. Nisbett, Stuart Valins, and Barnard Weiner (Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press,
1972), 85.
48
Alan Wolfe, Moral Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001), 195.
49
Wolfe, Moral Freedom, 104. Poll conducted by Blum and Weprin Associates, Inc., on March 13-16, 2000 for the New York Times, “The inner life of Americans:
Views on spirituality, identity, sexuality, anxiety, and more,” http://asnic.utexas.edu/~bennett/__310/Wolfe-poll.htm">http://asnic.utexas.edu/~bennett/__310/
Wolfe-poll.htm.
50
Wolfe, Moral Freedom, 225.
51
Wolfe, Moral Freedom, 127.
52
Wolfe, Moral Freedom, 200.
 T.L. Price / The Leadership Quarterly 19 (2008) 478–487 487

holds that “we can be autonomous … only to the degree that we act in accord with timeless moral precepts not chosen by us. Moral
action, in [Kant's] view, was the exact opposite of a do-as-you-please affair.”53 Wolfe's claim, then, is that people behave as they do in
everyday life because they see themselves as free to do as they please. Like the amoralist, they see themselves as free from morality.
On the whole, of course, people's behavior can look relatively amoral. The actions of one person in an everyday moral situation
can be quite different from those of another person in the same situation. Behavior can range from what we would expect from an
absolute prohibition on lying to what we would expect from no prohibition at all. But it certainly does not follow from this kind of
behavioral variety that the individuals in these moral situations see themselves as free from morality. To many individuals, we
might assume, their behavior is ultimately the result of their efforts to figure out the right answer, an answer that would also apply
to other individuals in the same situation.
In fact, there is something very Kantian about this kind of moral individualism. Of course, Kant himself would not be
comfortable with the practice that Wolfe describes this way: “for nearly all of them, when a moral decision has to be made, they
look into themselves – at their own interests, desires, needs, sensibilities, identities, and inclinations – before they choose the right
course of action.”54 It is capitulation to these particularities of human nature that often leads to exception making — for instance, to
behaviors such as lying to protect someone's feelings. Still, a central feature of Kant's moral philosophy is that individuals have the
capacity to determine what morality requires. It is not obvious that the subjects of Wolfe's interviews are engaged in a project any
more radical than this.
Moral freedom would imply a view closer to what philosopher Susan Wolf identifies as the existentialist position of Martin
Heidegger (1889-1976) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80): “the belief that one's actions and values are wholly one's own, ultimately
unsupportable by anything but one's own unjustifiable choice.”55 If this view were widely held, it would certainly give credence to
the amoralist explanation of people's behavior. But is there any reason to attribute Alan Wolfe's radical idea of moral freedom to
everyday leaders?
Wolfe's own survey data, which serves as part of the foundation of his argument, gives us reason to think that this attribution
would be unwise. Of survey respondents, 47% “think what is shown on television today is less moral than American society”; 49%
agree with the statement, “The growing income gap in America between those at the top and those at the bottom is morally
wrong”; and 90% “think grown children have a moral responsibility to take care of their parents.”56 These are hardly the views of
people who think they are free from morality. Wolfe's analysis thus shows only that people see themselves as free to act on what
they believe morality really requires or allows, not that they see themselves as free to do as they please when it comes to issues of
morality.
Leaders may be especially inclined to see themselves as having genuinely moral reasons to break rules against behaviors such as
lying and promise breaking. After all, with leadership come serious responsibilities, even in everyday life. It is little wonder, then,
that leaders sometimes believe that they are not equally bound by the rules of morality. In minds of leaders, these rules apply
generally and can be overridden by particular circumstances, group membership, or the greater good. But the distinctive features of
leadership do nothing to weaken what morality demands of leaders. In fact, the ethical importance of these features is that they
allow us to expect more, not less, from our leaders. So, for the leader who thinks he might be justified in breaking the moral rules,
the best advice we can give him is, “No, you aren't special.”

53
Wolfe, Moral Freedom, 202.
54
Wolfe, Moral Freedom, 196.
55
Susan Wolf, Freedom Within Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 65.
56
Blum and Weprin Associates, Inc., “The inner life of Americans.”