Organizational Morality Through Aesthetic Leadership, Reflective Practice and Responsible Management

In the previous chapter, two of the prongs of the MCP triad—collaboration/coordination and purpose—were developed. In the present chapter, the third prong—morality—is the focus of attention, in the context of the role of organization designer, a managerial role which has hitherto not been part of the traditional roles of management. In this chapter, a link between organization design-as-meaning and the processes of leading-through-meanings or aesthetic leadership, as well as reflective practice and responsible management are established, as the paths towards organizational morality and a new ethic-aesthetic mindset. However, for this to happen, something must be done to the way managers are educated and trained. Thus, the chapter ends with a call for much-needed reform in traditional management education, and a change in the mindset of management educators, if the new ambitions about organizational purpose are to have any chance of flourishing. The key message here is that as MOS academics, we need to transform ourselves before we can transform societies. For a few decades, there has been a claim from the literature about a need for thorough reform of management education, but now more than ever, practising managers need to have a different perspective of their role in society, and moral excellence, coupled with a new ethic-aesthetic perspective on organization design(ing) can provide an important impetus towards that end.