Analysis of Two Articles on Leadership of Businesses

The purpose of this review is to summarise, analyse and synthesise two authors’ arguments. Maak and Pless (2009) in Business leaders as citizens of the world. Advancing humanism on a global scale and Thomas (2010) in the Global moral compass for business leaders.

This paper reviews complex challenges facing the world and business leaders today. It describes how the worlds pressing problems can be resolved in other to make the environment a more sustainable place. Maak and Pless (2009) claims that it takes a responsible, global and cosmopolitan mindset to improve the values of humanity on a global scale. This is to say that the world needs a global leader that can be depended upon by taking responsibilities for the pressing problems arising in the external society. However, (Thompson 2010) claims that the world needs a leader whose attitude is open to widely alternative views and values, able to integrate long-term considerations and a broad selection of stakeholder’s interests into its strategic choices which is based on a stable and transparent “moral compass” which helps to manage moral challenges.

The world is getting more complex and problems are springing up as it is increasingly getting integrated and interconnected (Maak and Pless 2009). The authors claim that the arising problems cannot be solved by communities, governments and NGO’s alone. Therefore in order to build a sustainable future, the public, private and non-profit organisations have to identify their distinct roles and help tackle the pressing problems facing the world since they have always played interlocking roles.

Both papers argue that some pressing problems of the world like poverty and moral challenges arising as a result of globalisation cannot be ign...

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Maak, T. and Pless, N. (2009). ‘Business Leaders as Citizens of the World. Advancing Humanism on a Global Scale’. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.537-550.

Jones, M.and Millar, C. (2010). ‘About Global Leadership and Global Ethics, and a possible Moral Compass: an introduction to the special issue’. Journal of Business Ethics.

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Thompson, L (2010). ‘The Global Moral Compass for Business Leaders’. Journal of Business ethics.