How Does Power Affect Moral Courage?

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Moral courage is to raise your hand, overcome one’s fear, and claim for something that is wrong. A military leader exerts his power influencing with his positon power (in case of military the rank) and/or personal power (how does one person is seen in the organization). The leader, who has a position power, and doesn’t claim for something that is wrong or exerts moral courage, take the risk of loosing personal power and credibility within his organization. If the senior leader exerts moral courage within an cohesive organization he will probably gain personal power and credibility throught the organization. It means that his organization will support and trust on him. For this reason the leader should has to take into account many factors: The culture of his organization, if there is cohesion in his organization, what is his superior’s behavior, and how to built trust between superiors and subordinates. In both cases, a military senior officer will not loose his position power. On the other hand, the subordinate that doesn’t have position power (young officers, warrant officers, and enlisted officers) and claims for something that is wrong or exercise their moral courage, will probably gain personal power within his group or organization. So there is a close relationship between personal and position power and there always be risks if there is not communication and a cohesive organization. There is also a huge risk with a person that has power and claim for something that is wrong, in this person can loose the opportunity to log in better positions if the system is corrupt. The commander role for setting conditions fot the demonstration of moral courage should: First, he should act according to moral and ethical standars. Second, ... ... middle of paper ... ... ground and commented that the kind of training was not part of the agenda and that LTC Holland was too low and banking over too hard, but he did not take inmediate action to this respect. Besides this observations from these senior leaders no action was taken. Despite the regulations that were established, the two senior officers lack of moral courage to say that LTC Howard was acting wrong that day. One of them should take the decition to stop the B-52 pilot. As we can see, moral courage is very important and in this situation could save the live of the B-52 tripulation, but, It did not happen. Nobody claimed for something fair (stopping LTC Holland actions). Col Pellerin and LTC Holland did not act within morale standars. Finally there was no cohesion in this group and there was lack of confidence to tell that one element from the organization was acting wrong.

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