Hi Jeffrey, A short, quick answer on the way to work. The area you are now presenting has been an assignment for 17 years in the transport industry and before that for various companies in more or less vulnerable situations. I have thus written supervised, discussed, developed and guided leadership in companies, organizations and sports. If you are interested, I can try to present this, but since my language area is Swedish and despite years of academic studies, I have to hire qualified translators. If you can accept my English, we can have a dialogue. Best Börje

Most empirical experiences might behind the high technology era. Better responsible leadership will be built by the strategic fusion of human, social, and technology.

Dear Jeffrey!

For your purpose you can compare the well known list of Fortune magazine's most admired companies and presence in Global Compact https://www.unglobalcompact.org/

Best, Pavlo

Dear Jeffrey Lie,

What does how to empirically approach Responsible leadership? mena. Please make it clear and thereafter it is possible to give answer to your question from different perspectives.

Best Regards

Desalegn Abraha

I, too, do not get what the word “empirically” adds. At the same time, I am unclear about what the question means without the odd phrasing. Here is a stab at an answer.

Let’s say that the question is this: there is a history of irresponsible and morally offensive conduct on the part of persons who lead a research project—how can the risks of this happening be reduced?

Maybe he “empirical” part of the question is wise because the culture of doing research can vary by field of inquiry and institutional base. Then, one would have to rely on stories about past events that we would call “irresponsible“. We could then consider which were handled in a satisfactory way and which not. There are bound to be various ways in which the unsatisfactory episodes unfolded. I will come back to that.

I honk that someone asking this is interested in how to design an adequate PRACTICE of responsibility. That means, in part, how the leader’s actions can be known, assessed, and held accountable. It also means identifying what the leader is responsible for and to whom he or she is responsible. It also means that the authorities to whom the leader is responsible must be trustworthy in two ways: keeping faith with the persons involved with the research and keeping faith with the values that are publicly avowed. Gus, basically, we are talking about a practice of accountability overseeing a practice of responsibility.

Those who do the oversight required but accountability can be too particular or too lax. If there are few serious violations of trust and most harm no one, then those holding others accountable could get less vigilant than they need to be. A system should address that. Friendships and power structures can dilute the effectiveness of all this at many levels. But it suggests President Reagan‘s slogan, “Trust but verify”.

“Motives“ for violations of responsibility could include orders from above, greed, laziness, bias, and arrogance. Outside review panels may help with this, but most of what I have seen on his aspect of making a practice was a sham.

For the worst cases, one needs there to be a structure of whistleblowing.

Do we want to design a practice for to catch the worst case scenarios of rare occurrence or the typical infractions of higher frequency? It would be good for groups from various environments to talk over such questions and cases. Some from medical research, some from military research, some from engineering research, some from political research (such as polling).