ETH 2200 Module 3 Final Project Part 2: Leadership Interview Example

Values Under Pressure: An Interview With a Township Public Works Superintendent

Student Name

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

ETH-2200: Leading the Way: A Path Towards Ethical Leadership

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Values Under Pressure: An Interview With a Township Public Works Superintendent

About the Interview

I interviewed the superintendent of public works for our township, who has led the department of 34 employees for eight years after 15 years as an engineer with the county. We met for 50 minutes in her office in March. I prepared eight questions in advance, based on the module's readings on values, and took notes, which she reviewed afterward for accuracy. She agreed to be quoted but asked not to be named.

Her Core Values

Asked which values guide her most, she named three without hesitation: "Stewardship, fairness and keeping my word." She explained stewardship as treating every dollar and every truck as if residents were watching, because "they are, just not today." Fairness, for her, means applying the same rules to the people she likes and the people she does not. Keeping her word means she does not promise residents a repair date she cannot meet.

These map closely onto what the course text calls core values for ethical leadership, and onto what Brown et al. (2005) found subordinates associate with ethical leaders: honesty, fairness and trustworthiness, together with a willingness to talk about ethics openly. She was clear that values only matter when they cost something. "Everybody has values on a slow day," she said.

An Ethical Challenge

I asked her to describe a hard ethical decision. Four years ago, the department took bids for a new salt storage dome. The lowest qualified bid came from a contractor whose owner, she learned after the committee had recommended it, was the brother-in-law of the department's purchasing clerk, who had helped prepare the specifications. Nothing illegal had happened that she could see, and the bid was genuinely lowest. Still, she pulled the recommendation, had the specifications reviewed by the county engineer and rebid the project. The new low bid came from the same contractor at a slightly higher price, and she awarded it.

"I paid $11,000 more for a dome I could have had in October," she told me, "and I would do it again. If I hadn't, the next time someone complained about a bid, nobody would believe a word I said." Jones (1991) argued that people judge an issue's moral intensity partly by how widely its effects are felt and how close they are to the people affected. In her case, the direct harm was small, but the possible harm to public trust across the department was large, and that is what she weighed.

Pressure From Above

She described regular pressure from elected officials to move their residents' roads up the repair list. Her answer is a published priority system based on pavement condition and traffic, posted on the township's website. "When a council member calls, I pull up the list with them on the phone. If their road is number 40, I tell them it's number 40 and why." She said the list protects her crews as much as herself, because it removes any suggestion that repairs are favors.

What She Looks for in Supervisors

I asked what she looks for when promoting crew leaders. She said she watches how people handle small things: whether their timesheets match the work, whether they share overtime fairly and whether they admit mistakes before she finds them. "The big ethical tests are rare. The small ones happen every day, and that's where I learn who people are." Kish-Gephart et al. (2010) found in a review of many studies that unethical behavior at work comes from individuals, the type of issue and the organization's environment together; her attention to small habits fits the view that individual character and daily culture both matter.

What I Learned

Three lessons stand out. First, values need a system to survive pressure; her priority list does work her personal integrity alone could not. Second, an ethical decision can cost money and still be right, if the cost buys trust. Third, I need to pay attention to the small tests, because my crew is watching those far more closely than any big decision. I will carry the idea of a published, explainable system into my own philosophy: a crew leader's fairness should be visible, not just intended.

References

Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002

Jones, T. M. (1991). Ethical decision making by individuals in organizations: An issue-contingent model. Academy of Management Review, 16(2), 366-395. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1991.4278958

Kish-Gephart, J. J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L. K. (2010). Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: Meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017103