Responsible Leadership in Networked Society
Luke Hsiao *
Abstract
Responsible leadership is a social-relational and ethical phenomenon which occurs in the processes of social interaction. The environment of traditional society is very stable, while the prevailing leadership literature has for the most part focused on the relationship between leaders and followers in the organization and defined followers as subordinates. As society changes, hierarchical style of leadership is confronted with challenges. The context determines the effectiveness of leadership. Modern public management governance is transformed from bureaucratic governance into network governance. The characteristics of network context are its flexibility, openness as well as interaction with multi-stakeholders. If leadership style didn’t change to meet the needs of networked society, governance crisis will likely occur. This article demonstrates a perspective that leadership takes place in the interaction with a multitude of followers as stakeholders inside and outside the corporation. Using an ethical lens, we discuss leadership responsibilities in a stakeholder society with a model of the leadership role. A “roles model” of responsible leadership is adopted, which gives a gestalt to a responsible leader and describes the different roles he or she takes in leading stakeholders and businesses in society.
Keywords: responsible leadership, stakeholder theory, networked society, leadership role, relationship intelligence
* Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy & Management, Department of Tourism, I-Shou University.