Business serves as the moral metronome for society. The meter and behavior established by business and business leaders help to set the tone, develop the vision, and shape the patterns of behavior for all of us. This chapter on leadership and business excellence talks about ethics in business, workplace ethics, and leaders as role models. The issue of ethics in business arises at the very core, the nexus of what we mean by business – transactions, actions in regard to others. The ethics of leadership – whether good or bad, positive or negative – affects the ethos of the workplace and thereby helps to form the ethical choices and decisions of the workers in the workplace. Bad leaders or misleaders are primarily focused on their own self-serving exercise of power and not on their constituents' concerns and needs. A section in the chapter is devoted to the culture of Narcissism.

Controlled Vocabulary Terms

business ethics; leader; leadership