Responsible Leadership : Global Perspectives
This book is about applied ethics, and particularly ethical leadership. It is also a 21st century example of a new small-scale Web-based 'industry' in operation.
One of the two editors, Christoph Stückelberger, is a professor of ethics in Switzerland, a former director of the Swiss Protestant Development Organization Bread for All, and well known to the readers of New Horizons as the chairman of ECLOF International. His editorial colleague, Jesse Mugambi, from Kenya, is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at the University of Nairobi.
Prof. Mugambi is also the founder of Acton Publishers, which has brought out Responsible Leadership. Acton focuses on academic and specialised publishing with a particular concern for African scholarship. The other entrepreneurial editor, Prof. Stückelberger, began Globethics.net in 2004. This is an applied ethics, mostly electronic think tank (with a Web site in four languages) that particularly wants to give visibility to the perspectives of institutions and researchers emerging from Africa, Latin America and Asia, and who are extremely under represented in current ethics debates. Responsible Leadership is the first volume in the Globethics.net series.
"Applied ethics has to do with integrity, which in turn has to do with respectability and respectfulness." So Stückelberger and Mugambi say in their introduction. They explain how these attributes relate to leadership: "To be respectable, a leader must be respectful of those from whom that leader expects respect and compliance. Respect can only be deserved. It must not be demanded. Self-imposition evokes fear, whereas exemplary leadership wins respect."
Responsible Leadership contains research papers on different aspects of leadership by contributors from ten countries. All the authors explore leadership principles derived from the precepts of Jesus.Christoph Stückelberger outlines the biblical Christian norms that should guide responsible leadership. Jesse Mugambi focuses on culturally relevant education as a prerequisite for responsible leadership, whilst Rachel Xiaohong Zhu discusses Chinese traditional family leadership and its transformation during the process of modernisation. Richard Ondji'I Toung examines family leadership from the perspective of Cameroon.
Other Protestant and Orthodox writers cover a range of leadership issues from the worlds of politics, business, feminism, religion and the church. On the latter, Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from Kenya and the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, writes that the church must give leadership in addressing ethical questions. Dr Kobia believes that, "Even more than (today's) political and economic crises, the moral crisis represents the greatest challenge in Africa - and indeed in the world in general."
Christoph Stückelberger and J.N.K. Mugambi (editors) Acton Publishers, Nairobi, Kenya and World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland. ISBN 9966-888-77-2
