A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of many others...the great instrument of moral good is the imagination (Percy Bysshe Shelley 1821, p. 13).

Reimagining alternative systems and rebuilding them requires a new set of skills. While technical competencies remain critical, effective leadership in an interdependent world requires building skills we used to consider “soft,” beginning with moral imagination.

Moral imagination, according to philosopher Mark Johnson, means envisioning the full range of possibilities in a particular situation in order to solve an ethical challenge. Johnson emphasizes that acting morally often requires more than just strength of character. For example, moral action requires empathy and the awareness to discern what is morally relevant in a given situation.

Moral imagination, as defined by Minette Drumwright and Patrick Murphy, is the ability to be simultaneously ethical and successful by envisioning new and creative alternatives. In other words, can people look beyond the dollars-and-cents impact of a decision to see how it affects others?

For example, consider Nestle Foods. The company refused to target young children with advertising for its high sugar, high fat products. Instead, to keep the company competitive in that market, it innovated and created new, healthier products to advertise to young children.

Moral imagination is composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behaviour. Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others – terribly objective sometimes – but the real task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others.

But why moral imagination? This is because we can no longer design systems only for those like ourselves. We must design for those who traditionally have not had a voice — the poor, the vulnerable, the environment. A new generation is demanding that companies not only pursue purpose, but to integrate values of sustainability into their operations and their treatment of employees and customers. Companies will only succeed in the long term if they show through their actions concern for employees, customers, and the earth.

To prepare our students and future generations to lead through complexity in a highly imperfect world, business schools, in particular, must do a far better job teaching and modelling these new “hard” skills, grounded in moral imagination.

These skills include holding values in tension — standing amid the chaos of disparate ideologies and assumptions and considering the values of each side — listening to voices unheard and partnering with humility and audacity.

While training future leaders in specific competencies is vital, so too is ensuring they build the character needed to radically rejuvenate our broken systems and create a new economy in which it includes all of us.

For instance, take the issue of electricity for the 1.5 billion people who lacked it in 2007, 130 years after Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. Sam Goldman and Ned Tozun had the moral imagination and courage to try to change that. They focused their energies on bringing affordable light to the 1.5 billion who lacked electricity, starting first by understanding the needs and desires of their prospective customers.

Sam and Ned would have failed had they not developed the hard skill of listening with all of their senses to voices the market had repeatedly ignored. Thirteen years later, the company d.light has brought clean, affordable light and electricity to over 100 million low-income people, created thousands of jobs and generated long-term financial returns to investors. At every step, the hard skills of moral imagination and deep listening guided the way.

In a world of growing fragility, business leaders will be increasingly expected to play their part in solving some of the toughest problems facing our world. No single system — not markets, not government, not civil society — will solve these problems alone, and it will require new partnerships that transcend sectors. Such partnerships, with government, social enterprises, and philanthropies, even with those we might consider our adversaries, require humility to acknowledge the different strengths and weaknesses of each partner while simultaneously holding to the aspiration of shared goals and collective responsibilities.

Tomorrow’s leaders will stand apart by focusing on others, not simply by enriching themselves. There is ample opportunity to do this within the framework of business if we can make a shift from valuing power, money and fame to a leadership style that insists on putting our shared humanity and the sustainability of the earth at the centre, not simply profit alone.

Responsibility goes hand in hand with privilege. Our educational institutions are well-placed to equip our future leaders of business and government not only with the technical tools to solve the world’s toughest problems — but with hard skills grounded in moral imagination. If each of us were rewarded for giving more to the world than we take from it, everything would change.

References

Moberg, D.J., & Seabright, M.A. (2000). The Development of Moral imagination. Business Ethics Quarterly, 10(4), 845-884. DOI:https://doi.org/10.2307/3857836

Rest, J. R. (1994). Background: Theory and Research. In Moral Development in the Professions: Psychology and Applied Ethics, ed. Rest, J. R. and Narvez, D., pp. 1–26. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.