Content area
Full text
In a world increasingly dependent upon the extra-mile efforts of followers to sustain a competitive advantage (Caldwell and Hansen, 2010; Karfestani et al. , 2013), a growing list of highly regarded scholars has suggested that leaders must demonstrate a "transformative" and highly ethical leadership approach that serves the best interests of both their organizations and their employees (Cameron et al. , 2003; Cameron and Spreitzer, 2012). Advocating a new standard designed to achieve unparalleled excellence, these scholars have explained that great leadership transcends traditional leadership perspectives while honoring stewardship obligations and ethical duties that transform organizations and enable individuals to find their voice (Covey, 2004).
The theme of this paper is that organizational leaders who treat employees with "beneficence" and who act with a commitment to employees' welfare, growth, and wholeness are able to create high trust and generate competitive advantage while honoring duties owed to employees. We begin our paper by defining beneficence and providing a summary of the academic literature that explains how beneficence is a foundation element of trustworthiness, trust, and ethical leadership and a key contributor to competitive advantage. We present a theoretical model which links beneficent leader behavior, the corresponding high-value trust behaviors of followers, and competitive advantage. Incorporating insights from the scholarly literature, we identify five propositions that scholars and practitioners can use to test the practical value of beneficence in the modern organization and provide two outstanding leaders as exemplars of beneficence in leadership. We identify six contributions of our paper to the academic and practitioner literature and conclude by offering specific suggestions for helping scholars and leaders to assess the practical application of beneficence to create organizations that are more humane and more profitable.
Beneficence defined
Within the healthcare profession, beneficence has been traditionally identified as an important ethical value in articulating the obligations owed by healthcare providers to their patients (Sutrop, 2011). The duties owed by those who work in the medical field that guide the practice of medicine have been traced back to Babylonia and the Code of the Hammurabi as early as 1792 BC and to Vaidya's Oath with Hindu origins about 1500 BC (Ogunbanjo and Knapp van Bogaert, 2009, p. 30). The Hippocratic Oath and other medical codes of conduct recognized the obligation...