To Begin at the Beginning...

In order to study the ethics of discrimination at an academic library one must first study just what ethics are. We are often tempted to make ethical judgements from our own personal experiences of the world, but that is not how it is done in an ethics class. You must begin at the beginning by learning about ethical thinking, about the "sides" that are often argued. As an in-class exercise, we took a short quiz to see if we were the "caring" or "judging" type. We have also learned about Consequentialism and Deontology, including some of the sub-theories and names associated with these ways to evaluate a topic from an ethical point of view. An extension on that lesson was to seek out and analyze an article that discussed or explained ethical theory. I found Michel Dion's article "Are Ethical Theories Relevant for Ethical Leadership?" an interesting recap and application of ethical theory.

While Dion's article focuses on leadership and ethics and does not discuss discrimination or academic libraries, it is obvious to expect that all libraries have leaders, both formally and informally. Regardless of the environment, learning a little something about leadership styles and how they relate to ethics can only be helpful throughout this class and in my future career.

In short, Dion details eight types of leadership styles and relates each style to one or more ethical theories or sub-theories. The vast majority of the article is his description of each leadership style and each of the ethical theories, with a few illustrative examples thrown in to clarify his main points. I did not find any surprises in how he related the leadership styles to the ethical theories, but I did find it interesting that he pointed out how culture can play a role in how ethics are applied to leadership. He noted that the bias in his article related to Western culture and suggested that the same relationships he presented should be applied to non-Western culture in order to give a more comprehensive picture of ethics as applied to leadership.

Dion's conclusion that there is a basic link between a given ethical theory and a specific leadership style really helped cement my newly acquired knowledge of ethical theories. The inherent bias of Western culture present in this article and need for further research into ethical leadership in other cultures felt like a good way to proceed further toward my focus area of discrimination in academic libraries.

I appreciated the illustrative examples Dion provided in his article, as they helped me to better understand the information presented in the course materials. While searching for a relevant article for this assignment, I even found two articles that will be very informative about discrimination, and that is always a win! Learning how to evaluate an ethical issue from a specific viewpoint, or even from both main viewpoints, feels a bit like researching a debate topic. I suppose it is, but I hope that learing to evaluate ethical dilemmas from both sides will lead to a more well-rounded conclusion rather than trying to pursuade listeners that one side is better than another, as is typically the point in a debate. I would not want to suggest the taking of sides when it comes to ethics, but rather to use both sides to gain a fuller picture of possible responses within the context of the issue.

If you would like to read the Dion article for yourself you can find it at https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731211193098.

Dion, Michel. 2012. Are ethical theories relevant for ethical leadership?. Leadership & Organization Development Journal 33 (1): 4-24,

http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezp.twu.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/01437731211193098 (accessed February 2, 2018).