How does the pandemic challenge ethical leadership?

Perhaps, this is the first time in human history where five national leaders jointly wrote an opinion column entitled “This is not the time for geopolitical turf battles” at the Financial Times (FT) on April 1, 2020.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier (the President of Germany), King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Halimah Yacob of Singapore, President Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia and President Lenín Moreno Garcés of Ecuador argued that, firstly, leaders have the responsibility to encourage the best in people and to contain the worst.

Second, everybody’s self-interest is the global solution in which case, regardless of the size of our populations and economies, all of us have something to contribute.

Third, they call for the joint forces among countries, pharmaceutical companies, scientists, philanthropic foundations, the World Bank group, the IMF, the international vaccine alliances, the Red Crescent Movement and the International Red Cross.

Fourth, they propose four key objectives, to wit, (1) speeding up research on vaccine and treatments including boosting its funding; (2) ensuring rapid production and fair distribution of critical medical equipment for all and testing kits; (3) future vaccines and therapies should be fairly shared and scaling up its production; (4) putting a vaccine and an eventual treatment as what they call as the “global public good.”

Fifth, they refuse a view which either suggests that nations should keep their distance from one another or our world would be colder and poorer as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the decisions of national leaders that will determine our world in the near future.

Sixth, human ingenuity will save humanity if we pool our knowledge and resources together along with the spirit of solidarity between the rich and the poor, women and men, old and young people.

Domestic numbers

It is interesting to notice that those five national leaders also represent western Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

When the article appeared in FT on April 1, 2020, the total numbers of deaths in their own countries are following: 732 cases of death out of 67,366 total confirmed cases in Germany; 5 out of 274 total confirmed cases in Jordan, 3 out of 926 total confirmed cases in Singapore, 0 out of 26 total confirmed cases in Ethiopia, and 75 out of 2,240 total confirmed cases in Ecuador according to the WHO.

Those five leaders shuffle through the jumble of Covid-19 pandemic though the number of deaths in their respective countries is far below the global number of deaths (40,598) out of 823,626 confirmed cases globally as of April 1, 2020. They could have been spending their time to work instead of composing an opinion column as complicated as written by five national leaders across continents.

As a Latin saying verba volant, scripta manent (spoken words fly away, written words remain), they apparently believe that calling for global solidarity through writing is as indispensable as taking actions and making policies. Indeed, other national and business leaders should welcome the calling by joining the task force or giving a plausible criticism if they wish to reject it.

Ethical leadership

Leaders in business, academia and non-government organizations vary in their style of leadership. In general, they are divided into the transformational and transactional leaders.

On the one hand, the transformational leaders encourage changes not only to their followers but also themselves. Leading by giving examples is its brief mantra. Authors of that article are proper examples of transformational leaders because they reject national isolation, and think beyond their own national borders and jurisdictions.

On the other hand, transactional leaders cannot liberate themselves from the benefits (including profits) and costs analysis. Indeed, they just consider egoistic benefits, profits and costs into their accounts while ignoring its objective implications to others. President Trump and President Bolsonaro are stellar examples of transactional leaders. While President Trump has ignored the September 2019 paper entitled “Mitigating the Impact of Pandemic Influenza Through Vaccine Innovation,” President Bolsonaro thinks that the economy is more important compared to the lives of his people.

Both transformational and transactional leadership are part of ethical leadership. While transformational leadership is prone to virtues and duties, transactional leadership is likely to exercise egoistic benefits and costs analysis. Now, our world needs more transformational leaders instead of its counterpart.

However, the 21st century has been characterized by the invasion of business leaders into politics. The more they succeed in assuming public offices, the more we see transactional leaders. Number crunching might be their chronicle hurdle in minds whenever leading a country. They should have twisted their minds prior to shifting from being business to public leaders.

All in all, we should urge our own national leaders to make a choice whether he or she is a transformational or transactional leader. Addressing those four key objectives is one of its kind.