Philanthropic giving among leaders is often assumed to be an expression of ethical leadership in both academic and media discourses; however, this assumption can overlook the ways in which philanthropy produces and is underpinned by inequality. In order to extend current understandings of ethical leadership, this study employs a critical discourse analytic approach to examine how the link between philanthropy and ethical forms of leadership is verbally and visually constructed in the media. Based on the analysis, the article demonstrates how (...) the construction of Australian philanthropists as ethical leaders is achieved through their representation via three paradoxical identities: Aristocratic Battlers; Caring Controllers; and Publicity-Shy Celebrities. These discourses are mediated by Australian cultural norms and serve to conceal yet ultimately reinforce social and economic inequality. The article proposes that a critical discursive approach to understanding leadership ethics can help to explore the hidden or adverse effects of ostensibly ethical practices. (shrink)

In this article, we contribute to sociological literatures on morality, professional and institutional contexts, and morally stigmatized ‘dirty work’ by emphasizing and exploring how they mutually inform one another in lawyers’ work activities. Drawing on interview data with 58 practitioners in the commercial legal industry in Singapore, we analyze how they experience professional and institutional constraints on the expressions of morality in their work. Our findings illustrate how a dominant managerial and economic focus maintains and reproduces a constrained form of (...) morality, limited to instrumental, utilitarian and commercial ends, and subordinated to lucrative client and firm interests. We discuss our findings in terms of the need to research and reform professions in ways that support more rounded and unconstrained moral reflexivity and autonomy in how work is undertaken and valued. This in turn has implications for how organizations and professions might achieve alternative moral institutional orders, and for legal work to avoid the moral and social taints of dirty work. (shrink)