Meta-Ethics

The study of meta-ethics refers to the nature of ethical terms and concepts and to the attempt to understand the underlying assumptions behind moral theories; therefore, it is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments. It covers a broad range of questions surrounding how we know what moral truth is (and even if moral truth exists), and how we learn about moral facts. Meta-ethical questions are, by their very nature, abstract. It might seem that they do not necessarily bear much relation to the task of developing practical, decision-making tools. However, some of the issues are very important and relevant to that task and meta-ethics receives some attention here.
If we begin to consider whether or not one should be a just person, for example, then we are very quickly faced with questions about the nature of justice and about what being a ‘just’ person means. Is justice a human invention? Can we accept that ideas of justice can be different in different societies? Or is the notion of justice an eternal, unchanging concept that should be upheld by everyone, everywhere, and throughout all time? This is not merely an abstract, academic question. The question of whether or not one culture’s notion of justice can and should be imposed upon another has historically been – and continues to be – a cause of profound conflict between people.

Environmental and Development Ethics

Two such areas of applied ethics are of direct concern to us. The first, development ethics, emerged as a field of study in the second half of the 20th century. It questions and looks at the ethical implications of ideas such as ‘progress’ and at the implications of various types of social change. It considers the costs and gains from major socioeconomic changes, and whether those in wealthier countries have a duty to help those in poorer parts of the world. As with most areas of applied ethics, it has a purpose: to ‘help in identifying, considering and making ethical choices about societal “development”, and in identifying and assessing the explicit and implicit ethical theories’. In other words, it aims to give clearer understanding of the key issues surrounding socioeconomic development, and to unpick the many hidden assumptions about what is the ‘right’ or ‘good’ thing to do. Key issues include social and human rights, poverty reduction, the gap between rich and poor, and planned international intervention by some nations in the development of others.

A second area of applied ethics is environmental ethics. Environmental ethics emerged as a separate area of philosophical study during the 1970s. The approaches of environmental philosophers are varied, but most take as their starting point the belief that we are facing a critical point in our relationship with the non-human world, and that in order to avert (or reverse) an ecological crisis, we need to reassess the ways in which we value the non-human world. While not all environmental philosophers suggest that we need a new approach to the ethical values we assign to nature, many varied suggestions have been made as to which alternative frameworks we should use for valuing nature. These two important areas of applied ethics are central to understanding many important contemporary issues, such as those related to sustainable development, climate change, and environmental management. Issues are also raised by environmental and development ethicists in relation to another important area of applied ethics: corporate ethics (although some would regard business/corporate ethics as a further area of applied ethics in its own right).

Ethics and Morality

The terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are not always used consistently and precisely in everyday contexts, and their ordinary meanings do not always correspond with philosophers’ use of the terms. Ethics is often used in connection with the activities of organisations and with professional codes of conduct: for instance, medical and business ethics, which are often formalised in terms of exhaustive sets of rules or guidelines stating how employees are expected to behave in their workplaces (such as in respect of a duty of care or confidentiality that health-care workers owe to their patients; or the medical ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy, and justice). Morality, on the other hand, is more often used in connection with the ways in which individuals conduct their personal, private lives, often in relation to personal financial probity, lawful conduct and acceptable standards of interpersonal behaviour (including truthfulness, honesty, and sexual propriety).

These ‘everyday’ uses of the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are not so much incorrect by philosophical standards, as too limited. The philosopher’s interest in the theoretical study of ethics is with the idea of conduct that is right, fair and just, does not cause harm, and that can be applied to a wide variety of cases. For our purposes, each of the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ captures the essence of that idea sufficiently well. In what follows, then, it is not really necessary to over-emphasise the distinction between ethics and morality; here, those terms may be used interchangeably to refer to ideas about how humans ought to act.

Transactional Leadership styles

 Transactional leadership relies more about 'trades' between the leader and follower by which followers are compensated for meeting specific goals or performance criteria . The transactional leader will first validate the relationship between performance and reward and then exchange it for an appropriate response that encourages subordinates to improve performance .

Transactional leadership in organizations plays an exchange role between managers and subordinates  Transactional leadership style is understood to be the exchange of rewards and targets between employees and management . Bass and Avolio explained Transactional leaders motivate subordinates through the use of contingent rewards, corrective actions and rule enforcement.

Bass Bernard explained that transactional leadership depends on contingent reinforcement, either positive contingent reward or the more negative active or passive forms of management-by-exception. Transactional leaders motivate followers through exchange; for example, accomplishing work in exchange for rewards or preferences . Kahai et al found group efficacy was higher under the transactional leadership condition. According to Burns , transactional leader tends to focus on task completion and employee compliance and these leaders rely quite heavily on organizational rewards and punishments to influence employee performance.

Transformational Leadership styles

Transformational leadership style concentrates on the development of followers as well as their needs. Managers with transformational leadership style concentrate on the growth and development of value system of employees, their inspirational level and moralities with the preamble of their abilities. According to Bass , the aim of transformational leadership would be to transform people and organizations inside a literal sense - to alter them in the mind and heart enlarge vision, insight and understanding clarify reasons make behavior congruent with values, concepts and brings about changes which are permanent, self-perpetuating and momentum building.

Transformational leadership happens when leader become wider and uphold the interests of the employees, once they generate awareness and acceptance for the purpose and assignment of the group, so when they blend employees to appear beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group.

Transformational leaders encourage followers to view problems from new perspectives, provide support and encouragement communicates a vision, stimulates emotion and identification. Bruce said that transformational leaders are able to define and articulate a vision for their organizations and their leadership style can influence or “transform” individual-level variables such as increasing motivation and organization-level variables, such as mediating conflict among groups or teams. Podsakoff et al disclosed transformational leadership had active influence on individual and organizational outcomes such as employee satisfaction and performance. Higher levels of transformational leadership were associated with higher levels of group potency

Joint leadership and Meta-leadership

Just as there are different leadership roles within social networks, there are also metaleadership roles that cut across networked organizations. When it comes to leading across different organizations, such as coalition partners, partnerships, alliances, joint command, or multi-agency missions, a new set of meta-leadership roles comes into play. These roles are different from those in a hierarchical organization where subordinates are required to execute orders or follow management directives and are held accountable for doing so. In joint command efforts, on the other hand, collaboration is peer-based, consensual, and mutual. There are no prior histories for building reciprocity, trust, or transparency. Therefore these have to be created anew over time. Moreover, as the leadership role is more one of governance than of command, the issue becomes how to cooperatively develop metrics and protocols that respect the integrity of each of the respective organizations.

 That being said, creating new meta-networks is much the same as creating any peer networked organization, except that the units are significantly larger and each has its own distinctive culture. Accordingly, certain leadership roles have to be established for all participants—specifically, what behaviors or traits best exemplify the qualities and standard being sought of the meta-network. Since leadership in joint efforts typically rotates over time, exemplar leadership roles should be filled by those who have qualities that are not closely identified with any one particular organization or Service. Rather, an effort should be made to give this networked organization its own independent identity. An early visionary can act as the exemplar member and personify the desired qualities,thereby setting a precedent for others to follow. However, there should be an effort to identify other network leadership roles and the associated metrics and protocols that the different representatives of the joint organizations would undertake.

Leadership and creativity in military contexts

Today’s armed forces around the world operate in complex, dynamic, and often dangerous geopolitical contexts. Military and civilian scholars alike have identified implications these challenging environments have for the nature of modern day warfare and, consequently, the need for identifying leadership paradigms enabling military leaders to respond adaptively to a wide range of strategic, operational, and tactical challenges. The creative capacity of leaders and their followers has become increasingly important in military leadership contexts. This reviews the literature on creativity and leadership as it pertains to military contexts, focusing on creative attributes and behavior of leaders themselves and on leaders as facilitators of individual follower and team creativity. 

EXCEL SHORTCUT KEYS

F2   Edit the selected cell
F5   Go to a specific cell
F7   Spell check selected text and/or document
F11   Create chart
Ctrl + Shift + ;   Enter the current time
Ctrl + ;   Enter the current date
Alt + Shift + F1   Insert new worksheet
Shift + F3   Open the Excel formula window
Shift + F5   Bring up search box
Ctrl + A   Select all contents of worksheet
Ctrl + B   Bold highlighted selection
Ctrl + I   Italicize highlighted selection
Ctrl + C   Copy selected text
Ctrl + V   Paste
Ctrl + D   Fill
Ctrl + K   Insert link
Ctrl + F   Open find and replace options
Ctrl + G   Open go-to options
Ctrl + H   Open find and replace options
Ctrl + U   Underline highlighted selection
Ctrl + Y   Underline selected text
Ctrl + 5   Strikethrough highlighted selection
Ctrl + O   Open options
Ctrl + N   Open new document
Ctrl + P   Open print dialog box
Ctrl + S   Save
Ctrl + Z   Undo last action
Ctrl + F9   Minimize current window
Ctrl + F10   Maximize currently selected window
Ctrl + F6    Switch between open workbooks/windows
Ctrl + Page up & Page Down    Move between Excel worksheets in the same document
Ctrl + Tab   Move between two or more open Excel files
Alt + =   Create formula to sum all of above cells
Ctrl + ‘   Insert value of above cell into current cell
Ctrl + Shift + !   Format number in comma format
Ctrl + Shift + $   Format number in currency format
Ctrl + Shift + #   Format number in date format
Ctrl + Shift + %   Format number in percentage format
Ctrl + Shift + ^   Format number in scientific format
Ctrl + Shift + @   Format number in time format
Ctrl + g   Move to next section of text
Ctrl + Space   Select entire column
Shift + Space   Select entire row
Ctrl + W   Close document

OUTLOOK SHORTCUT KEYS

Alt + S   Send the email
Ctrl + C  Copy selected text
Ctrl + X  Cut selected text
Ctrl + P   Open print dialog box
Ctrl + K   Complete name/email typed in address bar
Ctrl + B   Bold highlighted selection
Ctrl + I   Italicize highlighted selection
Ctrl + U   Underline highlighted selection
Ctrl + R   Reply to an email
Ctrl + F   Forward an email
Ctrl + N   Create a new email
Ctrl + Shift + A   Create a new appointment to your calendar
Ctrl + Shift + O   Open the outbox
Ctrl + Shift + I   Open the inbox
Ctrl + Shift + K   Add a new task
Ctrl + Shift + C   Create a new contact
Ctrl + Shift+ J   Create a new journal entry

WORD SHORTCUT KEYS

Ctrl + A   Select all contents of the page
Ctrl + B   Bold highlighted selection
Ctrl + C   Copy selected text
Ctrl + X   Cut selected text
Ctrl + N   Open new/blank document
Ctrl + O   Open options
Ctrl + P   Open the print window
Ctrl + F   Open find box
Ctrl + I   Italicize highlighted selection
Ctrl + K   Insert link
Ctrl + U   Underline highlighted selection
Ctrl + V   Paste
Ctrl + Y   Redo the last action performed
Ctrl + Z   Undo last action
Ctrl + G   Find and replace options
Ctrl + H   Find and replace options
Ctrl + J   Justify paragraph alignment
Ctrl + L   Align selected text or line to the left
Ctrl + Q   Align selected paragraph to the left
Ctrl + E   Align selected text or line to the center
Ctrl + R   Align selected text or line to the right
Ctrl + M   Indent the paragraph
Ctrl + T   Hanging indent
Ctrl + D   Font options
Ctrl + Shift + F   Change the font
Ctrl + Shift + >   Increase selected font +1
Ctrl + ]  Increase selected font +1
Ctrl + Shift + <   Decrease selected font -1
Ctrl + [   Decrease selected font -1
Ctrl + Shift + *   View or hide non printing characters
Ctrl + f   Move one word to the left
Ctrl + g   Move one word to the right
Ctrl + h   Move to beginning of the line or paragraph
Ctrl + i   Move to the end of the paragraph
Ctrl + Del   Delete word to right of cursor
Ctrl + Backspace   Delete word to left of cursor
Ctrl + End   Move cursor to end of document
Ctrl + Home   Move cursor to beginning of document
Ctrl + Space   Reset highlighted text to default font
Ctrl + 1   Single-space lines
Ctrl + 2   Double-space lines
Ctrl + 5 1.5-line spacing
Ctrl + Alt + 1   Change text to heading 1
Ctrl + Alt + 2   Change text to heading 2
Ctrl + Alt + 3   Change text to heading 3
F1   Open help
Shift + F3   Change case of selected text
Shift + Insert   Paste
F4   Repeat last action performed (Word 2000+)
F7   Spell check selected text and/or document
Shift + F7   Activate the thesaurus
F12   Save as
Ctrl + S   Save
Shift + F12   Save
Alt + Shift + D   Insert the current date
Alt + Shift + T   Insert the current time
Ctrl + W   Close document