Essay on Tesla Corporate Social Responsibility

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Using the Big Five to measure Elon Musk’s personality as a leader:

Openness of experience

Through establishing PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla, Elon Musk has shown a high level of openness to experience. He is innovative and proactive about building a new business that can change the industry.

Conscientiousness

Musk devotes most of his time to work and fully participates in the operation. Through the financial and production problems in SpaceX and Tesla, Musk takes responsibility and tries his best to convince the investors to keep the companies running. However, according to Kalshoven et al. (2011, P.352), Costa and McCrae (1992) suggest that “people who acquire a high level of conscientiousness are more likely to behave after thorough thinking and comply with morality and their responsibility.” Musk’s impractical ideas can be considered unaccountable to his employees, and they might feel both physically and mentally stressed out by his unrealistic thoughts.

Extroversion

It is likely that Musk might be an introvert rather than an extrovert since he enjoys reading and prefers to spend his time alone exploring new knowledge and then sharing his creative thoughts with others.

Agreeableness

Musk is viewed by his employees as an extracting boss who wants everything to follow his rule. Likely, Musk is not generally trusting and caring, and he prefers to participate in everything and make sure the companies work perfectly, while this might indicate he has a low level of agreeableness.

Neuroticism

Musk presents a calm and stress-resistant attitude toward the crisis in Tesla and SpaceX which can consider the necessary characteristics as a leader. However, Musk might be good at dealing with the emergency but have hostile behavior. During the interaction between Musk and his employees and investors, it seems that Musk sometimes would harshly treat his staff and become aggressive if there was a disagreement with him.

What implications does Musk Musk’s leadership have from the perspective of ethical and responsible behavior in organizations?

Musk’s participation in every part of the operation

Musk’s full participation might be responsible for his position, but it might also indicate Musk’s low willingness to share the power. Brown et al. (2005) note that ethical leadership should “provide followers with voice.” De Hoogh and Den Hartog (2008) also state that “Leader’s social responsibility was positively related to the combined scale for ethical leadership (morality and fairness, role clarification and power-sharing,” but “power-sharing may be more related to employee creativity and innovative behavior rather than effectiveness in the organization.” That is, the power-sharing in the organization might allow Musk to listen to the employees’ voices and develop their new ideas.

Abusive supervision

Musk’s abusive behavior might be both a mental and physical burden to the employees. Brown et al. (2005) provide that “ethical leadership is positively related to affective trust in the leader and negatively related to abusive supervision.” On the other hand, Taylor et al. (2018) suggest that followers who receive abusive supervision in the long term might consider abusive supervision normal and act abusively with others in the organization. Therefore, the abusive behavior in the organization might trickle down from the top management to the lower level of the organization.

Which specific event described in the case do you find particularly relevant from the perspective of ethical and responsible behavior in organizations?

The event that one employee’s one-day absence because of his newborn child has shown Musk that employees should prioritize their work with no excuses. He considers the employees are supposed to participate fully as much as he does, and this might show his carelessness and lack of compassion for the employees’ situation. Howell and Avolio (1992, cited in Blair et al.,2017, p.336) suggest that “ethical charismatic leaders cannot feel and might ignore followers’ needs and aspirations.’ A survey from De Hoogh and Den Hartog (2008) measure “concern for others” as one of the categories to score leader’s social responsibility, which has a positive relationship with ethical leadership. De Hoogh and Den Hartog (2008) also note that people who get a higher score in the leader’s social responsibility would get higher in ethical leadership compared to despotic leadership. Musk chooses to ignore the condition of the employees and push them to work harder which might be regarded as unethical leadership.

Reference:

Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117–134. https://doi-org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002
Blair, C. A., Helland, K., & Walton, B. (2017). Leaders behaving badly: The relationship between narcissism and unethical leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 38(2), 333–346. https://doi-org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.1108/LODJ-09-2015-0209
De Hoogh, A. H. B., & Den Hartog, D. N. (2008). Ethical and despotic leadership, relationships with leader’s social responsibility, top management team effectiveness and subordinates’ optimism: A multi-method study. Leadership Quarterly, 19(3), 297–311. https://doi-org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.03.002
Kalshoven, K., Den Hartog, D., & De Hoogh, A. (2011). Ethical Leader Behavior and Big Five Factors of Personality. Journal of Business Ethics, 100(2), 349–366. https://doi-org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.1007/s10551-010-0685-9
Taylor, S. G., Griffith, M. D., Vadera, A. K., Folger, R., & Letwin, C. R. (2018). Breaking the cycle of abusive supervision: How disidentification and moral identity help the trickle-down change course. The Journal Of Applied Psychology. https://doi-org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.1037/apl0000360

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