Ethical Leadership as a Mode-of-Being: A Heideggerian Perspective

This thesis seeks to uncover the rich context of meaning embedded in people’s experiences of ethical leadership. This was underpinned by the research question 'how is ethical leadership understood through the lived experience?’. Interviews were undertaken with people from the energy, government and built environment sectors. The philosopher Martin Heidegger, in his seminal work Being and Time, identifies various 'ontological structures' of Being (or existence). He uses these structures to explain how we experience the world in different modes-of-Being. This thesis maps the everyday lived experience of ethical leadership with these ontological structures, to shed light on an ethical-leadership-mode-of-Being.