Examining Ethical Decision-Making through a Distributive Leadership Lens: The Case of Three Private Lebanese Schools During Thawra

Abstract

This study examines ethical decision-making occurring in Beirut private schools during the thawra, a 2019 political movement to protest government corruption, by applying the lens of distributive leadership. The study sought to achieve three main purposes: to identify the nature of the decisions that school leaders made during the thawra, to determine the decisions’ ethical justifications, and to analyze how networks of leaders enacted decision-making in response to the ethical dilemmas presented by the thawra. The study employed a qualitative multiple case study research design: 25 administrators, teachers, students, and parents from three non-religious, private schools in Beirut were interviewed. Coding interview transcripts allowed for comparison across cases and with the literature. Three key findings emerged. First, school leaders engaged in reactive, short-term decision-making across the pedagogical, human resources, managerial, and political domains of school functioning in response to the thawra. Second, school leaders overwhelmingly justified decisions with the ethic of profession. Third, the same networks of school leaders that engaged in decision-making prior to the thawra continued to enact the decision-making process during the crisis. Considering the ethical paradigms through a distributive lens afforded insight into the multiple ethical perspectives driving a single decision, patterns of influence shaping decision-making, and organizational processes including and excluding stakeholders (and their ethical justifications) in and from decision-making. The ethical decision-making enacted in the three case study schools corresponded to some best practices cited in literature while revealing contextually driven practices, affirming that leadership is culturally situated. Consequently, the study findings call for more research on the outcomes of different crisis management methods in the Lebanese context to evaluate the effectiveness of the rapid, short-term decision-making that the school leaders enacted.