https://doi.org/10.37955/cs.v6i3.2798
Received May 01, 2021 / Approved October, 10 2022 Pages: 62-71
eISSN: 2600-5743
Leadership and ethics in the
organizational management of law
firms
Liderazgo y la ética en la gestión organizacional de los
consultorios jurídicos
Pilar del Rocío Campoverde Palma
University of Zulia, Guayaquil, Ecuador,
pilarcampoverde@hotmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9494-1036
ABSTRACT
Managing organizations as complex units presupposes structural changes in
the existing types of management. These progressive processes find in
management (coordination, execution, and control of decisions and efforts to
fulfill the raison d'être) a bridge to intervene between what is desired to be
and what is achieved as performance through progressive effort. To subsist
through the desired performance, it is necessary to glimpse in the
management the participation of the elements or agents that intervene in the
organizational part, that is why it is necessary to explore to conceive a new
model of organizational management. Therefore, leadership and ethics
present a different alternative, focused on participation and cooperation, in
the construction of institutional social relevance. This study makes a
theoretical approach to leadership and ethics, as a support for strategic
management in law firms, in order to establish the important aspects that
affect the performance of this type of organizations.
RESUMEN
Administrar organizaciones como unidades complejas, presume cambios
estructurales en los tipos de gestión existentes. Estos procesos progresivos
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encuentran en la gestión (coordinación, ejecución, y control de las decisiones
y esfuerzos para cumplir con la razón de ser) un puente para intervenir entre
lo que se desea a ser y lo que se logra como desempeño mediante esfuerzo
progresivo. Para subsistir a través del desempeño deseado se requiere
vislumbrar en la gestión la participación de los elementos o agentes que
intervienen en la parte organizacional por eso es necesario explorar para
concebir un nuevo modelo de gestión organizacional. Por lo tanto, el
liderazgo y la ética presentan alternativa diferente, centradas en participación
y cooperación, en la construcción de pertinencia social institucional. El
presente estudio realiza una aproximación teórica al liderazgo y la ética, como
soporte de gestión estratégica en los consultorios jurídicos, para de este modo
establecer los aspectos importantes que inciden en el desempeño de este tipo
organizaciones.
Keywords / Keywords
Legal consulting, ethics, organizational management, leadership
Consultorios jurídicos, ética, gestión organizacional, liderazgo
Introduction
Nowadays, the changes in the environment caused by globalization
require a reconversion in the structure and management of
organizations, especially in the way they should be managed. For this
reason, decision makers within the organization must obtain, process
and analyze internal and external information in order to know the
situation and be able to anticipate or respond in accordance with the
law.
The aforementioned processes are conducted through management,
which is conceived as the planning, organization, execution and
control of the set of actions, decisions and efforts produced by an
organization to fulfill its mission. In order to guarantee good
organizational performance, it is necessary to observe the elements or
agents involved in it, so as to be able to foresee the future based on the
current reality of the organization.
However, when a management model is proposed, it is necessary for
the organization to consider that its components are human beings
and that they are the ones who make the decisions, therefore they are
not free to make mistakes, which will not be attributed to the
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individuals of the organization in isolation, but to the organization as
a whole. Therefore, it is important that organizations have a vision that
considers the values and the imperative ethical duty for each of the
components that make up the organization to make a political-social
decision and respond institutionally for the same.
Legal clinics are generally understood as an institution that promotes
experimental legal education, therefore their administrative
management is the same as that of any organization. These types of
organizations provide free legal services that contribute to meet the
legal needs of the poorest people in the country and, therefore, to
decrease the high levels of inequality that exist in a political
community such as Ecuador (Recalde, Luna, & Bonilla, 2017).
Paradoxically, however, empirical information and academic
literature on law clinics is scarce and its quality has notable ups and
downs. Administrative management in these offices is an almost
unexplored field in universities because this topic has been
approached but from the consideration of the power structures of the
university and not on how the university as an organization identifies
the most appropriate forms of management to fulfill the mission,
vision and strategic objectives, as there are key, strategic and support
processes.
The public officials in charge of regulating the clinics and supervising
their activities usually do not have a precise knowledge of the theory
underlying them or the practices they develop, which causes serious
difficulties for these organizations, which is reflected in the poor
fulfillment of their objectives, low levels of effectiveness and efficiency.
Many of the problems faced by this type of organizations can be
avoided or solved if proper management is carried out, for this it is
necessary that the people involved are prepared or accredited to
perform the assigned positions, in addition to this it is important to
indicate that leadership and ethics play an important role in
organizational management, since the leaders through their decisions
and ethical actions interact with the rest of the organization, and from
this perception by the workers will depend on the greater commitment
and performance (Chalen, 2017).
The purpose of this study is to provide a theoretical point of view based
on empirical evidence on how ethics and leadership influence the
organizational management of legal clinics in universities and thus
establish which aspects of organizational management are a key
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element in the continuous improvement of quality in this type of
organizations linked to universities. It is worth mentioning that the
information contained in this document is part of the Doctoral Thesis
entitled "Organizational management of law offices in the province of
Guayas-Ecuador: a study from the point of view of ethics and
leadership".
Materials and Methods
Organizations in the world require strategies and guidelines that allow
their sustainability, which work with the interaction of people,
constantly exchanging values with their stakeholders. Additionally,
they carry out their activities to achieve the objectives defined in the
short, medium and long term. An organization as a system maintains
relationships with its internal and external environment. Internally, it
requires technological, human, financial and logistical resources that
together allow it to generate its value proposition. In addition, when it
relates to the external environment, it is able to establish relationships
with suppliers, customers, governments and institutions that generate
information and strategic resources for its operation.
Organizational management was born as a singular strategy to
improve the organization, based on group dynamics and theory and
practice related to planned changes, until it became "an integrated
structure of theories and practices capable of solving or helping to
solve most of the important problems faced by the human side in
organizations" with the sense of promoting the development of
organizational potential (Campoverde, 2016, p.10).
Results
Paez (2017) indicates that organizational management "is a space that
considers the structure and procedures of the company throughout its
internal value chain, its mission and vision; and the mechanisms of
development, according to the trends of change in a globalized and
increasingly competitive economy" and that also considers in a
remarkable way the human resource and its alignment with the
strategic direction of the organization (p. 35).
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Noguera (2014) highlights that organizations that maintain good
management achieve a higher degree of sophistication, however, it is
necessary to admit that to reach this level it will be necessary to design
and implement conciliatory policies between the hegemony of
economic values and the recognition of the human, since in the
decision-making process it is necessary to visualize the organization as
a composite whole, in order to be able to respond to the objectives,
mission and vision.
Noriega (2013) indicates that organizations depend, in order to grow
and endure, on the leadership of their leaders, and this is valid for both
for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Leadership is an
interaction of members of a group, which involves the structuring or
restructuring of situations, perceptions and expectations of the
members, according to Bass (2013, p.32) "leadership occurs when a
member of the group modifies the motivation or competence of others
or when it directs their attention to the goals or the way to achieve
them."
Directors and managers who are in charge of the management
function in the organization exercise leadership, which is defined
according to Soto and Cárdenas (2007) as the process of leading work
teams to achieve the expected results. To this end, the leader leads
those who accompany him or her towards success, and success means
obtaining real, effective and indisputable progress.
Based on the above, organizational management focused on
achievement will be effective to the extent that the leadership invites
the actors such as employees and collaborators to carry out the
operations of their processes within the framework of "should be", i.e.
from the deontological point of view, addressing compliance with the
precepts described in the corresponding codes of conduct.
To ensure success in organizational management, where people and
processes are involved, it is necessary to relate it to ethical conduct and
management supported by effective leadership. To this effect,
according to Soto and Cárdenas (2007), ethics "is a part of philosophy
that deals with the morals and obligations of man". Ethics
systematically studies the nature of axiological concepts such as good
and evil, right and wrong.
Organizational managers face ethical issues in their professional lives
on a daily basis, rarely having to make decisions that do not involve
some ethical dimension or facet. In addition to the ethical aspects that
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decision-making brings, they also face ethical dilemmas in the course
of carrying out their leadership responsibilities. Soto and Cardenas
(2017, p.113) state that organizations "whether they are engaged in
planning, organizing, motivating, communicating, or carrying out
some other function proper to it, have to face the fact that issues of
right and wrong, fairness and partiality, and justice or injustice, creep
surreptitiously into their decisions, acts, or behaviors," and no matter
what level they are managed within the organization ethical factors
will always play a decisive role.
Fischer (2014) indicates that a corporate culture focused on ethics has
positive effects on business. Leaders who understand the importance
of acting ethically are more likely to attract better employees and
customers, therefore, it is important to program ethical leadership
within organizations through the establishment of ethical guidelines
and procedures.
In view of the above, it can be established that ethics is a mandatory
element for command management and leadership to be effective in
any context, becoming an imperative to achieve effectiveness. Leaders
have to court the goodwill of employees so that they put their talents
at the service of the organization's objectives (Espinosa, Contreras, &
Barbosa, 2016).
The procedures carried out in the legal clinics are related to State
entities and seek to respond to a series of challenges where the person
in charge of the legal clinics must have qualities such as charismatic,
enthusiastic, sense of belonging, entrepreneurial, know how to
manage work teams, be innovative, work based on values, plan and
strategic thinking.
Organizational management in the legal clinics is exercised by a
Coordinator who is responsible for the proper management of the legal
services provided by the legal clinics, and therefore, must implement
mechanisms for the registration, follow-up and evaluation of the cases
sponsored and the personnel under his/her charge. Each Coordinator
of the legal clinics is "responsible for the proper management of the
legal services provided by the legal clinics, and therefore, must
implement mechanisms for registration, monitoring and evaluation of
the cases sponsored and the staff in charge" (Defensoría Publica del
Ecuador, 2015).
This is done in order to ensure the quality of its services and access to
justice for priority groups, which will be possible if the "leader puts
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into practice the competencies inherent to his role" (Universidad
Benito Juárez, 2017), including the practice of his social skills, which
allow him to communicate effectively with his team. Also, he must be
empathetic and ensure that team members do not work individually,
but rather as a team for the welfare of the group and the organization.
In order to provide a quality and warm service to priority groups, legal
clinics must be strengthened by improving their competencies and
providing them with complementary management tools, which will
allow them to continue providing their services and project prospects
for their growth and development.
The optimal performance of law firms depends on the ability of
management to define its objectives and organizational guidelines in
relation to the staff working in the office, giving the organization its
own identity. The top management, in this case the coordination of the
practice, has a relevant role since it must be in charge of aligning the
strategies of the organization to the organizational structure and
culture. In this area, the head of the free legal clinic must implement
management mechanisms related to aspects of planning, availability
of technical, human and physical resources, organizational structure,
among others, that allow the legal clinics to provide their services in
adequate conditions. Based on the bibliographic review, we proceeded
to identify the key elements or indicators to measure the performance
of an organization in relation to ethics and leadership, which can be
used by law clinics to improve their administrative management, as
shown in the following table:
Table 1. Main aspects to consider for the organizational
management of law firms considering ethics and leadership.
Indicator
Ability to plan and
meet objectives
Legal documentation
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Management and
Follow-up Mechanisms
Leadership and
Management
Organizational
management and
communication
Human Resources
Technical capacity and
equipment installed
Ethics
Source: (Public Defender's Office, 2015).
Associated with the new missions of the organization, leadership and
ethics were considered as fundamental elements for the management
of the law offices as an entity that generates social welfare, the
proposed indicators will allow improving the management carried out
within the law offices, and will also serve as a basis for the design of
strategies aimed at improving organizational management. It cannot
be ignored that material and financial resources are factors of the first
order for successful management, but despite their predominant
place, every manager must recognize in human capital, the engine that
sets those resources in motion and the benefits they bring (López,
2018).
Conclusions
Ethics and leadership are key factors that contribute to the
organizational management of law firms, according to Uribe (2013)
when these factors concur in the direction of the organization,
individualistic thinking is left aside, resorting to moral conduct
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governed by inspiring values and highlighting their real vocation of
service, thereby maintaining a congruence, which translates into the
necessary confidence to generate changes through participation in the
citizenship involved.
The study presented through its development has demonstrated the
synergy that exists between organizational management, ethics and
leadership, therefore it is necessary to strengthen the organization
through the preparation of an ethical leader that generates a favorable
organizational climate for all and gathers the necessary knowledge and
skills for the optimal management of the legal offices.
It is also necessary to see the law offices as functional units, in which
each of its components is important for the proper functioning of the
same, therefore it is necessary that each of the members, from interns
to coordinators, fulfill the role that corresponds to them acting in an
ethical, exemplary and responsible manner. It is necessary to consider
that in order for the organization (law offices) to offer a quality service,
it is necessary to have all the necessary resources, such as furniture,
computers, etc., since these aspects are also part of organizational
management.
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