Deliberation has faced criticism with regard to its application to business, on the basis that it can be misused to disseminate an ideology, divert attention from genuine debates, or strengthen the power of certain people. We suggest that Aristotle’s notion of deliberation can mitigate these ethical risks and help companies strengthen their deliberative practices. A comprehensive perspective based on Aristotelian deliberation reveals the relevance of (a) individual and collective deliberation, promoting a virtuous and meaningful reflection, free from ideological conditioning; (b) (...) deliberation on ends and means that facilitates a transcendental and rooted reflection, thereby avoiding artificial debates; and (c) deliberation that is decisive and cooperative and thus prevents instrumentalization of deliberation by the strongest. We contribute to the discussion of the relationship between business and society by identifying the different steps in the deliberative process and promoting a dynamic perspective on deliberation. (shrink)

Phronesis is essential for good decision‐making and actions. This literature review shows how phronesis has been discussed and related to elements of the field of administration and organizations. A search in the database systems Scopus, EBSCO, Web of Science, and Scielo, based on eligibility criteria, resulted in 43 theoretical and 14 empirical works. The analysis of these studies showed the most significant empirical contributions, the most cited authors, methods, journals, and central themes addressed in studies on phronesis to understand ethics (...) in business. From a virtue ethics perspective, we discuss the major theoretical and empirical contributions, as well as the implications of a restricted understanding of phronesis when it is treated apart from other elements of the virtue ethics framework. We present a synthesis of the concepts of phronesis, based on dimensions of magnitude and amplitude of the conceptions, ranging from formal to substantive phronesis, and covering individual, organizational, or societal levels of analysis. We argue that a substantive conception of phronesis within virtue ethics may improve our understanding of ethics because it assumes the interdependence of phronesis and moral virtues, integral anthropology, and the common good. We present a future research agenda, considering the study's limitations and findings. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDrawing upon the theoretical debate on the concept of common good involving, in particular, Sison and Fontrodona, I aim to show how the common good principle can serve as the basis for a new diversity perspective. Each of the three dominant diversity approaches—equality, diversity management, and inclusion—runs the ethical risk of focusing on community or individual levels, or on particular disciplines—economic, social, or moral. This article demonstrates that the common good principle could mitigate the ethical risks inherent to each of (...) these diversity approaches. There are three positive aspects to a comprehensive common good perspective: 1) it includes considering different community levels, which it connects by subsidiarity, 2) it embraces the moral, social, and economic fields, which it connects by teleological hierarchy, and 3) it avoids the risk of exclusion by generating a sense of solidarity. (shrink)

“No one can serve two masters.” This Bible quotation highlights an irreducible contradiction, which echoes numerous organizational settings. This article considers the under-explored ethical implications of paradoxical injunctions created by such a contradiction at the managerial level. Contradictory organizational constraints turn into paradoxant systems , where the organization structurally settles paradoxical injunctions which challenge managerial ethics in practice. We then ask what managerial responsibility means in such contexts and find that managers have then to reshape their practice as a situated (...) construction through constant mediation between different “masters” and bricolage (i.e., tinkering with concepts). An ethnographic case study of an anti-money laundering service in an investment bank illuminates this phenomenon from a practice perspective. The possibility to enact an actual ethical practice within the contradictory organization relies on a new role of the manager. This implies drawing on an approach of responsible management as an enactment of ethics in practice which is situated within the framework of a new conception of both the organization, as a structurally “paradoxant system,” and the manager as a mediator in charge of enacting coherence. (shrink)

A recent special issue in the Journal of Business Ethics gathered together a variety of papers addressing the challenges of putting virtue ethics into practice :563–565, 2013). The editors prefaced their outline of the various papers with the assertion that exploring the practical dimension of virtue ethics can help business leaders discover their proper place in working for a better world, as individuals and within the family, the business community and society in general :563–565, 2013). Scholars are yet to explore (...) the role of virtuous organisational leaders in the pursuit of Eudaimonia. This paper is a qualitative study which considered company directors’ self-understandings in light of a virtue ethics conceptual framework. The aim of the study is to explore whether virtue ethics rather than deontology and consequentialism is a better vehicle for expressing directors’ self-understandings about their ideals and role. (shrink)

Conversely to the United States, lobbying consulting in France is a relatively recent activity and is perceived negatively by a majority of the population. Influencing public decision-making is certainly a sensitive occupation at both managerial and societal levels. This is why ethics applied to business can play a central role while establishing the practice of lobbying in France. This paper examines the issues and the practices of ethics in lobbying consulting. The field for this exploratory study is a lobbying consultancy (...) firm based in France. Our research is developed through a 3-month participant observation and complemented with secondary data on the lobbying profession in France. The results of this research are developed along two lines: The practice of ethics in lobbying consultancy firms reveals its limits as well as a framework worth developing. The players and the represented client topics are potential dangers for ethical lobbying firms. This intervention research has nevertheless allowed us to observe the emergence of an effective regulation approach: the ethics of exemplarity as potentially illustrated by a representative actor of the French lobbying consulting profession. The stakes of ethics are both internal and external to lobbying consulting professionals in France. Internally, ethics act as a structuring element enabling this profession to establish itself with practices and deontological codes; externally, it clarifies the relationship between lobbying consultants and their major stakeholders including customers, government, and the civil society. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the virtue of temperance as a moral competence in professional performance. The analysis relies on three different streams of literature: virtue ethics, positive psychology and competency-based management. The paper analyzes how temperance is defined in each of these perspectives. The paper proposes an integrative definition of temperance as “moral competence” and summarizes behaviors in business environments in which temperance plays a role.

There is both individual and collective widespread concern in society about the impact of human activity and the effects of our decisions on the physical and social environment. This concern is included within the idea of sustainability. The meaning of the concept is still ambiguous and its practical effectiveness disputed. Like many other authors, this article uses as a starting point the definition proposed by the World Commission on Environment and Development, considering it to be a proposal for changing the (...) assessment of the effects of decisions, from at least two perspectives: what effects we should consider and how we should assess them. Based on this double perspective, sustainability is explored as a method for decision-making which both expands the assessment of the consequences, and also provides an objective criterion for such assessment. It will be argued that the idea of sustainability, seen from this perspective, brings to decision-making two qualities which had been partially lost: realism and impartiality. In turn, the criteria for realism and impartiality in decision-making can be used to identify the limitations of some partial approaches to sustainability, which suffer from insufficient realism, insufficient impartiality or both phenomena at once. The article concludes by demonstrating how realism and impartiality provide the basis for a new form of sustainable decision-making, which is dependent on the development of two moral virtues, prudence and benevolence, and which brings practical effectiveness and ethical sense to the concept of sustainability. (shrink)

This paper argues that Shanahan and Hyman’s Virtue Ethics Scale should be abandoned and that work should begin to develop better-grounded measures for identifying individual business virtue in context. It comes to this conclusion despite the VES being the only existing measure of individuals’ virtues that focuses on business people in general, rather than those who hold specific leadership or audit roles. The paper presents a study that, in attempting to validate the VES, raises significant concerns about its construction. In (...) particular, investigation of the VES items leads to adjustments in the language used and examines participants’ understanding of the virtue terms and their descriptors. Confirmatory factor analysis of data collected from a sample of 137 HR practitioners establishes that the 6-factor solution identified by Shanahan and Hyman is not appropriate for the sample under examination. Rather, exploratory factor analysis results in three dimensions based in 13 items focusing on the individuals’ reliability, resourcefulness, and leadership. Finally, multiple regression establishes that these dimensions do not on the whole show associations with MA or PRESOR, two measures through which it would be expected to establish convergent and divergent validity. The paper concludes by suggesting guidelines for the development of future measures of IBV. (shrink)

In recent years, organisational theorists have been interested in the tensions faced by healthcare organisations. In this paper, these tensions are examined using the virtue approach to ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre. It is argued that although MacIntyre's framework shares many concerns with organisational studies, it supplements the analysis with a focus on moral content and evaluation. By providing moral evaluation of the stories told in organisations, an ethical analysis compels action on a basis that organisational studies does not. Nevertheless, it (...) is the analysis of stories in organisation studies that provides the tools for taking action. The analysis presented here provides an example of how ethics and organisational studies can be brought together to provide a stronger analysis of organisational phenomena. Indeed, it provides support for Nielsen's position that organisational theory and ethics are co‐dependent and suggests that greater attention should be paid to ethical concepts in the study of organisational phenomena. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Does effective moral judgment in business ethics rely upon the identification of a suitable set of moral principles? We address this question by examining a number of criticisms of the role that principles can play in moral judgment. Critics claim that reliance on principles requires moral agents to abstract themselves from actual circumstances, relationships and personal commitments in answering moral questions. This is said to enforce an artificial uniformity in moral judgment. We challenge these critics by developing an account of (...) principle-based moral judgment that has been widely discussed by contemporary Kantian scholars. In so doing we respond to some basic problems raised by so-called “moral particularists” who voice theoretical objections to the role of principles as well as to contemporary business ethicists who have criticized principle-based moral judgment along similar lines. We conclude with some future areas of research. (shrink)

The actions of “world‐based” multinational corporations (MNCs) have effectively decoupled the revenue generation and the production sides of the business equation. This decoupling has led to an end of “virtuous capitalism,” which has widespread ramifications for the societies within highly developed countries as well as those in developing and underdeveloped nations. This article presents an overview of the defining aspects of virtuous corporations and the linkages to virtuous capitalism. It then describes the actions of Apple Computer as emblematic of an (...) MNC that is nonvirtuous in its practices. The article then discusses how the encouragement of globalized trade has prompted the shift away from virtuous capitalism and closes with a summary of possible actions that could reverse the decline in corporate virtue. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is generally recognized as one of the three major schools of ethics, but is often waylaid by utilitarianism and deontology in business and management literature. EBSCO and ABI databases were used to look for articles in the Journal of Citation Reports publications between 1980 and 2011 containing the keywords ‘virtue ethics’, ‘virtue theory’, or ‘virtuousness’ in the abstract and ‘business’ or ‘management’ in the text. The search was refined to draw lists of the most prolific authors, the most (...) cited authors, the most cited articles, and the journals with the most virtue ethics publications. This information allows one to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and to establish ‘schools’ or clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. The results of this quantitative analysis of authors, ‘schools’, themes, and publications provide a foundation for the future study of virtue ethics in business and management, identifying its achievements and potentials. (shrink)

To further the debate on the ethical dimension of transformational leadership from a virtue ethics perspective, this study focused on leaders’ in-group orientation as well as their in-group versus out-group orientation in situations of conflict between organizational interests and broader ethical values. More precisely, the current study captured leaders’ organizational identification as well as their willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior and tested the relations between these attitudes and follower-perceived TFL behavior. In total, the leadership behaviors of 112 middle- (...) and top-level managers were evaluated by 900 direct-reports. Results showed leaders’ organizational identification to be positively related to TFL. However, we found no relation between leaders’ willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior and TFL. Implications regarding the ethical dimension of TFL are discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical dimension of hawala, an ancient informal financial practice rooted in Islamic moral traditions. Widely used in countries with an Islamic background and their diasporas, hawala is considered an important vehicle for the financial and economic development of some less developed countries. Nevertheless, in Western countries, hawala is regarded with suspicion due its controversial ethical nature. Unlike other Islamic financial institutions, the controversial questions are not the legitimacy of profit sources or (...) the interest charged, but rather the lack of transparency that surrounds hawala transactions. Yet, the literature on hawala has neglected its ethical perspective. Our study delves into this dimension with a critical approach, using the Triple Font Theory, grounded on virtue ethics. We conclude that if hawala transactions are carried out with honesty, and fairness, this practice deserves a positive ethical appraisal. However, it is necessary to implement efficient regulatory measures to guarantee that the system is not abused by money launders and criminals. In practice, it becomes imperative to bring over a change in the regulatory approach to hawala toward a more ethically, culturally, and economically sensitive strategy. Thus, future research should focus on how “hyper-norms” or fundamental principles inherent to humanity, which are common to both “formal” and “informal,” “Western” and “non-Western” financial practices, could run the new AML/ctf regulation agenda. (shrink)

In a previous essay (Sison and Fontrodona 2012), we defined the common good of the firm as collaborative work, insofar as it provides, first, an opportunity to develop knowledge, skills, virtues, and meaning (work as praxis), and second, inasmuch as it produces goods and services to satisfy society’s needs and wants (work as poiesis). We would now like to focus on the participatory aspect of this common good. To do so, we will have to identify the different members of the (...) firm as a community, drawing from corporate citizenship literature and stakeholder theory. Afterward, we will explore both the manner and the intensity of these different members’ participation and its impact on the firm’s common good. (shrink)

Despite the profound potential of MacIntyre’s revolutionary virtue paradigm, management scholars have struggled to make sense of one of the most contentious and insightful philosophers of our time. This conceptual paper attempts to move past the transliteration of MacIntyre in favour of a translation of his contribution in a manner than retains something closer to its full meaning, while helpfully guiding empirical efforts to apply this emerging paradigm to modern organisations. This translation entails a dismissal of MacIntyre’s hypercritical bias in (...) order to accommodate an expansion of his ideas into the language and logic of management theory and practice. Schein’s methodological roadmap for deciphering culture is offered, as is theory-building using comparative case research, as offering two particularly promising directions for future empirical studies that seek to use the theory of virtue in order to reconceptualise and study the modern organisation. (shrink)

Today’s globalized economy cannot be governed by legal strictures alone. A combination of self-interest and regulation is not enough to avoid the recurrence of its systemic crises. We also need virtues and a sense of corporate responsibility in order to assure the sustained success of the global economy. Yet whose virtues shall prevail in a pluralistic world? The moral theory of Thomas Aquinas meets the present need for a business ethics that transcends the legal realm by linking the ideas of (...) justice and virtue in an ingenious way. While allowing for, and incorporating, the specificities of region and religion, industry and culture, Thomas’s virtue theory coordinates private and public activities through a set of context-invariant, justice-oriented norms with conceptual appeal to contemporary questions of global business ethics.In our article, we first sketch how Aquinas’s theory can be also of relevance to a non-confessional audience through its appeal to the ‘natural light of reason.’ Then we explain how his theory of ‘natural law’ aligns his ideas of virtue and justice. From this vantage point, we address the tension between cultural diversity and moral uniformity in the economic sphere in general and in today’s globalized business world in particular. Throughout the article, we aim to show that by interpreting the virtue-dimension of business in light of the idea of social justice, Aquinas’s conception of virtuous business conduct gains inter-personal and inter-cultural validity that establishes social justice as the global virtue of business. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article proposes a theory of the firm based on the common good. It clarifies the meaning of the term “common good” tracing its historical development. Next, an analogous sense applicable to the firm is derived from its original context in political theory. Put simply, the common good of the firm is the production of goods and services needed for flourishing, in which different members participate through work. This is linked to the political common good through subsidiarity. Lastly, implications and (...) challenges arising from the positing of work as the common good of the firm are explored. (shrink)

In contrast to the recent rise to economic importance of offshore finance centres (OFCs), the topic of taxation has so far created little interest among scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper makes two contributions to addressing this lacuna. Applying a range of influential normative theories of ethics, it first offers an ethical evaluation of tax havens. Second, the paper examines what use large firms that are headquartered in two OFCs—Bermuda and the Cayman Islands—make of formal CSR tools. The (...) emerging duplicity in tax havenbased companies professing social responsibility highlights once more the political nature of CSR, where at least some firms and/or industries can successfully limit government power to enact regulation as well as shape the discourse around CSR. The study of CSR in OFC-based firms thus calls into question the usefulness of the often quoted definition of CSR as going beyond the law. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore the prospects for a virtue ethic approach to business. First, I delineate two fundamental criteria that I believe must be met for any such approach to be viable: viz., the virtues must be exercised for the sake of the good of one’s life as a unitary whole (contra role-morality approaches) and for the common good of the communities of which one is a part as well as the individual good of their members (contra egoist approaches). (...) Second, I argue that these two criteria can be met only if we are able to reconceive and transform the nature of work within contemporary business organizations. In particular, what is needed, I argue, is a retrieval of something like the older ideal of work as a “vocation”, or “calling”, whereby work can be viewed as a specific aspect of a more general calling to pursue, through the practice of the virtues, “the good life” both for ourselves and for others. Lastly, I consider some important challenges to this “vocational virtue ethic” approach to work within contemporary business organizations and offer a few suggestions for how they might be met. (shrink)

Caritas in Veritate (CV) poses a challenge to the business community when it asks for “a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise” (CV 40). The paper proposes the concept of the “common good” as a starting point for the discussion and sketches a definition of the common good of business as the path toward an answer for this challenge. Building on the distinction between the material and the formal parts of the common good, the authors characterize profit as the (...) material part of the common good of business and work as the formal part that expresses the essential significance of business. (shrink)

The article starts by arguing that seeing the firm as a mere nexus of contracts or as an abstract entity where different stakeholder interests concur is insufficient for a “humanistic business ethos”, which entails a complete view of the human being. It seems more appropriate to understand the firm as a human community, a concept which can be found in several sources, including managerial literature, business ethics scholars, and Catholic Social Teaching. In addition, there are also philosophical grounds that support (...) the idea of business as a human community. Extending this concept, and drawing from some Phenomenological-Personalist philosophers, we propose that the firm should be seen as a particular “community of persons” oriented to providing goods and services efficiently and profitably. Being a “community of persons” emphasizes both individuals and the whole, and makes explicit the uniqueness, conscience, free will, dignity, and openness to human flourishing. This requires appropriate communication about and participation in matters which affect people’s life, and makes it essential to cooperate for the common good of the business firm and the society. (shrink)

Critics point to four issues as presenting barriers to the use of virtue in the context of business. They focus on the relationship between management and practice, the potential for virtuous behaviour in a competitive environment, the ability to develop a reflexive critique of management that can be acted on, and the differentiation between work and wider social roles and people's propensity to take responsibility for them. In this paper we propose a solution to criticisms levelled at the use of (...) virtue within Business Ethics. We examine the critiques of management in the context of Virtue Ethics and the application of these to business. In arguing for a role for business in being virtuous and promoting virtue we accept that the concept of management that is based on the type of liberalism founded on personal preference and benefit is deeply problematic and that management that is driven solely by profit is not compatible with the development of practice based virtue. However, we argue that to exclude those activities in which management is involved as a result would be wrong and dangerous. Instead we see the great advantage of a Virtue Ethic is that it conjures up an alternative vision to the dominant practice, and such an alternative vision is urgently needed in business today. (shrink)

Economic profit is produced by entrepreneurs, those special individuals able to detect and seize as yet unexploited market opportunities. Many large capitalist firms manage to deliver positive profits even in the most competitive environments. They can do so, thanks to internal entrepreneurs, a subset of their employees able to drive change and develop innovation in the workplace. This paper argues that the goal of increasing economic profit is fully consistent with the corporation doing good for society. However, there is little (...) justification for corporations to transfer the whole economic profit to shareholders. Economic agents entitled to receive the economic profit are precisely those who create this profit, namely the internal entrepreneurs. (shrink)

This article examines the applicability of character and virtue ethics to international marketing. The historical background of this field, dimensions of virtue ethics and its relationship to other ethical theories are explained. Five core virtues – integrity, fairness, trust, respect and empathy – are suggested as especially relevant for marketing in a multicultural and multinational context. Implications are drawn for marketing scholars, practitioners and educators.

The classical literature on Confucianism exhorted leaders to practice five core virtues as the basis for becoming a noble person and for sustaining harmonious communities built on trust and good example. We present a theory about how the senior management in modern corporations, by enacting the five Junzi virtues through virtuous environmental, social, and governance policies and practices, might inspire virtue-based relationships between superiors and subordinates and between employees. We argue that if middle managers and employees observe and experience that (...) their firm’s ESG policies and practices are virtuous, they would feel encouraged to practice those virtues in their own behavior, and thus embody and promote interpersonal harmony. We provide three types of illustration for our theory. First, we map the five Junzi virtues to the content of a specimen ESG report. Second, we map seven subtypes of servant leadership behavior of middle managers to the five Junzi virtues. Third, we map seven types of employee organizational citizenship behavior to the five Junzi virtues. (shrink)

In the business ethics literature, many argue that managerial decision making ought to be improved by more robust ethical concerns. Some see the virtue of “practical wisdom” as the key for improved managerial decision making. However, because of the epistemic limitations confronting decision makers in the face of irreducible market complexity, there is a risk that practical wisdom, employed in the context of day‐to‐day managerial decision making, becomes an impractical concept. Nevertheless, if the attempt to incorporate virtue ethics (and its (...) related concepts) into business practices is laudable, if indeed a virtuous life is worth pursuing and practical wisdom plays an essential role toward that end, it is important to attempt to salvage practical wisdom and uncover its appropriate usage. Thus, this article pursues two major ends. First, upon surveying some of the prominent and standard usages of the term, it articulates concerns, rooted in epistemic limitations, about the way that practical wisdom appears in business ethics literature. Second, it offers a new way forward for understanding “practical wisdom.” By contextualizing day‐to‐day, rule‐based managerial decision making within the ethical value of the market order, practical wisdom reappears as the higher‐order capacity to pursue vocations, as morally worthwhile projects, in business. (shrink)

While business as a social activity has involved communities of persons embedded in dense relational networks and practices for thousands of years, the modern legal, theoretical psychological, and moral foundations of business have progressively narrowed our understanding of practical wisdom. Although practical wisdom has recently regained ground in business ethics and management studies, thanks mainly to Anscombe's recovery of virtue ethics, Anscombe herself once observed that it lacks, and has even neglected, a moral psychology that genuinely complements the nuanced philosophical (...) perspective of a virtue‐centered moral philosophy. Herein, we offer one way to fill this gap by suggesting two opposing psychological paradigms, namely the inter‐processual self and the autonomous self, which are classified according to the assumptions they make about the self, human agency and action more broadly, as well as how they relate to practical wisdom. Upon presenting these moral psychologies, we will bring this proposal into conversation with business ethics to show how the IPS paradigm can enable and support virtuous management. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is widely recognized as one of three major approaches in contemporary moral philosophy and arguably the most influential normative theory in business ethics. Despite its rich pedigree in Western and Eastern philosophy, most work in contemporary virtue ethics is part of the Western tradition. The purpose of this Thematic Symposium is to foster dialogue between Western and Eastern conceptions of virtue in business and engage them with questions about the nature, justification, and content of the virtues in each (...) tradition. This Editorial offers a brief introduction to the problem, a summary of Western and Eastern varieties of virtue ethics, an overview of the six articles included in this Thematic Symposium, and a section with five common themes for further exploration and future collaborative research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this address, I outline a “back to basics” approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm, provide an adequate basis for specifying the responsibilities of business managers. The second is framing the role of business in society by looking to the values realized by the basic building blocks of contemporary economic activity, i.e., (...) markets and firms. The third is making explicit the basic institutions that structure the background against which business operates. The aim is to develop a plausible framework for managerial decision making that respects the fact of value pluralism in a global economy and that fosters meaningful criticism of current business practices while remaining sufficiently grounded in contemporary circumstances so as to be relevant for managers. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue presented a reinterpretation of Aristotelian virtue ethics that is contrasted with the emotivism of modern moral discourse, and provides a moral scheme that can enable a rediscovery and reimagination of a more coherent morality. Since After Virtue’s publication, this scheme has been applied to a variety of activities and occupations, and has been influential in the development of research in accounting ethics. Through a ‘close’ reading of Chaps. 14 and 15 of AV, this paper considers and (...) applies the key concepts of practices, institutions, internal and external goods, the narrative unity of a human life and tradition, and the virtues associated with these concepts. It contributes, firstly, by providing a more accurate and comprehensive application of MacIntyre’s scheme to accounting than that available in the existing literature. Secondly, it identifies areas in which MacIntyre’s scheme supports the existing approach to professional accounting ethics as articulated by the various International Federation of Accountants pronouncements as well as areas in which it provides a critique and challenge to this approach. The application ultimately provides an alternative philosophical perspective through which accounting can be examined and further research into accounting ethics pursued. (shrink)

Some virtue ethicists are reluctant to consider principles and standards in business ethics. However, this is problematic. This paper argues that realistic Personalism can be integrated into virtue-based business ethics, giving it a more complete base. More specifically, two principles are proposed: the Personalist Principle (PP) and the Common Good Principle (CGP). The PP includes the Golden Rule and makes explicit the duty of respect, benevolence, and care for people, emphasizing human dignity and the innate rights of every human being. (...) The CGP entails cooperation to promote conditions which enhance the opportunity for the human flourishing of all people within a community. Both principles have practical implications for business ethics. (shrink)

The debate on the influence of markets on virtues has focused on two opposite hypotheses: the doux commerce thesis and the self-destruction thesis. Whereas the doux commerce hypothesis assumes that capitalism polishes human manners, the self-destruction hypothesis holds that capitalism erodes the moral foundation of society. This paper will develop a more balanced position by using the virtue ethics developed by Aristotle, which distinguishes several virtues. The research will focus on the question for which virtues the doux commerce or self-destruction (...) thesis is likely to hold. An extensive literature survey shows that market competition tends to stimulate diligence, crowd out temperance, generosity, and sociability, and stimulate envy. The effect on other virtues – i.e. courage, high-spiritedness, justice, and prudence – is ambiguous. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is regarded as the key in search of moral excellence among corporations. Yet, there are limited works to empirically investigate what virtuous character morally good corporations is expected to exhibit in the course of business from the perspective of customers. To fill this gap, we argue that customers are to evaluate firm’s virtuous character using Confucian cardinal virtues (ren, yi, and li) and perceived virtuousness determines customer loyalty. We test this argument using a sample of 276 Hong Kong (...) Chinese. The result suggests that a corporation not only has to offer a good value and high quality to customers but also needs to develop and acquire virtuous character in retaining customer loyalty. Firm has to embrace ren, yi, and li as the primary business goal. In fact, they are not the means but the end in themselves. The continuous pursuit of these cardinal virtues at the firm level not only establishes proper corporate values but also enables a firm to act morally in the course of business. Such kind of firm is known as junzi corporation. (shrink)

This essay articulates a crucial and neglected element of a general theory of the ethics of bureaucratic organizations, both private andpublic. The key to the approach developed here is the thesis that the distinctive ethical principles applicable to bureaucratic organizations are responses to the distinctive agency-risks that arise from the nature of bureaucratic organizations as complex webs of principal/agent relationships. It is argued that the most important and distinctive ethical principles for bureaucratic organizations express commitments on the part of bureaucrats (...) that function to reduce the agency risks that are inherent in such organizations. This approach to the ethics of bureaucratic organizations is shown to be more illuminating than those that concentrate exclusively or primarily on determining the conditions for corporate responsibility or on the idea that the ethical obligations distinctive of bureaucracies are role-derived. (shrink)

Abstract:There is good reason to take a virtue-based approach to business ethics. Moral principles are fairly useful in assessing actions, but understanding how moral people behave and how they become moral requires reference to virtues, some of which are important in business. We must go beyond virtues and refer to character, of which virtues are components, to grasp the relationship between moral assessment and psychological explanation. Virtues and other character traits are closely related to (in technical terms, they supervene on) (...) personality traits postulated by personality psychologists. They may therefore be featured in respectable psychological explanations. But good character fits no familiar psychological pattern. A person of good character is sufficiently self-aware and rational that his or her virtues are not accompanied by the vices that psychologists find usually associated with them. A course in business ethics can help develop this self-awareness, which a good life in business requires. (shrink)

Abstract:In recent years, many business ethicists have raised problems with the “ethics pays” credo. Despite these problems, many continue to hold it. I argue that support for the credo leads business ethicists away from a potentially fruitful approach found in Hume’s moral philosophy. I begin by demonstrating that attempts to support the credo fail because proponents are trying to provide an answer to the “Why be moral?” question that is based on rational self-interest. Then, I show that Hume’s sentiments-based moral (...) theory provides an alternative to the credo that points toward a more fruitful approach to business ethics. Along the way, I examine a recent social contract alternative to the credo that, despite many appealing features, is less effective than is the Humean alternative. Finally, I develop a Humean approach to business ethics and demonstrate why it is a desirable alternative that business ethicists should explore. (shrink)

Pricing policies and fair-trade practices are critical for sustaining commercial relationships between firms and customers. Nevertheless, in current business practices, fairness has been mistakenly reduced to a minimalistic ethic wherein justice only demands legal and explicit norms to which commercial parties voluntarily agree. Aimed at giving a different explanation of commercial agreements, this paper will introduce a Virtue Ethics (VE) explanation of the relationship between pricing and the common good by taking up classical concepts related to justice in commerce. In (...) particular, we will explore three principles associated with the notion of fairness in commerce as defined in Neo-Aristotelian ethics towards a relationship between a common good and justice in pricing, i.e., proportionality, benevolence and well-being. To exemplify how these criteria of justice apply to decision-making in commercial practices, we will discuss several cases of fair and unfair commercial relationships. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the theory of virtue ethics and its applications in the business arena. In contrast to other prominent approaches to ethics, virtue ethics provides a useful perspective in making sense of various business ethics issues with an emphasis on the moral character of the individuals and its transformational influences in driving ethical business conduct. Building on Geoff Moore’s :19–32, 2002; Bus Ethics Q 15:237–255, 2005; Bus Ethics Q 18:483–511, 2008) treatment of (...) Alasdair MacIntyre’s practice–institution schema, the paper discusses how individuals, as moral agents, can serve to promote virtuous business conduct and help foster a moral and ethical climate in the organization and in society at large. Using interview data from a broader study of the New Zealand wine industry as explanatory examples, the paper argues that while many companies’ sustainable practices are still largely market based, such excellent business practices are often driven by individuals’ moral and ethical pursuits. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:There is considerable overlap between the interests of business ethicists and those of political philosophers. Questions about the moral justifiability of the capitalist system, the basis of property rights, and the problem of inequality in the distribution of income have been of central importance in both fields. However, political philosophers have developed, especially over the past four decades, a set of tools and concepts for addressing these questions that are in many ways quite distinctive. Most business ethicists, on the other (...) hand, consider their field to be primarily a domain of applied ethics, and so adopt methods and conceptual frameworks developed by moral philosophers. In this paper, we discuss some of the salient differences between these two approaches, and suggest some ways in which business ethicists could benefit from taking a more “political philosophy” approach to these questions. Throughout, we underline the importance of seeking greater compatibility among the principles used in normative theorizing about markets, regulations, corporate governance, and business practices. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explain the differences between neo-Aristotelian virtue and positive organizational virtuousness from the virtue ethics perspective. Most studies use virtues and virtuousness interchangeably. A few others try to explain their differences from the positive organizational science perspective. Although closely related, we believe that these two notions are not identical. If we understand neo-Aristotelian virtue correctly, then it cannot be judged exclusively on what is externally verifiable, as is the case with virtuousness. For these reasons, (...) we attempt our own differentiation, highlighting the gains and losses realized in the migration from neo-Aristotelian virtue to positive organizational virtuousness, and establishing guideposts to meaningfully combine the strengths of both concepts. (shrink)

Due to the nature of lending practices and support services offered to the poor in developing countries, portfolio risk is a growing concern for the microfinance industry. Though previous research highlights the importance of risk for microfinance organizations, not much is known about how microfinance organizations can mitigate risks incurred from providing loans to the poor in developing countries. Further, though many microfinance organizations practice corporate social responsibility to help create economic and social wealth in developing countries, the impact of (...) such CSR practices remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry. We use a normative ethics lens to develop an ethics-based CSR theory that differentiates between three forms of ethics-based CSR—virtue, consequentialist, and deontological. We argue that while all three forms can help mitigate risk, virtue ethics-based CSR is potentially the most useful form of CSR toward mitigating microfinance portfolio risk. We test our hypotheses using a sample of microfinance organizations from across the world. Our findings suggest that virtue ethics-based CSR is not just an important philosophical paradigm; it can actually help mitigate microfinance portfolio risk when implemented in practice. (shrink)

Quality is commonly applied to products and processes, but we can also define human quality in dealing with people. This requires first establishing what treatment is appropriate to the human condition. Through an inquiry into the characteristics that define the human being and what ethical requirements constitute a good treatment, we define “Human Quality Treatment” as dealing with persons in a way appropriate to the human condition, which entails acting with respect for their human dignity and rights, caring for their (...) problems and legitimate interests, and fostering their personal development. With this in mind, we can distinguish between five different levels or degrees of HQT in organizations which can be characterized by the following terms: maltreatment, indifference, justice, care, and development. (shrink)

This paper draws from the work of sixteenth century theologian, philosopher, and ethicist Domingo de Soto and considers his virtue-based approach to the ethical evaluation of commerce within an Aristotelian–Thomistic framework for the articulation of business and the common good. Particular attention is given to the fundamental emphasis placed by Soto in distinguishing between commerce as an activity and the specific conduct of persons engaging in commercial activity. The distinction between the material and the formal parts of the common good (...) is then employed to shed light on the way Soto articulates commercial practices, virtuous character, and the common good. It is concluded that Soto’s major contribution for business ethics is clarifying that the key element for the ethical evaluation of commerce is the embodiment of virtuous personal conduct in the exercise of commercial activity. In this framework, the fulfillment of commerce’s potential to contribute to the common good is thus fundamentally interconnected with putting virtues into practice. (shrink)

Abstract:Alasdair Maclntyre (1984) asserts that the ethical systems of the Enlightenment (formalism and utilitarianism) have failed to provide a meaningful definition of “good.” Lacking such a definition, business managers have no internal standards by which they can morally evaluate their roles or acts. Maclntyre goes on to claim that managers have substituted external measures of “winning” or “effectiveness” for any internal concept of good. He supports a return to the Aristotelian notion of virtue or “excellence.” Such a system of virtue (...) ethics depends on an interrelationship of the community, one’s roles in that community, and the virtues one needs to perform that role well. This article develops Maclntyre’s concept of virtue ethics and shows how this paradigm fits well with existing theories about organizational behavior. (shrink)