Although virtues have gained a firm presence in the theory and practice of corporate management, humility is not ranked as one the chief virtues in the business world. In spite of this, it is an important virtue, contributing to the manager’s moral and professional quality and the development of the company’s human team. This paper explains the basic traits of humility in general and how they manifest in the manager’s life and profession, and shows, within the ethics of virtues, that (...) it is not just a personal desideratum but a fundamental quality of a good manager and good management. (shrink)

As studies continue to accumulate on leader humility, it has become clear that humility in a leader is largely beneficial to his or her followers. While the majority of the empirical research on this topic has demonstrated the positive effects of leader humility, this study challenges that consensus by arguing that a leader’s humble behavior can have contradictory outcomes in followers’ voice behavior. Drawing on attachment theory, we develop a model which takes into account the ways in which leader humility (...) influences the seemingly contradictory voice behavior of followers, i.e., inducing challenging voice, and defensive voice depending on the followers’ sense of security as reflected by feeling trusted and self-efficacy for voice. The results of this empirical study confirm that leader humility influences followers’ voice in a contradictory way through their sense of security. (shrink)

Contemporary treatments of humility typically treat humility as a virtue that is reserved for the accomplished. I argue that paradigmatic humility can also be possessed by the deficient, and I provide an extended example of such humility. I further argue that attending to such a case helps us to appreciate the way in which the humble have released both the desire for superiority and the aversion to inferiority. Accordingly, when necessary, the humble will exhibit an extremely low concern with their (...) own status relative to that of others. (shrink)

While philosophical debates about the ethical dimension of cinema have flourished over the last few decades, discussions of cinema and virtues are still limited. And, even if virtues are explored with regard to film, humility is not often the most obvious virtue that comes to mind. As this article argues, this might in part be due to humility’s lack of expressive action and its tendency to remain in the background. In addition, the wide range of philosophical views on what actually (...) counts as virtuous humility, if it is to be considered a virtue at all, further problematises the discussion. One aspect of these disagreements is the question of humility’s compatibility with great achievement. This article aims to demonstrate both how humility can be shown on screen and reveal greatness and humility can go together in practice. For this, the author draws on contemporary philosophical accounts of the virtue of humility to examine Damien Chazelle’s 2018 film First Man, a Neil Armstrong biopic based on James R. Hansen’s biography of the same name. The article outlines how both the distinct portrayal of its main protagonist and the film’s aesthetic features, such as mise-en-scène, sound and editing, are used to convey an idea of humility that reconciles achievement, ambition and greatness with a recognition of sacrifice, serendipity and sometimes the futility of human endeavours. Consequently, First Man is not only a film about a humble main character, but also indicates how cinematic techniques can be used effectively to enable us to experience humility, thus demonstrating how films can make a distinct contribution to philosophical debates about virtues beyond mere illustration. (shrink)