This paper draws on MacIntyre’s ethical thought to illuminate a hitherto underexplored religious context for business ethics, that of the Amish. It draws on an empirical study of Amish settlements in Holmes County, Ohio, and aims to deepen our understanding of Amish business ethics by bringing it into contact with an ethical theory that has had a signifcant impact within business ethics, that of Alasdair MacIntyre. It also aims to extend MacIntyrean thought by drawing on his neglected critique of modernity (...) in the context of business ethics. The Amish context allows us to appreciate the relationship between MacIntyre’s critique of modernity, his conception of practices and communities, and his distinctive approach to the virtues. It also helps us to better understand how the ethical life is possible within our emotivist culture. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of managerial capitalism is well known, with some arguing that MacIntyrean thought is antithetical to contemporary capitalist business. Nevertheless, substantial efforts have been taken to demonstrate how different business activities constitute MacIntyrean practices, which points to an incoherence at the heart of MacIntyrean business ethics scholarship. This article proposes a way of bridging these perspectives, suggesting a reimagined MacIntyrean approach to business that is thoroughly ‘practice-led.’ A detailed comparison of accounting and management shows that while neither are (...) practices in ‘good order,’ they differ in significant ways: where management does not meet the criteria for a MacIntyrean practice, accounting is a ‘distorted’ practice. This leads to a categorisation of practice-led business activity, whereby the traditional tasks of management are subsumed, shared or subordinated to practices and practitioners. Insights on how this can be implemented are drawn from the ‘communities of practice’ literature and a consideration of professions. (shrink)

Entry on MacIntyre and Business Ethics forthcoming in Poff, D. C. & Michalos, A. C. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer.

This paper argues that the principles of spiritual traditions provide normative ‘standards of goodness’ within which practitioners evaluate meaningful work. Our comparative study of practitioners in the Buddhist and Quaker traditions provide a fine-grained analysis to illuminate, that meaningfulness is deeply connected to particular tradition-specific philosophical and theological ideas. In the Buddhist tradition, meaningfulness is temporal and rooted in Buddhist principles of non-attachment, impermanence and depending-arising, whereas in the Quaker tradition, the Quaker testimonies and theological ideas frame meaningfulness as eternal. (...) Surprisingly, we find that when faced with unethical choices and clashes between organizational normativity and spiritual normativity, Buddhist practitioners acknowledge the temporal character of meaningfulness and compromise their moral values, whereas in contrast, Quaker practitioners morally disengage from meaningless work. Our study highlights how normative commitments in different spiritual traditions can influence different levels of adaptability in finding work meaningful and stresses the central importance of normative commitments in meaningful work. Our study concludes with practical implications and future pathways for inter-disciplinary research. (shrink)

This paper draws a distinction between ‘right MacIntyreans’ who are relatively optimistic that MacIntyre’s vision of ethics can be realised in capitalist society, and ‘left MacIntyreans’ who are sceptical about this possibility, and aims to show that the ‘left MacIntyrean’ position is a promising perspective available to business ethicists. It does so by arguing for a distinction between ‘community-focused’ practices and ‘excellence-focused’ practices. The latter concept fulfils the promise of practices to provide us with an understanding of the best work (...) for humankind and highlights the affinities between MacIntyre’s concept of a practice and Marx’s conception of good work as free, creative activity. The paper concludes with a suggestion that we reflect on the best forms of work so that we can strive to ensure the very best activities, those most consonant with our flourishing, one day become available to all. (shrink)

The notion that business organizations are akin to Aristotelian political communities has been a central feature of research into virtue ethics in business. In this article, I begin by outlining this “community thesis” and go on to argue that psychological research into the “just world fallacy” presents it with a significant challenge. The just world fallacy undermines our ability to implement an Aristotelian conception of justice, to each as he or she is due, and imperils the relational equality required for (...) shared participation in communities. In the final section, I offer a description of what Aristotelian community might look like within organizations, and some suggestions about how it may be possible to resist the challenge posed by the just world fallacy. (shrink)

This paper argues that Quaker business ethics can be understood as a MacIntyrean tradition. To do so, it draws on three key MacIntyrean concepts: community, compartmentalisation, and the critique of management. The emphasis in Quaker business ethics on finding unity, as well as the emphasis that Quaker businesses have placed on serving their local areas, accords with MacIntyre’s claim that small-scale community is essential to human flourishing. The emphasis on integrity in Quaker business ethics means practitioners are well-placed to resist (...) the compartmentalising pressures of contemporary work. Quaker business ethics is also highly critical of the manipulative forms of management that MacIntyre regards as dominant. As such, Quaker business ethics provides evidence that more morally ameliorative forms of running business organisations is possible, even if they remain difficult to achieve. (shrink)

Drawing on implicit leadership theory (ILT) research, we develop and test a model that explains why integrating transformational leadership and servant leadership may achieve enhanced leader effectiveness. Using a sample of 237 hairstylists and 474 of their customers representing 31 salons, we confirm the augmentation effects of transformational leadership and servant leadership on followers' perceptions of leader stereotypicality (i.e., the extent to which a leader matches followers' implicit theories of leaders) and on customer satisfaction. However, we do not find the (...) hypothesized interaction effect of transformational and servant leadership. Implications are discussed and directions for future research are suggested. (shrink)

Given his view that the modern world is ‘radically evil’, Adorno is an unlikely contributor to business ethics. Despite this, we argue that his work has a number of provocative implications for the field that warrant wider attention. Adorno regards our social world as damaged, unfree, and false and we draw on this critique to outline why the achievement of good work is so rare in contemporary society, focusing in particular on the ethical demands of roles and the ideological nature (...) of management’s self-understanding. Nevertheless, we show that Adorno’s comments on activities such as art and philosophy mean that it is possible to draw on his work in a way that contributes constructively to the conversation about good and meaningful work within business ethics. (shrink)

It has been claimed that ‘virtuous structures’ can foster moral agency in organisations. We investigate this in the context of employee involvement in corporate philanthropy, an activity whose moral status has been disputed. Employing Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of moral agency, we analyse the results of eight focus groups with employees engaged in corporate philanthropy in an employee-owned retailer, the John Lewis Partnership. Within this organisational context, Employee–Partners’ moral agency was evidenced in narrative accounts of their engagement in philanthropic activities and (...) in their disputes about the moral status of corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

Several alternative leadership approaches have been introduced to supplement the long-standing transformational leadership model as concerns have grown that it did not place enough emphasis on leader ethics. Nonetheless, to establish the value of the newer approaches, evidence of conceptual and empirical distinctiveness is required. Though meta-analysis has been somewhat helpful in this regard :517–536, 2016), we conducted two within-study comparisons of ethical leadership, virtuous leadership and key components of TL reflected by socialized charismatic leadership. We predicted that these alternative (...) models differ in the strength of their ties to a range of valued outcomes. Our analyses of 230 leader–follower dyads based predominately in North America and US-based 131 dyads left many hypotheses unsupported; nonetheless, there was evidence of differential associations. For example, across both samples, in the context of all three models, follower-rated ethical leadership was the only significant predictor of follower-rated leader effectiveness, leader-rated subordinate in-role performance, and leader-rated follower ethicality. As hypothesized, virtuous leadership was the strongest predictor of self-rated leader happiness in Sample 1, but contrary to expectations, in Sample 2, only the TL components were related to happiness and life satisfaction among both leaders and followers. (shrink)

AbstractIn the wake of organizational scandals associated with corporate America servant as well as transformational leadership are seen as approaches capable of engendering a type of morality—on the part of leaders and followers—based on shared values, universal moral principles and an orientation towards a pro-social behavior serving the common good. However, recent critiques have highlighted the tendency in the relevant literature to overlook the systemic context within which leadership and followership are situated. Given this oversight this paper re-visits a classic (...) piece of ethnography on corporate America: Robert Jackal’s Moral Mazes. Employing concepts from critical realism fused with insights from studies on management and bureaucracy we analyse the key themes from the book pertaining to the nature of the leader–follower dynamic in shareholder capitalism. The analysis highlights the role of bureaucracy and corporate ideology as key elements shaping leader–follower relationships, encouraging a type of morality associated with guarding self-interest whilst undermining relationality. The influence of the structural and cultural context in which leader–follower relations unfold draws attention to morality as relationally contingent as opposed to an ideal state. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

This paper aims to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Adorno’s thought for business ethicists working in the critical tradition by showing how his critique of modern social life anticipated, and ofers continuing illumination of, recent technological transformations of capitalism. It develops and extrapolates Adorno’s thought regarding three central spheres of modern society, which have seen radical changes in light of recent technological developments: work, in which employee monitoring has become ever more sophisticated and intrusive; leisure consumption, in which the algorithmic (...) developments of the culture industry have paved the way for entertainment products to dominate us; and political discourse, in which social media has exacerbated the anti-democratic tendencies Adorno warned of in the mid-twentieth century. We conclude by presenting, as a rejoinder to these developments, the contours of an Adornian ethics of resistance to the reifcation and dehumanisation of such developments. (shrink)