The problem I raise here is not what ought to succeed mankind in the sequence of species (- the human being is an end -): but what type of human being one ought to breed, ought to will, as more valuable, more worthy of life, more certain of the future. (Friedrich Nietzsche1) The question which leads us beyond the grave of our own generation is not 'how will human beings feel in the future', but 'how will they be' ... We (...) do not want to train up feelings of well-being in people, but those characteristics we think constitute the greatness and nobility of our human nature. (Max Weber2). (shrink)

Postmodernist thinkers have often claimed that there is something like a `modernist' model of theory and metatheory in the social sciences which is objectivistic, dogmatic, and generally over-ambitious, aiming to dominate the theoretical landscape like a modernist skyscraper. This paper suggests that there is little to support such a view, and that most sociologists and social anthropologists, and many other social scientists, have been much more cautious and tentative in their claims than postmodernists have claimed. The alleged distinctiveness of postmodern (...) social science is therefore itself open to question. The paper includes a discussion of reflection and reflexivity in realist philosophy of science and in the social theory of Habermas and Bourdieu. (shrink)

Discussions of whistleblowing whether in academic literature or in more popular media have tended to very one-sided assessments of the moral worth of the act. Indeed, much of the current literature concentrates on psychological or managerial aspects of whistleblowing while taking for granted this or that moral position or eschewing any normative commitment on the question. The purpose of this article is firstly to reemphasise the importance and complexity of the normative foundations of whistleblowing acts; and secondly, through a moral (...) philosophical analysis of the component decisions that make up any act of whistleblowing, to contribute to a more balanced and less polarised treatment of the topic. It is argued that the polarisation of views on the topic is in part due to a failure to decompose the act of whistleblowing into a number of inevitable component moral decisions leading up to the act. It is furthermore argued on the basis of the analysis that it is impossible to state a priori as a matter of general principle that whistleblowing is always morally right or morally wrong . The article will close with a reflection on the degree to which the weighing up of good and bad in the act of whistleblowing differs sharply among cultures; and with a conjecture as to a possible relation to a people's history which may serve as a pointer to interesting future empirical research on the topic. (shrink)

Max Weber's concept of the iron cage has become a byword in the scholarly world since the publication in 1930 of Talcott Parsons' translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . What is less well-known is that Jules Verne had earlier used the iron cage metaphor in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) to reveal the paradoxes of modernity. Roland Barthes criticized Verne's vision of modernity as bourgeois and positivistic, pointing out his narrow-minded enthusiasm for futuristic (...) technology. In this essay, I argue that Verne's originality lies precisely in his equivocal attitude towards modernity with its high technology. Verne, I suggest, does not reject technological modernity, but by dissecting it he reveals its propelling forces, high demands and price. He shows that the Enlightenment's Rule of Reason is, in the end, governed by the ancient passions of fear, bitterness and the thirst for revenge. It is this combination that makes the human condition tragic. Verne's Homeric imagination creates an epic hero—Captain Nemo—who personifies the remarkable alliance of modern science and ancient heroism. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib has displayed a deeply normative concern for the origin, properties, condition and destiny of the modern world in work running from Critique, Norm, and Utopia (1986), to Situating the Self (1992), The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (1996), and Another Cosmopolitanism (2006). I hope to show that Benhabib's view of modernity is ambiguous, and that inconsistencies in her position reach back, through Habermas and Weber, to Kant. I begin with a sketch of Benhabib's sense of what modernity is (...) about, turn then to what I think makes her position ambiguous, and conclude with a discussion of what I think is missing in her treatment of modernity. The gap I identify is strikingly pointed up when she uses the term modernism but does not talk about modernism at all. (shrink)

This article seeks to understand a puzzling aspect of Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money, namely, the many religious analogies Simmel uses to characterize money. We argue that with these analogies Simmel indicates how what he would later term ‘the transcendent character of life’ permeates mundane monetary interactions. Specifically, we articulate how key religious forms of experience – faith, unity, and individuality – exist in monetary exchange and point toward a distinctively Simmelian way to understand the interplay between religion and (...) economics. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present cross-cultural research on secondary school students in Poland and Norway concerning their opinions about the ethical norms that every employee should follow, and the declared attitudes of young people towards these norms. The interaction between the awareness of general ethical norms that every employee should follow and the declared attitudes toward this role are discussed. Additionally, the influence of nationality and gender on opinions and attitudes toward ethical norms is analyzed.Random-quota sampling was (...) chosen to collect data from 844 Norwegian and 1337 Polish students aged 16–18. The analyzed variables concerning attitudes and opinions towards ethics included: giving and taking bribes, confidentiality, consideration for the employer’s property, consideration for the company’s hardware and software, positive attitudes to clients and co-workers, working in competing organizations, and using psychoactive substances.Analyses of variance showed that variables such as gender and nationality significantly influenced the opinions and attitudes of young people towards work; however, the effect of nationality in this interaction appears to be stronger. We concluded that youth need to be educated in the area of work ethics before they enter the job market. (shrink)

Neo-liberal economics is built upon the claim that the freedom to pursue one's self-interest and rational choice leads to economic growth and development. Against this background neo-liberal economists and policymakers endeavoured to universalise this claim, and insistently argue that appropriate economic policies produce the same results regardless of cultural values. Accordingly, developing countries are often advised to embrace the neo-liberal economic credo for them to escape from the trap of underdevelopment. However, the economic success of South East Asia on the (...) one hand and the failure of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa on the other, are increasingly proving that the 'economic' argument cannot be taken dogmatically: self-interest and rationality do not seem to be the sufficient explanations for economic development. One other avenue to be taken seriously is the link between cultural values and economic development. After viewing the principle of self-interest against its historico-cultural background, I consider this link in the African context, and argue that, although they cannot be taken as the sole factor, people's cultural beliefs and values are crucial for economic development. Economic growth and development need to be a substantiation of a people's beliefs and values. In African value system, this substantiation could lead to what one would call 'ubuntu economy' in which the state, the markets and the people are all agents, and not patients, in the process of economic growth and development. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores the discursive configuration of paid work by Greek employees, shedding light to the symbolic pores they mobilize in order to craft its meaning as well as to the micro- and macrosocial implications of their argumentation strategies. Building upon a social constructionist epistemology, 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed using tools and techniques provided by critical approaches to discourse analysis. The ‘school’, the ‘journey’, and the ‘slavery’ repertoires, as I named them, were the three discursive (...) patterns identified, each one grounded in different assumptions about the social universe and thus legitimizing or challenging the hegemonic fixations of the meaning of work. (shrink)

It is well established within the ethics and institutional theory literatures that institutions can have conflicting logics with ethical dimensions and that there are solutions to the conflicts. Within institutional, ethics, and change leadership theory, quantitative, mixture solutions such as distributive solutions have been frequently considered. The ethics, institutional, and change leadership theory literatures have recognized that there are qualitative transformational solutions that are different than quantitative mixture solutions. However and for the most part, with the notable exception of the (...) Thornton et al. :801–843, 2012) typology of solutions, the institutional, change leadership, and ethics literatures have not considered typologies of transformational solutions. And more specifically with respect to this article, the institutional, change leadership, and ethics literatures have not considered different types of transformational solutions to institutional logic conflicts with ethical dimensions. This article: develops a typology of transformational solutions; applies the typology with historical examples of conflicting institutional ethics logics within factory, cultural, and institutional social change leadership cases; and, considers practical and theoretical implications for institutional ethics change leadership for achieving and/or resisting different types of transformational solutions. (shrink)

On the basis of the Weber, Jaspers, and Arendt style ‘ideal types’ of the manager as Eichmann, Richard III, and Faust it is explained how under strong organizational pressures to obey orders and further organizational ends, different types of managers cooperate with organization behavior that harms people. On the basis of Arendt's and Tillich's action philosophies, the manager as Institution Citizen with the courage to be both as oneself and as a part is presented as alternative, contrast, and resistance model (...) to the other ‘ideal types’, particularly to the Eichmann ‘ideal type’. (shrink)

Organizational ethics and institutional theories are extended by recovering Weberian and Pre-Weberian theorizing that emphasized the joining of ethics and institutional theories. Understanding how ethics and institutional systems influence each other can advance our understanding of the nature and causes of structural organizational ethics issues and help guide potential reforms. We consider the interplay of these elements during the recession of 2008–2009, highlighting how structural ethics problems may have to be addressed at the institutional levels and not solely the individual (...) or organizational levels. (shrink)

This article examines the way advertising was rationalized in the early twentieth-century United States. Drawing on a targeted archival comparison with the United Kingdom, I show how the extensive mobilization undertaken to legitimate and rationalize advertising, rather than changes in the techniques employed in the content of ads themselves, were seen by actors in the mid-1920s to explain most of the extraordinary advances made by American advertising. Building on that comparison, I show how American advertising was transformed, particularly around World (...) War I, into a legitimate profession situated at the center of a network of expertise about consumers and their media. Under the banner of “truth in advertising” ads came to be regarded as a legitimate, rational, and sustained business investment, leading to an enormous increase in aggregate expenditures. I argue that future research should examine how this process fuelled mass media and contributed to the conditions for modern consumerism. (shrink)

An examination of the practice of self-examination in Scottish Presbyterianism shows the value of following the later Foucault in the examination of religion as a social practice. His attention to the influence of pastoral power on governmentality is shown to have been embedded in a Roman Catholic heritage leading to a stress on the confessional. By contrast, an examination of one aspect of Protestant pastoral power indicates the genealogy of practices of self-help. An historical examination of both the structure of (...) the Scottish church and the diaries of believers indicates the emphasis placed in this tradition on accountability. It also points to the need to reassess Foucault's treatment of Seneca, whose place in the Christian tradition, as exemplified by the Scottish experience, was more important than Foucault allows. (shrink)

A critical analysis of Carl Schmitt’s account of the conflict between sea and land power, and the metaphysical and religious underpinning of these conflicting powers.

This study examines the impact of Islamic Work Ethic on organizational citizenship behaviors and knowledge-sharing behaviors among university employees in Pakistan. A total of 215 respondents from public sector educational institutions participated in this research. The findings suggest that IWE has a positive effect on OCBs. In other words, individuals with high IWE demonstrate more citizenship behaviors than those with low IWE. The findings also suggest a positive effect of IWE on KSBs. Individuals with high IWE exhibit more KSBs than (...) those with low IWE. The paper also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (shrink)

This article analyzes efforts in Nicaragua to create ethical organizations and an ethical economy. Three societal ethea found in contemporary Nicaragua are examined: the ethos of revolution, the ethos of corruption, and the ethos of human development. The emerging ethos of human development provides the most hope for the nation's social and economic evolution. The practices of three successful economic development organizations explicitly aligned with the ethos of human development are described and evaluated: (1) a microfinance foundation (FDL), (2) a (...) federation of cooperatives (FENACOOP), and (3) a local branch of an international NGO (IO-Nicaragua). The article concludes with additional reflections on the meaning of ethical organizations and an ethical economy in the context of contemporary Nicaragua. (shrink)

Even before trust became a buzzword, theoretical developments were made, which have instigated the development of two forms of trust which are described as personal trust and system trust/confidence. However, this distinction remained rather secondary in the overall literature. There is an overall lack on the historical developments of these forms of trust, their internal logic and how they interlink, overlap, or work against each other. The paper aims to advance these three aspects: first through a historical overview of the (...) semantic of this distinction, followed by a theoretical reconstruction of the historical material and third by demonstrating how these theoretical concepts can be applied to political crises (Revolutions of 1989), thus revealing their logic and mutual interlocking. (shrink)

Max Weber is noted for his analysis of the `specific and peculiar rationalism' of western culture. However, his diagnosis of a life disenchanted by reason draws attention to his lesser known formulations of the problem of theodicy - the problem of reconciling pain and misfortune with moral expectations of the world. Weber suggests that cultural responses to this problem change with the increasingly secular rationalization of life. The present paper traces this development from the cultural representation of pain as the (...) embodiment of moral strife in the early modern novel to contemporary images of pain and suffering in medicine, the mass media and film. The comparison suggests that late modernity is confronted by an `inverse' problem of theodicy, in which representations of pain and suffering are disassociated from ethical and political contexts and the quest for meaning within a human frame. (shrink)

Most of what has been written about Buber and education tend to be studies of two kinds: theoretical studies of his philosophical views on education, and specific case studies that aim at putting theory into practice. The perspective taken has always been to hold a dialogue with Buber's works in order to identify and analyse critically Buber's views and, in some cases, to put them into practice; that is, commentators dialogue with the text. In this article our aims are of (...) a different kind. First and fundamentally, we demonstrate the political and social ontological basis of Buber's thought; that is, we show that Buber, the philosopher of dialogue, held an authentic dialogue with his time, and demonstrate that Buber's work, in this case I and Thou, holds a dialogue with its Zeitgeist; that is the text dialogues with its Zeitgeist. This approach leads us to our second aim, which is to demonstrate that Buber's thought remains relevant to our times, particularly when it serves as a dialogical educational tool with which to resolve conflict of all types and to aid dialogue towards peace in inter-community relations. (shrink)

The focus of this article is the analysis of generative mechanisms, a basic concept and phenomenon within the metatheoretical perspective of critical realism. It is emphasized that research questions and methods, as well as the knowledge it is possible to attain, depend on the basic view – ontologically and epistemologically – regarding the phenomenon under scrutiny. A generative mechanism is described as a trans empirical but real existing entity, explaining why observable events occur. Mechanisms are mostly possible to grasp only (...) indirectly by analytical work, based however on empirical observations. In order to achieve such an explanatory analysis, five methodological steps are suggested and discussed, among them abduction and retroduction. These steps are illustrated throughout by examples drawn from empirical research regarding social work practice. The article is concluded with a discussion of the need for knowledge of generative mechanisms. (shrink)

Social distance, as a non-static cognitive attribute of acceptance among particular groups across different contexts, has been resemioticized during the coronavirus crisis and legalized worldwide to reduce global strain on healthcare systems and prevent deaths. Concerning this, brand designers have tried to persuade the brand community to benefit from products or services safely by staying away from others as much as possible instead of in-person contact. This research was conducted to discover the semiosis process of social-distancing resemioticization through creating values (...) of brands during the post-coronavirus crisis. The corpus consists of 124 brands – all sampled purposely from 2019 to 2021 – which was investigated via a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods using an integrated model in a functional perspective. All the results highlight the fact that, although brand designers have attempted to creatively resemioticize social-distancing during the coronavirus crisis as a means of increasing or enriching brand values, still some semiosis layers of brand discourse have been overlooked. Pertaining to this, the authors try to apply a new perspective of marketing semiotics to appraise consumer investments in light of a socio-cultural setting by conducting an inquiry about the semiosis of individual brand discourses to manage consumer perceptions regarding brand equity. (shrink)

Using qualitative data, this article makes a substantive and formal contribution to the growing academic literature on bodybuilding and the sociology of the body. Placing a question mark against existing knowledge claims, it argues theories ascribing bodybuilding to antecedent predispositions are not sufficient when accounting for the ongoing variable project of creating `the perfect body'. It is asserted that physique bodybuilding (as opposed to weight-training) in the late 1990s could be independent of the `masculinist imagery' of `the muscular body' alongside (...) feelings of gender and personal insecurity, but is increasingly dependent upon an acquired `ethnophysiological' appreciation of `excessive' muscularity. This phenomenological argument, which asserts the agency of bodies in social processes, focuses upon male participants' spatially and temporally contingent heterogeneous body-projects. (shrink)

Using embodied sociology, this article offers a virtual ethnography of ‘fat male embodiment’. Reporting and analysing qualitative data generated online, it includes a typology of big/fat male body-subjects and supportive/admiring others. These fat-friendly typifications are unpacked by referencing advocated codes of self–body relatedness, sexualities and the relevance of food. The virtual construction of acceptable, admirable or resistant masculinities is then explored under the following headings: (1) appeals to ‘real’ or ‘natural’ masculinity; (2) the admiration and eroticization of fat men’s bodies; (...) (3) transgression, fun and the carnivalesque; and (4) the pragmatics and politics of fat male embodiment. While alternative (positive) understandings of fatness are presented online, discrepancies between virtual and actual identities render stigma an ever-present possibility for those with ‘real’ fat male bodies. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide a preliminary outline of a theory of identity. The first section addresses what the sociologist Niklas Luhmann has called ‘the problem of identity’, or, in other words, the mind–society (rather than the mind–body) problem: In how far can the internal (psychological) self and the external (social) persona be integrated into a unit? The second section of the essay briefly defines a basic vocabulary of a theory of identity. ‘Identity’ is understood as the existentially necessary formation (...) of a coherence between the ‘self’ (the ‘I’ as it is experienced in thoughts and feelings), its body and its social ‘persona’ (the individual person with its social attributes). Three different major paradigms of identity formation are distinguished from one another: a sincere identity is constructed through a firm commitment of the self to its social roles; an authentic identity is constructed through the creation of a social persona on the basis of one’s unique and original self; a ‘profilic’ identity, as we call it, is shaped by successfully presenting a personal profile under conditions of second-order observation as they prevail, for instance, in the social media, but also in other contemporary social systems. In the third section of the essay, we present a sketch of the historical sequence of these three paradigms of identity. Although these paradigms are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, it seems that sincerity flourished in pre-modern society, while authenticity came to prominence along with the functional differentiation of modern society and is now, along with the increased significance of second-order observation, gradually overshadowed by the influence of profilicity. (shrink)

This paper expands the focus of ethical analysis to look at the basic approaches to strategy used by business firms. Using a set of criteria historically used to judge ethical issues, three strategy paradigms are evaluated in terms of their likely effects on society as well as the firm. From this analysis, recommendations are offered regarding the ethical pursuit of profit and suggestions made for future research into the relationship between strategy and ethics.

This paper is a response to Ray's recent proposal that the intellectual property rights attached to potentially life saving/life sustaining innovations should become public goods in cases where markets are either unable or unwilling to pay for the creation of the intellectual property. Using a free market approach to innovation based on Western moral philosophy, we suggest that treating intellectually protected life saving/life sustaining innovations as public goods will likely reduce social welfare over the long term.

While the media and public opinion polls suggest that the state of business ethics is declining, surveys of corporate managers on the subject are less than conclusive. This study presents results of a survey of 487 adult, MBA, and undergraduate business students on the business philosophies of Machiavellianism, Darwinism, Objectivism, Relativism, and Universalism. The findings were consistent with earlier research which showed prospective managers to be less ethical than practicing ones and that women and those reporting a strong religious conviction (...) tend to be more ethical. Explanations and several recommendations for improving the situation are offered.If you saw Atlas... trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders — what would you tell him to do? (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s exposition of the human condition provides the basic framework for a theoretical perspective on close relationships. According to Arendt, the human condition is comprised of three modes of activity: labor, work, and action. Labor is need-driven behavior, work concerns goal-directed activity and the fabrication of things, and action involves the mutual validation of unique individuals. Within this framework, the gift is the means by which relational ties are made concrete. I propose a model of gift-giving organized by two (...) axes: whether or not the partner is singularized by the gift and whether or not the gift is given with an expectation of a return gift. I then apply this model to the three modes of the human condition. (shrink)

This paper explores the values and practices of capitalism and speculates about how they might evolve as twenty-first century global capitalism comes into being. The values embodied by the Westernized canon we have inherited might account for certain shortcomings of capitalism. As economic power shifts away from dominant markets of the recent past, our search for the canon of twenty-first century global capitalism can help shape the values we aspire for our capitalism of the future to embody and to enable.

Is there anything outside the Christian Text or is the Christian Text all there is? The article will argue that the Christian Text has formed and shaped Western thinking to such an extent that it is impossible to think in the global world, co-created by various Western texts, without Christianity. The fact that the West colonised the world, and that today the Western media dominates the language of the global village, makes it nearly impossible to think outside the Christian Text (...) and thus the universal domination by the Text. This article will first argue that for the Western-influenced world, there is nothing beyond the Christian Texts, and then it will argue that although this Text has universal dominance, there is an interpretation of its central message as a message of weakness and vulnerability, which challenges its imperialism. This leads towards the question: what is a possible praxis of such a universal and 'imperial' Text with its message of vulnerable weakness, specifically from a post-colonial context like South Africa? (shrink)

This paper identifies cultural disenchantment as a crucial concept in Rorty's understanding of liberalism, and considers how Rorty's use of this term draws on but also differs from similar ideas in Nietzsche and Weber. It argues that Rorty's notion of disenchantment complements his Darwinian view of human nature and his conception of the self as a centerless web of beliefs and desires. These three principal ideas form the basis of Rorty's novel theoretical approach to liberal democracy and of his belief (...) in its ability to sustain itself without its traditional rationalist justifications. (shrink)

This study examines the role of both religion and culture [as measured by the cultural clusters of countries in the GLOBE study of House et al. (Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, 2004)] on the levels of perceived corruption. Covering the period from 2000 to 2010, the study uses three different measures of perceived corruption: (1) the World Bank’s Control of Corruption measure, (2) Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and (3) Heritage Foundation’s Freedom from Corruption Index. (...) A system of three simultaneous equations is used, with the jointly endogenous variables being (a) perceived corruption, (b) perceived government legitimacy, and (c) perceived government effectiveness. The results show that both cultural and religious differences are incrementally related to perceived corruption, even after controlling for other economic and political factors. Specifically, relative to the Protestant Christian religion, the non-Protestant Christian religion, the Islamic religion, and Other Religion/no Religion are positively associated with higher corruption (or negatively with anti-corruption), but the Buddhist and Hindu religions appear to be not significantly different from the Protestant Christian religion. On the cultural side, compared to the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition, the other European clusters are incrementally positively associated with higher corruption, but this tendency is offset by more effective political governance, thus leading in the case of the German and Nordic cultures to levels of corruption not statistically different from the Anglo cluster. All the non-European cultural clusters are associated with significantly higher corruption tendencies, but the overall effect is mitigated partially by either greater perceived political legitimacy (Latin-American, Middle-Eastern, Caribbean, and Pacific Islander), or greater political effectiveness (Confucian and South-East Asian). (shrink)

Modern science and technology originated in Western Europe within a specific culture, but they have now been adopted and developed by several Eastern countries as well. We analyze the features of Western culture that may explain the rise of modern science with its associated economic development. A comparative analysis of Eastern cultures will then help us evaluate how far could contemporary science be successfully integrated within very different cultures. Without denying the role of social and political institutions, we would like (...) to investigate the influence of Western and Eastern cultural thought patterns on the respective development of Europe and East Asia. In this way, we try to estimate the importance of the cultural framework for the development of science and technology. (shrink)

Contemporary sociology mirrors Western society in its general aversion and sensitivity to pain, and in its view of pain as an unproductive threat to cultures and identities. This highlights the deconstructive capacities of pain, and marginalizes collectively authorized practices that embrace it as constitutive of cultural meanings and social relationships. After exploring the particularity of this Western orientation to pain — by situating it against processes of instrumentalization and medicalization, and within a broader context of other social developments conducive to (...) a heightening of affect control — this article builds on Mauss’s analysis of ‘body techniques’ in suggesting that the cultural, physiological and psychological dimensions of pain can be combined in various ways. In examining this point further, we then compare contrasting religious engagements with pain as a way of detailing how it can be positively productive of cultural meanings and identities, and conclude by using these comparisons to illuminate the relationship between the current Western approach to pain and the Christian traditions that shaped the West historically. (shrink)

As the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe try to make capitalism work in an ethical manner, their historical background and the national culture acquired over centuries cannot be ignored, as this study from Estonia eloquently shows. Dr Professor Maksim Saat is Professor of Business Administration, and Dr Mari Meel is Assistant Professor of Business Ethics, at the Tallinn Technical University, Ehitajate tee 5, EE‐0026 Tallinn, Estonia. In an Appendix Dr Meel describes how she teaches business ethics to university students.

As the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe try to make capitalism work in an ethical manner, their historical background and the national culture acquired over centuries cannot be ignored, as this study from Estonia eloquently shows. Dr Professor Maksim Saat is Professor of Business Administration, and Dr Mari Meel is Assistant Professor of Business Ethics, at the Tallinn Technical University, Ehitajate tee 5, EE‐0026 Tallinn, Estonia. In an Appendix Dr Meel describes how she teaches business ethics to university students.

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)

Workplaces around the world have experienced extraordinary changes to the composition of their workforces and the nature of work. Few studies have explored workers from multiple countries of birth, with multiple religious orientations, working together within a single country of residence. Building on and extending the Work Values Ethic (WVE) literature, we examine 1,382 responses from employees working in three manufacturing companies. Differences were found in the mean WVE scores of groups of respondents from 42 countries of birth. Their WVE (...) scores were strongly associated with their birth countries’ per capita Gross National Product (GNP), and the means of these scores did not change with variations in the respondents’ length of residence in a different country. These results have implications for developing cross-cultural management practices and for improving relationships with employees, with opportunities for increased commitment and, potentially, productivity. (shrink)

Although scholars have long recognized the importance of "elective affinity" as a key word in Weber's sociology, surprisingly little systematic research has gone into understanding this metaphor in Weber's writing, or the source from which he drew the term. For Weber, this was an implicit reference to Goethe's novel, well known to Weber's educated German audience, entitled Elective Affinities. In this article, I provide a systematic account of Goethe's conception of elective affinity as a chemical metaphor, and of the way (...) that it is related to Weber's uses of the term in the Protestant ethic essays and in his critical rejoinders. By understanding elective affinity as a Goethean chemical metaphor we can better understand the causal claims that Weber makes in his famous essay: Weber's argument is best understood as an analysis of emergence in the chemistry of social relations. (shrink)

Commentators on Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism have tended to view that work within the context of world-historical social processes and change. Recently, more literary forms of analyses have come to the fore emphasizing Weber’s indebtedness to the philosophical/literary efforts of Nietzsche and Goethe, among others. The following offers the preliminary observation that the concept of ‘drive’ understood as a mode of psychological operation and process considerably complicates any possible interpretation of the essay itself. Weber’s refusal (...) to specify the exact nature and extent of the psychological Antriebe underlying his rational actor may make a decisive interpretation of the text impossible. Nevertheless, there may be good reason for supposing that Weber’s usage of the terms ‘drive’ and ‘maxim’ is indicative of a Fichtean synthesis of anthropological impulses and the operations of the rational intellect via his reading of Hugo Münsterberg. (shrink)