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Managerial Work in a Practice-Embodying Institution: The Role of Calling, The Virtue of Constancy
Abstract
What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This article uses the ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner–directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice.
... The virtues both sustain social practices, promoting the well-being of fellow participants, and often of the broader community (MacIntyre, 2007;Sinnicks, 2019), and are constitutive elements of a flourishing life (Annas, 2011;Bloomfield, 2014;MacIntyre, 1999). A substantial stream of research in business ethics and organization studies (Beadle, 2013;Moore, 2012aMoore, 2017Moore & Beadle, 2006;Tsoukas, 2018a) has focused on the role of practices within organizations. We adopt this framework to explain the role of moral factors in sustaining collaboration within joint production. ...
... For this, ethical leadership is especially important, as high-status individuals exercise more influence on others through social contagion (Burgess, et al., 2018;Lukas & Baxter 2012). Virtuous managers may thus have a significant impact on the moral character of other organization members (Beadle, 2013;Rego, et al., 2012). In turn, virtuous members are more easily influenced than non-virtuous members by virtuous superiors (Wei, et al., 2016). ...
... When this occurs in a coherent way (Finnis, 2011;von Krogh, et a. 2012), the organization promotes human flourishing, both that of its members and of other stakeholders. The practice of joint production provides the organizational context (Barney & Felin, 2013: 141) where these goods are more or less coherently linked, especially when members aim to create value without harming other important human goods (Bacq & Aguilera, 2021;Beadle, 2013;Scherer & Voegtlin, 2020: 200;Voegtlin & Scherer, 2017: 227). This is the case when, for instance, members conscientiously take care to avoid harming or inhibiting the knowledge, creativity, or bodily integrity of fellow employees (Finnis, 2011) or the health and capacity for control (Nussbaum, 2011) of external stakeholders who may be affected by the firm's activities. ...
Organizations involve joint production where members engage in purposive coordination and cooperation with others. Scholars have often noted the importance of “moral factors” in facilitating such collaboration but previous research has not adequately explained the nature of these moral factors, how they are embodied within joint production, or why organization members willingly adhere to them. We draw upon virtue ethics to address these questions. We argue that joint production represents a distinct, organization-level practice embodying morally salient standards of professional excellence that contribute to the development of members’ virtues through habituation. We then elaborate microfoundations for this account, developing a virtue ethical account of human agency as directed toward human flourishing such that members willingly adhere to organizational norms and values when they coherently embody goods that contribute to human flourishing.
... In this sense, different researches were developed in order to highlight the positive results that accompany individuals who perceive their work as a calling. A study by Beadle (2013), for example, demonstrated that traditional circus directors were able to maintain their business for long periods, even in a period of worsening for the industry, as they had a striking work orientation that gave them pleasure and fulfillment even in the face of the challenges. In this sense, a study by Rawat and Nadavulakere (2015) with teachers from the United States revealed that in the face of complex job demands, individuals who perceived a calling were more committed to their organizations, had less emotional exhaustion and exhibited higher levels of contextual performance, adopting a coping style, that allowed them to successfully solve challenges rather than adopt a style of avoidance. ...
... The results of the above studies suggested that perceiving a calling is associated with a sense of wellbeing in life and work, reducing physical and mental exhaustion and increasing enthusiasm, commitment, pleasure, fulfillment and satisfaction (Beadle, 2013;Bott et al., 2017;Wu, Hu, & Zheng, 2019. The above findings evidence that the perception of an occupational calling has the potential to reduce symptoms of burnout syndrome and occupational stress. ...
... Recent studies of occupational calling theory have evaluated both the positive outcomes that accompany individuals who perceive a calling, as reducing symptoms of burnout and stress syndrome (Beadle, 2013;Bott et al., 2017;Duffy et al., 2016;Haney-Loehlein et al., 2015;Neubert & Halbesleben, 2015;Rawat & Nadavulakere, 2015). They also examined the possible negative outcomes, such as the increased experience of paradoxical tensions (Cardador & Caza, 2012;Conway et al., 2015;Duffy et al., 2016;Schabram & Maitlis, 2017). ...
We evaluate the bivalent relationship between perceiving a calling and burnout syndrome and occupational stress. We suggest that although callings are negatively associated with burnout and stress, they produce a positive effect on both, having the perception of paradoxical tensions as a mediator. For this purpose, we conducted a quantitative survey of 539 individuals. The results showed a direct effect, according to which the more individuals perceive an occupational calling, the smaller the symptoms of burnout and stress. We also found an opposite indirect effect: the more individuals perceive a calling, the greater the symptoms of burnout and stress caused by increased paradoxical tensions that are experienced by individuals. Our findings show the importance of problematizing the idea of occupational callings as a necessarily positive antecedent for career development.
... By emphasising safety, health, and well-being, business people seek to support affluent communities in maintaining their businesses. Despite a few controversies on the potential of virtue in business (Bertland, 2009;Dawson and Bartholomew, 2003), virtue is recognised to at least theoretically aid in discussing how to further develop ethical roles and create organisational efficiency in a business environment (Beadle, 2013;Dawson, 2015;Ali et al., 2012). However, academics pay little attention to how virtues play a role in the business environment to foster ethical behaviour and fulfil social obligations. ...
... At the individual level, a US retail store is taken as an example to explore the influence of virtue ethics on the use of virtue language (Lin et al., 2016). Beadle (2013) investigates how the practice of circus personnel demonstrates virtue, especially the unchanging virtue within the circus organisation, and then provides evidence that managers and potential institutions that infer their ability can demonstrate virtue. In a case study, the advantages of the customer relationship system design were investigated, and its drawbacks were found to be caused by the lack of attention to virtue (Beadle, 2013). ...
... Beadle (2013) investigates how the practice of circus personnel demonstrates virtue, especially the unchanging virtue within the circus organisation, and then provides evidence that managers and potential institutions that infer their ability can demonstrate virtue. In a case study, the advantages of the customer relationship system design were investigated, and its drawbacks were found to be caused by the lack of attention to virtue (Beadle, 2013). Although scarce research has focused on testing virtue in the financial and banking sectors, especially in countries with socialist business norms (i.e., China), a few researchers support the positive impact of virtue on team performance (Libby and Thorne, 2007;Rego et al., 2015;Khan et al., 2019). ...
... By emphasising safety, health, and well-being, business people seek to support affluent communities in maintaining their businesses. Despite a few controversies on the potential of virtue in business (Bertland, 2009;Dawson and Bartholomew, 2003), virtue is recognised to at least theoretically aid in discussing how to further develop ethical roles and create organisational efficiency in a business environment (Beadle, 2013;Dawson, 2015;Ali et al., 2012). However, academics pay little attention to how virtues play a role in the business environment to foster ethical behaviour and fulfil social obligations. ...
... At the individual level, a US retail store is taken as an example to explore the influence of virtue ethics on the use of virtue language (Lin et al., 2016). Beadle (2013) investigates how the practice of circus personnel demonstrates virtue, especially the unchanging virtue within the circus organisation, and then provides evidence that managers and potential institutions that infer their ability can demonstrate virtue. In a case study, the advantages of the customer relationship system design were investigated, and its drawbacks were found to be caused by the lack of attention to virtue (Beadle, 2013). ...
... Beadle (2013) investigates how the practice of circus personnel demonstrates virtue, especially the unchanging virtue within the circus organisation, and then provides evidence that managers and potential institutions that infer their ability can demonstrate virtue. In a case study, the advantages of the customer relationship system design were investigated, and its drawbacks were found to be caused by the lack of attention to virtue (Beadle, 2013). Although scarce research has focused on testing virtue in the financial and banking sectors, especially in countries with socialist business norms (i.e., China), a few researchers support the positive impact of virtue on team performance (Libby and Thorne, 2007;Rego et al., 2015;Khan et al., 2019). ...
... Some recent contributions have sought to address this gap. For example, Beadle's (2013a) analysis (which we discuss in more detail below) of how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives, highlights the role of the virtue of constancy in supporting a sense of "calling" among circus directors. ...
... To recall the distinction between proximate and ultimate goals, questions about "virtue" in any sphere of practice -like policing -are always secondary to questions of what constitutes the good for human beings (Aristotle, 1094a7-8 One way to think of this is that with virtue ethics there are both social (Koehn, 2013), and temporal complexities (Beadle, 2013a) to consider. In terms of social complexities, we need to be sensitive to a place, institution(s), a set of beliefs and traditions, the practices and values of a community, and other diffuse, intangible expressions of norms and customs -for example what we might refer to in shorthand as, "culture". ...
... However, the challenges of understanding context are not fatal to any project working with virtue. Nor does it make attempts to work out what virtue means in a given setting futile (Beadle, 2013a), or mean we cannot seek principles that work alongside a virtue framework (Melé, 2009). It does, however, have important implications for considering how institutional virtues in policing take shape. ...
... Some recent contributions have sought to address this gap. For example, Beadle's (2013a) analysis (which we discuss in more detail below) of how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives, highlights the role of the virtue of constancy in supporting a sense of "calling" among circus directors. ...
... To recall the distinction between proximate and ultimate goals, questions about "virtue" in any sphere of practice -like policing -are always secondary to questions of what constitutes the good for human beings (Aristotle, 1094a7-8 One way to think of this is that with virtue ethics there are both social (Koehn, 2013), and temporal complexities (Beadle, 2013a) to consider. In terms of social complexities, we need to be sensitive to a place, institution(s), a set of beliefs and traditions, the practices and values of a community, and other diffuse, intangible expressions of norms and customs -for example what we might refer to in shorthand as, "culture". ...
... However, the challenges of understanding context are not fatal to any project working with virtue. Nor does it make attempts to work out what virtue means in a given setting futile (Beadle, 2013a), or mean we cannot seek principles that work alongside a virtue framework (Melé, 2009). It does, however, have important implications for considering how institutional virtues in policing take shape. ...
... Some recent contributions have sought to address this gap. For example, Beadle's (2013a) analysis (which we discuss in more detail below) of how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives, highlights the role of the virtue of constancy in supporting a sense of "calling" among circus directors. ...
... To recall the distinction between proximate and ultimate goals, questions about "virtue" in any sphere of practice -like policing -are always secondary to questions of what constitutes the good for human beings (Aristotle, 1094a7-8 One way to think of this is that with virtue ethics there are both social (Koehn, 2013), and temporal complexities (Beadle, 2013a) to consider. In terms of social complexities, we need to be sensitive to a place, institution(s), a set of beliefs and traditions, the practices and values of a community, and other diffuse, intangible expressions of norms and customs -for example what we might refer to in shorthand as, "culture". ...
... However, the challenges of understanding context are not fatal to any project working with virtue. Nor does it make attempts to work out what virtue means in a given setting futile (Beadle, 2013a), or mean we cannot seek principles that work alongside a virtue framework (Melé, 2009). It does, however, have important implications for considering how institutional virtues in policing take shape. ...
... Nevertheless, MacIntyrean research continues to demonstrate that in a range of professional and commercial contexts, some practitioners have defended the integrity of their practices against a variety of perceived threats (Robson 2014;Krogh et al. 2012;Wilcox 2012). In line with MacIntyre's argument that practices may be undermined by commercial expansion and not only by decline (MacIntyre 2008, 7), these empirical studies highlight threats including commercialisation (Krogh et al. 2012), exploitation of customers (Robson 2015), and not only resistance by practitioners but also by organizational principals (Beadle 2013). The priority that practitioners afford to the goods of their practice and the relationships these require have led to different types of resistance. ...
... The early years of the Big Apple Circus showed that such understanding was far from a precondition to attendance or to the institution's economic viability; but these were not Binder's animating purposes. Alongside the circus directors interviewed in Beadle's (2013) study, Binder's commitment was to the circus as a form of community and practice. Writing to the New York Times, the Chairman of the Big Apple Circus, Alan Sifka, summarised the philosophy that grounded the relationship between practitioners and audience. ...
Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the relationship between morally educative practices and the institutions that house them have been widely noted. We propose a taxonomy of the ways in which the pursuit of external goods by institutions undermines the pursuit of the internal goods of practices. These comprise substitution, where the institution replaces the pursuit of one type of good by another; frustration, where opportunities for practitioners to discover goods or develop new standards of excellence are frustrated by institutional priorities and resource allocation; and injustice, which undermines the integrity of relationships within the organization and/or with partners. These threats, though analytically distinct, are often mutually reinforcing. This conceptual contribution is illustrated both by the extant literature and by a novel context, the three-ring circus.
... Thus, although a liberal perspective acknowledges the fact of disagreement and the potential for rival conceptions of the good, it is not neutral; rather, liberal institutions, including especially for-profit firms within relatively free markets, make some ways of life and, thus, some forms of flourishing more feasible than others (Macedo, 1990: 266). As MacIntyre (2007: 227; see also Robson, 2015) rightly notes, craft-based modes of production, with their associated virtues and notions of flourishing, are made more difficult, though certainly not impossible (Beadle, 2013;Dobson, 2009;Moore, 2017;von Krogh, Haefliger, Spaeth, & Wallin, 2012), to sustain within modern society. By contrast, business, as a distinct practice (Moore, 2002) focused on integrating knowledge and resources to facilitate mutually beneficial transactions (Otteson, 2019: 17), is made more feasible within a modern, market-based society. ...
... By contrast, critics like Boatright (1995: 355-56) have argued that Aristotelian approaches have not taken sufficient account of the extent of conflicting interests within business. Future research may attempt to tease apart motivations linked with self-authorship and mutual benefit from those related to excellence within core practices (see Beadle, 2013;Conroy, 2009;Crockett, 2008;Kempster, Jackson, & Conroy, 2011;Robson, 2015;Robson & Beadle, 2019;Wilcox, 2012), considering both the specific role of the distinctive liberal values noted here in sustaining value-creating relationships with stakeholders (see Uzzi, 1997) and the extent to which individuals consciously integrate these ideals with values more at home in the Aristotelian tradition, related to excellent work. ...
This article develops a liberal theory of the virtues in business. I first articulate two key liberal values embodied within market society: self-authorship and mutual benefit. Self-authorship is a mode of autonomy given expression through the effective exercise of economic liberties. Mutual benefit involves the intentional pursuit of the well-being of one’s transaction partners within economic exchange. These values are uniquely realized, I argue, within business, conceptualized as a distinct, firm-level, social practice. More specifically, individuals realize self-authorship by purposively integrating cospecialized resources, forms of knowledge, and business functions to facilitate mutually beneficial transactions. Through their commitment to mutual benefit, businesspersons establish ongoing, cooperative relationships with customers, members of other firms, and various stakeholders more generally. These relationships are constitutive of a distinct liberal notion of the common good. The practice of business and the common good in a market society are sustained by a range of individual-level virtues. I recount these virtues and, before concluding, discuss several other theoretical implications of this account.
... In the work domain, secular calling was found to be positively correlated with work engagement [134,139], study, job or career satisfaction [76,121,[135][136][137]140], passion [134], work enjoyment [141], work hope [14,137], a sense of purpose at work [132,139,142] or work direction [119]. Dik et al. [14] reported on a positive association between a secular calling outlook and intrinsic as well as extrinsic work motivation. ...
... It is also correlated with performance [119,[122][123][124], putting extra efforts into work [117], effectiveness [117], productivity, investment and willingness to handle work challenges [119,121], devotion, service ethic, and lower absenteeism [133]. People with a secular calling orientation also show an identification with the work or with the organization [99,143], organizational and career commitment [119,140], work resilience and constancy despite a turbulent occupational environment [141] and low turnover intentions [140,143]. ...
Work on callings has burgeoned in the past 20 years, yet recent reviews exposed a lack of conceptual clarity and disagreements around its definition, components and measures. One lingering point of contention revolves around the element of prosociality: is a calling orientation primarily motivated by self-interest, prosocially orientated, or a mix of both? This conceptual paper reviews and examines the pro-self and prosocial component of a calling outlook, by examining and comparing the ways in which they feature in different calling subtypes: classic, neoclassic and modern callings. Our analysis suggests that these subtypes vary in where they are located on a pro-self-proso-cial continuum: classic callings are located on the prosocial side of the axis, modern callings are located on pro-self side of the axis, and neoclassic callings can be situated in the middle of the continuum , integrating self-orientated and other-orientated motivations. Our analysis further suggests that these calling subtypes draw on divergent value systems: classic callings are propelled by self-transcendent values, modern callings are driven by self-actualization motivations, and neoclassic callings integrate both value systems. We therefore argue that the subjective experiences of pursuing a calling within each subtype pathway differ, although they may culminate in similar outcomes. The paper offers a novel framework for analyzing people's calling that draws on their values.
... In the work domain, secular calling was found to be positively correlated with work engagement [130,135], study, job or career satisfaction [71,128,[131][132][133]136], passion [130], work enjoyment [137], work hope [14,133], and sense of purpose at work [128,135,138], or work direction [115]. Dik et al. [14] reported on a positive association between a secular calling outlook and intrinsic as well as extrinsic work motivation. ...
... It is also correlated with performance [115,[118][119][120], putting extra efforts into work [113], effectiveness [113], productivity, investment and willingness to handle work challenges [115,117], devotion, service ethic, and lower absenteeism [129]. People with a secular calling orientation also show an identification with the work or with the organization [94,139], organizational and career commitment [115,136], work resilience and constancy despite turbulent occupational environment [137], and low turnover intentions [136,139]. ...
Work on callings has burgeoned in the past 20 years, yet recent reviews exposed a lack of conceptual clarity and disagreements around its definition, components and measures. One lingering point of contention revolves around the element of prosociality: Is a calling orientation primarily motivated by self-interest, prosocially orientated, or a mix of both? This conceptual paper reviews and examines the pro-self and prosocial component of a calling outlook, by examining and comparing the ways in which they feature in different calling subtypes: Classic, neoclassic, and modern callings. Our analysis suggests that these subtypes vary in where they are located on a pro-self – prosocial continuum: Classic callings are located on the prosocial side of the axis, modern callings are located on pro-self side of the axis, and neoclassic callings can be situated in the middle of the con-tinuum, integrating self-orientated and other-orientated motivations. Our analysis further suggests that these calling subtypes draw on divergent value systems: Classic callings are propelled by self-transcendent values, modern callings are driven by self-actualization motivations, and neoclassic callings integrate both value systems. We therefore argue that the subjective experiences of pursuing a calling within each subtype pathway differ, alt-hough they may culminate in similar outcomes. The paper offers a novel framework for analyzing people’s calling that draws on their values.
... While the virtue of integrity may be distinguishable by its function to promote the same character across all contexts, the virtue of constancy may be set apart by its function to promote the same goods throughout extended periods of time (MacIntyre, 1999;Beadle, 2013;emphasis added). Constancy allows cyber leaders to be undeterred in their commitment to privacy and security and their commitment to the practice-based communities and institutions within which they pursue these internal goods. ...
... Because the virtue of constancy equips leaders as enduringly faithful and dependable servants of internal goods that are sought together within their communities of practice, it also promotes one's commitment to work as a prosocial service or calling, as opposed to the view of work as a job (Beadle, 2013). While seeing work as a job inclines one to focus more on external goods like money, per the authors of Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al., 2008), having a calling orientation to work entails a commitment to the internal goods of the work first and foremost. ...
In an effort to consider what the U.S. can do to mitigate threats to the relatively new battlefield of cyberspace, this chapter calls readers’ attention to how critical infrastructure and software breaches often happen. Next, the chapter engages with questions regarding who can help us to learn from the breaches further. An answer is provided in light of the ideal type of the ‘Cyber Leader’—defined herein as someone who demonstrates craft expertise in the practice of cybersecurity to promote the internal goods of privacy and security. A partial account of what virtues cyber leaders require is also sketched before chapter conclusions are drawn.
... Alasdair MacIntyre'nin ahlaki şemasından esinlenerek oluşturulan kavramsal çerçeve "erdemler-iyiler-pratik-kurum" şemasıdır (Moore, 2002;. Bu kavramsal çerçeve bir dizi teorik ve ampirik çalışmalara yol açmıştır (Crocket, 2008;Beadle, 2013;Robson, 2015;Beadle, 2015;Van de Ven, 2011, Sinnicks, 2018: West, 2018b Alasdair MacIntyre bir örgüt teorisyeni olmaktan ziyade ahlak alanında filozoftur. Bu yüzden, MacIntyre'nin kavramlarının doğrudan anlaşılması zordur. ...
... MacIntyre'nin ahlaki teorisine göre, özellikle dışsal iyilerin içsel iyileri bastırdığı bağlamda, kurumlar pratikleri bozar ya da çürütür (Moore, 2012). Bununla birlikte, kurumlar ve pratikler arasındaki karşılıklı ilişki oldukça komplekstir (Beadle, 2013). Bu kompleks karşılıklı ilişki Danimarka'daki üniversite kurumlarında yeni kamu yönetiminin yönlendirdiği yapısal değişimlerin akademik pratik ve kimlik üzerindeki etkisinde incelenmiştir. ...
Bu çalışmada ahlak alanında filozof olan Alasdair MacIntyre’nin iş etiği alanında yansıması olan erdem etiği perspektifinin temel kavramlarının tartışılması amaçlanmıştır. MacIntyre’nin örgütsel çalışmalardaki gelişim seyrinin izi takip edilmiş, MacIntyre’nin “erdemler-iyiler-pratik-kurum” şeması aktör, kurumsallaşma modu ve çevre bağlamında ele alınmıştır. Böylece, niçin bazı örgütlerin ahlaki pratiklerini koruyabildiği, erdemlerini geliştirebildiği ve ahlaki aktör rolünü harekete geçirebildiği daha iyi bir şekilde anlaşılabilir. Bunun yanında, örgütlerin erdemlilik haritasının ve bu haritada hangi erdemlerin olabileceğinin değerlendirmesi yapılmıştır. Bu doğrultuda, örgütsel çalışmalarla örgütsel etik çalışmalarının birbirinden kopukluğunun üstesinden gelinmesinde MacIntyre’nin erdem etiği perspektifi önerilmiştir.
... As applied ethicists of many stripes have sought to apply MacIntyre's account of the virtues to professional life, the identification of such goods that he calls "internal" (MacIntyre 2007(MacIntyre [1981) has been pivotal (Beadle 2017a), and particularly extensively debated when related to business and finance (Beadle 2017b;MacIntyre 2016). According to MacIntyre, our virtues are developed through persistence in the pursuit of these internal goods, the relationships we develop with other practitioners, and our defense of these goods and relationships from a variety of harms and dangers (Beadle 2013;Tsoukas 2018). In the absence of such practice-based contexts as those afforded by jazz bands (Banks 2012), surgical teams (Hall 2011), andmilitary units (MacIntyre 2000), our desires will remain untutored and we will fail to recognize, let alone pursue, the distinctive human excellences that enable us to achieve such goods (MacIntyre 2016). ...
... It is particularly noteworthy, then, that MacIntyre's recent work (2016) provides evidence of the necessity of sound financial management to the achievement of such goods in such contexts. This work furnishes examples of both practice-embodying institutions (Beadle 2013), such as Cummins Engines (MacIntyre 2016, 172), and of practice-based fishing communities (MacIntyre 2016, 178-80) and favelas (MacIntyre 2016, 181). In the first example, a company devoted to realizing the goods internal to engineering was able to operate without making a profit for its first eighteen years having been "financed by a local banker, W.G. Irwin, who shared [the owner's] enthusiasm for diesel engines as the key to the future of American trucking and who now invested in the company" (MacIntyre 2016, 172). ...
Finance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the pursuit of external goods, but this should encourage attempts to reform the institutionalization of finance rather than to reject its potential for virtuous business activity. This article argues that finance should be regarded as a domain-relative practice (Beabout 2012; MacIntyre 2007). Alongside management, its moral status thereby varies with the purposes it serves. Hence, when practitioners working in finance facilitate projects that create common goods, it allows them to develop virtues. This argument applies MacIntyre’s widely acknowledged account of the relationship between practices and the development of virtues while questioning some of his claims about finance. It also takes issue with extant accounts of particular financial functions that have failed to identify the distinctive goods of financial practice.
... This raises the further question of whether MacIntyrean business ethics research has implicitly adopted elements of managerial ideology (see Knight 2008). That is, by focusing on the role of managers in balancing internal goods and external goods (Beabout 2012;Beadle 2013), this work has failed to recognize the ways in which modern organizations marginalize the discourse of plain persons. ...
... 3 But researchers in business ethics, drawing upon MacIntyre's framework have typically avoided questions about wages, distributive justice, or the permanence of the hierarchy of shareholders and managers vis-àvis employees (though note the discussion of employee control in Breen 2012, and employee governance in Bernacchio and Couch 2015). While researchers have argued that participation in practices allows employees a greater degree of agency (Beadle 2013) this clearly does not extend to control of the firm's resources or its distribution of surplus. Again this is surprising, not only in the light of Rancière's claims about the police but also in terms of MacIntyre's notion of the plain person. ...
Research in business ethics has largely ignored questions of equality and dissensus, raised by theorists of radical democracy. Alasdair MacIntyre, whose work has been very influential in business ethics, has developed a novel approach to virtue ethics rooted in both Aristotelian practical philosophy and a Marxian appreciation of radical democracy. In this paper, we bring MacIntyre into conversation with Jacques Rancière and Chantal Mouffe and argue the following: first, MacIntyre’s work has significant similarities with Rancière and Mouffe, thus suggesting that MacIntyrean business ethics has the potential to address the concerns of radical democrats; second, the MacIntyrean business ethics literature has not adequately incorporated the aspects of Macntyre’s work addressing concerns regarding equality and dissensus and future work should pay more attention to these concerns.
... In the West, Aristotelian concepts have been developed by MacIntyre into a critique of the 'Enlightenment Project' (MacIntyre 2007 for example), and his work has been usefully applied to Western organizations, including business (Moore and Beadle 2006). This has led to a number of conceptual and empirical papers which either draw on or are situated within the conceptual framework MacIntyre offers 1 3 (Beadle 2013;Moore 2012;Van De Ven 2011;Von Krogh et al. 2012, for example). ...
... First, interviewees' views on organizational purpose were investigated and taken as a measure of the extent to which the internal goods generated by the organization contribute to the common good of the community. Second, the ordering and balance between the pursuit of internal and external goods were investigated by using the terms excellence and success respectively as substitutes (Beadle 2013;Crockett 2005). In this way, a measure of the virtue of the organization can be gained and represented by means of Fig. 1. ...
This paper explores whether MacIntyrean virtue ethics concepts are applicable in non-Western business contexts, specifically in SMEs in Taiwan, a country strongly influenced by the Confucian tradition. It also explores what differences exist between different polities in this respect, and specifically interprets observed differences between the Taiwanese study and previous studies conducted in Europe and Asia. Based on case study research, the findings support the generalizability of the MacIntyrean framework. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective and synthesizing this with MacIntyrean concepts, the paper explains the differences between the studies largely by reference to the Confucian tradition operating at both the micro-level within firms and at the macro-level as a means of harmonizing the potentially competing institutional logics to which firms are subject. The recent weakening of this tradition, however, suggests that increased conflict may characterize the future.
... At the interplay of this distinction between internal and external goods, Macintyre develops his practice-institutions dichotomy (Horvath 1995;Moore 2015;Wang et al. 2016). External goods are external to the practice, yet useful to sustain it: they represent the kind of goods that are generally pursued by institutions (Beadle 2013). The latter house the practice and are necessary for its survival. ...
... Critics of NPM have argued that the business world/ NPM-inspired context is somehow unsuitable for the cultivation of virtues (Beadle 2013). Along the same line, the NPM reform of university is said to reorient the telos, the purpose of the university, and, with the telos, the pursuit of the practice and the moral character of academics (Churchman 2002;Humphrey et al. 1995;Nagy and Robb 2008;Roberts 2004;Gendron 2008). ...
An extensive literature has focused on the impact of new public management (NPM) oriented structural changes on academics’ practice and identity. These critical studies have been resolute in concluding that NPM inevitably leads to a degeneration of academics’ ethos and values. Drawing from the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we argue that these previous analyses have overlooked the moral agency of the academics and their role in ‘moralizing’ and consequently shaping the ethical nature of their practices. The paper provides a new theoretical understanding of NPM-oriented reforms in light of the virtue ethics approach, thereby directing the attention to the moral character and moral agency of academics. Our analysis of interviews collected in the business department of a Danish university provides an example of how individuals have divergent ethical understandings of these structural changes and enact/resist pre-defined social roles in different ways. While in some cases the NPM agenda of the institutions has triggered internal moral conflict and a crisis of moral character, in other cases the new logic resonates with academics’ values and evaluative standards. Partially departing from the theoretical ground of MacIntyre (1981), we conclude that academics can play a crucial role in shaping the morality of NPM-oriented institutions and in transforming these settings into suitable contexts for the cultivation of virtues.
... Finally, Beadle (2016) writes that "despite the situationist critique (Doris (2002)) that human action is so responsive to situational variables as to undermine the notion of persistent character, recent research exemplifies the virtues of integrity and constancy in resisting powerful institutional drivers (Beadle (2013), Robson (2015))." This argumentation suggests that societal virtues are not going to be crowded out by the introduction of tontines. ...
Tontines, a form of financial arrangement in which a group of participants is pooled together and receives periodic payments that increase as other participants pass away, raise unique ethical considerations that warrant in-depth examination. This paper explores the ethical dimensions surrounding the practice of mortality risk sharing specifically in the context of tontines. Through a comprehensive analysis of existing literature and ethical frameworks, this study investigates the ethical implications of tontines as a mechanism for sharing mortality risks and provides policy recommendations to minimize ethical concerns.
... Alasdair MacIntyre has had a greater impact within business ethics than any other living virtue ethicist (Ferrero & Sison, 2014). His work has been drawn on in a variety of contexts, such as accounting (West, 2018), business (Bernacchio & Couch, 2022;Moore, 2002), circus arts (Beadle, 2013;Beadle & Sinnicks, 2023), corporate governance (Bernacchio & Couch, 2015), finance (Rocchi et al., 2021;Sison et al., 2019), healthcare (Toon, 2014), journalism (Borden, 2013), leadership (Sinnicks, 2018), management (Beabout, 2012;Dawson & Bartholomew, 2003;Potts, 2020), organisational learning (Halliday & Johnsson, 2010), public relations (Leeper & Leeper, 2001), retail (Fernando & Moore, 2015), risk management (Asher & Wilcox, 2022), software development (Bolade-Ogunfodun et al., 2022;von Krogh et al., 2012), education (MacAllister, 2016;Sison & Redín, 2023), and many others. ...
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 significant 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.
... This speaks to fundamental concerns of the microfoundations perspective (Barney and Felin 2013, p. 139). Beadle (2013;see Tsoukas 2018a, b) offers one example of this when discussing circuses. Drawing upon interviews with a number of circus directors, Beadle argues that circuses comprise a range of practices involving distinct conceptions of excellence, which are often treated as, at least in part, intrinsically valuable modes of activity (see Whittington 2019). ...
MacIntyre’s distinctive version of practice theory has already influenced strategy as practice research but his approach has further relevance to the field. The MacIntyrean approach further focuses attention on joint production as an organization-wide practice that potentially encompasses and integrates sub-organizational practices. It also highlights the way that ordinary organization members engage in modes of praxis in order to integrate productive practices in the service of morally salient, organizational goals, facilitating collaboration and long-term value creation, illustrating how participation in joint production shapes members’ identities beyond that derived from sub-organizational, productive practices. As such, this approach offers new insights into the nature of the praxis, practices, and practitioners that shape processes of strategizing within organizations., This approach also furthers the integration of the practical and critical strands of strategy as practice research and provides insights into the way it can be integrated with other research in strategy.
... Neo-Aristotelians identify two more reasons that integrity is important: first, a lack of integrity results in an inability fully to exercise one's moral agency, and second, a life without integrity has an unintelligible narrative that cannot be ordered toward eudaimonia (MacIntyre 2016, 228-29;2007, 205;1999b). People possessing the virtues of appropriate narrative disunity and overall narrative goodness pick the right projects and pursue them with constancy (Beadle 2013;MacIntyre 1999b, 318); one could therefore characterize integrity from a virtue-ethical perspective as a propensity to take one's life seriously (Cox, La Caze, and Levine 2014). ...
We consider the problem of moral disjunction in professional and business activities from a virtue-ethical perspective. Moral disjunction arises when the behavioral demands of a role conflict with personal morality; it is an important problem because most people in modern societies occupy several complex roles that can cause this clash to occur. We argue that moral disjunction, and the psychological mechanisms that people use to cope with it, are problematic because they make it hard to pursue virtue and to live with integrity. We present role coadunation as a process with epistemic and behavioral aspects that people can use to resolve moral disjunction with integrity. When role coadunation is successful, it enables people to live virtuous lives of appropriate narrative disunity and to honor their identity-conferring commitments. We show how role coadunation can be facilitated by interpretive communities and discuss the emergence and ideal features of those communities.
... Character virtues lead individuals towards certain behaviours that are generated through habituation (Sherman, 1989). Through this habituation, character virtues provide behavioural consistency (Alzola, 2012;Beadle, 2013;Frank, 1988;MacIntyre, 1985MacIntyre, , 2006. Learning through practice, individuals will approach practical matters effectively. ...
Military leaders face ethical and moral dilemmas daily that span the conflict continuum from large-scale combat operations to security cooperation and deterrence. In 2011, the Australian Chief of Defence Force (CDF), Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, called for values to guide leadership. Although the desire to develop military leaders who make decisions in a virtue-based culture is a noble ideal, it is enormously complex to enact. Although the Australian Defence Force (ADF) seeks to build a values-based culture and leadership founded on ethical practices, there is little guidance on what values-based culture is and how this military ethic is practiced. This thesis sympathetically confronts the challenge posed by the former CDF to develop values-based leadership. While endorsing the sentiment, this thesis has identified significant impediments to such an ideal. Applying post-structural discourse analysis to a vignette study and interview study of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) officers revealed ambiguities, contradictions, and incommensurability in practising ethical leadership. It was clear within both studies that the higher ranks used more process-based and legalistic reasoning linked with their bureaucratic subject position. In contrast, junior officers were more inclined to identify the moral complexity of decision-making, including cognitive and moral situational awareness, and revealed more complex subject positions. This exposed an internal dialectic between personal agency and organisational power. It was concluded that the Chief's likely intention was for a virtue-based, not values-based leadership. This research has unearthed significant concerns that must be addressed to enhance the likelihood of achieving this desirable ideal. These concerns include dealing with the physicality of the body, the multiple constructed subject, and the inevitable and most irreconcilable dialectic of personal agency, which is essential to values/virtue-based leadership and organisational power. Implications are provided for future defence force, and potentially other hierarchical bureaucratic rules-based organisations,' virtuous leadership. Adopting moral agency based on virtuous character will require rules-based organisations, such as the military, to contend with the dialectic between codified and enforceable processes and moral agency.
... Character virtues lead individuals towards certain behaviours that are generated through habituation (Sherman, 1989). Through this habituation, character virtues provide behavioural consistency (Alzola, 2012;Beadle, 2013;Frank, 1988;MacIntyre, 1985MacIntyre, , 2006. Learning through practice, individuals will approach practical matters effectively. ...
Military leaders face ethical and moral dilemmas daily that span the conflict continuum from large-scale combat operations to security cooperation and deterrence. In 2011, the Australian Chief of Defence Force (CDF), Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, called for values to guide leadership. Although the desire to develop military leaders who make decisions in a virtue-based culture is a noble ideal, it is enormously complex to enact. Although the Australian Defence Force (ADF) seeks to build a values-based culture and leadership founded on ethical practices, there is little guidance on what values-based culture is and how this military ethic is practiced. This thesis sympathetically confronts the challenge posed by the former CDF to develop values-based leadership. While endorsing the sentiment, this thesis has identified significant impediments to such an ideal. Applying post-structural discourse analysis to a vignette study and interview study of Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) officers revealed ambiguities, contradictions, and incommensurability in practising ethical leadership. It was clear within both studies that the higher ranks used more process-based and legalistic reasoning linked with their bureaucratic subject position. In contrast, junior officers were more inclined to identify the moral complexity of decision-making, including cognitive and moral situational awareness, and revealed more complex subject positions. This exposed an internal dialectic between personal agency and organisational power. It was concluded that the Chief's likely intention was for a virtue-based, not values-based leadership. This research has unearthed significant concerns that must be addressed to enhance the likelihood of achieving this desirable ideal. These concerns include dealing with the physicality of the body, the multiple constructed subject, and the inevitable and most irreconcilable dialectic of personal agency, which is essential to values/virtue-based leadership and organisational power. Implications are provided for future defence force, and potentially other hierarchical bureaucratic rules-based organisations,' virtuous leadership. Adopting moral agency based on virtuous character will require rules-based organisations, such as the military, to contend with the dialectic between codified and enforceable processes and moral agency.
... While this has been taken up in theoretical contributions to the literature (e.g. Beadle, 2002;Knight, 2017), applications of MacIntyre's work have typically sought to identify and explore examples of work where manipulative and emotivistic management is absent, or at least mitigated by commitment to goods internal to practices (Beadle, 2013;Moore, 2012a). However, the organisation at the heart of this study provides an illustration of the consequences of an indifference to, and at times an apparent unawareness of, internal goods. ...
Introduction
This paper explores the vulnerability of practice-like activities to institutional domination.
Methods
This paper offers an ethnographic case study of a UK-based engineering company in the aftermath of its acquisition, focusing in particular on its R&D unit.
Results
The Lab struggled to maintain its practice-based work in an institutional environment that emphasized the pursuit of external goods.
Discussion
We use this case to develop two arguments. Firstly, we illustrate the concept of “practice-like” activities and explore their vulnerability to institutional domination. Secondly, in light of the style of management on display after the takeover, we offer further support to MacIntyre's critique of management. Finally, based on the empirical data we reflect on the importance of organizational culture, as well as friendship and the achievement of a common good in business organizations for these kinds of activities.
... Research from the field of MacIntyrean Business Ethics has explored the connection between poor management culture and the marginalization of practices (Beadle, 2002;Moore, 2008;Sinnicks, 2018). Considerable effort has been made to resuscitate a positive ideal of management and the manager in Alasdair MacIntyre's terms that would promote practices rather than marginalize them (Beadle, 2013;Moore, 2017;Potts, 2020;Sison and Redín, 2022). In his latest work, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, MacIntyre (2016) has spoken approvingly of these hopeful efforts. ...
In this article, we engage with a theory of management advanced by MacIntyrean scholars of business ethics and organization studies to develop an account of “chronic moral injury” in the workplace. In contrast to what we call “acute moral injury,” which focuses on grave, traumatic events, chronic moral injury results from poor institutional form—when an individual desiring excellence must function within a vicious institution that impedes the acquisition of virtues and marginalizes practices. In other words, chronic moral injury occurs when practitioners who pursue excellence in their practice work within corrupt or malformed organizations. To demonstrate this point, we recount the events associated with the rise and fall of the biotech company, Theranos. This case study advances an empirical contribution to MacIntyrean studies by demonstrating how chronic moral injury can happen under such conditions and what the negative consequences may entail for workers.
... By learning how to excel at them, we build our character and cultivate virtues. In this respect, practices are educative as they school us in virtues. 1 There has been a growing body of scholarship on the importance of practices thus understood in the fields of education, management, business ethics and politics (Beabout, 2013(Beabout, , 2020Beadle, 2013;Bernacchio & Knight, 2020;Dunne, 2003;Knight, 2007;MacIntyre & Dunne, 2002, to list but a few). What has not been discussed is whether literature is a practice and, if it is, what role it plays in educating us in the virtues. ...
Following the definition of ‘practice’ conceptualised in After Virtue, the paper argues that literature as creative writing and reading is a MacIntyrean practice. Literature's key internal goods are spelled out: the common aesthetic enjoyment achieved by the writer's ability to create a truthful fictional narrative the reader is drawn into and the expansion of our narrative identities and self‐awareness. Against the conceptual background, the paper asks in which sense can we say that literature as a practice schools us in the virtues. Thomas Mann's work and life are discussed. It argues that Mann's work is both a rich source for us to understand 20th‐century German and European bourgeois societies and an ideological obfuscation of such understanding. Drawing on his early conservatism, the paper shows how the practice of writing and Mann's Nietzschean self‐assertion allowed him to become a politically engaged writer able to question himself and his culture.
... He says, "so long as we share the standards and purposes characteristic of practices, we define our relationship to each other. . . by reference to standards of truthfulness and trust, so we define them too by reference to standards of justice and of courage" (see MacIntyre, 2007, p. 192;Beadle, 2013). That is, within practices participants must relate to each other in terms of the virtues, if not, they will, in effect, no longer be participating in the practice. ...
Alasdair MacIntyre has developed a theory of virtue ethics that is closely integrated with sociology and organization studies. While rejecting reductive views of the virtues, MacIntyre appeals to their functional role in facilitating collaboration as a basis for justifying their normative requirements. This raises the question of how agents within cooperative contexts come to appreciate their intrinsic value. I argue that MacIntyre's account of the virtues is undergirded by an implicit personalist moral psychology. To make this evident, I draw upon the account of moral psychology developed by Michael Tomasello, who argues that a sense of moral obligation is generated when persons engage in collective action. Tomasello's account complements MacIntyre's by explaining how participation in social practices generates a sense of moral obligation but it does not address the problem of relativism. As a result, it does not fully explain how and why participants in practices come to see themselves as bound by moral norms since the threat of relativism undermines the idea that moral norms are binding. This limitation further illustrates the role of a personalist moral psychology in MacIntyre's work: through the experience of cultural breakdown persons are able to view themselves as engaged in a shared inquiry concerning the good that transcends any specific culture. This provides the basis for a self-conscious sense of moral obligation that is not threatened by relativism.
... If work as a practice is possible, it is often so by resisting the corrupting power of institutions, i.e., the predominance of private corporations' institutional-effectiveness-seeking over internal goods (Knight 2007). This, in fact, reveals a permanent conflict in private corporations in that modern managementas defined by Weber's free-context approach-cannot resist corruption (Beadle 2013). ...
Alasdair MacIntyre´s criticism of Modernity essentially refers to the problem of compartmentalization, which restricts the possibility of achieving excellence in an integral lifestyle. Among other reasons, compartmentalization is especially derived from an insular valorization of the workplace based on a reductionist understanding of productivity in terms of mere efficiency. Aimed at overcoming the moral confusion derived from the overestimation of technical, skilled productivity and individualistic cooperation in private corporations, this article offers a thicker explanation of MacIntyre’s theory of productive work in light of a narrative approach that opens up the possibility of achieving standards of excellence in modern production. To do so, it follows MacIntyre’s understanding of productivity in terms of craftsmanship by explaining what excellence in production is and the role it plays in achieving unity of life and excellence in modern corporations based on two criteria derived from a historical definition of production, namely, craftsmanship and collegiality.
... A number of ethicists have highlighted particular virtues as especially pertinent to business: Newton (2005: 221) argues that business people 'more than others, are asked to develop... integrity, caution, patience and perseverance ';McCloskey (2006) holds that trustworthiness and diligence are the central business virtues; Solomon (1998) claims that all managers require compassion and honesty; while Beadle (2013) argues that the virtue of constancy can counter some of the corrupting pressures often encountered within institutions. The present study aimed to put such claims to the test, and to discover which virtues (or character strengths) are regarded as being most important by students and practitioners in business and finance. ...
... If both practice and institution recognise the priority of inner goods, then it is possible to start the discussion about those goods and approach them as a whole working community. Ron Beadle presented five years' longitudinal qualitative research among the managers in UK circuses that that kind of ideal life is not utopian (Beadle 2013). He noticed that circus managers stayed in their positions even in periods when it was very difficult for circuses to survive, believing in what the circus has to offer made them stay, even without financial rewards. ...
Aristotelove misli o hrabrosti u Nikomahovoj etici i dalje su najučestalije štivo rasprava o vrlini. Međutim, ako primijenimo razmatranje o vrlinama Alasdaira MacIntyrea, postavlja se pitanje o tome raspolažemo li u suvremenim liberalnim društvima tek fragmentima drevnog pojma hrabrosti. Slika hrabrosti izmijenila se. Možemo govoriti o aristotelovskim uvidima i pričati o srednjovječnim vitezovima, ali sadašnja su tradicija i karakter njena morala ti što oblikuju naše razumijevanje i korištenje vrlina. MacIntyreovski trostruki pristup vrlinama, uzimajući u obzir a) praksu, b) pripovjedno jedinstvo života i c) tradiciju, otkriva dva suparnička pojma hrabrosti: vrlina hrabrosti izvrsnosti i vrlinu hrabrosti učinkovitosti. Koja će prevladati ovisi o tome kakvu ćemo hrabrost usvojiti kao našu drugu prirodu navike.
... These interventions at best can discern one's calling by matching and connecting one's job with prosocial-oriented purpose and explore ways to live out their calling through facilitating individuals to craft their jobs and make it more meaningful and prosocial (Bunderson & Thompson, 2009;Schabram & Maitlis, 2017;Tims, Derks, & Bakker, 2016). Leaders can help members develop a calling orientation by fostering a climate that encourages employees to explore and expose their authentic selves and identify their full potential in a climate of mutual respect and genuine civility (Beadle, 2013;Lips-Wiersma & Morris, 2009;Park, Lee, Lim, & Sohn, 2018).Thus, based on above discussion, we come up with following proposition, Proposition 1: The stronger the calling orientation within the organization, the more meaningful climate the organization adopts. ...
This is a conceptual paper where for meaningful organization identification, we used a structured, systematic technique inspired by Gioia et al. (2013) methodology for achieving qualitative rigor in inductive research to analyse the various usages of the concept of "meaningfulness" in the literature. On the other hand, appreciative inquiry as an OD intervention is proposed as it is particularly well suited to the challenge of creating and developing a meaningful workplace. Systematic review of literature through Gioia methodology helped us find three attributes, we propose meaningful organizations that can be identified by either having or not having one, two, or all of the three attributes i.e. Calling, Eudaimonia and Faith-based spirituality. Our study directly and indirectly focuses on how leaders can develop meaningful organizations. On the one hand, this study alerts leaders to the potential of getting employees fully engaged in work.
... Indeed, a number of ethicists have singled out some particular virtues as especially pertinent to business: Newton argues that business people 'more than others, are asked to develop . . . integrity, caution, patience and persever- ance' (2005, p. 221); McCloskey (2006) holds that trustworthiness and dili- gence are the central business virtues; Solomon (1998) claims that all managers require compassion and honesty, while Beadle (2013) argues that the virtue of constancy can counter some of the corrupting pressures often encountered in contemporary companies and institutions. ...
... But what name may be given to such a practice? While the answer to this question may seem rather obvious, MacIntyre denies "management" the status of practice, seeing that management is an expression of the very patterns of individualism that Bellah et al. also problematize (Beadle, 2013;Sinnicks, 2017). However, as Sinnicks suggests, "while management is almost certainly not a practice in MacIntyre's sense, institutionally sustaining practice-based communities is a practice-a practice which MacIntyre names politics" (Sinnicks, 2014, p. 230). ...
This paper extends an ongoing discussion about establishing a sharper way to conduct ethical investigations into managerial virtue. It does so by relying on Alasdair MacIntyre's moral philosophy in place of those more dominant approaches taken by scholars who make up the field of positive social science. A connection is drawn herein between a MacIntyrean “narrative approach” to investigating managerial virtue and the idea of “work as a calling.” Specifically, it will be argued that the MacIntyrean‐influenced idea of “work as a calling” provides a substantive moral vision that supports an understanding of how virtuous managers ought to narrate their primary workplace motivations. Ultimately, virtuous managers fulfill a “political calling” to support and sustain (a) good work, (b) the good of individual lives, and (c) the common good of communities that their organization reaches. To do this, they must rely on the “shepherd virtue” of practical wisdom (phronesis). Practical wisdom aids virtuous managers’ thinking about achieving the ends of their “calling” as well as any necessary course‐corrections that ought to be made toward the better achievement of those good and worthy ends.
... Practical wisdom is described as the virtue by which the person uses intellect to excel at: (1) deliberating on what to do while dealing with specific issues; (2) showing good judgment in each action; and (3) putting decisions into action. The analytical framework found in MacIntyre-practices, institutions, tradition, community-based practices, internal and external goods-has been suggested for understanding the moral dimension in organizations (Beabout, 2012;Beadle, 2013;Moore & Grandy, 2016). MacIntyre (2007) defines practices and their internal goods and examines how individuals who adopt such practices coordinate their several roles . ...
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.
... Beyond such partially instrumental considerations, the account developed in this article, by articulating the manner in which commitment to employee rights are implicit within productive practices, serves to further reframe the practice of management. Accordingly, management can be understood as a higher-order practice centered upon both the promotion of the goods of core practices (Beabout 2012;Beadle 2013) and on the flourishing of practitioners, insofar as this is reflected in respect for employee rights. MacIntyre (1994b, p. 288) notes that members of practices, which includes managers (Beabout 2012), "can only succeed" in asking themselves "'What is my good?'" in "company with those others who participate with them and with each other in various practices, and who also participate with them in the common life of their whole community." ...
Rights claims are ubiquitous in modernity. Often expressed when relatively weaker agents assert claims against more powerful actors, especially against states and corporations, the prominence of rights claims in organizational contexts creates a challenge for virtue-based approaches to business ethics, especially perspectives employing MacIntyre’s practices–institutions schema since MacIntyre has long been a vocal critic of the notion of human rights. In this article, I argue that employee rights can be understood at a basic level as rights conferred by the rules constitutive of practices. As such, employee rights correspond to the obligations of practitioners to treat fellow practitioners according to the standards of excellence and requirements of justice. Thus, one way that managers can ensure that their core practice is well-functioning is to recognize employee rights. One implication of this argument is that managers should adopt a more positive stance toward labor unions, insofar as they are a key way for employees to ensure that their voice is heard, and their rights respected.
... Constancy and humility are clear examples of these. Constancy is always needed because the achievement of the goods internal to every practice requires of the agent an ongoing commitment to the pursuit of the goods of the practice in such a way that it be sustained (Beadle 2013). Humility, in turn, is necessary because practitioners will have to submit to the standards of excellence and the best achievements available at the moment, which implies admitting one's own subordination to experts within the practice (Keat 2000). ...
... Managers are in charge of the institutional level of an organisation, respectively supplying practices with the external goods, also requiring a bal-ance between the claims of internal and external goods in organisational life (Beadle, 2013). If this so, then the organisation should operate as a practice-based community, in which practices and the virtues they care for are characteristically protected from the distorting potential of external goods (Beadle and Konyot, 2006). ...
Paper is divided into two parts. The first contains two philosophical discussions about comprehension of courage and the second focuses on the findings in an empirical study with care home managers about the virtue of courage. First discussion revolves around the question whether the virtue of courage is expressed a) only in life–threatening situations or is it a virtue trained and exemplified in b) everyday life settings, while the second emphasises the difference between i) courage of efficiency as a skill and ii) courage of excellence as a virtue. Arguments here support a vision of courage as the virtue of excellence expressed in everyday life settings. The second part of the paper highlights a new perspective of courage with regards to the notion of care towards the aim of the courageous endeavour. The ‘courage of care’ supports the idea that the courage practised as the virtue of excellence aims to develop the moral character of the actor fundamentally outside of the life–threatening situation. Care for the self, other people, animals and intangible moral principles inspire us to do brave deeds. Thus, by accepting Alasdair MacIntyre’s statements that a) in the times of the peace managers represent moral idols and b) idea that the notion of courage should be closely related to the practice of care and compassion, the research continued with the interviews with the care home managers in Kent county in England. Conversations with care home managers released further insights into how care and compassion influence the understanding of the virtue of courage.
This study investigates the phenomenon of founder CEOs playing an inordinately crucial role in achieving firm innovation performance. While existing research compares the effectiveness of founder and non-founder CEOs, the reasons behind founder CEOs’ advantage in achieving high innovation performance remain unclear. Building on upper echelons theory, this study explores micro-foundations underlying this phenomenon. We propose that CEO founder status positively influences innovation performance through the application of ambidextrous firm strategy, with such effects being moderated by the extent to which CEOs experience a sense of calling for their work. Based on data from 200 small- and medium-sized high-tech enterprises in China, we find that founder, as compared to non-founder, CEOs have a more positive relationship with innovation performance, mediated by ambidextrous firm strategy, and this effect is strengthened by calling for their work. These findings provide new insights regarding how and when a ‘founder advantage’ is most likely to be achieved regarding innovation performance. Moreover, by focusing on Chinese firms, this study responds to calls for expanding management research beyond Western contexts, enriching our understanding of founder CEOs and innovation in diverse cultural settings.
The Consumer Choice Action Plan: background and
context
Financial decisions play a crucial role in our daily lives. In our
modern world, it is essential to understand how consumers behave
when faced with an important financial choice. Consumers must
confront important financial choices even though they may not
have the time, knowledge or motivation to make the right decision,
and people are often influenced by unconscious and irrational
factors.
In practice, for example, when consumers are presented with several options they will often choose the middle one, regardless of the price and features of the other alternatives. They put off creating a savings buffer until the refrigerator and washing machine both
break down at once, and they wait till the end of their current mortgage period before looking up information on interest-only mortgage options. Left to themselves, consumers do not always make the most rational decisions in their own interest. Many people see financial matters as a means, rather than an end in itself: they don’t want a mortgage – they want a house. They don’t want insurance – they just want to enjoy their skiing holiday. The financial side is a tool, a necessary evil, something they just have to do so they can get what they want.
This is not a new insight; as the 2019 report by the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) put it, “Knowing what to do is not enough”. The partners in the Consumer Choices Action Plan have always aimed to support consumers to make better
financial decisions. We want to publicise these insights and practices throughout the financial sector so that all stakeholders can take advantage of them, and so we can achieve our ultimate goal of promoting healthy financial decisions through behavioural insights.
This publication arose from the Consumer Choices Action Plan, a collaboration involving more than 50 partners and individuals from diverse backgrounds in the financial sector.
The initiatives in the Consumer Choices Action Plan are divided into five key themes, each dealing with challenges for promoting good consumer choices:
1 Financial literacy: Consumers need to be able to take action when their financial situation calls for it. How can we encourage consumers to be proactive and seek help as soon as they need it?
2 Investing: Investing has evolved. Instead of involving a physical visit to the bank, now
people mostly invest online, and often without the help of advisers. Do consumers really understand the risks?
3 Saving: Ideally, consumers should have a savings buffer to deal with unexpected financial setbacks. How can we encourage consumers to set aside money for a buffer when they have the means to do so?
4 Borrowing and leasing: Another area of finance that’s largely moved online is the world of loans and lease agreements, and again it’s less common for a financial advisor to be involved. When it comes to long-term, important financial commitments, consumers need to make the best choices for their financial situation. How can behavioural insights help them do that?
5 Financial sustainability: Although consumers are keen to use sustainable financial products and energy-saving measures, factors such as inertia, habit and a short-term focus still get in the way. What behavioural interventions will help people actually take the plunge? The structure of this publication
As you read further into this publication, the information becomes more in-depth. That said, each chapter can also be read on its own, so you can feel free to flip through and read only the parts that are relevant to you.
Chapters 2 and 3 focus on practical results from the Consumer Choice Action Plan. In Chapter 2, we take the specific results from the Action Plan’s partner organisations and make them easily accessible to other stakeholders. Chapter 3 combines findings from
Action Plan studies and experiments with the very latest knowledge and insights from financial behavioural science.
Chapter 4 offers background information on various psychological mechanisms and some associated behavioural models. We want to inform and inspire people who work in the financial industry with an overview of a wide range of psychological mechanisms that impact financial behaviour. Psychological mechanisms have a big effect on the way people make financial decisions. The literature uses various different terms to discuss these mechanisms, from ‘interventions’, ‘techniques’ and ‘heuristics’ to ‘biases’, ‘illusions’, ‘nudges’ and ‘boosts’. This chapter explains specific mechanisms and models based on these terms and gives real-world examples.
Chapter 5 provides an overview of some of the theoretical ideas and scientific traditions behind the various ways of influencing people’s behaviour. We use this overview to go into more detail on what we now know about behavioural change. In this chapter, we dive into
the ocean of scientific theories on behavioural change and identify different types of behavioural models. We take you on a journey from Aristotle’s virtue theory to Seligman’s positive psychology; from Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ to Thaler’s nudges; and from Kant’s deontology to Cialdini’s theory of influence. As well as exploring these three main schools of thought, in this chapter we also identify procedural and mixed models.
This publication was produced in association with experts from finance, government and science. Insights gained from the literature reinforce and enhance the results of the Consumer Choices Action Plan. We believe this blend of practical knowledge and scientific
expertise represents a valuable contribution to the work of encouraging the people of the Netherlands to make good financial choices.
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.
Consistent with the idea that business ethics is a form of applied ethics, many virtue ethicists make use of an extant (pure) moral philosophy framework, namely, one developed by Alasdair MacIntyre. In doing so, these authors have refined MacIntyre’s work, but have never really challenged it. In here questioning, and developing an alternative to, the MacIntyrean orthdoxy, I illustrate the merit of business ethicists adopting a broader philosophical perspective focused on constructing (new) theory. More specifically—and in referring to action sports (e.g., mountain biking, snowboarding)—I propose that an external good motive is not only much more consistent with virtuous practical excellence than MacIntyreans acknowledge, but that such a motive is fundamental to identifying and explaining how practices can be deliberately created (by businesses). Consequently, and in stark contrast with MacIntyre’s deeply pessimistic outlook on modern business and society, I propose that those who value practices might celebrate our current era.
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the ethical responses of the fashion industry to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic when the entire world was shocked by the rapid spread of the virus. The authors describe lessons from emergency ethics of care in the fashion industry during the initial months of COVID-19, which can assist fashion managers in improving ethical decisions in future operations.
Design/methodology/approach
Rapid qualitative research methods were employed by conducting real-time, in-depth interviews with key informants from multinational fashion companies operating in Spain, a severely affected region. A content analysis of news articles published during the first months of 2020 was conducted.
Findings
Five critical disruptions in the fashion industry were identified: (1) changes in public needs, (2) transportation and distribution backlogs, (3) defective and counterfeit supplies, (4) stakeholder relationships at stake and (5) managers' coping challenges. Additionally, five business survival responses with a strong ethics of care component were identified, implemented by some fashion companies to mitigate the damage: (1) adapting production for public well-being, (2) enhancing the flexibility of logistic networks, (3) emphasizing quality and innovation, (4) reinventing stakeholder collaborations and (5) practicing responsible leadership.
Originality/value
Despite the well-documented controversies surrounding unethical practices within the fashion industry, even during COVID-19, our findings inform managers of the potential and capability of fashion companies to operate more responsibly. The lessons learned can guide fashion companies' operations in a post-pandemic society. Furthermore, they can address other grand challenges, such as natural disasters, geopolitical conflicts and climate change.
Employees interact with animals in a myriad of ways in the context of work. Herein, we seek to catalog this multiplex phenomenon in order to gain theoretical insights. Our article unfolds in four parts. First, we conduct an interdisciplinary review from which we develop a typology of four employee-animal interactions: working for, with, around, and on animals. Second, we outline the current research for each discrete category. Third, we consider key divergent experiences (e.g., the uniquely gendered nature of each) and convergent themes (e.g., all animal work is emotional and hierarchical) across the typology. Fourth, we supplement our review with two metasyntheses of other workplace team interactions—employee-employee and employee-machine/artificial intelligence interactions—to highlight how the study of human-animal interactions can address current conundrums in the organizational domain. We do so to demonstrate that considerations of employee-animal interactions can offer theoretical value to scholars, including those who may not have an inherent interest in the phenomenon. We complement theoretical extensions with suggestions for future research on core management topics, including humanizing workplaces, the future of work, and team collaboration.
Amidst the exponentially growing interest in "work as a calling," contemporary discussions have taken an individualistic turn away from the earlier prosocial character that once marked this orientation to work. Now, discussions about "work as a calling" mostly prioritize personal fulfilment via the pursuit of deeply "meaningful work."
Excessive focus has been placed on the experience of meaningful work in ways that are detached from the genuinely good workplace ends that allow for such a meaningful experience to ensue. This book provides a novel paradigm for reimagining the idea of "work as a calling," which serves as a corrective that better supports the individuals’ search for meaning and their contribution to the common good, arguing that the two go hand in hand, and so they cannot be separated. Thus, the key idea captured herein is not simply that scholars have misunderstood the very notion of "work as a calling" by implying that it is essentially just synonymous with meaningful work, but, even more importantly, the point is that scholars and laypersons alike often fail to realize how true meaning ensues as a result of a genuine concern for contributing to human flourishing and the common good through one’s work.
Providing a new perspective on "work as a calling" by examining the issue from the perspective of morality rather than self-actualization, this volume will be of interest to researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the fields of business ethics, management, leadership, and organizational studies.
Alasdair MacIntyre’s title, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (AV), is a thought‐provoking, influential, ground‐breaking title that contributes much to business ethics studies. However, to date, there has not been any systematic and comprehensive study that has examined AV’s overall impact on the business ethics landscape. This study thus offers specific and rich information about AV’s realized contribution to business ethics over the past 20 years. First, using citation concept analysis (CCA), which refers to a content analysis of statements surrounding in‐text citations of AV in articles referring to the primary source, we reveal which AV contents have been either frequently cited or rarely cited. Our findings indicate that although researchers have cited considerably rich and diverse content from AV, there remains a discrepancy for citation contexts when compared to AV’s original content related to MacIntyre’s multi‐level virtue conceptualization. Secondly, using citation depth analysis for how citations of AV spread through a primary source in one of the three categories, for example, limited, intermediate, and comprehensive, we find that AV content has been increasingly cited in both an intermediate and a comprehensive way. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this offered study in the management and organization studies.
No link https://linktr.ee/virtudes é possível ler uma amostra do livro e conhecer seu sumário, bem como verificar onde adquirir o exemplar físico e o ebook.
This paper investigates some of the information conditions necessary for the preservation of police officers’ individual and collective moral agency, particularly the virtues of integrity and constancy, which can diminish in markedly rule-based, informationally impoverished, or corrupt work environments. We focus on one particular work from philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who explores the threat of social structures to moral agency by using the hypothetical case of J whose job it was to make the trains run on time while avoiding questions about the cargo. J’s supervisors and the broader social structure he occupies inhibited his capacity to be a full moral agent. In order to illustrate the relevance and application of MacIntyre’s argument to policing and the good justice, including the wider philosophical and economic problems of compartmentalization of moral agency, we draw from his framework to consider our own case study in policing inspired by a challenging era within the recent history of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (USA). Implications for leadership and management in policing are discussed.
The book develops an account of virtue which, in a contemporary version, foregrounds the idea that virtue is an exercise of practical intelligence (ideally, a form of practical wisdom) similar to the practical exercise of a skill. A practical skill is acquired through experience and habituation, but the result is not routine but an educated and intelligent application of thinking in action. This way of thinking of virtue shows how virtue does not conform to modern expectations of 'moral reasoning' and enables us to see how many contemporary objections to virtue as it figures in ethical theories misfire. The book does not present an ethics of virtue, but shows how the account can illuminatingly distinguish among different varieties of virtue ethics, depending on the conception of the good to which they are committed. The book also shows how an account of virtue which emphasizes its structural likeness to a practical skill fits a theory of eudaimonism, which takes us to have the aim, over our lives as wholes, of achieving happiness or flourishing.
This paper considers the question of whether journalism can be considered to be a social practice. After considering some of the goods of journalism the paper moves to investigate how external goods can corrupt the practice and make it somewhat ineffective. The paper therefore looks to consider ways in which the goods claimed have been better served in ‘radical’ journalism. Bristol Independent Media Centre is then evaluated as an example of an active project in which the goods of community are pursued through an inclusive form of participatory journalism.
This paper contextualizes before summarizing a conceptual framework for virtue ethics in organizations that has been developed by drawing upon the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. Conducting empirical work with this framework is at an embryonic stage and so, having discussed methodological issues, the paper reports on findings from a longitudinal case study-based research project into the private equity-owned organization Alliance Boots. It demonstrates the applicability of the conceptual approach and hence the presence of practices and virtues even within capitalist business organizations. It makes theoretical advances particularly in the relationship between internal and external goods. It proposes a mapping for virtue in organizations and uses this to conduct an organizational analysis of Alliance Boots and its predecessor organizations. The paper thus makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to our knowledge in the area of applied virtue ethics.
Although Alasdair MacIntyre has criticized both the market economy and applied ethics, his writing has generated significant discussion within the literature of business ethics and organizational studies. In this article, I extend this conversation by proposing the use of MacIntyre's account of the virtues to conceive of management as a domain-relative practice that requires and develops practical wisdom. I proceed in four steps. First, I explain MacIntyre's account of the virtues in light of his definition of a "practice." Second, I examine his distinction between "practices" and "institutions." Third, I explain what I mean by a "domain-relative practice" and defend the claim that it is helpful to conceive of management in those terms. Finally, I highlight several features of practical wisdom as a virtue developed in and integral to standards of excellence within management as a domain-relative practice.
This article initiates a long overdue discussion regarding purpose within leadership, an integral yet often taken-for-granted and subsumed function of leadership. Specifically, the article problematicizes the manifestation of purpose in everyday organizational leadership practices through the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. The article argues that purpose requires greater attention if it is to become manifest in both the corporate and the societal orientations of leaders in organizations. In support of this argument we identify the implications of singularly focusing upon corporate purpose to the exclusion of societal purpose against the backdrop of the credit crunch aftermath. The article develops a theoretical argument that, when conceptualized as a process of sensemaking, leadership can provide an opportunity for notions of societal purpose to come to the fore in countervailing balance with corporate purposes. We conclude by suggesting a research agenda centred on further explicating and developing the idea of leadership as purpose.
We present evidence suggesting that most people see their work as either a Job (focus on financial rewards and necessity rather than pleasure or fulfillment; not a major positive part of life), a Career (focus on advancement), or a Calling (focus on enjoyment of fulfilling, socially useful work). Employees at two work sites (n= 196) with a wide range of occupations from clerical to professional were unambiguous in seeing their work primarily in terms of a Job, Career, or Calling. Differences in respondents' relations to their work could not be reduced to demographic or occupational differences; an homogenous subset of 24 college administrative assistants were, like the total sample of respondents, distributed evenly across Job, Career, and Calling.
This paper defines the circus as an institutionalized questioning of forms of stability and classification, and then enquires as to how such effects are produced. I begin with the cultural representations of the circus, and then move through sections on community, movement and economic organization. This order is intended to illustrate that the production of mystery is a complex affair, and that cultural and economic descriptions of this particular form of organization are necessarily entangled. Focusing on one at the expense of the other leads to either a culturalism which lacks an understanding of production, or a business model which is incapable of understanding miracles.
MacIntyre's narrative based virtue ethics have for the first time in this book been applied to an organization undergoing change driven by market forces and a society that wants more for less with scant regard for the means by which that is achieved. The practical potential of these insights is explored in the case study that runs through the book.
The responses to my critics are as various as their criticisms, focusing successively on the distinctive character of modern moral disagreements, on the nature of common goods and their relationship to the virtues, on how the inequalities generated by advanced capitalist economies and by the contemporary state prevent the achievement of common goods, on issues concerning the nature of the self, on what it is that Marx’s theory enables us to understand and on how some Marxists have failed to understand, on the differences between my philosophical stances and those both of John McDowell and of the physicalists, on the nature of human rights and of productive work, on the ancient Greek polis, and on the metaphysical commitments presupposed by my theorizing.
The present contribution explores the role of (the lack of) professionalism and professional ethics in the global credit crisis. It will be argued that the credit crisis is partly due to a lack of professionalism in the financial sector. The unrestrained pursuit of profit that has pervaded banks, rating agencies, and investors has led to a compartmentalized sense of moral responsibility and an erosion of central virtues such as truthfulness, integrity, justice, and courage in their way of doing business. To explain the meaning of professionalism we will use Alasdair MacIntyre's virtue ethical framework, which focuses on the tension between the internal goals of a practice and the external goals of the institution that supports the practice. The relation between a practice and professionalism will be further explored by a discussion of Kasher's theory of what constitutes a profession. Before applying this framework to professionals in banking, the paper first embarks on a hermeneutical exercise, to see whether it makes sense to interpret banking as a practice in the sense that MacIntyre understands it.
In Reason, Tradition, and the Good, Jeffery L. Nicholas addresses the failure of reason in modernity to bring about a just society, a society in which people can attain fulfillment. Developing the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Nicholas argues that we rely too heavily on a conception of rationality that is divorced from tradition and, therefore, incapable of judging ends. Without the ability to judge ends, we cannot engage in debate about the good life or the proper goods that we as individuals and as a society should pursue. Nicholas claims that the project of enlightenment-defined as the promotion of autonomous reason-failed because it was based on a deformed notion of reason as mere rationality, and that a critical theory of society aimed at human emancipation must turn to substantive reason, a reason constituted by and constitutive of tradition. To find a reason capable of judging ends, Nicholas suggests, we must turn to Alasdair MacIntyre's Thomistic-Aristotelianism. Substantive reason comprises thinking and acting on the set of standards and beliefs within a particular tradition. It is the impossibility of enlightenment rationality to evaluate ends and the possibility of substantive reason to evaluate ends that makes the one unsuitable and the other suitable for a critical theory of society. Nicholas's compelling argument, written in accessible language, remains committed to the promise of reason to help individuals achieve a good and just society and a good life. This requires, however, a complete revolution in the way we approach social life. "Jeffery Nicholas has written an important and valuable book that invites its readers to discover the difficulties of late modern Western thought from the perspective of twentieth-century critical theory, and to consider a response to those difficulties drawn from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor". Copyright
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.
Alasdair MacIntyre is generally regarded as the most interesting, influential, and provocative figure in moral philosophy today. He is a strong critic of the cruder forms of liberalism which he takes to be responsible far confusion of contemporary moral and political culture. MacIntyre focuses upon three 'characters', each of which he takes to be emblematic of our age: the Aesthete, the Therapist and the Manager. A 'character' is a fusion of a specific role with a specific personality type in such a way that it emphasizes and celebrates the moral ideas of a particular culture. MacIntyre takes modern 'characters' to reflect the doctrine of emotivism which holds that moral discussions are no more than attempts by one party to alter the preferences and feelings of another party so that they accord with their own. Emotivism removes the possibility of treating people as ends, as rational beings; moral debate, from this perspective, is fundamentally manipulative. The Aesthete treats other people as a means to achieve his/her own ends-the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of boredom; the Therapist is concerned with the technique of the treatment of individuals, not the values of the goals they pursue; and the Manager-the focus of this article-is exclusively concerned with the pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness, leaving the task affixing purpose and evaluating goals to others; Ah three 'characters' eschew moral debate regarding questions of ends as beyond systematic rational assessment. It is this notion of 'character' that is the starting point for this article. if MacIntyre is correct and the Manager is one of the key 'characters' of our times, there ought to be more debate amongst those of us concerned with organizations. The purpose of this article is to outline MacIntyre's argument, to indicate some of the support it commands in the literature of organizational behaviour and to pass comment upon both the ideas and the literature.
This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries.
After reading John Dobson’s thoughtful latest response to our ongoing discussion, I thought it important to clarify and reiterate a few key points.
In this comment I challenge two of the arguments made in the paper, “Toward the Feminine Firm.” First I challenge the claim that Gilligan's work on gender differences in moral orientation provides a logically and empirically sound foundation for an alternative theory of the firm. I cite recent work that discredits any concise notion of a feminine ethic. Second I challenge the claim that, if such a firm were to exist, it would flourish in a competitive market economy. I suggest that, far from flourishing, such a firm will rapidly perish.
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.
We describe the Catholic natural law tradition by examining its origins in the medieval penitentials, the papal decretals, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and seventeenth century casuistry. Catholic natural law emerges as a flexible ethic that conceives of human nature as rational and as oriented to certain basic goods that ought to be pursued and whose pursuit is made possible by the virtues. We then identify four approaches to natural law that have evolved within the United States during the twentieth century, including the traditionalist, proportionalist, right reason, and historicist approaches. The normative implications of these approaches are discussed in relation to ethical issues in the tobacco industry, ITT under Geneen, the marketing of pharmaceuticals, affirmative action, and bribery. It is argued that Alasdair MacIntyre is correct in claiming that the natural law tradition is superior to the liberal ethics of modern deontology and utilitarianism.
We investigated the relationship between various character strengths and life satisfaction among 5,299 adults from three Internet samples using the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths. Consistently and robustly associated with life satisfaction were hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity. Only weakly associated with life satisfaction, in contrast, were modesty and the intellectual strengths of appreciation of beauty, creativity, judgment, and love of learning. In general, the relationship between character strengths and life satisfaction was monotonic, indicating that excess on any one character strength does not diminish life satisfaction.
A qualitative examination of work meaning in the zoo-keeping profession pointed to the centrality of the notion of work as a personal calling. The view of calling expressed by zookeepers, however, was closer in basic structure to the classical conceptualization of the Protestant reformers than it was to more recent formulations. We used qualitative data from interviews with U.S. zookeepers to develop hypotheses about the implications of this neoclassical conceptualization of calling for the relationship between individuals and their work. We found that a neoclassical calling is both binding and ennobling. On one hand, zookeepers with a sense of calling strongly identified with and found broader meaning and significance in their work and occupation. On the other hand, they were more likely to see their work as a moral duty, to sacrifice pay, personal time, and comfort for their work, and to hold their zoo to a higher standard. Results of a survey of zookeepers from 157 different zoos in the U.S. and Canada supported the hypotheses from our emergent theory. These results reveal the ways in which deeply meaningful work can become a double-edged sword.
Andrew Wicks recently reflected “On The Practical Relevance of Feminist Thought to Business.” Part of his reflection focussed on my contributions to this subject. In critiquing my work, Wicks notes the similarity between my views on business and those of Alasdair MacIntyre. He goes on to give a brief overview of our position as he sees it. Wicks’s overview, although insightful, is misleading in certain key respects. My purpose in this response, therefore, is to clarify MacIntyre’s views on business. In doing this I will, by default, clarify my own.
MacIntyre himself might be surprised by the frequency with which his name appears in the business-ethics discourse. Although, over a period spanning nearly fifty years, he has written prolifically on the subject of ethics, he has only, as far as I am aware, written two brief articles directly addressing the subject of business ethics. Why then should we in business or in business ethics concern ourselves with his views? I think our interest in MacIntyre stems from our interest in virtue ethics, specifically our interest in the applicability of the virtues to business. When it comes to virtue ethics MacIntyre is recognized as an authority, if not the authority. Even his fiercest detractors would, I hope, admit that he has been largely responsible for the resurrection of classical philosophy in the latter half of this century. His book After Virtue, in which he criticizes modernity and praises a classical virtue-based approach to ethics, is undoubtedly one the most influential books on moral philosophy written this century. Indeed, as postmodernism gains steam as a cultural force, its full influence is perhaps yet to be determined. If MacIntyre’s critique of modernity proves correct, then much of business-ethics theory—not to mention moral theory in general—would be discredited. Thus interest in MacIntyre’s thesis, from many quarters, is understandable.
In this chapter, we set out to demonstrate how organizational theory and analysis can benefit from the work of the distinguished philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In the first part of the chapter we show how MacIntyre's conception of how rival traditions may move towards reconciliation has the potential to resolve the relativist conclusions that bedevil organization theory. In the second part, we show how MacIntyre's ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ general theory provides a framework for reconciling the fields of organization theory and organizational ethics. In the third part, we provide a worked example of these two strands to demonstrate the implications of MacIntyre's philosophy for organizational analysis. We conclude with a research agenda for a distinctively MacIntyrean organization theory.
Purpose
– The aim of this paper is to show how storytelling and MacIntyre's virtue ethics theoretical schema can inform a new approach to management development and coaching. It also highlights the potentially collusive nature of a coaching relationship where there is an absence of broader research‐based input.
Design/methodology/approach
– The approach has three stages: first, to sample what it means to lead reform implementation through managers' stories; second, to view those stories as passing on or coaching others in the virtues of the institution; third, to suggest an alternative approach to coaching which includes deepening managers' understanding about conflicting moral traditions, ideologies and discourses that often feature in their stories of change.
Findings
– The capability to find a way through multiple and conflicting change initiatives appears to be enhanced when managers gain a deeper understanding of the antecedents of the different ideologies at play. It is argued that without the research input and stimulus to understand what is behind change policy, coaching could be submitting to disciplinary power (Foucault, 1980) where both coach and coachee are implicated in a collusive perpetuation of what Žižek calls a “narrative quilting of heterogeneous material into a unified ideological field”.
Originality/value
– One suggested avenue for management development and coaching would be to build further on MacIntyre's notion that it is sometimes only through conflict that we learn what our ends and purposes are, with the question, “Of what [wider] conflicts is [my conflict] the scene?” (adapted from MacIntyre).
Alasdair MacIntyre is generally regarded as the most interesting, influential, and provocative figure in moral philosophy today. He is a strong critic of the cruder forms of liberalism which he takes to be responsible for confusion of contemporary moral and political culture. MacIntyre focuses upon three `characters', each of which he takes to be emblematic of our age: the Aesthete, the Therapist and the Manager. A `character' is a fusion of a specific role with a specific personality type in such a way that it emphasizes and celebrates the moral ideas of a particular culture. MacIntyre takes modern `characters' to reflect the doctrine of emotivism which holds that moral discussions are no more than attempts by one party to alter the preferences and feelings of another party so that they accord with their own. Emotivism removes the possibility of treating people as ends, as rational beings; moral debate, from this perspective, is fundamentally manipulative. The Aesthete treats other people as a means to achieve his/her own ends—the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of boredom; the Therapist is concerned with the technique of the treatment of individuals, not the values of the goals they pursue; and the Manager—the focus of this article—is exclusively concerned with the pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness, leaving the task of fixing purpose and evaluating goals to others. All three `characters' eschew moral debate regarding questions of ends as beyond systematic rational assessment. It is this notion of `character' that is the starting point for this article. If MacIntyre is correct and the Manager is one of the key `characters' of our times, there ought to be more debate amongst those of us concerned with organizations. The purpose of this article is to outline MacIntyre's argument, to indicate some of the support it commands in the literature of organizational behaviour and to pass comment upon both the ideas and the literature.
Although employees are increasingly interested in jobs that enable them to do good, we know relatively little about how jobs are structured to provide these opportunities. To fill this gap, I report three studies that examine the dimensions and psychological consequences of two prosocial job characteristics that enable employees to make a positive difference in the lives of other people. In Study 1, confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated strong psychometric properties of self-report measures of job opportunities for impact on and contact with beneficiaries. In Study 2 I examine the mechanisms through which prosocial job characteristics are linked to a stronger motivation to do good among public service and telephone solicitation employees. In Study 3, multitrait-multimethod matrices using observer ratings of job descriptions supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the prosocial job characteristics. I discuss implications for theory and research in positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship, job design, and prosocial behavior.
Education as a practice in its own right (or sui generis practice) invokes quite a different set of ethical considerations than does education understood as a subordinate activity – i.e. prescribed and controlled in its essentials by the current powers-that-be in a society. But the idea of education as a vehicle for the ‘values’ of a particular group or party is so commonplace, from history's legacy as well as from ongoing waves of educational reforms, as to appear a quite natural one. So much is this case that the idea of education as a sui generis practice may seem a bit eccentric at first sight. Some preliminary work is called for then to render intelligible the claim that education is indeed a practice in its own right, and to illustrate the original starting point this gives for an exploration of educational ethics. In undertaking this preliminary work, central themes from two major sources are explored and reviewed: Richard Peters’ well-known study Ethics and education and MacIntyre's After virtue. The suggestive merits of both works for advancing a sui generis understanding of education and its conduct are identified. But crucial occlusions are also highlighted in the arguments of both authors, the recognition of which might have enabled their thinking on educational matters to venture onto a different plane. The kind of thinking that emerges from these investigations as most promising for educational ethics is seen to differ in its key features from what the various branches of academic philosophy have to offer by way of ethical theory.
This article provides an account of a ‘neo-Aristotelian’ conception of practice. It introduces this account through an analysis of internal and external goods of practices. It then delineates a crucial distinction between practical and technical rationality and grounds this distinction in an analysis of the priority of ‘material’ over ‘method’ in different domains of activity. It concludes by addressing some possible misgivings about the account and by tracing some of its most significant implications for the relationship of theory and practice.
Authored by a circus performer/manager and an academic, this paper uses concepts from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre to interpret ethnographic material from the traditional circus. The paper outlines MacIntyre’s conceptual architecture of goods, practices and institutions in which exercise of the virtues by those who manage the institution is required to maintain the integrity of practices. Such exercise is one defining feature of what MacIntyre calls ‘practice‐based communities’. Following a discussion of method it uses ethnographic material to describe the organisation of work in the circus and the self‐understanding of the managerial role of ringmaster. A series of incidents illustrate the use of the virtue of phronêsis, practical judgement in this role to maintain the integrity of the practice. The paper concludes by considering the extent to which travelling circus may be considered an example of the practice‐based community.
I have found myself very much drawn to the epistemological realism which T.F. Torrance puts forward in his 1985 book, Reality and Scientific Theology. Torrance's claim, that true knowledge represents a genuine disclosure to the mind of that which is objectively real, seems to me an indispensable presupposition for the church's proclamation of the Gospel. If the knowledge, ‘That I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to myself but to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ’, is to be capable of offering concrete assurance about the eternal destiny of ordinary believers, such knowledge must of necessity be grounded in a reality (Jesus Christ) which transcends the particularities of the believer's own body, soul, and historical circumstances. A realism like Torrance's would seem to be essential if the church's witness is to be taken seriously.
This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in a British circus between 1975 and 1979.1 It focuses on the dynamics of the frequent disappearance and reappearance characteristic of travelling circus shows in Britain. It shows that these dynamics are to be understood in terms of circus economics, social and semiotic constraints. It argues that, understood in these terms, the appearance and disappearance of circuses should not be taken as unequivocally confirming the notion of circus decline or, on the contrary, as supporting the notions of circus continuity (see White, 1977; Bouissac, 1976: 4; George and Mulford, 1977). Rather, they are structural characteristics of circus marginality epitomizing both circus precariousness and its endurance within the general socio-historical context.
The importance of virtuousness in organizations has recently been acknowledged in the organizational sciences, but research remains scarce. This article defines virtuousness and connects it to scholarly literature in organizational science. An empirical study is described in which the relationships between virtuousness and performance in 18 organizations are empirically examined. Significant relationships between virtuousness and both perceived and objective measures of organizational performance were found. The findings are explained in terms of the two major functions played by virtuousness in organizations: an amplifying function that creates self-reinforcing positive spirals, and a buffering function that strengthens and protects organizations from traumas such as downsizing.
This article illustrates how work contexts motivate employees to care about making a positive difference in other people's lives. I introduce a model of relational job design to describe how jobs spark the motivation to make a prosocial difference, and how this motivation affects employees' actions and identities. Whereas existing research fo-cuses on individual differences and the task structures of jobs, I illuminate how the relational architecture of jobs shapes the motivation to make a prosocial difference. Why do I risk my life by running into a burning building, knowing that at any moment . . . the floor may give way, the roof may tumble on me, the fire may engulf me? . . . I'm here for my community, a community I grew up in, a community where I know lots of people, a community that knows me (fire-fighter; International Firefighters' Day, 2004).