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After Virtue and Accounting Ethics

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Andrew West at Queensland University of Technology
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Abstract

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue presented a reinterpretation of Aristotelian virtue ethics that is contrasted with the emotivism of modern moral discourse, and provides a moral scheme that can enable a rediscovery and reimagination of a more coherent morality. Since After Virtue’s (AV’s) publication, this scheme has been applied to a variety of activities and occupations, and has been influential in the development of research in accounting ethics. Through a ‘close’ reading of Chaps. 14 and 15 of AV, this paper considers and applies the key concepts of practices, institutions, internal and external goods, the narrative unity of a human life and tradition, and the virtues associated with these concepts. It contributes, firstly, by providing a more accurate and comprehensive application of MacIntyre’s scheme to accounting than that available in the existing literature. Secondly, it identifies areas in which MacIntyre’s scheme supports the existing approach to professional accounting ethics as articulated by the various International Federation of Accountants pronouncements as well as areas in which it provides a critique and challenge to this approach. The application ultimately provides an alternative philosophical perspective through which accounting can be examined and further research into accounting ethics pursued.
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After Virtue and Accounting Ethics
Andrew West
1
Received: 26 June 2015 / Accepted: 7 January 2016 / Published online: 14 January 2016
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue presented a
reinterpretation of Aristotelian virtue ethics that is con-
trasted with the emotivism of modern moral discourse, and
provides a moral scheme that can enable a rediscovery and
reimagination of a more coherent morality. Since After
Virtue’s(AV’s) publication, this scheme has been applied
to a variety of activities and occupations, and has been
influential in the development of research in accounting
ethics. Through a ‘close’ reading of Chaps. 14 and 15 of
AV, this paper considers and applies the key concepts of
practices, institutions, internal and external goods, the
narrative unity of a human life and tradition, and the virtues
associated with these concepts. It contributes, firstly, by
providing a more accurate and comprehensive application
of MacIntyre’s scheme to accounting than that available in
the existing literature. Secondly, it identifies areas in which
MacIntyre’s scheme supports the existing approach to
professional accounting ethics as articulated by the various
International Federation of Accountants pronouncements
as well as areas in which it provides a critique and chal-
lenge to this approach. The application ultimately provides
an alternative philosophical perspective through which
accounting can be examined and further research into
accounting ethics pursued.
Keywords Accounting ethics After Virtue Aristotle
MacIntyre Professional ethics Virtue ethics
Introduction
The high-profile ethical failures of professional accoun-
tants in recent decades have been met with increased reg-
ulation and oversight, as well as calls for greater attention
to ethics education in accounting programs. As it is not yet
clear whether these measures are sufficient to prevent
further accounting crises, or even whether these measures
are appropriately implemented (given no discernible
increase in accounting ethics education from 2000 to 2012
in Australia, for example (Dellaportas et al. 2014)),
examination of alternative perspectives on accounting
ethics is both warranted and desirable. This paper provides
such an examination, based on Alasdair MacIntyre’s After
Virtue (AV), a seminal work in twentieth-century virtue
ethics, and one that has had significant implications for a
variety of occupations and activities. MacIntyre’s work
presents a critique of modern moral philosophy and its
contemporary, emotivist, expression, and, drawing on the
Aristotelian philosophical tradition, he proposes an
approach to ethics that is intended to enable a rediscovery
of morality. Given the recent crises of accounting ethics,
such a rediscovery would be timely indeed.
The purpose of this paper—to examine how MacIntyre’s
approach can be applied to professional accounting ethics—
is achieved primarily through a ‘close’ reading of Chapts. 14
and 15 of AV. Following his critique of contemporary moral
discourse and his review of pre-modern virtue ethics tradi-
tions, these two chapters deal expressly with the details of
MacIntyre’s reimagined virtue ethics. This approach enables
a more comprehensive analysis than that provided by Francis
(1990), whose interpretation of AV suffers from several
significant weaknesses. Rather than simply updating and
extending Francis’ work, however, the focus of this paper is
on considering both how a MacIntyrean perspective may
&Andrew West
andrew.west@qut.edu.au
1
School of Accountancy, Queensland University of
Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
123
J Bus Ethics (2018) 148:21–36
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3018-9
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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