Abstract
We analyze the status of virtues in management by going in some depth into the two main virtues, justice and practical wisdom. We next study how ethics requires that all virtues should be present under the ideal concept of a ‘unity of virtues’ for a completely wise person and discuss the practical limitations of this concept. Then, we draw a framework for decision making depending on whether the decision maker possesses both justice and practical wisdom or only one of these, and then discuss which one is better to have. We conclude that justice is more important, as it is about setting objectives and prioritizing, whereas practical wisdom is about attaining these objectives, once listed, in a rationally wise and contextual way. Hence, we conclude that objectives (justice) must come first, because this makes it more likely for practical wisdom to be developed in the end, thus leading to having both virtues.
Highlights
Business ethics has become one of the important fields in management in the last few decades
We first presented and analyzed the concept of a weak unity of virtues, under the assumption that practical wisdom and justice are the two main virtues that should be developed in management
As our main finding, we argued that practical wisdom, the currently non-forgotten virtue, does not need to be the starting point for a virtuous environment in organizations, and it may not help managers make the right choices
Summary
Business ethics has become one of the important fields in management in the last few decades. Trying to improve the relationship between ethics and science, Appiah recognizes that, in psychology, it is usually argued that evaluative judgments are considered not to depend on facts He argues, “our evaluative and non-evaluative judgments must cohere in a way that makes it rational sometimes to abandon even what looks like a basic evaluative judgment because we have changed our minds about the facts” [4]. Sometimes, the course of action selected may not lead to the end considered to be good (guided by the moral criteria of justice), people update their knowledge looking at the facts or results This line of thinking, that facts feed evaluative and non-evaluative learning, is consistent with the reconciliation and necessary inputs coming from moral justice, which cannot be separated from the ones coming from justice perceptions, as some research on organizational justice claims [5]. We discuss this from the perspective of the manager at the individual level, even if organizational and individual levels are correlated and management that display virtues generate an organization that incorporates virtuousness at the organizational level [33]
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