Virtue In Business Research Articles

The Role of Corporate Organisations in Community Development; A Case of Two Rural Banks’ Corporate Social Responsibility, Ghana

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is globally acclaimed 21st -century business virtue by which the corporate organisations participate in community development. This case study investigates two rural banks’ CSRs and how they complement the local government in community development. The study rural banks’ CSRs were found to foster a win-win relationship, creating thriving business environment, while contributing to community development. The study’s banks’ CSR philosophy was driven by the desire for legitimacy, maintaining a business presence, promoting equity while responding to community needs. The case study banks’ CSRs drive which complemented the local government to improve the livelihood, education, health and social amenities were responsive to the needs of the rural communities. However, a deeper community involvement and collaboration, and more attention to livelihood interventions were required to maximise local relevance in community development.

Qur’anic and Confucian Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility: The New Imperative of Business Virtue

Qur’anic and Confucian Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility: The New Imperative of Business Virtue

Exploring the Efficacy of Contemplative Practices in Business Virtue Ethics Course

This research provides a qualitative analysis of 3rd year business student’s experiences in an ethics course, utilizing virtue ethics as a pedagogical framework. Virtue ethics calls for development of character virtues through experiential learning and contemplative practices, enabling personal transformation. Students practiced meditation and emotional intelligence exercises to develop self awareness, regulation of emotions, awareness of others and decision- making discernment. This paper’s contribution is to understand the actual impact of such pedagogies on students’ experiences and their potential transformation. Data was available from 62 participating students of diverse backgrounds, and 19 of them were interviewed to gain deeper insights on their perceptions of these experiences and transformations. Student’s observations are presented and interpreted through the lens of Transformative Learning. Findings indicate that students obtained insights into themselves and others, suggesting enhanced self awareness, regulation of emotions and improved relationships. The qualitative nature of this research provides rich information on student’s experiences, though at this point difficult to generalize. This is an exploratory research and will further benefit from longitudinal and quantitative methodologies as well as being able to assess the effects single practices could have on business students.

Thematic Symposium Editorial: Virtue Ethics Between East and West

Virtue ethics is widely recognized as one of three major approaches in contemporary moral philosophy and arguably the most influential normative theory in business ethics. Despite its rich pedigree in Western and Eastern philosophy, most work in contemporary virtue ethics is part of the Western tradition. The purpose of this Thematic Symposium is to foster dialogue between Western and Eastern conceptions of virtue in business and engage them with questions about the nature, justification, and content of the virtues in each tradition. This Editorial offers a brief introduction to the problem, a summary of Western and Eastern varieties of virtue ethics, an overview of the six articles included in this Thematic Symposium, and a section with five common themes for further exploration and future collaborative research (namely, the centrality of rites and rituals, the normative status of social relationships and organizations, role modeling, the analogy of families and communities to define the business corporation, and the definition of social responsibilities).

Some Virtue Ethics Implications from Aristotelian and Confucian Perspectives on Family and Business

Not only individuals and firms, but also families engage in business as a social activity and this is true beyond the case of family businesses. Cultural differences in the way families are construed might influence the way they do business. There are different types of families, and among these are those described by Aristotelian and Confucian traditions, representing the West and the East respectively. The literature on virtue in business has been dominated by a Western—mainly Aristotelian—tradition (Ferrero and Sison in Bus Ethics Eur Rev 30(1): 8–24, 2014), neglecting the role of the family and focusing on the individual. In this paper, we seek to fill this gap by explaining differences and similarities in the normative evaluation of certain family-related business attitudes and practices, in light of Confucian and Aristotelian virtue ethics standards. After comparing the structure, organization and dynamics of Aristotelian and Confucian families, we shall draw some inferences regarding “virtuous” or excellent business practices—such as nepotism, bribery, gift-giving and guanxi and attitudes—on codified rules or written norms. For this analysis we shall make use of Aristotelian and Confucian ethical accounts as well as inputs from Family Science applied to organizations, which provides conceptual categories to compare the two traditions. Thus we hope to contribute not only to the comparative study of Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics in business, but also to the understanding of the distinctive role of families, raising cultural awareness for what may be considered virtuous business practices according to the Aristotelian and Confucian traditions.

Measuring Individuals’ Virtues in Business

This paper argues that Shanahan and Hyman’s (J Bus Eth 42:197–208, 2003) Virtue Ethics Scale (VES) should be abandoned and that work should begin to develop better-grounded measures for identifying individual business virtue (IBV) in context. It comes to this conclusion despite the VES being the only existing measure of individuals’ virtues that focuses on business people in general, rather than those who hold specific leadership or audit roles. The paper presents a study that, in attempting to validate the VES, raises significant concerns about its construction. In particular, investigation of the VES items leads to adjustments in the language used and examines participants’ understanding of the virtue terms and their descriptors. Confirmatory factor analysis of data collected from a sample of 137 HR practitioners establishes that the 6-factor solution identified by Shanahan and Hyman is not appropriate for the sample under examination. Rather, exploratory factor analysis results in three dimensions based in 13 items focusing on the individuals’ reliability, resourcefulness, and leadership. Finally, multiple regression establishes that these dimensions do not on the whole show associations with MA or PRESOR, two measures through which it would be expected to establish convergent and divergent validity. The paper concludes by suggesting guidelines for the development of future measures of IBV.

Three Different Approaches to Virtue in Business―Aristotle, Confucius, and Lao Zi

The proposed paper presents an overview on the matter of virtue from different philosophical angles. It concentrates on three different schools of thought coming from the West and the East and their respective concepts of virtue. These schools of thought and the therewith-associated personalities and works discussed in this paper are Aristotelian virtue ethics, Confucianism and Daoism. The paper focuses specifically on the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) by Aristotle, the Analects belonging to Confucianism, and the Dao De Jing coming from Daoism. The paper is divided into three major parts. First, the concept of virtue of each school is outlined. In the second part, the concrete virtues as such according to each school are explained. In the third part, these virtues are then applied in specific business contexts like business practice, corporate culture and leadership, illuminating each school’s characteristic approach. The paper closes with a summary and conclusion. In the conclusion the paper outlines differences as well as similarities between Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics. Yet, the author generally takes a critical stance towards comparisons merely for the sake of finding similarities. Particularly between Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics there is a significant difference when it comes to the cultural and historical background of these schools, which should not be ignored. Besides, even within Chinese philosophy there are already significant differences when it comes to concepts and practice.

Review of Virtue in Business: Conversations with Aristotle by Edwin Hartman

Review of Virtue in Business: Conversations with Aristotle by Edwin Hartman

Virtuous Persons and Virtuous Actions in Business Ethics and Organizational Research

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude.

A Survey on Virtue in Business and Management (1980-2011)

Virtue ethics is generally recognized as one of the three major schools of ethics, but is often waylaid by utilitarianism and deontology in business and management literature. Focusing on publications in the Thomson-Reuters Journal of Citation Report between 1980 and 2011, we use EBSCO and ABI databases to look for articles containing the keywords “virtue ethics”, “virtue theory” or “virtuousness” in the abstract together with “business” or “management” in the text. We refined our search to draw lists of the most prolific authors, the most cited authors, the most cited articles and the journals with the most virtue ethics publications. This information allows us to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and establish clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. These findings also provide a foundation for future study of the meanings of virtue ethics and the achievement and potential of different persuasions within virtue ethics research. We believe this will make a significant contribution to business ethics scholarship and management education by supplying both with a solid philosophical and anthropological mooring.

Thomas Aquinas on Justice as a Global Virtue in Business

ABSTRACT:The moral theory of Thomas Aquinas meets the present need for a business ethics that transcends the legal realm by linking the ideas of justice and virtue in an ingenious way. Thomas's virtue theory coordinates private and public activities through a set of context-invariant, justice-oriented norms with conceptual appeal to contemporary questions of global business ethics. In our article, we first sketch how Aquinas's theory can be also of relevance to a non-confessional audience through its appeal to the ‘natural light of reason.’ Then we explain how his theory of ‘natural law’ aligns his ideas of virtue and justice. From this vantage point, we address the tension between cultural diversity and moral uniformity in the economic sphere in general and in today's globalized business world in particular. Throughout the article, we aim to show how Aquinas's conception of virtuous business conduct gains inter-personal and inter-cultural validity that establishes social justice as the global virtue of business.

Virtue in Business: Alliance Boots and an Empirical Exploration of MacIntyre’s Conceptual Framework

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.

In Search of Organizational Virtue in Business: Agents, Goods, Practices, Institutions and Environments

In this paper we argue that MacIntyre’s virtues-goods-practice-institution schema (MacIntyre 1985) provides a conceptual framework within which organizational virtue in general, and virtue in business in particular, can be explored. A heuristic device involving levels of individual agency, mode of institutionalization and environment is used to discuss why some businesses protect practices, develop virtues and encourage the exercise of moral agency in their decision making, while others struggle or fail to do so. In relation to conventional shareholder-owned capitalist business, both the mode of institutionalization and the environment are shown to be largely antithetical to the development of practices. Other businesses may meet the necessary internal conditions for the sustenance of practice-like features but remain dependent upon features within their environments. To illustrate this, we use participant observation to show how one particular organization—Traidcraft plc—meets the relevant conditions.

C. Edward Weber, Stories of Virtue in Business

C. Edward Weber, Stories of Virtue in Business

Is Toughness a Business Virtue?

L'A. analyse la notion de durete qui apparait dans le discours de l'ethique des affaires comme une vertu appropriee a cette activite. L'A. se refere a la theorie des valeurs aristotelicienne, thomiste et feministe, afin de determiner la validite interne de l'emploi de la durete comme vertu des affaires, du concept philosophique de vertu et des fins poursuivies par l'ethique des affaires

Corporate Temperance a Business Virtue

“There are strong temptations for those at the top of an organisational hierarchy to appropriate to themselves a disproportionate share of the resources of the organisation and to exercise too much power over the activities of other organisational members.” Hence the case for taking a cool look at executive remuneration and other possible breaches of applying the classical virtue of temperance to corporate behaviour. The author is Principal Lecturer in the Business Studies Department, Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Building, Aytoun Street, Manchester M1 3GH.

Do Good, Do Well: The Business Enterprise Trust Awards

In March 1991, the Business Enterprise Trust presented its first annual awards for acts of courage, integrity and social vision in business. The stated purpose of the awards is to honor those know there9s more to good business than next year9s bottom line. Predictably, an effort designed to shine a spotlight on courageous and principled acts of business responsibility would be met with skepticism by some members of the business community. And, even before the award winners were announced, Fortune cynically questioned the motives not only of the Trust but, by extension, of all business executives who claim to do good. This article explores both the validity of the Trust9s efforts to reward business virtue and the arguments of those who claim that doing good is bad business.

Business and Benevolence

Business activity, it seems, is the very model of cold, calculating, selfish conduct. Though some business persons sheepishly acknow ledge this, many others openly celebrate ruthless selfishness, extolling the profit motive, even greed, as business virtues.1 Yet if selfishness is a business virtue, while selfless benevolence is a moral virtue, then it seems that good persons cannot be good at business, and that the successful business person is a moral failure. While this hasty conclusion ignores the ample room for benevolent activities in one's non-business, personal life, it nevertheless suggests that something about business is incompatible with morality. Business ethics is a contradiction in terms, according to a familiar jest; and perhaps a subtle truth underlying that quip is just that the selfish profit motive successful business requires is intrinsically at odds with part of the requirements of morality. In order to take business ethics seriously, then, it is necessary to harmonize the apparent opposition between business selfishness and moral benevolence. Blending business and benevolence is the project of the present study, a project in which we shall find it fruitful to examine various traditional moral defenses of business and the profit motive. Though often used in conjunction, two separate strategies for addressing this problem are prominent: one challenges the moral indictment of self-interest or selfishness, attempting to exonerate the profit motive; another tries to justify business selfishness through its beneficial consequences. Finding both traditional strategies ultimately unsatisfactory, I show in the end how business and benevolence can be combined in profitable business activities which can also be morally virtuous.