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Management as a Practice: A Response to Alasdair MacIntyre
... Furthermore, if an activity is a practice, it is appropriate to then consider, more concretely, how various virtues apply and how context-specific goods and standards of excellence are constituted. This is indeed what MacIntyrean scholars have been engaged with, when arguing that management is a practice (Beabout, 2012(Beabout, , 2013(Beabout, , 2014Brewer, 1997;Moore, 2008;Tsoukas, 2018), or is not a practice (Beadle, 2002;Knight, 2017;Sinnicks, 2014a), that accounting is a practice (Francis, 1990;West, 2018), that finance and investment advising are practices (Rocchi, Ferrero, & Beadle, 2020;Wyma, 2015) and that consumption is a practice (Garcia-Ruiz & Rodriguez-Lluesma, 2014). ...
... A number of scholars have argued that the activities of both management and accounting can be conceived as MacIntyrean practices and therefore as a locus for the good (Beabout, 2012(Beabout, , 2013Brewer, 1997;Francis, 1990;Moore, 2008Moore, , 2017West, 2018-but see also the criticism from Beadle [2002] and Sinnicks [2014a], and Beabout's [2014] response). However, problems in how both management and accounting are actually practised are also articulated. ...
... Firstly, there are suggestions of specific internal goods associated with management. Brewer (1997) suggests that enabling employees and excellence in stakeholder responsibility constitute internal goods, and Tsoukas (2018: 332) similarly posits "ensuring the purposeful cooperation of individuals and groups within the organization in a way that matches stakeholders' expectations." These activities are not, however, particular to management (cooperation is, as indicated earlier, a property of all practices). ...
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.
... 126). One scholar who exemplifies Dobson's analysis is Brewer (1997), arguing that in MacIntyre's account one finds a flurry of arguments condemning the manager that are "clouded by his normative bias against the economic sphere" (p. 825). ...
... 825). It may be surprising to note, however, that this did not prevent Brewer (1997) and many others who would come later from attempting to square MacIntyre's definition of a practice with a positive ideal of the manager and to do so by attempting to use some of MacIntyre's own statements against him. This section briefly recounts that history, placing particular emphasis on the turn of events that happened largely as a byproduct of conversations beginning with Moore (2002), which have since been picked up by other MacIntyrean business ethicists as well as MacIntyre himself. ...
... Early e orts to resuscitate a positive ideal of MacIntyre's manager Most of the earliest efforts to resuscitate an ideal of management as a practice in MacIntyre's terms, such as Brewer (1997) attempt, have been discredited largely for reasons concerning (a) how they fail to meet the full scope of MacIntyre's definition of a practice, or (b) because they attempt to sneak a "science" of management in through the backdoor, which in one way or another always reinforces the manipulative capitalist conditions of the workplace that MacIntyre criticizes. Useful for our discussion here regarding its various components is (MacIntyre, [1981] 2007) unique definition of a practice, which entails a: ...
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.
... Although MacIntyre himself has not written specifically about the professions, there are a wide range of published papers concerned with understanding a particular profession in macintyrean terms, and all of these give purchase to the arguments developed here. By way of example one can point to the health area (Hoyt-O'Connor 1998;Sellman 2000), the business field (Balstad Brewer 1997;Dobson 2009), and teaching (Dunne 2003;Noddings 2003). ...
... External goods, on the other hand, are the result of competition, and therefore there are always winners and losers. Another useful example is offered by Balstad Brewer (1997) who argues that management is a practice. Rather than conceiving of management in terms of individual effectiveness and usefulness, he argues that management is a practice with the internal good of ''enabling employees through personnel interaction'' (p. ...
Since the nineteenth century, the debate around the process of professionalization of higher education has been characterized by two extreme positions. For some critics the process carries the risks of instrumentalizing knowledge and of leading the university to succumb under the demands of the market or the state; for other theorists it represents a concrete opportunity for the university to open up to the real needs of society and for reorienting theoretical and fragmented disciplines towards the resolution of concrete and challenging problems. This article pursues three objectives. Firstly, we show that the debate is usefully informed not only by ideas of what a university is, but also by ideas of a profession (and, by extension, of professional training). We suggest that both ideas help to overcome the conflict between the two afore-mentioned antagonist perspectives. Secondly, we demonstrate that a certain understanding of a profession can prevent the risk of viewing knowledge exclusively as scientific expertise and reducing training to the acquisition of technical skills. The position on professions adopted here is inspired by the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, whose work is instructive in understanding professions as “rational practical activities”, embedded in a social context with their own internal goods. Our third objective, therefore, is to argue, with MacIntyre, that the presence of professions within the university opens up the opportunity to rescue forms of rationality that are oriented towards action and, by implication, promotes spaces of training that are resistant to exclusively corporate or governmental interests and criteria of mere effectiveness.
... Apart from developing a core practice with its corresponding virtue, managers should also seek the practice of sustaining the institution itself, which then became an internal good. This constituted a stand similar to Brewer (1997). ...
... In matching journals with major themes, it was found that studies on 'Virtues in relations between Solomon (1992); Koehn (1992); Newton (1992); Stark (1993); Hartman (1994); Solomon (1994); Werhane (1994); Boatright (1995); Collier (1995); Ewin (1995); Nesteruk (1995); Beck-Dudley (1996); Brewer (1997); Maitland (1997); Shaw (1997); Moore (1999); Schudt (2000); Moore (2002) (1995); Horvath (1995); Koehn (1995); Shaw (1995); Corvino (2006); Derry (1996); Mintz (1996); Shaw (1996); Wicks (1996); Dobson (1997); MacLellan & Dobson (1997); Maguire (1997); Wicks (1997); Solomon (1998) This information would be useful not only in determining the 'character' or 'personality' of each journal but also for prospective authors to judge the likely 'fit' between their works and the journals to which they submit (Table 9). ...
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. EBSCO and ABI databases were used to look for articles in the Journal of Citation Reports publications between 1980 and 2011 containing the keywords ‘virtue ethics’, ‘virtue theory’, or ‘virtuousness’ in the abstract and ‘business’ or ‘management’ in the text. The search was refined 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 one to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and to establish ‘schools’ or clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. The results of this quantitative analysis of authors, ‘schools’, themes, and publications provide a foundation for the future study of virtue ethics in business and management, identifying its achievements and potentials.
... MacIntyre's concept of practices, to which we return below, is the foundation of his definition of virtues and has been particularly central to the scholarly conversation (Beadle, 2008;Brewer, 1997;Moore & Beadle, 2006;Sinnicks, 2014Sinnicks, , 2019. MacIntyre's work has also been drawn on within the business ethics literature that relates to a variety of religious contexts, including Catholicism (Moore et al., 2014), Confucianism (Chu & Moore, 2020), and Quakerism (Burton & Sinnicks, 2022;Burton & Vu, 2021). ...
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.
... In workplaces that house a fully-fledged practice, and when in good order, management is concerned to institutionally support the practice. In such a situation, MacIntyre acknowledges that "[m]anagers become enablers" (2016, p.132), and as a result of both this, and of MacIntyre's broader account of institutions, management has been understood as a practice (Brewer, 1997) or a 'domainrelative' practice (Beabout, 2012). ...
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.
... If we take "political" institutions loosely to include productive organizations or businesses, then sustaining them can potentially be transformed into a practice. Moore (2008) and others (Brewer, 1997;McCann & Brownsberger, 1990) identify this practice with management. Management is a "second-order practice" through which institutions supply external, material resources to sustain and support "first-order" core practices. ...
The purpose of this paper is to show how a MacIntyre‐inspired business school could contribute to developing practical wisdom in students through its curriculum, methods, faculty, student selection criteria, and governance. Despite MacIntyre's critiques, management can be presented, in MacIntyrean terms, as a second‐order, domain‐relative practice, with practical wisdom as corresponding virtue. Management education consists in developing practical wisdom. How? Primarily by initiating students and enabling them to participate in communal traditions of inquiry focused on, although not limited to, the purposes and ends of business. The transmission of objective knowledge, analytical skills, and techniques is subordinated to the end goal. We consider traditions centered on shareholder value maximization, the balancing of stakeholder interests, and the fulfillment of the common good of firms. Each gives rise to a particular kind of business school. A MacIntyrean business school is one that seeks the common good of firms.
... In the fourth section, we depict how MacIntyre provides a theory of work in line with a Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics approach to management theory Brewer 1997;Collier 1995;Dawson 2009;Dawson and Bartholomew 2003;Dobson 2004;Halliday and Johnsson 2009;Horvath 1995;Moore 2005;Sison et al. 2017). MacIntyre has indeed made important theoretical contributions for understanding modern corporations based on the "practice-institution" distinction Moore 2002) in what Moore has described as Modern Virtue Ethics in Business (Moore 2005). ...
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by the wide introduction of automation in industry, brought about many changes in work and in the possibility of replacing workers with machines that are threatening the future of work. This chapter delves into the conflictive relationship between modern work and technology. We will depart from two main paradigmatic representatives of the eighteenth-century economic approach to work, namely Adam Smith and Karl Marx, mostly considered intellectual antagonists. Besides their differences, we sustain that both failed to give a sustainable and realistic account of the meaning of work and its contribution to individual flourishing and the common good, mainly because of their reductionist anthropological assumptions. Hence, we will analyze their understandings of the work-technology relationship in light of the thought of MacIntyre, a prominent critic of both Marx and Smith. By rehabilitating the idea of a practice, MacIntyre offers a more realistic and robust approach to understanding the way technology might negatively affect work, but also recognizes it as an opportunity for excellence in modern corporations.KeywordsMacIntyreMarxPracticeSmithTechnologyWork
... In the fourth section, we depict how MacIntyre provides a theory of work in line with a Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics approach to management theory Brewer 1997;Collier 1995;Dawson 2009;Dawson and Bartholomew 2003;Dobson 2004;Halliday and Johnsson 2009;Horvath 1995;Moore 2005;Sison et al. 2017). MacIntyre has indeed made important theoretical contributions for understanding modern corporations based on the "practice-institution" distinction Moore 2002) in what Moore has described as Modern Virtue Ethics in Business (Moore 2005). ...
How can a typology of stakeholders be established to truly illuminate the pathways of action for companies? The simple perspective regarding their classification arises out of aspects related to Business Ethics and the philosophical nature of the need to establish relations with stakeholders beyond those necessary for business survival. Although this chapter does not answer the baseline ethical position, it does propose a way to establish the taxonomic axes to do the exercise so companies can approach the issue with better outlooks. In this theoretical approach, aimed at achieving greater order in the analysis and selection of the stakeholder census, we shall propose criteria for inclusion by means of a taxonomy that may be able to reflect the weight of each stakeholder.
... In the business setting, the virtue ethics approach includes a long list of virtues recognized in the business setting. This includes values such as fairness, justice, honor, reliability, respect, responsibility, integrity, trust, trustworthiness, wisdom among others (see e.g., Brewer, 1997;Brinsfield, 1998;Dean, 1992;Card, 2010;Gier, 2001;Limbs & Fort, 2000;McCracken et al., 1998;Murphy, 1999;Seeger & Ulmer, 2001;Solomon, 1992;Shanahan & Hyman, 2003;Tessman, 2000). ...
Blockchain is an open digital ledger technology that has the capability of significantly altering the way that people operations (i.e. human resource management) operate in organizations. This research takes a first step in proposing several ways in which the blockchain technology can be used to improve current organizational practices, while also considering the ethical implications. Specifically, the paper examines the role that blockchain technology plays in three primary areas of people operations: (1) entry to the organization (via recruitment and selection), (2) intraorganizational processes (including compensation via smart contracts, retention and motivation via shared leadership and conflict management via network-based dispute resolution, and performance management), and (3) exit (offboarding). In each section, the paper reviews the ethical implications from the lenses of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology and contractarianism. The paper concludes that in whole the implementation of blockchain technology in people operations processes can create a more ethical work environment. However, careful implementation is necessary and requires extensive examination of ethical implications in advance.
... Si les biens externes sont aussi des biens, ils sont secondaires, adjuvants, par rapports aux biens internes. Pour MacIntyre, le management fait clairement partie de la dimension institutionnelle de eabout, 2012 ; Brewer, 1997). Sans entrer dans ce débat sur la nature du management, et en acceptant que la frontière entre pratique et institution puisse être parfois floue, nous voulons nous interroger sur ce en quoi pourrait consister une forme de leadership empruntant à cette approche éthique. ...
... In contrast to approaches like Held's, Tronto's, and Ruddick's, Alasdair MacIntyre defines a practice as: any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended. (MacIntyre 2014, 166) This is a far higher standard than Held's or Tronto's, and MacIntyre has thereby excluded a number of activities that we might intuitively call practices (see, for example, Brewer 1997;Dunne 2003). 8 Rather than attempting to show that care qualifies as a sort of practice using one particular theory of practice or another, my strategy will be to argue that theories of practice remain analytically useful by appealing to certain widely accepted elements thereof. ...
Though the literature on care ethics has mushroomed in recent years, much remains to be said about several important topics therein. One of these is action. In this article, I draw on Anscombean philosophy of action to develop a kind of meta- or proto-ethical theory of caring actions. I begin by showing how the fragmentary philosophy of action offered by care ethicists meshes with Elizabeth Anscombe's broader philosophy of action, and argue that Anscombe's philosophy of action offers a useful scaffold for a theory of caring actions. Following this, I defend an account of caring actions as those that aim to meet needs. I argue that care aims at satisfying eudaimonistic needs, those things without which one cannot flourish. I then consider the place of caring actions in care ethics. I suggest that if caring actions are to be a starting point for an ethical theory, we ought to reject the notion that a caring action must bring about its intended consequences, and I show how the concept of practice better equips us to evaluate caring actions.
... MacIntyre (1972, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1990, 1992, 1998, 2001, 2009, 2010a, 2010b) Nesses termos, os artigos relacionados no quadro 1 fazem menção a pesquisas que vinculam o pensamento comunitarista de MacIntyre (1981MacIntyre ( , 1983MacIntyre ( , 1984MacIntyre ( , 1990MacIntyre ( , 1992MacIntyre ( , 1998MacIntyre ( , 2001MacIntyre ( , 2009MacIntyre ( , 2010aMacIntyre ( , 2010b Mangham (1995); Randels (1995); Nash (1995); e Horvath (1995) destacam os principais pressupostos do pensamento comunitarista macintyreano, sobretudo no que se referem as práticas sociais nas organizações. Thomas (2008); Dobson (2008); Holt (2006); Nielsen (2006);Brewer (1997); Mangham (1995); Randels (1995); Nash (1995); e Horvath (1995) se dá porque discutem a teoria moral a partir de micro ações originadas pela interação contínua dos agentes em comunidades, repensando as organizações num horizonte coletivo com direcionamentos voltados às necessidades dos tempos atuais, pensando a sociedade além da sua capacidade regulatória, priorizada por um sentido de mudança, além de discutir a teoria moral a partir de micro contextos dinâmicos que se originam pela interação contínua de ações entre os agentes que participam em comunidade. ...
Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar a maneira pela qual a filosofia moral de MacIntyre (1981, 1983, 1984, 1990, 1992, 1998, 2001, 2009, 2010a, 2010b) tem sido adotada no âmbito dos Estudos Organizacionais (EOs). Trata-se, portanto, de um ensaio teórico elaborado a partir dos principais fundamentos ontológicos e epistemológicos que alicerçam a sua filosofia moral, identificados, sobretudo, por meio de uma série de trabalhos publicados em periódicos do campo da administração a nível internacional que discutem a sua filosofia na perspectiva da teoria organizacional. Ademais, com base na análise dos trabalhos este ensaio identificou que a filosofia moral de MacIntyre contribui para os EOs, sobretudo na ampliação dos estudos das práticas sociais no âmbito das organizações, fazendo entender que a moral atua como um elemento balizador das relações sociais comunitárias de aprendizagem organizacional.
... Concern for practice truly started at the turn of the 1970s, when social sciences started showing interest in studying human activities (Balstad-Brewer 1997). Among the central figures of this practical turn are the proponents of the Chicago School of Pragmatic Sociology (Goffman 1969;Garfinkel 1984) and scholars like French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu (1977), who wrote Outline of a Theory of Practice, and Michel de Certeau (1984), who published The Practice of Everyday Life. ...
This study examines the nature of design as a professional activity with regard to Christopher Higgins’ conceptualization of what counts as a practice. Inspired by the work of American moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, Higgins identified 14 criteria to determine if an activity can be considered a practice or not. As MacIntyre suggested in his book After Virtue (2007), practice consists of socially established human activities that respond to recognized norms of excellence. Under the tutelage of that model, our study suggests that design, in the current state of things, cannot genuinely claim itself to be a practice.
... Others have argued that management, or organization, is itself a (normative) practice (McCann and Brownsberger 1990;Brewer 1997;Moore and Beadle 2006;Beabout 2012). ...
In 2010, the Dutch Scientific Council for Governmental Policy called for an explicit and adequate intervention ethics for policy on international development cooperation. Yet, as appears from a careful reading of their report, the council's own overall commitment to a modernist worldview hinders the fruitful development of such an intervention ethics. There is, however, a strand in their thinking that draws attention to the importance of practical knowledge. We argue specifically that an intervention ethics for development cooperation in agriculture should start from this practical knowledge, which points to the inherent normativity of agricultural development cooperation. That is, agricultural development cooperation is a normative practice of which the inherent normativity consists in facilitating other practices in the agricultural domain. As such, agricultural development cooperation should respect the normativity inherent in those other practices.
... Furthermore, there have been numerous articles which aim to show that some particular activity or form of work fits MacIntyre's description of a practice. Examples include business (Kay 1997), management (Brewer 1997), nursing (Sellman 2000), public relations (Leeper and Leeper 2001), teaching (Dunne 2003), journalism (Borden 2007), fire-fighting (Dawson 2014), investment advising (Wyma 2015), and accounting (West 2016). The frequency with which such cases for particular forms of employment counting as practices are made suggests that the scope of MacIntyre's concept of a practice is not entirely clear. ...
This paper seeks to show how MacIntyre’s concept of a practice can survive a series of ‘scope problems’ which threaten to render the concept inapplicable to business ethics. I begin by outlining MacIntyre’s concept of a practice before arguing that, despite an asymmetry between productive and non-productive practices, the elasticity of the concept of a practice allows us to accommodate productive and profitable activities. This elasticity of practices allows us to sidestep the problem of adjudicating between practitioners and non-practitioners as well as the problem of generic activities. I conclude by suggesting that the contemporary tendency to regard work as an object of consumption, rather than undermining MacIntyre’s account of practices, serves to demonstrate the potential breadth of its applicability.
... [....] MacIntyre is guilty of misreading Weber probably because he approaches Weber as if he were an ethics rather than as the sociologist he actually was" (Tester, Nuestra tesis es atípica, además, en segundo lugar, porque la literatura secundaria ha mostrado más bien que MacIntyre recoge de Max Weber aspectos ligados a la racionalidad económica y a la figura del gerente, pero no cuestiones sustantivas referidas al proyecto moderno y a la restitución de la idea de virtud y tradición. De hecho, eso explicaría que Weber aparezca entre los estudiosos de MacIntyre fundamentalmente cuando se trata sobre mercado, organización, ética de negocios o el management como práctica (Keat, 2008;Beadle, 2006;Balstad Brewer, 1997;McCann-Brownsberger, 1990;Beabout, 2013), pero no más allá. 2 Para alcanzar los objetivos propuestos, se comenzará con una breve descripción de las ideas de Max Weber referidas a la burocracia, más atendiendo a su superioridad técnica como forma de administración que como mecanismo de dominio y control 3 . Poste-1999: 566, 572). ...
After Virtue contains a powerful critique of Weberian bureaucratic authority, or managerial authority. A. MacIntyre attacks the fictional feature of the two main attributes that this form of domination possesses according to Max Weber: organizational effectiveness and total predictability of action. The purpose of this paper is to analyze «bureaucratic authority» as the main ideology of domination for the present time that MacIntyre detects. Nevertheless, in the same line of research, we will attempt to show that this critique does not entail a departure from Weber, but rather help MacIntyre, by opposition, to reconstruct the idea of moral virtue present in his ethical project.
... However, for many the problem is not ethics per se but the actual variant of ethics with rule-based ethics the culprit. As a result Alasdair MacIntyre is promoted by many business ethicists (amongst others see Brewer (1997);Horvath (1995); Moore (2003)) who favour his championing of virtue ethics over utilitarian or deontological theories. That, however, might not be as simple as it sounds. ...
Do information and communications technology (ICT) professionals who have ICT qualifications believe that the ethics education they received as part of their ICT degrees helped them recognise ethical problems in the workplace and address them? If they do, are they also influenced by their personal ethics? What else helps them recognise ethical problems in the workplace and address them? And what are their views in relation to the impact of ethics education on professionalism in the ICT workplace? A quantitative survey of 2,315 Australian ICT professionals revealed that participants who reported having various levels of qualifications found ethics education or training, to a small degree, helpful for recognising ethical problems and addressing them; although it is those with Non-ICT qualifications, not those with ICT degrees, who were influenced more by ethics education or training. This suggests that educators need to consider how to better prepare ICT graduates for the workplace challenges and the types of situations they subsequently experience. The survey also found that participants who reported having various levels of qualifications were not influenced by their personal ethics or indeed any other factor making ethics education or training important for developing professionalism. The quantitative survey was followed by qualitative interviews with 43 Australian ICT professionals in six Australian capital cities. These interviews provided further empirical evidence that ethics education is crucial for enabling ICT professionals to recognise ethical problems and resolve them and that educators need to consider how to better prepare ICT graduates for the types of moral dilemmas that they are likely going to face in the workforce.
... [....] MacIntyre is guilty of misreading Weber probably because he approaches Weber as if he were an ethics rather than as the sociologist he actually was" (Tester, Nuestra tesis es atípica, además, en segundo lugar, porque la literatura secundaria ha mostrado más bien que MacIntyre recoge de Max Weber aspectos ligados a la racionalidad económica y a la figura del gerente, pero no cuestiones sustantivas referidas al proyecto moderno y a la restitución de la idea de virtud y tradición. De hecho, eso explicaría que Weber aparezca entre los estudiosos de MacIntyre fundamentalmente cuando se trata sobre mercado, organización, ética de negocios o el management como práctica (Keat, 2008;Beadle, 2006;Balstad Brewer, 1997;McCann-Brownsberger, 1990;Beabout, 2013), pero no más allá. 2 Para alcanzar los objetivos propuestos, se comenzará con una breve descripción de las ideas de Max Weber referidas a la burocracia, más atendiendo a su superioridad técnica como forma de administración que como mecanismo de dominio y control 3 . Poste-1999: 566, 572). ...
p>Recibido: 27/04/2016 • Aceptado: 02/02/2017
Tras la virtud contiene una poderosa crítica a la autoridad burocrática o gerencial de base weberiana. En ella Alasdair MacIntyre ataca el carácter ficticio de los dos atributos que poseería esta forma de dominación: la eficacia organizativa y la predictibilidad de sus resultados. El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar que la «autoridad burocrática» es la principal ideología de dominación del tiempo presente detectada por MacIntyre. Sin embargo, lejos de implicar esta postura un distanciamiento de las tesis weberianas, nuestra intención es demostrar que buena parte de los análisis que realiza el sociólogo alemán le servirán a MacIntyre para perfilar –por oposición– su idea de virtud moral, centrada en la excelencia de las prácticas y en el carácter narrativo de la vida.
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... However, for many the problem is not ethics per se but the actual variant of ethics with rule-based ethics the culprit. As a result Alasdair MacIntyre is promoted by many business ethicists (amongst others see Brewer, 1997;Horvath, 1995;Moore, 2003) who favour his championing of virtue ethics over utilitarian or deontological theories. That, however, might not be as simple as it sounds. ...
ICT professionals need a way to understand the ethical challenges they face in the workplace. Having first identified common workplace challenges through an industry survey with 2,315 respondents, those challenges were further explored, as were solutions to them, through interviews with 43 participants in six Australian capital cities. Findings from the quantitative survey were consistent with the findings from the qualitative interviews. That led to the identification of common categories of ethical challenges and strategies for solving them. Common unethical behaviours in the ICT workplace were also identified. The findings to date suggest that internal strategies are more effective in dealing with ethical workplace issues compared to external strategies. Further research is underway to clarify how those strategies can best be presented in an Internet resource, and the proactive steps that can be taken to create work environments that mitigate against unethical behaviours.
... Another question that emerges from this is the status for comparatively new vocational practices that have grown out of the last three or four centuries of industrial revolutions. For example, Balstad Brewer (1997) argues that management should be considered a practice and defends it as such against MacIntyre's sweeping criticism in After Virtue. If management is a vocational practice, where is its larger cultural embeddedness? ...
The approach of vocational Bildung didactics has been developed to investigate practical knowledge in matters of education for Bildung and phronesis (practical wisdom). Case narratives of unusual richness or success are at the core of the approach, each case representing an articulation of someone’s practical knowledge. The concept of a practice as developed by MacIntyre is introduced here as a way of situating the practical knowledge of Bildung and phronesis gained from case narratives. A series of case studies are discussed to examine the practices that surfaced. The result is a differentiation of MacIntyre’s concept in two directions: one more specific called vocational practice and one more general called a cultural practice. This differentiation is then applied to the case studies and it is argued that it helps illuminate aspects of them that previously were difficult to comprehend within the framework of vocational Bildung didactics. The conclusion is that biographical cases where cultural and vocational practices intersect are uniquely positioned to afford knowledge of how such intersections have been achieved through education and what they have meant for the person initiated into such matrixes. This, in turn, contributes to the insight with which we are able to design vocational education and training curricula that support initiation into dynamic vocational practices with a focus on the goods and virtues possible to develop through them.
... MacIntyre's characterization has found support in Jackall's ethnography of bureaucratic managers (Jackall 2009), Mangham's discussion of the manager-actor (Mangham 1995 By contrast, critics maintain that MacIntyre's Weberian characterization (McCann and Brownsberger 1990; Breen 2012a) has blinded him to the moral deliberation in which contemporary managers engage (Anthony 1986;Du Gay 1998). Extending this critique are those who claim that good management coheres with MacIntyre's own notion of the types of practice-based work which require virtuous agency (Brewer 1997;Collier 1998;Moore 2002Moore , 2005Beabout 2012Beabout , 2013. Recent empirical work (Conroy 2009;von Krogh et al 2012;Robson 2015;Wilcox 2012) may provide support for this notion of managerial agency in reporting managerial efforts to protect practices from institutional demands. ...
Business ethics scholars have made much use of Alasdair MacIntyre’s distinctive account of the virtues. This chapter discusses MacIntyre’s influence and considers four distinctive types of enquiry inspired by his seminal 1981 text After Virtue. These comprise:(i)
The moral status of the manager
(ii)
The application of MacIntyre’s notion of practice in business
(iii)
The relationship between practices and institutions
(iv)
Empirical enquiry using MacIntyre’s “goods-virtues-practices-institutions” framework
The remaining chapters in this section exemplify these enquiries.
... MacIntyre's characterization has found support in Jackall's ethnography of bureaucratic managers (Jackall 2009), Mangham's discussion of the manager-actor (Mangham 1995 By contrast, critics maintain that MacIntyre's Weberian characterization (McCann and Brownsberger 1990; Breen 2012a) has blinded him to the moral deliberation in which contemporary managers engage (Anthony 1986;Du Gay 1998). Extending this critique are those who claim that good management coheres with MacIntyre's own notion of the types of practice-based work which require virtuous agency (Brewer 1997;Collier 1998;Moore 2002Moore , 2005Beabout 2012Beabout , 2013. Recent empirical work (Conroy 2009;von Krogh et al 2012;Robson 2015;Wilcox 2012) may provide support for this notion of managerial agency in reporting managerial efforts to protect practices from institutional demands. ...
Business ethics scholars have made much use of Alasdair MacIntyre’s distinctive account of the virtues. This chapter discusses MacIntyre’s influence and considers four distinctive types of enquiry inspired by his seminal 1981 text After Virtue. These comprise:(i)
The moral status of the manager
(ii)
The application of MacIntyre’s notion of practice in business
(iii)
The relationship between practices and institutions
(iv)
Empirical enquiry using MacIntyre’s “goods-virtues-practices-institutions” framework
The remaining chapters in this section exemplify these enquiries.
... Most of the business ethics scholarship informed by MacIntyre has focused on his 'goods-practices-institutions' framework as it relates to business ethics, but this paper focuses instead on his other contribution to business ethics-his critique of management. Numerous scholars have sought to challenge this critique (for example , Brewer 1997;Dobson 2009;Hartman 2015, et cetera). However, this paper aims to show that MacIntyre's charge that management is emotivistic is worthy of reconsideration and argues that although MacIntyre's critique of management, advanced in his magnum opus After Virtue (2007 [1981]), faces a number of compelling objections, his central contention that management, broadly defined, is emotivistic is plausible. ...
MacIntyre argues that management embodies emotivism, and thus is inherently amoral and manipulative. His claim that management is necessarily Weberian is, at best, outdated, and the notion that management aims to be neutral and value free is incorrect. However, new forms of management, and in particular the increased emphasis on leadership which emerged after MacIntyre’s critique was published, tend to support his central charge. Indeed, charismatic and transformational forms of leadership seem to embody emotivism to a greater degree than do more Weberian, bureaucratic forms of management; hence, MacIntyre’s central contention about our emotivistic culture seems to be well founded. Having criticised the details but defended the essence of MacIntyre’s critique of management, this paper sketches a MacIntyrean approach to management and leadership by highlighting the affinities between MacIntyre’s political philosophy and Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership.
... Despite Knight's characterisation of attempts to apply MacIntyre's work to corporate management as 'paradoxical ' (1998, 283), business ethicists and organisational scholars have persisted in this attempt. Within business ethics the literature specifically interpreting MacIntyre's work stretches back some years (McCann/Brownsberger 1990;Hovarth 1995;Mintz 1996;Dobson 1996Dobson , 1997Dobson , 2001Wicks 1996Wicks , 1997Brewer 1997;Collier 1998; Dawson/Bartholomew 2003) and references are so common as to be de rigueur in contemporary considerations of virtue ethics (Crocket 2005;Whetstone 2005;Jones et al 2005;Weaver 2006) and Aristotelian organisation theory (Tsoukas/Cummings 1997). ...
In a series of papers Geoff Moore has applied Alasdair MacIntyre’s much cited work to generate a virtue-based business ethics. Central to this project is Moore’s argument that business falls under MacIntyre’s concept of ‘practice’. This move attempts to overcome MacIntyre’s reputation for being ‘anti-business’ while maintaining his framework for evaluating social action and replaces MacIntyre’s hostility to management with a conception of managers as institutional practitioners (craftsmen). I argue however that this move has not been justified. Given the importance MacIntyre places on the protection of practices, the result is that much of Moore’s contribution is misplaced. Business cannot name a practice but business institutions certainly do house practices. The task then is to try to understand the circumstances under which practices might flourish and those under which they might founder in a business context. This is not aided by Moore’s redescription of all businesses as practices.
... Beyond more general applications of virtue ethics to business and accounting, a significant body of work has specifically considered how MacIntyre's approach to virtue ethics (drawing primarily on AV) may be applied to businesses and organisations. Moore (2002) argued for 'business' itself to be considered a MacIntyrean practice (subsequently modifying this to describe 'business' as a ''practice-institution combination' ' Moore 2008, p. 507, see also Beadle 2008), while others have focused on specific activities or professions, including those of jazz musicians (Banks 2012), journalists (Borden 2007;Lambeth 1990;Salter 2008), managers (Brewer 1997), nurses (Armstrong 2006;Sellman 2000Sellman , 2011, psychiatrists (Michel 2011), psychologists (Richardson 2012), those involved in public relations (Leeper and Leeper 2001), surgeons (Hall 2011), and teachers (Fitzmaurice 2010;Noddings 2003;Dunne 2003). ...
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.
... Par exemple, depuis le début des années 1980, les sciences sociales ont montré un intérêt marqué pour la notion de pratique (Brewer, 1997). Les conséquences de ce tournant pratique ont été d'amener un basculement du travail sur les croyances, les désirs, les émotions ou les buts vers l'analyse des pratiques humaines, c'est-à-dire l'analyse des capacités, des savoir-faire, des compétences, des dispositions, etc. (Hager, 2012). ...
Cet article présente une analyse de l’activité de design à la lumière du concept de pratique proposé par Christopher Higgins. Inspiré par les réflexions soutenues par le philosophe états-unien Alasdair MacIntyre, dans son ouvrage Après la vertu (2006), Higgins a développé une liste de 14 critères permettant d’examiner si une activité est en mesure de satisfaire et de réclamer le statut de pratique. Une pratique, comme le suggère MacIntyre, est formée d’activités humaines socialement établies et reconnues et qui se réalisent par l’obéissance à des normes d’excellence correspondantes. Nous tentons de montrer qu’à la lumière de ce modèle, le design ne peut pas véritablement se réclamer d’une pratique.
Mots-clés : Alasdair MacIntyre pratique professionnelle éthique du design
This study analyses the nature of design professional activity in regard of Christopher Higgins conceptualisation of what counts as a practice. Inspired by the work of American moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, Higgins identified a list of 14 criterias in order to determine if an activity can be considered as a practice or not. Practice, as suggested by MacIntyre in his book After Virtue (2006), are socially established human activities that respond to recognized norms of excellence. Under the tutelage of that model, our study ought to show that design, in the current state of things, cannot genuinely claims itself to be a practice.
Keywords: Alasdair MacIntyre professional practice design ethic
... This involves the humility to recognize when one lacks crucial information, the ability to attend to relevant particular details, and the ability to make good judgments as to whether the given end is worthwhile. 17 , Moore 2002, du Gay 1998, Brewer 1997, Dobson 1997, Wicks 1997, Dobson 1996, Wicks 1996, Horvath 1995, Mangham 1995, Nash 1995, Randels 1995, McCann and Brownsberger 1995, Santilli 1984 Beyond these three layers, Mac Intyre revised his account of the virtues in his 1999 book, Dependent Rational Animals. He added a fourth layer that flows out of the acknowledgement that human beings are animals. ...
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.
... While some scholars have argued that particular jobs are practices, such as teaching (Dunne 2003), nursing (Sellman 2000), and journalism (Borden 2007), others have sought to apply the concept to business ethics more generally. A significant body of literature on MacIntyre's notion of a practice has been concerned to show that either management (Brewer 1997, Warren 1996 or business (Moore 2002) are the kinds of rich, intrinsically rewarding, virtue-inculcating activities deserving of the title 'practice.' Such scholars see in MacIntyre's work the potential for a deeper and richer understanding of contemporary work and of business ethics than is available elsewhere, despite MacIntyre's own pessimism about such matters. ...
This paper argues that attempts to apply Alasdair MacIntyre’s positive moral theory to business ethics are problematic, due to the cognitive closure of MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. I begin by outlining the notion of a practice,
before turning to Moore’s attempt to provide a MacIntyrean account of corporate
governance. I argue that Moore’s attempt is mismatched with MacIntyre’s account of moral education. Because the notion of practices resists general application I go on to argue that a negative application, which focuses on regulation, is more plausible. Large-scale regulation, usually thought antithetical to MacIntyre’s advocacy of small-scale politics, has the potential to facilitate practice-based work and reveals that MacIntyre’s own work can be used against his pessimism about the modern order. Furthermore, the conception of regulation I defend can show us how management is more amenable to ethical understanding than MacIntyre’s work is often taken to imply.
... Whetstone (2001) advocates a position that virtue ethics can form one leg of a tripartite ethical approach to business ethics that also includes a deontological component and a consequentialist component. 5 Brewer (1997) advocates a position that views management as a "practice" (in the MacIntyre sense and against the notion that management is not a "practice," as MacIntyre has argued) and therefore subject to be viewed in light of a virtue-based evaluation. Dawson and Bartholomew (2003) examine potential barriers to employing a virtue-based approach to ethics in a business management environment and argue that such are obstacles are not only surmountable, but that it is desirable to do so and adopt a virtue-ethics approach. ...
... However, there are a number of reasons why we might argue that management is a practice [for development, see Christensen (2012); Brewer (1997), Moore (2002Moore ( , 2005aMoore ( , 2005b]. First, 'management' is recognizably a 'coherent and complex form of socially established human activity', with its own 'standards of excellence'. ...
Alasdair MacIntyre’s distinction between institutions and practices helps illuminate how powerful institutional forces frame and constrain the practice of organizational research as well as the output and positioning of scholarly journals like Organization. Yet his conceptual frame is limited, not least because it is unclear whether the activity of managing is, or is not, a practice. This article builds on MacIntyre’s ideas by incorporating Aristotle’s concepts of poíēsis, praxis, téchnē and phrónēsis. Rather than ask, following MacIntyre, whether management is a practice, this wider network of concepts provides a richer frame for understanding the nature of managing and the appropriate role for academia. The article outlines a phronetic paradigm for organizational inquiry, and concludes by briefly examining the implications of such a paradigm for research and learning.
Free riding involves benefiting from common resources or services while avoiding contributing to their production and maintenance. Few studies have adequately investigated the propensity to overestimate the prevalence of free riding. This is a significant omission, as exaggeration of the phenomenon is often used to justify control and coercion systems. To address this gap, we investigate how the common good approach may mitigate the flaws of a system excessively focused on free-riding risk. In this conceptual paper featuring illustrative vignettes, we argue that the common good perspective is realistic and effective in preventing this excessive attention by promoting trust as an unconditional gift and a response to vulnerability. We discuss the common good perspective’s originality over the dominant approaches and propose a set of ethical and managerial recommendations that may be the best protection against this excessive focus and maybe even against free riding itself.
This chapter elaborates on MacIntyre’s views on the virtues by explaining what he defines as a practicepractice and how this relates to the virtues. The role that practices plays within MacIntyre’s larger body of work and what he defines as narrative and traditiontradition are briefly discussed but the focus is primarily on his definition of a practice and how these can support individual achievement of the virtues.
Research question/problem definition This thesis is a philosophical study into the nature of the practice of supervisory boards in care institutions in The Netherlands. I do so from the perspective of ‘practical wisdom’ (phronesis) as coined by Aristotle. The main question of this thesis is: what is wise supervision? What will become apparent is that albeit this is a thesis on supervisory practice, it has a much wider scope. As supervisory practice is oriented to so many organizational and societal aspects, it is also a thesis on governance, institutions, management and ordinary caring practices in civil society in general. The question is explorative: what happens if we reconceptualize supervision as practical wisdom? I have no hypothesis that is tested in the ‘real world’, but rather I install a specific interpretation that sheds light on the practice that has remained in the background in previous research on supervisory work. Relevance The role and position of the supervisory board in Dutch civil society organizations, such as in health care or education, has been discussed intensively but narrowly in the past decade. This narrow view consists of a focus on quality and risk management, corporate governance, professionalization and value-oriented approaches. In this narrow view there is a permanent quest for certainty, unambiguity, clarity and simpleness. This quest paralyzes the debate and practice of governance, and possibly also that of care itself. We need a perspective on supervisory boards and governance that takes ambiguity and equivocality of care and organizing as a point of departure. Theoretical framework The theoretical perspectives in this thesis vary widely. The first overarching theory is from Schön on the reflective practitioner and the difference he makes between the ‘safe high grounds’ and the ‘swampy lowlands’. A second overarching theory is about the difference between system world and lifeworld, and the quest for ‘purpose’. The specific theoretical perspectives that are worked out are from care ethics, critical management studies, hermeneutic-phenomenology, critical modernity analyses and post-foundational political philosophy. These perspectives integrate questions of ambiguity, politics and democracy. Method It is a theoretical philosophical dissertation that does not assume representation, but rather precisely interprets the practice from a particular angle. In order to do so, I have analyzed the practice of supervisory boards in a sensitizing way: I interpreted cases, analyzed popular books on governance and had dialogues with two supervisory boards. Arguments It is argued that care is a political category, and that this is usually denied in practices of quality management. Care, especially institutional care, reflects to some greater or lesser extent our attempts to live together in a decent way. This implies that the question of ‘good care’ is not a mere technical matter, but rather also a moral and political question. The technical approach to care, mainly by quality management, hides the paradoxes that flow from its applications. From this angle, also governance is a political and caring activity. Supervisory board members need to understand their work as being ‘relational’, i.e., between boards and the organization. The supervisory board is on the boundary of concrete everyday care and its political context, the institutional framework, in which care is nested. Conclusion I conceptualize wise supervision as practical wisdom as a form of knowledge that is not a mere individual trait but has a practice aspect and an institutional aspect as well. Supervisory practice is not only about the behavior of its practice members, but also about the interplay between society, supervision, management and organization – as well as the way in which this is institutionally embedded: who has a say, who may take decisions and who can counteract.
FIFA and UEFA are the two major football institutions in the global and European level, respectively. The recent scandals in both organizations and especially in FIFA, raised again discussion about the nature of governance in football institutions. This study focuses for the first time on the assessment of both organizations by using the tenets of institutional theory and MacIntyre’s virtues-goods-practice-institution schema. Through a review of the history of FIFA and UEFA, we identified the role of the context, agents and ethics. Our analysis shows that while FIFA has developed very much in terms of power and influence, both the agents and institutional context, have played a key role in the creation of a culture of corruption. On the other hand, UEFA had to comply with a stricter regulative system and powerful stakeholders, while its major agents appear to be less affected by corrupt practices, compared to those of FIFA.
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.
Resumo: Autor de uma obra filosófica abrangente, Alasdair MacIntyre manifesta um interesse profundo pelo tema da educação, tendo refletido, em particular, seriamente sobre a universidade. Sua concepção de universidade é fortemente influenciada por aquela defendida por John Henry Newman no século XIX, e se relaciona intimamente, tanto quanto para Newman, com a sua compreensão sobre a filosofia. Partindo de tal concepção, é possível refletir sistematicamente sobre a questão do ensino de filosofia, tanto no interior da vida universitária quanto nas relações desta última com a sociedade e a cultura em geral, inclusive com um foco particular sobre a realidade brasileira. Palavras-chave: Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-). John Henry Newman (1801-1890). Universidade. Ensino de filosofia. Abstract: Authoring a comprehensive philosophical oeuvre, Alasdair MacIntyre manifests a profound interest on the subject of education, having produced in particular a serious reflection on the theme of the university. His conception of a university is strongly influenced by that of John Henry Newman in the 19th century, and is intimately related, as much as with Newman’s, to his understanding of philosophy. Beginning with such a conception, it is possible to systematically meditate on the matter of the teaching of philosophy, within the university walls as well as at its general cultural and social boundaries, including a particular focus on Brazilian reality. Keywords: Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-). John Henry Newman (1801-1890). University. Philosophy teaching. REFERÊNCIAS ARRIOLA, Claudia Ruiz. Tradición, Universidad y Virtud: Filosofia de la Educacion Superior en Alasdair MacIntyre. Pamplona: EUNSA, 2000. ARISTÓTELES. Ethica Nicomachea. In: MCKEON, Richard (Org.). 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In this chapter, the nature of the management practice is investigated. The scene is sketched by telling a couple of stories from the experience of the author. Then, it is argued that an organizational approach is needed to understand the thinking and behavior of managers. It is shown that practice approaches are very suitable because they take their starting point in the daily activities, do justice to the nature of different activities, and make underlying ideals, values, and basic beliefs explicit. The Triple I model is used to investigate the practice of management in detail. It is shown that practices and management practices are intimately intertwined. The author's conclusion is that management is a supportive practice that is disclosed by the intrinsic values of the specific domain.
In what follows I shall consider what Alasdair MacIntyre has to say about utopianism, from the standpoint of someone who has an interest in the kind of politics that takes place within social institutions. The discussion has two parts. In the first part I survey the various comments that MacIntyre has made about utopianism in his writings over the years, from the publication of After Virtue in 1981 down to the present. In the second part I discuss the relevance of these ideas for those seeking to develop a critique of the uses and abuses of power within contemporary social institutions.
This chapter offers an introductory overview of recent efforts to extend MacIntyre’s virtue ethics to business and management. Geoff Moore has called attention to a distinction drawn by MacIntyre between practices and institutions. This distinction, along with other central concepts and distinctions from MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, are explained. With these in hand, it becomes clear that, MacIntyre’s work includes not only a negative assessment of the corrosive features of advanced capitalism, but also the outlines of a positive way forward for rethinking the pursuit of excellence in contemporary business and management. Management of a certain sort can be understood as a domain-relative practice. The pursuit of excellence in such a practice involves cultivating a range of virtues, especially practical wisdom. Practical wisdom involves the ability to reason well about action, bringing together sound principles with an ability to attend to the relevant particularities of a concrete situation. In the context of a contemporary organization, those charged with institutional leadership act with practical wisdom when they protect and extend the excellences internal to the practices of the organization, deliberate well with others, make good judgements, and carry out plans that bring the group as near as possible to worthwhile goals.
We focus on virtue ethics measures for business academicians and practitioners. Despite virtue ethics’ long history, virtue ethics scale development is a somewhat new field. Here, we introduce conceptualizations of virtue ethics and the attributes that define it, including three challenges to developing virtue ethics scales: subjectivity (virtues are person specific), cultural relativism (a globally recognized set of virtues may not exist), and psychological ego (people’s programming dictates responses to stimuli). Next, we discuss the psychology literature on which many virtue ethics scales are based and attempts to measure personal and group virtue ethics. Finally, we delineate challenges to virtue ethics scale development and best practices for avoiding social desirability and acquiescence bias.
We focus on virtue ethics measures for business academicians and practitioners. Despite virtue ethics' long history, virtue ethics scale development is a somewhat new field. Here, we introduce conceptualizations of virtue ethics and the attributes that define it, including three challenges to developing virtue ethics scales: subjectivity (virtues are person specific), cultural relativism (a globally recognized set of virtues may not exist), and psychological ego (people's programming dictates responses to stimuli). Next, we discuss the psychology literature on which many virtue ethics scales are based and attempts to measure personal and group virtue ethics. Finally, we delineate challenges to virtue ethics scale development and best practices for avoiding social desirability and acquiescence bias.
This paper considers discussions of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre in management literature. It argues that management scholars who have attempted to appropriate his After Virtue as a supportive text for conventional business ethics do so only by misreading or by ignoring his other work. It shows that MacIntyre does not argue for a reformed capitalism in which individual virtue overcomes institutional vice. Rather he argues that capitalist businesses are inherently vicious and that therefore individual virtue cannot be realised within them. The job of the virtuous is to resist them. The paper first presents an account of MacIntyre’s position on management and introduces some of the critical and supportive uses of his work in management scholarship. It focuses on two papers typical of the approach taken by conventional business ethicists to his work. These have attempted to deploy concepts developed by MacIntyre while denying the account of management and organisation of which they form a part. The paper provides some tentative hypotheses as to why management scholars have approached MacIntyre in this way. It argues that these attempted appropriations not only have failed but also must fail as conceptual coherence is sacrificed when the account within which those concepts make sense is denied.
This study examined the relationship between the demography of top management teams and corporate strategic change, measured as absolute change in diversification level, within a sample of Fortune 500 companies. Controlling for prior firm performance, organizational size, top team size, and industry structure, we found that the firms most likely to undergo changes in corporate strategy had top management teams characterized by lower average age, shorter organizational tenure, higher team tenure, higher educational level, higher educational specialization heterogeneity, and higher academic training in the sciences than other teams. The results suggest that top managers' cognitive perspectives, as reflected in a team's demographic characteristics, are linked to the team's propensity to change corporate strategy.
Organized anarchies are organizations characterized by problematic preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation. Recent studies of universities, a familiar form of organized anarchy, suggest that such organizations can be viewed for some purposes as collections of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be an answer, and decision makers looking for work. These ideas are translated into an explicit computer simulation model of a garbage can decision process. The general implications of such a model are described in terms of five major measures on the process. Possible applications of the model to more narrow predictions are illustrated by an examination of the model's predictions with respect to the effect of adversity on university decision making.
What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization
and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and
the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises:
rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to
change them. We describe three isomorphic processes--coercive, mimetic, and
normative-leading to this outcome. We then specib hypotheses about the impact of
resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty,
and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest
implications for theories of organizations and social change.
Alasdair MacIntyre, author of After Virtue, combined moral philosophy, sociology, and history in a way that could lead scholarship in journalism and mass communication along interesting new paths. His definition of a social practice may be especially helpful by providing a model of what can happen when journalists working in close knit professional communities strive to meet standards of excellence and his articulation of the creative connection between social practice past and present offers new possibilities for writing journalism history. After Virtue and other works by MacIntyre neither make reference to journalism nor provide moral decision making schema easily exportable to professional life, yet his account of the concept and role of the virtues in western society may provide a rich analytical resource for mass media scholars. This article attempts to illustrate how.
When social structures are viewed as made up of roles, social stability is not explicable as a function of (a) the normative consensual commitment of individuals or (b) normative integration. Instead, dissensus and role strain--the difficulty of fulfilling role demands--are normal. In a sequence of role bargains, the individual's choices are shaped by mechanisms, outlined here, through which he organizes his total role system and performs well or ill in any role relationship. Reduction of role strain is allocative or economic in form, but the economic model is different. "Third parties" interact with an individual and his alter, to keep their bargain within institutionalized limits. The larger social structure is held in place by role strains. The cumulative pattern of all such role bargains determines the flow of performances to all institutions. The research utility of this conception is explained.
Most economists are committed to some version of egoism. After distinguishing among the various sorts of egoistic claims, I cite the empirical literature against psychological egoism and show that attempts to account for this data make these economists’ previous empirical claims tautological. Moreover, the assumption of egoism has undesirable consequences, especially for students; if people believe that others behave egoistically, they are more likely to behave egoistically themselves. As an alternative to egoism I recommend the commitment model of Robert Frank.
The equivalent of egoism at the organizational level is that business firms seek (should seek) to maximize profits. I present arguments to show that a conscious attempt by managers to maximize profits is likely to fail. A committed altruism is more likely to raise profits. I suggest that a firm should take as its primary purpose providing meaningful work for employees.
"Passions Within Reason" re-evaluates the traditional models of human behavior in light of "a simple paradox," as Frank states, "namely, that in many situations the conscious pursuit of self-interest is incompatible with its attainment."
The self interest theory inspires self-interest; we expect the worst of others and act accordingly. But Frank shows, with many eloquent examples taken from a whole range of human behavior, that pure self interest leads to disaster, for oneself and society.
In "Passions Within Reason" Frank incorporates new developments from biology, psychology, and game and bargaining theory into a micro-economic theory that transcends the traditional "rational choice" model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study is based on the belief that economic organization is shaped by transaction cost economizing decisions. It sets out the basic principles of transaction cost economics, applies the basic arguments to economic institutions, and develops public policy implications. Any issue that arises, or can be recast as a matter of contracting, is usefully examined in terms of transaction costs. Transaction cost economics maintains that governance of contractual relations is mainly achieved through institutions of private ordering instead of legal centralism. This approach is based on behavioral assumptions of bounded rationalism and opportunism, which reflect actual human nature. These assumptions underlie the problem of economic organization: to create contract and governance structures that economize on bounded rationality while safeguarding transactions against the hazards of opportunism. The book first summarizes the transaction cost economics approach to the study of economic organization. It develops the underlying behavioral assumptions and the types of transactions; alternative approaches to the world of contracts are presented. Assuming that firms are best regarded as a governance structure, a comparative institutional approach to the governance of contractual relations is set out. The evidence, theory, and policy of vertical integration are discussed, on the basis that the decision to integrate is paradigmatic to transaction cost analysis. The incentives and bureaucratic limits of internal organization are presented, including the dilemma of why a large firm can't do everything a collection of small firms can do. The economics of organization in presented in terms of transaction costs, showing that hierarchy also serves efficiency and permits a variety of predictions about the organization of work. Efficient labor organization is explored; on the assumption that an authority relation prevails between workers and managers, what governance structure supports will be made in response to various types of job attributes are discussed, and implications for union organization are developed. Considering antitrust ramifications of transaction cost economics, the book summarizes transaction cost issues that arise in the context of contracting, merger, and strategic behavior, and challenges earlier antitrust preoccupation with monopoly. (TNM)
1st Issued as Paperback Bibliogr. s. 267-275
Economists have long been concerned with the incentive problems that arise when decision making in a firm is the province of managers who are not the firm's security holders. One outcome has been the development of “behavioral” and “managerial” theories of the firm which reject the classical model of an entrepreneur, or owner-manager, who single-mindedly operates the firm to maximize profits, in favor of theories that focus more on the motivations of a manager who controls but does not own and who has little resemblance to the classical “economic man.” Examples of this approach are Baumol (1959), Simon (1959), Cyert and March (1963), and Williamson (1964b). More recently the literature has moved toward theories that reject the classical model of the firm but assume classical forms of economic behavior on the part of agents within the firm. The firm is viewed as a set of contracts among factors of production, with each factor motivated by its self-interest. Because of its emphasis on the importance of rights in the organization established by contracts, this literature is characterized under the rubric “property rights.” Alchian and Demsetz (1972) and Jensen and Meckling (1976b) are the best examples. The antecedents of their work are in Coase (1937, 1960). The striking insight of Alchian and Demsetz (1972) and Jensen and Meckling (1976b) is in viewing the firm as a set of contracts among factors of production.
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