Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-23T04:59:50.222Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Re-Imagining the Morality of Management: A Modern Virtue Ethics Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Geoff Moore
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper the problematic nature of the morality of management, in particular related to business organisations operating under Anglo-American capitalism, is explored. MacIntyre’s critique of managers in After Virtue (1985) serves as the starting point but this critique is itself subjected to analysis leading to a more balanced and contemporary view of the morality of management than MacIntyre provides. Paradoxically perhaps, MacIntyre’s own virtues-goods-practice-institution schema is shown to provide a way of re-imagining business organisations and management and thereby holds out the possibility of resolving the issue of the morality of management within such organisations. Implications for management practice are drawn out.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 483 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akaah, I., and Riordan, E. 1989. “Judgments of Professionals about Ethical Issues in Marketing Research: A Replication and Extension,” Journal of Marketing Research 26(1): 112–20.Google Scholar
Anthony, P. 1986. The Foundation of Management. London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar
Arendt, H. 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Bauman, Z. 1993. Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Baumhart, R. 1961. “Problems in Review: How Ethical Are Businessmen?” Harvard Business Review 39(4): 6–9.Google Scholar
Beadle, R. 2002. “The Misappropriation of MacIntyre,” Reason in Practice 2(2): 45–54. (The journal has been subsequently renamed Philosophy of Management.)Google Scholar
Beadle, R. and Moore, G. 2006. “MacIntyre on Virtue and Organization,” Organization Studies 27(3): 323–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, F. and Waters, J. 1989. “The Moral Muteness of Managers,” California Management Review 32(1) (Fall): 73–88.Google Scholar
Brenner, S. and Molander, E. 1977. “Is the Ethics of Business Changing?” Harvard Business Review 55(1): 57–71.Google Scholar
Brewer, K. B. 1997. “Management as a Practice: A Response to Alasdair MacIntyre,” Journal of Business Ethics 16(8): 825–33.Google Scholar
Carroll, A. 1987. “In Search of the Moral Manager.” Business Horizons (March–April): 7–15.Google Scholar
Carroll, A.. 2000. “Ethical Challenges for Business in the New Millennium: Corporate Social Responsibility and Models of Management Morality,” Business Ethics Quarterly 10(1): 33–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clegg, S. and Rhodes, C. 2006. Management Ethics. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Courpasson, D. and Reed, M. 2004. “Introduction: Bureaucracy in the Age of Enterprise,” Organization 11(1): 5–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deet, Z. S. 1995. “Character, Corporate Responsibility and the Dialogic in the Postmodern Context: A Commentary on Mangham,” Organization 2(2): 217–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. 1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48(2): 147–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, T. and Preston, L. 1995. “The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications,” Academy of Management Review 20(1): 65–91.Google Scholar
du Gay, P. 1998. “Alasdair MacIntyre and the Christian Genealogy of Management Critique,” Cultural Values 2(4): 421–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
du Gay, P.. 2000. In Praise of Bureaucracy. London: Sage.Google Scholar
du Gay, P., ed. 2004. The Values of Bureaucracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dunne, J. and Hogan, P. 2004. Education and Practice: Upholding the Integrity of Teaching and Learning. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Froud, J., Johal, S. and Williams, K. 2002. “Financialisation and the Coupon Pool,” Capital and Class 78 (Autumn): 119–51.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1969. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Goodpaster, K. and Matthews, J. 1982. “Can a Corporation Have a Conscience?” Harvard Business Review 60(1): 132–41.Google Scholar
Hauerwas, S. 2001. The HauerwasReader, ed. Berkman, J. and Cartwright, M.Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hine, J. 2007. “The Shadow of MacIntyre’s Manager in the Kingdom of Conscience Constrained,” Business Ethics: A European Review 16(4): 358–71.Google Scholar
Hodgson, D. 2004. “Project Work: The Legacy of Bureaucratic Control in the Post-Bureaucratic Organization,” Organization 11(1): 81–100.Google Scholar
Hodson, R. 1999. “Management Citizenship Behavior: A New Concept and an Empirical Test,” Social Problems 46(3): 460–78.Google Scholar
Hoggett, P. 2004. “A Service to the Public: The Containment of Ethical and Moral Conflicts by Public Bureaucracies,” in du Gay 2004: 167–90.Google Scholar
Jackall, R. 1988. Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kallinikos, J. 2004. “The Social Foundations of the Bureaucratic Order,” Organization 11(1): 13–36.Google Scholar
Karreman, D. and Alvesson, M. 2004. “Cages in Tandem: Management Control, Social Identity, and Identification in a Knowledge-Intensive Firm,” Organization 11(1) 149–75.Google Scholar
Keat, R. 2000. Cultural Goods and the Limits of the Market. London: MacMillan Press.Google Scholar
Keat, R.. 2008. “Practices, Firms and Varieties of Capitalism,” Philosophy of Management 7(1) 77–91.Google Scholar
Klein, S. 1988. “Is a Moral Organisation Possible?” Business and Professional Ethics Journal 7(1): 51–73.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A. 1977. “Utilitarianism and Cost-Benefit Analysis: An Essay on the Relevance of Moral Philosophy to Bureaucratic Theory,” in Values in the Electric Power Industry, ed. Sayre, K.. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A.. 1979. “Corporate Modernity and Moral Judgement: Are They Mutually Exclusive?” in Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century, ed. Goodpaster, K. E. and Sayer, K. M.Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A.. 1985. After Virtue, 2nd ed. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A.. 1994. “A Partial Response to my Critics,” in After MacIntyre, ed. Horton, J. and Mendus, S.Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A.. 1995. Marxism and Christianity. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A.. 1999. “Social Structures and their Threats to Moral Agency,” Philosophy 74:311–29Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A. and Dunne, J. 2002. “Alasdair MacIntyre on Education: In Dialogue with Joseph Dunne,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 36(1): 1–19.Google Scholar
Mangham, I. 1995. “MacIntyre and the Manager.” Organization 2(2): 181–204.Google Scholar
McCann, D. and Brownsberger, M. L. 1990. “Management as a Social Practice: Rethinking Business Ethics after MacIntyre,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics: 223–45.Google Scholar
Merton, R. 1940. “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality,” Social Forces 18(1): 560–68.Google Scholar
Moore, G. 2002. “On the Implications of the Practice-Institution Distinction: MacIntyre and the Application of Modern Virtue Ethics to Business” Business Ethics Quarterly 12(1): 19–32.Google Scholar
Moore, G.. 2005a. “Corporate Character: Modern Virtue Ethics and the Virtuous Corporation,” Business Ethics Quarterly 15(4): 659—85.Google Scholar
Moore, G.. 2005b. “Humanizing Business: A Modern Virtue Ethics Approach.” Business Ethics Quarterly 15(2): 237–55.Google Scholar
Moore, G. and Beadle, R. 2006. “In Search of Organizational Virtue in Business: Agents, Goods, Practices, Institutions and Environments,” Organization Studies 27(3): 369–89.Google Scholar
Morgan, G. 1997. Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.Google Scholar
Nash, L. 1990. Good Intentions Aside: A Manager’s Guide for Resolving Ethical Problems. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar
Nash, L. 1995. “Whose Character? A Response to Mangham’s ‘MacIntyre and the Manager,” Organization 2(2): 226–32.Google Scholar
Ogbonna, E. and Wilkinson, B. 2003. “The False Promise of Organizational Culture Change: A Case Study of Middle Managers in Grocery Retailing,” Journal of Management Studies 40(5): 1151–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Sullivan, M. 2003. “The Political Economy of Comparative Corporate Governance.” Review of International Political Economy 10(1): 23–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, M. 2002. Against Management. Organization in the Age of Managerialism. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, R. 2003. “Stakeholder Legitimacy,” Business Ethics Quarterly 13(1): 25–41.Google Scholar
Phillips, R., Freeman, R. E and Wicks, A. 2003. “What Stakeholder Theory is Not,” Business Ethics Quarterly 13(4): 479–502.Google Scholar
Randels, G. 1995. “Morality and the Manager after MacIntyre: A Response to Mangham,” Organization 2(2): 205–11.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. 1984. “The Moral Character of Management Practice,” Journal of Management Studies 21(3): 287–302.Google Scholar
Robertson, I. and Smith, M. 2001. “Personnel Selection,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 74: 441–72.Google Scholar
Salaman, G. 2004. “Bureaucracy and Beyond: Managers and Leaders in the ‘Post-Bureaucratic’ Organization,” in du Gay 2004: 141–64.Google Scholar
Sennett, R. 1998. The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
ten Bos, R. and Willmott, H. 2001. “Towards a Post-Dualistic Business Ethics: Interweaving Reason and Emotion in Working Life,” Journal of Management Studies 38(6): 769–93.Google Scholar
Thomas, A. 2003. Controversies in Management: Issues, Debates, Answers, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thompson, P. 2003. “Disconnected Capitalism: Or Why Employers Can’t Keep Their Side of the Bargain,” Work, Employment and Society 17(2): 359–78.Google Scholar
Thornton, P. 2007. Inside the Dark Box: Shedding Light on Private Equity. London: The Work Foundation.Google Scholar
Watson, T. 2002. Organising and Managing Work: Organisational, Managerial andStrategic Behaviour. Harlow: Financial Times/Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Weaver, G. 2006. “Virtue in Organizations: Moral Agencies as a Foundation for Moral Agency.” Organisation Studies 27(3): 341–68.Google Scholar
Williams, K. 2000. “From Shareholder Value to Present-Day Capitalism,” Economy and Society 29(1): 1–12.Google Scholar