Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qs9v7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T15:24:48.969Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Role of Character in Business Ethics1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Edwin M. Hartman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

There is good reason to take a virtue-based approach to business ethics. Moral principles are fairly useful in assessing actions, but understanding how moral people behave and how they become moral requires reference to virtues, some of which are important in business. We must go beyond virtues and refer to character, of which virtues are components, to grasp the relationship between moral assessment and psychological explanation. Virtues and other character traits are closely related to (in technical terms, they supervene on) personality traits postulated by personality psychologists. They may therefore be featured in respectable psychological explanations. But good character fits no familiar psychological pattern. A person of good character is sufficiently self-aware and rational that his or her virtues are not accompanied by the vices that psychologists find usually associated with them. A course in business ethics can help develop this self-awareness, which a good life in business requires.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 1998 , pp. 547 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1998

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

Aristotle, . 1894. Ethica Nicomachea. Edited by Bywater, I.Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1985. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence, Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Asch, Solomon E. 1955. “Studies of Independence and Conformity: A Minority of One against a Unanimous Majority.” Psychological Monographs 70. 9, Whole no. 416.Google Scholar
Brink, David O. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Randall. 1981. “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology.” American Journal of Sociology 86, 986–1014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Derry, Robbin, and Green, Ronald M. 1989. “Ethical Theory in Business Ethics: A Critical Assessment.” Journal of Business Ethics 8, 521–533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dworkin, Gerald. 1988. The Theory and Practice of Autonomy. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edel, Abraham, Elizabeth, Flower, and O’Connor, Finbarr W. 1994. Critique of Applied Ethics: Reflections and Recommendations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1984. Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Revised edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1985. Sour Grapes: Studies in the Sub-version of Rationality. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1989. The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry G. 1981. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” In Free Will, edited by Gary, Watson, 81–95. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haney, Craig, Philip, Zimbardo, and Banks, W. Curtis. 1973. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Similated Prison.” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1, 69–97.Google Scholar
Hartman, Edwin M. 1988. Conceptual Foundations of Organization Theory. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Hartman, Edwin M. 1996. Organizational Ethics and the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Huxley, Aldous. 1932. Brave New World. New York: Harper and Row. (Perennial Library Edition, first published in 1969.)Google Scholar
Keeley, Michael. 1995. “The Trouble with Transformational Leadership: Toward a Federalist Ethic for Organizations.” Business Ethics Quarterly 5, 67–96.Google Scholar
Koehn, Daryl. 1995. “A Role for Virtue Ethics in the Analysis of Business.” Business Ethics Quarterly 5, 533–539.Google Scholar
Kupperman, Joel. 1991. Character. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald. 1994. “Bourgeois Virtue.” The American Scholar 63, 177–191.Google Scholar
McFall, Lynn. 1992. “Integrity.” In Ethics and Personality: Essays in Moral Psychology, edited by John, Deigh, 79–94. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McMahon, Christopher. 1994. Authority and Democracy: A General Theory of Government and Management. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas. 1971. “Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness.” Synthese 22, 396–413.Google Scholar
Nash, Laura L. 1989. “Ethics Without the Sermon.” In Contemporary Moral Controversies in Business, edited by Iannone, A. Pablo, 552–563. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paine, Lynn Sharp. 1990. “Ethics as Character Development: Reflections on the Objective of Ethics Education.” In Business Ethics: The State of the Art, edited by Freeman, R. Edward, 67–86. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paine, Lynn Sharp. 1994. “Managing for Organizational Integrity.” Harvard Business Review 72 (March-April), 106–117.Google Scholar
Pastin, Mark. 1986. The Hard Problems of Management: Gaining the Ethics Edge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.Google Scholar
Pfeffer, Jeffrey. 1982. Organizations and Organization Theory. Boston: Pitman.Google Scholar
Plato, . 1961. Plato’s Meno, edited by Bluck, J. S.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1985. “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, 223–251.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya K., and Bernard, Williams, editors. 1982. Utilitarianism and Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomon, Robert C. 1992. Ethics and Excellence: Cooperation and Integrity in Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Solomon, Robert C. 1994. “The Corporation as Community: A Reply to Ed Hartman.” Business Ethics Quarterly 4, 271–285.Google Scholar
Stoner, , James, A. E., and Freeman, R. Edward. 1989. Management. 4th edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Watson, Gary. 1982. “Free Agency.” In Free Will, edited by Gary, Watson, 96–110. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1973. Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1981. Moral Luck. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Alan. 1989. Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar