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MacIntyrean Virtue Ethics in Business: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

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Abstract

This paper seeks to establish whether the categories of MacIntyrean virtue ethics as applied to business organizations are meaningful in a non-western business context. It does so by building on research reported in Moore (Organ Stud, 33(3): 363–387, 2012) in which the application of virtue ethics to business organizations was investigated empirically in the UK, based on a conceptual framework drawn from MacIntyre’s work (After Virtue 2007). Comparing these results with an equivalent study in Sri Lanka, the paper finds that the categories are meaningful but that there are both similarities to and considerable differences in the content of these categories from the UK study. The paper draws on aspects of institutional theory to explore and explain these findings. Overall, there is supportive evidence that the categories of MacIntyrean virtue ethics are generalizable, and so can be used to characterize problems of organizational virtue and vice around the world, while providing evidence that there may be polities which are more conducive to the ‘practice-like conduct of production’ (Keat, Philos Manag, 7(1): 77–91, 2008).

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Notes

  1. Keat (2008, pp. 80–82) notes the patterns of share ownership, access to finance, form of corporate governance, consensual forms of management, cooperative relationships particularly with firms in the same industry (hence, the ‘horizontal’ description above), the approach to training and apprenticeship, research and development conducted on an industry-wide basis, and competition based on quality rather than price as the key differences from liberal market economies typified by the UK and USA.

  2. We might wish to limit this notion of perfection somewhat, to the development of the good character, or the flourishing, of individual practitioners.

  3. MacIntyre’s position on this may has moved somewhat in recent years. During a seminar with him in May 2012 to discuss a draft chapter of a new book of his, he acknowledged that there may be admirable capitalist enterprises, but his suspicion is that they always, in the end, become captured by the ‘system’.

  4. This quantitative exercise was an advance on Moore’s (2012)  study, but one that was identified in the limitations therein.

  5. Welch’s t test takes account of small samples where there are different population variances. In comparison with the more frequently used Student’s t test, this produces p values which are marginally more conservative.

  6. This analysis also uses Welch’s t test.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Operations and Marketing, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong, 2522, NSW, Australia

    Mario Fernando

  2. Durham University Business School, Durham University, Mill Hill Lane, Durham, DH1 3LB, UK

    Geoff Moore

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Fernando, M., Moore, G. MacIntyrean Virtue Ethics in Business: A Cross-Cultural Comparison. J Bus Ethics 132, 185–202 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2313-6

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