Virtue at Work: Ethics for Individuals, Managers, and Organizations

Abstract

Virtue at Work is about good organizations, good managers, and good people, and how these can contribute to good communities. It provides an integrated and philosophically-grounded framework that enables a coherent approach to organizations and organizational ethics from the perspective of practitioners in the workplace, from the perspective of managers in organizations, as well as from the perspective of organizations themselves. The philosophical grounding comes from the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In line with MacIntyre's own commitments, Virtue at Work makes philosophy down-to-earth and practical. It provides a new way of understanding ethics and organizations that is both realistic and attractive, but also challenging. And it also provides tough but realistic suggestions in order to put this approach into practice. Virtue at Work not only applies theory in a readable and compelling manner, but also shows how this has been applied to a wide variety of organizations and occupations. Examples are drawn from Architecture, Accounting, Human Resource Management, Banking, Investment Advising, Open Source Software, Pharmaceuticals, Fair Trade, the UK's National Health Service, Churches, and Journalism, among many others.