Ron Beadle

In Search of Organizational Virtue in Business: Agents, Goods, Practices, Institutions and Environments

In this paper we argue that MacIntyre’s virtues-goods-practice-institution schema (MacIntyre 1985) provides a conceptual framework within which organizational virtue in general, and virtue in business in particular, can be explored. A heuristic device involving levels of individual agency, mode of institutionalization and environment is used to discuss why some businesses protect practices, develop virtues and encourage the exercise of moral agency in their decision making, while others struggle or fail to do so. In relation to conventional shareholder-owned capitalist business, both the mode of institutionalization and the environment are shown to be largely antithetical to the development of practices. Other businesses may meet the necessary internal conditions for the sustenance of practice-like features but remain dependent upon features within their environments. To illustrate this, we use participant observation to show how one particular organization—Traidcraft plc—meets the relevant conditions.

MacIntyre on Virtue and Organization

This paper introduces the work of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in the area of virtue and organization. It aims to provide one point of entry to MacIntyre’s work for readers who have not been introduced to it and makes some novel suggestions about its development for those who have. Following some initial comments on MacIntyre’s approach to social science, it traces the development of his ideas on organization from 1953 to 1980, before outlining the general theory of virtues, goods, practices and institutions which emerged in the publication of his seminal After Virtue in 1981. Finally, the paper outlines some of the uses to which these ideas have been put in the organizational literature.

Why Business Cannot Be a Practice

Abstract 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.

MacIntyre, neo-Aristotelianism and organization theory

In this chapter, we set out to demonstrate how organizational theory and analysis can benefit from the work of the distinguished philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In the first part of the chapter we show how MacIntyres conception of how rival traditions may move towards reconciliation has the potential to resolve the relativist conclusions that bedevil organization theory. In the second part, we show how MacIntyres ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ general theory provides a framework for reconciling the fields of organization theory and organizational ethics. In the third part, we provide a worked example of these two strands to demonstrate the implications of MacIntyres philosophy for organizational analysis. We conclude with a research agenda for a distinctively MacIntyrean organization theory.

The Man in the Red Coat—Management in the Circus

Authored by a circus performer/manager and an academic, this paper uses concepts from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre to interpret ethnographic material from the traditional circus. The paper outlines MacIntyre’s conceptual architecture of goods, practices and institutions in which exercise of the virtues by those who manage the institution is required to maintain the integrity of practices. Such exercise is one defining feature of what MacIntyre calls ‘practice‐based communities’. Following a discussion of method it uses ethnographic material to describe the organisation of work in the circus and the self‐understanding of the managerial role of ringmaster. A series of incidents illustrate the use of the virtue of phronêsis, practical judgement in this role to maintain the integrity of the practice. The paper concludes by considering the extent to which travelling circus may be considered an example of the practice‐based community.