In the management domain the revival of interest in virtue ethics has been not so much in seeking a deeper understanding of the virtues themselves as in finding exemplars and pursuing the concept that virtue is a proper end of business. The aim of this paper is to show that a philosophical treatment of the great virtues can enlighten management understanding of them and to examine in more detail courage, love and wisdom. The paper includes an overview of the approach to the virtues in contemporary management literature, a brief summary of the traditional account of the moral virtues, and discussion of six contemporary concepts of management. The contribution which an understanding of individual virtues can make to effective management will then be explored, drawing on earlier work by the author in relation to both courage and love as management virtues.

Organisations are socially constructed in that their members are socialised in a world of language that enables them to understand, communicate and share. They use language to create patterns that help them make choices and relate their actions to the patterns they create and the choices they make. The world of organisations and their management is, therefore, a matter of language. In this world, rationality plays a fundamental role in legitimising choices together with the actions that express them. This study suggests that the limited expressive resources of a dominant version of rationality limit the world of management in a way that undermines its legitimacy and that it is possible for management to break free from this limited world by learning to think in other languages that express contrasting versions of rationality.

Any approach to the study of managerial situations undertaken without reflection on the underpinning philosophy is flawed because it limits our ability to question the validity of the knowledge claimed in the analysis. The paper considers this issue and presents a philosophical reflection on the use of a systems approach to the modelling of human enterprises. It draws on insights from systems thinking, cognitive science, autopoiesis, communication theory and non-linear dynamics. These are interpreted within the context of social systems as networks of conversations that are generated in language. It is written to invite an exchange of ideas concerning the role of the generative dialogue.

‘Isn’t it clear that a man must have the right to warn the majority, to argue with the majority, to fight with the majority if he believes he holds the truth? Before many can know something, one must know it!’ The words are Dr Stockman’s of An Enemy of the People1 and in a competitive market building upon a Smithian self-interest there might seem to be no room for people like him. Whatever the personal attitudes of the owners, managers and employees, they would feel forced to behave in business like all of their competitors. Such is the logic of the basic driving forces in Western societies. It is a logic that necessitates lean and mean production, the substitution of labour with capital, relocation of production to places with low labour costs - also known as social dumping - or to places with lessstringent environmental demands and/or less costly safety regulations.The traditional way to prevent this happening has been to use state intervention and regulation to curb the worst cases. But today many of the traditional harnesses on an unbridled market economy have been removed, such as controls on capital movements, trade across borders or regulation of sectorslike transport, telecommunication, energy, utilities and so on.With this in mind we may ask whether there exists an alternative to state intervention that would contain or change the direction of the logic from within the logic itself. In other words, is it possible for a single or a few entrepreneurs to change the logic in such a way that external regulation is avoided or reduced, while finding answers to the problems and concerns caused by that logic?Of course there is a risk that these answers may consist of just a kind of exploitative riding of the waves of concerns and offering strange, Potemkin-like answers to for instance the clamour for environmental responsibility.Responsible entrepreneurship is something else, though. It consists in understanding genuine concerns and using one’s special knowledge in a certain field, to experiment and develop constantly improving answers to these concerns, giving a concrete form to emerging values, and raising the expectations of all those having these concerns.

Electronic surveillance of employees in the workplace presents both opportunities and risks to contemporary managers. Some of the moral risks associated with electronic workplace surveillance are well-known and discussed in the literature. A lesser-known risk, which is explored and addressed in this article, is the threat that electronic surveillance poses, when used inappropriately, to employees’ personal autonomy. This article elaborates the concept of personal autonomy, illustrates how electronic workplace surveillance might be used to violate personal autonomy, and suggests some management strategies that could be used to avoid such violations.

Economics and social sciences in general have a long tradition of using theories, models, concepts, and so forth borrowed from the natural sciences to describe and explain the properties and behaviours of economic and social entities. However, unwarranted application of theoretical elements from the natural sciences in the economic/social domain can have adverse consequences for organisations, their employees and society in general. Focusing on biology and organisation studies, we discuss the general problems that may arise when theoretical elements from natural science are applied in the economic/social domain. We examine one particular case, the organisational ecology research programme, and we argue that organisational ecology rests on the metaphorical, rather than literal, use of the notion of evolution. We conclude by showing how the use of the evolutionary metaphor in organisation theory can have adverse consequences for both managerial practice and society in general.

This article offers an interpretation of theories of management and organisation from the perspective of Hannah Arendt’s theory of free action. This endeavour will contribute to criticism and eventually improvement of the conceptual framework of management and organisation theory. We discuss conceptual tensions in this field, for instance with respect to the relationship between human action and the constraints of an organisation. To the extent that management and organisation theory are practice-oriented, such an analysis can help to understand tensions and ambiguities in practice. Some of the optimism and high hopes found in the literature may have to be tempered as a consequence of a more adequate analysis of free action. The analysis therefore provides a critical point of view on the problems of managing freely acting people.

Although Taylor’s scientific management is often severely criticised, his publications are seldom the subject of scrutinised, philosophical, reading. The latter is the aim of the present text. Attention is given to the idea of science, the role of extra-scientific values, the relationship of theory and practice, the societal meaning of management, presenting demarcations, presuppositions and unclarities. The conclusion notes several topics, implied by Taylor’s views and still worth reflecting upon. One example is efficiency as a seemingly context-independent concept.

This paper takes seriously the idea that one person in a workplace could cause a co-worker to feel ashamed without realising it. This is because the most widely accepted conception of shame does not adequately explain the eliciting conditions of that emotion. I begin by setting out what I take to be the most common account of shame. Next, I note what predictions we would make about which situations will elicit shame in a subject were we to embrace that conception. I then show that these predictions are actually false in three cases out of four. A second analysis of shame is proposed as an alternative that makes better predictions about when shame will be elicited than the first account, and can explain more of the relevant phenomena even when the two accounts of shame make thesame prediction about whether the emotion will be elicited in a given scenario. I close with a practical discussion of how this new conception of shame should inform workplace managers who encounter situations in which one worker feels harassed by a colleague and the accused does not understand why her actions made the other worker feel the way they did.

Starting from the observation that in morally questionable situations managers tend to act in accordance with a so-called political utilitarianism, this paper seeks to answer the question: why is it important for managers to behave morally? It argues that managers should adopt the deontological notion of self-respect and respect for others as a basic presumption, bearing in mind management’s central role of dealing with people. It is suggested that this is especially so in transition economies. By adopting a deontological perspective, organisations could benefit significantly, although this should not be the primary motivation for acting on this basis.

This paper discusses the potential contribution of Henri Bergson’s philosophy to the theory and practice of service quality measurement. First, it summarises some of the theoretical developments within the field of service quality measurement and points to areas of controversy found within the extant publications. Then, it proposes that a greater appreciation of philosophy, in particular the writings of Henri Bergson, can help address the apparent inconsistencies and gaps observed in the literature. Finally, the paper offers suggestions regarding the potential implications of Bergson’s philosophy for the measurement of service quality in contemporary organisations.

Despite their common core concept, philosophy and knowledge management (KM) have not yet found a mutually inspiring base. Theories of KM cite philosophical works, more or less adequately, while philosophy tends to ignore theories of KM. This article draws the sketch of a possible common basis forfuture developments in the direction of a philosophically inspired theory of knowledge management. Starting with the development of a concept of knowledge that is the base of the common understanding, the critical review of knowledge management theories reveals conceptual flaws and the need for useful criteria to support successful KM.

Parts 1 to 3 of this paper explore the theoretical rationale and ethical significance of Alasdair MacIntyre’s twin distinctions between goods internal and external to practices and between goods of excellence and of effectiveness. Parts 4 and 5 then relate this analysis to his critique of contemporary institutions, compartmentalisation and management. My argument is that these concepts express a teleological theory of why and how goods should be ordered which, in refusing to identify practical rationality with institutional actuality and instead differentiating between rival traditions, progresses beyond the theories of Aristotle and of other, past and present anglophone Aristotelians.

Despite the profound potential of MacIntyre’s revolutionary virtue paradigm, management scholars have struggled to make sense of one of the most contentious and insightful philosophers of our time. This conceptual paper attempts to move past the transliteration of MacIntyre in favour of a translation of his contribution in a manner than retains something closer to its full meaning, while helpfully guiding empirical efforts to apply this emerging paradigm to modern organisations. This translation entails a dismissal of MacIntyre’s hypercritical bias in order to accommodate an expansion of his ideas into the language and logic of management theory and practice. Schein’s methodological roadmap for deciphering culture is offered, as is theory-building using comparative case research, as offering two particularly promising directions for future empirical studies that seek to use the theory of virtue in order to reconceptualise and study the modern organisation.

This paper challenges Alasdair MacIntyre’s assertion that the modern firm - such as Google, Unilever, or Microsoft - is inimical to human flourishing within an Aristotelian framework. The paper begins by questioning MacIntyre’s rendering of utopian communities. It then addresses four specific criticisms of themodern firm to be found throughout MacIntyre’s oeuvre, namely compartmentalisation, myopia, inequality, and loss of community. Arguments are made to the effect that these criticisms do not vitiate the institutional role of the modern firm in an Aristotelian context. The paper concludes with an invocation of the modern firm as institutional ideal within an evolving utopian vision of human flourishing. This is a utopian vision in which the modern firm plays a constructive, not corruptive, institutional role.

This paper considers the resources MacIntyre provides for undertaking empirical work using his goods-virtues-practices-institutions framework alongside the attendant challenges of doing such work. It focuses on methods that might be employed in judging the extent to which observed social arrangements mayconform to the standards required by a practice-embodying institution. It concludes by presenting the outline of an empirical project exploring at a music facility in the North East of England, The Sage Gateshead.

This paper uses narrative from the social centre movement in the UK to argue that social centres are examples of the MacIntyrean small communities that can virtuously resist the overbearing market influence. Looking at the contrast between rented and squatted centres, the paper argues that those that are squatted are practice-based communities, and those that are rented, are institutions. This therefore highlights the interrupting role of the market and argues that the rented centres are incompatible with MacIntyre’s ideal.

This paper examines two practices – the Roman Catholic Practice of Eucharist and the game Dungeons and Dragons – to show how social critique can be mounted from within a practice. It begins by relating Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of tradition to his earlier analysis of ideology and to the notion of ideology ingeneral. The paper then tackles two dominant forms of ideology – Commodity Fetishism and Scientism – and shows how both Eucharist and Dungeons and Dragons promote critical thinking to resist those ideologies. In the process, it denies the Althusserian-Foucauldian analysis of ideology as mere materialityand defends a conception of ideology as material and ideal.

This paper considers the question of whether journalism can be considered to be a social practice. After considering some of the goods of journalism the paper moves to investigate how external goods can corrupt the practice and make it somewhat ineffective. The paper therefore looks to consider ways in which the goods claimed have been better served in ‘radical’ journalism. Bristol Independent Media Centre is then evaluated as an example of an active project in which the goods of community are pursued through an inclusive form of participatory journalism.