Geoff Moore uses Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of virtue ethics to show how virtue in business is possible. MacIntyre himself, like Aristotle, doubts that business is hospitable to virtue. Moore states the conditions under which virtue in business is possible. In my view, Moore wins the argument.
This is not a long book, but it covers a great deal of ground with sophistication and good sense. It is written in a pleasant style that will be intelligible to businesspeople as well as scholars, and to the “everyday plain person” (7) as well, so long as that person reads the tightly argued text with careful attention. It suggests many directions for further research and further argument.
At the center of MacIntyre’s account, and therefore Moore’s, is the notion of a practice: “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized” (60). One aims at appropriate standards of excellence and thereby increases one’s ability to conceive of and achieve excellence (60, following MacIntyre). Virtues help us achieve excellence in practices and, more generally, achieve eudaimonia (happiness in the richest possible sense). A virtuous organization encourages virtuous practices and embeds them in a protective institution, which is primarily concerned with external goods. (Moore’s recurring example is about people in an architectural design firm in which there is some tension between practices around aesthetic integrity and profitable competitiveness.) Managing virtuous practices and navigating the external environment is itself a kind of practice that requires strategic intelligence and the virtues of practical wisdom and courage.
Many business ethicists have argued that the benefits of firms in competitive markets create a strong utilitarian case for business, but that is not what Moore wants. It certainly does not impress MacIntyre, who is contemptuous of empty utilitarianism, such as the kind that equates utility with the satisfaction of any old preference, as standard economic theory seems to do. But beyond theory, MacIntyre and to some degree Moore deplore modernity’s crass acquisitiveness and its focus on taking satisfaction in things—money, for example—that are at best only means to what is really good.
Like Aristotle, they distinguish between things that are desired but good only as a means rather than for themselves and things that are desired for themselves but are not in fact good. Gardening might be both good in itself—some people just love to garden—or a way to get fresh vegetables, or both. Money is an example of a means to the good. One can buy genuinely good things: a ticket to a superb opera or tuition for an excellent school, for example. But according to Aristotle, and MacIntyre and Moore as well, money is only a means to an end. There is no good reason for valuing money for itself—that is a form of what a psychologist would call pathological functional autonomy—and it may be a means for acquiring something bad, like a gun to be used to shoot someone out of revenge. Spitefully sabotaging a friend is a bad means to a bad thing.
As an employee in an organization you may earn money, which may be a means to some genuinely good things, and you may find the work itself satisfying, challenging, educational. You may enjoy cooperating with your fellow workers and feeling pride in your work. You may also see your work as serving some common social good. But not everyone is so fortunate as to have a calling, to use Moore’s word (89). Surely we should respect people who work at boring jobs to support their families and give their children better opportunities. Though they are not participating in virtuous practices at work, they are achieving the natural and laudable end of supporting their families.
Moore claims that what is good in itself takes precedence over what is a means to some good (68-71; the argument is complicated). The means to some good is somehow subordinate to that good, but it is not obvious that the intrinsic satisfactions of one’s work always takes precedence over the money one earns if one’s earnings greatly improve one’s life. Yet if we think of employees as being like professionals, we may believe that their first responsibility is to their position whether or not fulfilling that responsibility goes against management’s view of the interests of the organization. If you are a virtuous corporate attorney, your first loyalty is to the law; so Moore suggests (148, 157ff., and 179).
If we are not utilitarians, how do we know what is good? MacIntyre and Moore answer in the manner of Aristotle, who holds that the arete (excellence or virtue) of anything is determined by its essence, which normally includes its purpose (telos). Human beings are no exception; their essence includes rationality and sociability. Their virtues contribute to their rationality and sociability. A virtuous person is one who lives accordingly and enjoys a richly satisfying life. (MacIntyre and Moore emphasize the individual’s telos as opposed to that of human beings generally more than does Aristotle.) But what has that to do with morality in our sense? We normally think of morality as having to do with other people—with benefiting them, treating them justly, and respecting their rights. But because human beings are essentially sociable, living well is a matter of enjoying friendship, citizenship, and other communal relations and activities. The most satisfying form of friendship is unselfish: one wants for one’s friend what one wants for oneself. The most satisfying form of citizenship is being a contributor to a good community. Moore adds that the eudaimonic employee enjoys being trustworthy in a trusting environment (134).
But can virtue ethics guide action? Moore argues (48-50) that principles-based ethics only seems more precise and useful than virtue ethics in deciding what to do, for it is difficult to apply principles successfully in complex situations—not that principles are entirely worthless. Aristotle argues that virtue involves the ability to take the complexities of a situation into account and see it for what it is—so he says in his discussion of virtue and finding the mean between extremes—and to react with appropriate emotions. It is much like what we now call framing. In that respect, ethics is like strategic management, for which there are no principles that tell the manager very much about how to handle a complex situation.
MacIntyre holds that virtuous practices in organizations require an institution to protect them but that in the end the institution’s utilitarian tendencies tend to overwhelm them and crowd out virtue. One of Moore’s central arguments is that that is not always the case. Moore seeks to give an account of the relationship between the virtue of the individual and how it contributes to the common good. That is a challenge. We can see how an individual’s virtue benefits others, but it is harder to see how an employee’s virtue benefits the organization’s external stakeholders, or even the organization itself. Moore sets out to describe the conditions under which it is most likely to happen. They include certain structural requirements, but primarily virtuous managers.
What are the characteristics of a virtuous manager? Moore lists seven outcomes for the manager to accomplish through a kind of character development (110-114). To sum them up: The organization has at its core a practice whose internal goods, generated in meaningful work, contribute to the common good of the community. The mode of institutionalization is compatible with the goodness of the core practices, and it must protect the practices from the demands of impatient or hostile stakeholders. Organizational governance systems “crowd in” virtue by hiring pro-social employees, who then contribute to understanding how the organization contributes to the common good—by making work both subjectively and objectively meaningful; by cultivating trust and trustworthiness; by encouraging feelings of group identity; by paying fair salaries across the board; and by being transparent (133-136). So we need virtuous agents, the right form of institutionalization, and a virtuous environment (165).
One of the strengths of Moore’s book is that it shows an understanding of what goes on in organizations and, perhaps for that reason, is more convincing, more practical, and less dogmatic than MacIntyre’s somewhat Olympian account. Moore bases his account on thorough research and first-hand experience in business. He usefully distinguishes varieties of organizations and the differing kinds of challenge they face in creating and sustaining virtuous practices and the institutional factors that protect them.
One point requires perhaps more clarification than Moore offers. Moore notes that MacIntyre argues that we ought to be virtuous without regard to consequences (196-97). But if I understand Moore correctly, in claiming that the internal goods must contribute to the common good of the community he disagrees with MacIntyre’s radical anti-consequentialism. I have no objection to this claim, but it does seem more utilitarian than what we might expect given Moore’s focus on internal goods. For he seems reluctant to allow that the purpose of some external good might be to benefit customers and other stakeholders in the community. Profit might indirectly generate goods for customers but also indirectly yield internal goods for employees.
MacIntyre is a formidable figure, and Moore makes good use of MacIntyre’s framework, but I am not entirely convinced that he needs all of it. For example, what MacIntyre says about the importance of tradition and the “narrative quest” does not add much to Moore’s overall argument.
These are quibbles. Moore has written a very good book. For someone interested in MacIntyre’s influential work it is required reading.
