Moral Character Formation, Leadership Excellence and Corporate Character

Abstract

In the tradition of European business ethics the character of the actors is a fundamental and dominant mode for the attribution of virtuous action. The psychological and ethnological discussion of a “science of character” in the second half of the nineteenth century brought this tradition into bad repute, above all in Germany as a result of the National Socialist and anti-Semitic interpretations. But there is a further reason for this break with tradition, which is decisive from a theoretical point of view. Aristotle’s theoretical discussion of the ethical virtues and the practice of the “honourable merchant” allow little doubt about this. In functionally differentiated societies character is a difficult concept because it no longer refers to the status of citizens but is an open legal concept demanding integrity from agencies. Against this background the article discusses the options for a structuralist concept of character provided by the psychological behavioural sciences and experimental economics as seen through the lens of Governance Ethics. Leadership excellence is conceived here as the unity of the difference between the individual, the organization and society and thus also defines the quality of leaders.