What Virtues for Business Ethics?

Abstract

An approach founded on virtue ethics has gradually found its way in business ethics (BE). Despite the field be largely dominated by Kantian, utilitarian, and contractualist (Rawlsian) theories, a sound virtue-based understanding of BE takes concepts such as community, excellence, membership, integrity, and phronesis as central normative concepts. Natural law thinking is traditionally committed with social problems in general and with economic conduct in particular, following specially Thomistic teaching. However, notwithstanding the weight of virtues for the Aquinas, a relevant part of contemporary Thomistic ethics seems to address the problems of BE only in terms of moral principles. I contend that the list(s) of basic goods propounded by NNLT is not enough to define a satisfactory ethical approach – able to show a desirable way of life for the agents – because it remains dominated by moral principles – which can only show agents their limits of action with regards to others’ freedom. This is especially true for NNLT where the virtue approach is reconceived by theorists such as Finnis and Grisez in terms of modes of pursuing basic goods or “modes of responsibility” toward integral human fulfillment. With regard to a virtue-based understanding of BE, NNLT emphasis on integral human fulfillment and the modes of responsibility seems to offer only a limited understanding of (business) ethics. It is an understanding in which the “moral burden” of the modes of responsibility hinders the full potentiality of the virtues in the field of business and management. This is so because the understanding of virtues as modes of responsibility prevents their working as modes of personal development of the agent within his/her own community of business and, further, prevents someone to work within a business community as an agent who wants to develop his/her talents with a view to the common good of the political community where he/she lives.