Organizational Ethics
摘要
This chapter examines the firm as a community of persons in light of Aristotelian virtue ethics, with the goal of offering a foundation for understanding the nature of work within organizations. It begins by revisiting classical theories of the ethics of work, highlighting the dignity and dimensions of good work, within a framework of rights and duties ordered by distributive justice and the principle of merit. Building on this foundation, the chapter addresses applied aspects of workplace ethics, providing ethical grounding for common challenges such as hiring, leadership, and fairness in compensation. It then turns to the responsibility of business administrators, focusing on the professional nature of management and its role in sustaining the firm as an institution. Justice serves as the guiding principle for evaluating the relationships between different constituencies, particularly through proportionality in contribution and distribution. Special attention is given to the fiduciary responsibility of managers in modern corporations where ownership and administration are separated. This responsibility, it is argued, requires an anthropological foundation stronger than classical agency theory and is best understood through the virtue of magnanimity, conceived as a form of personal excellence and ambition oriented to the common good. The chapter ultimately argues that conceiving the firm as a community governed by virtue and justice enables a more robust account of its ethical responsibilities, integrating economic performance with human development and the pursuit of excellence.