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Virtue and Meaningful Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Ron Beadle  and
Kelvin Knight
Ron Beadle
Affiliation:
Northumbria University
Kelvin Knight
Affiliation:
London Metropolitan University
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Abstract:

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This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries.

Keywords

meaningful workvirtuebusiness ethicsself-determination theoryMacIntyre
Type
Special Issue: Reviving Traditions: Virtue and the Common Good in Business and Management
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 433 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2012

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