WHAT VIRTUES FOR BUSINESS ETHICS?

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. This is true as well of the so called school of new natural law theory (NNLT) – though with its own peculiarities – which sets its way apart from the tradition of natural law on at least three important accounts: first, it emphasizes the independence of practical reason from metaphysics and speculative reason; second, it defines a list of basic human goods which include all that counts towards the good life; third, it is crucial that the basic goods are incommensurable among themselves, leading to no natural order nor hierarchy prior to individual choice. All these features are, in my view, detrimental to a correct understanding of ethics in general and of BE in particular. 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 specially 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 fulfilment. With regard to a virtue-based understanding of BE, where concepts such as the aforementioned “community, excellence, membership, integrity and phronesis” are given a central place to foster both the agent’s development and his/her belonging to a certain social context, NNLT emphasis on integral human fulfilment 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.