Practices, Governance, and Politics: Applying MacIntyre's Ethics to Business

Sinnicks, Matthew (2014) Practices, Governance, and Politics: Applying MacIntyre's Ethics to Business. Business Ethics Quarterly, 24 (2). pp. 229-249. ISSN 1052-150X

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.5840/beq20145299

Abstract

This paper argues that attempts to apply Alasdair MacIntyre’s positive moral theory to business ethics are problematic, due to the cognitive closure of MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. I begin by outlining the notion of a practice, before turning to Moore’s attempt to provide a MacIntyrean account of corporate governance. I argue that Moore’s attempt is mismatched with MacIntyre’s account of moral education. Because the notion of practices resists general application I go on to argue that a negative application, which focuses on regulation, is more plausible. Large-scale regulation, usually thought antithetical to MacIntyre’s advocacy of small-scale politics, has the potential to facilitate practice-based work and reveals that MacIntyre’s own work can be used against his pessimism about the modern order. Furthermore, the conception of regulation I defend can show us how management is more amenable to ethical understanding than MacIntyre’s work is often taken to imply.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Published online 1st January 2015.
Uncontrolled Keywords: MacIntyre, practices, management, regulation, virtue-ethics
Subjects: N100 Business studies
N200 Management studies
V500 Philosophy
Department: Faculties > Business and Law > Newcastle Business School
Depositing User: Matthew Sinnicks
Date Deposited: 06 Dec 2016 16:07
Last Modified: 31 Jul 2021 21:19
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/28818

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