Integrating character in management: virtues, character strengths, and competencies

Abstract

In recent years, character traits in general and virtue-related concepts in particular have been of considerable interest to philosophers, psychological researchers, and practitioners in the business ethics field. Three approaches to character traits can be used to incorporate ethics into organizations: virtues (philosophical approach), character strengths (psychological approach), and competencies (management approach). The aim of this article is to clarify the concept of character traits, or virtues, and provide a unified operational version of it for incorporation into management.To this end, we first discuss the analogy among virtues, character strengths, and competencies. Then, we propose a list of moral competencies that can be implemented in competency-based human resource management.

Impacts of peers’ unethical behavior on employees’ ethical intention: Moderated mediation by Machiavellian orientation

“…In practice, such insights can help managers think about the negative side effects that may result in terms of workplace ethics if the systems or procedures they implement overemphasize the message of pursuing self‐interested, material goods at all costs. With systems that disregard the need to pursue honest goods to excel at work (Morales‐Sánchez & Cabello‐Medina, ), managers may run the risk of encouraging an unethical workplace.…”

Can compliance restart integrity? Toward a harmonized approach. The example of the audit committee

“…This is the cornerstone of our harmonized approach: prudence as practical wisdom enables the generation of a culture of compliance that tends to minimize the errors in decision making-in a permanent reevaluation-and guides to efficient and legitimate leadership. Thus, in a prudential and balanced view of corporate culture (Kaptein, 2017), the exercise of integrity demands the harmonization of moral and technical engagements (Meyer, 2015;Moore, 2015), integrating competences and personal virtues (Morales-S anchez & Cabello-Medina, 2015;Spraggon & Bodolica, 2015) into the specific organizational character (Rua, Lawter, & Andreassi, 2017).…”

A Nietzschean re‐evaluation of values as a way of re‐imagining business ethics

“…When more traditional ethical theories fail to provide us with the right ethical decision, as if we already know what the right decision should be, new foundations and frameworks for decision making are devised. For instance, we incorporate “teleological, deontological and existential theory” (Agarwal & Malloy, ), combine “the different perspectives of the existing ethical decision‐making models” (Malhotra & Miller, , p. 266), devise “a comprehensive framework composed of major philosophical and religious ethical theories” (Goodchild, , p. 485), integrate both “rationalist‐based” as well as “non‐rationalist based” models (Schwartz, ), “provide a unified operational version of [virtues] for incorporation into management” (Morales‐Sánchez & Cabello‐Medina, , S166), or forge virtuousness with a notion of common good (Arjoon, Turriago‐Hoyos, & Thoene, ), taking virtuousness to be “the pursuit of excellence” and “common good” as the attainment of “reasonable objectives,” both notions arbitrary and dubious in themselves.…”