Networks of Giving and Receiving in an Organizational Context:Dependent Rational Animalsand MacIntyrean Business Ethics

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Alasdair MacIntyre’sAfter Virtuehas made a significant impact within business ethics. This impact has centered upon applications of the virtues-goods-practices-institutions schema (Moore & Beadle, 2006). In this article, I develop an extension of the practices-institutions schema (Moore, 2017), drawing upon MacIntyre’s later text,Dependent Rational Animals. Two key concepts drawn from this text are “networks of giving and receiving” and “the virtues of acknowledged dependence.” Networks of giving and receiving are non-calculative relationships that enable participants to cope with vulnerability. These relationships are sustained by the virtues of acknowledged dependence, including just generosity,misericordia,and beneficence, virtues that direct participants to treat the needs of others as reasons for action. Drawing upon research in social network theory, I develop an example illustrating the application of these concepts within an organizational and interorganizational context. I then suggest a number of applications and research questions related to this extension of the practices-institutions schema.

MacIntyre and Business Ethics

“…One noteworthy application of MacIntyre's more recent work has been developed by Bernacchio (2018), who draws extensively on MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals (1999b). In this work, MacIntyre corrects the non-metaphysical conception of ethics advanced in After Virtue by reflecting on the reality of human vulnerability, and extends his "account of practices, institutions, and communities by illustrating the indispensability of uncalculating relationships that are sustained by virtues that serve to direct agents toward the needs of others" (Bernacchio 2018, p.380), which Bernacchio then explores with reference to cooperation between members of ostensibly competing organisations in the garment industry.…”

Beyond Personalist Virtue Ethics: Transcendental Anthropology and its Implications for Interpersonal Communication

“…MacIntyre's proposal on how to restore virtue did not just stay at the level of connecting again the virtues-goodspractices-institutions schema (Moore and Beadle 2006): his contribution went further to emphasize the essential interconnectedness we share as dependent rational animals (MacIntyre 1999). This contribution has been further problematized by Bernacchio (2018), who emphasized the acts of "giving and receiving," "the virtues of acknowledged dependence," and the notion of non-calculative relationships that enable humans to copy with vulnerability within practices. MacIntyre's (1999MacIntyre's ( , 2007 successful attempt to reorient organizational scholarship, philosophy, and practice back toward Aristotle's classical philosophy applied to the context of late modernity has been important within a personalist virtue ethics, in particular because of his emphasis on social practices and on the profound and humanizing role of work.…”

“We Ought to Eat in Order to Work, Not Vice Versa”: MacIntyre, Practices, and the Best Work for Humankind

“…MacIntyre's work has had a notable influence in business ethics (Ferrero and Sison 2014;Beadle 2017b). While his work has proven applicable to many business ethics topics beyond the practices-institutions framework, such as corporate governance (Moore 2012;Bernacchio 2015), regulation (Sinnicks 2014), interorganisational networks (Bernacchio 2018b), corporate philanthropy (Nicholson et al 2019), employee rights (Bernacchio 2020), and so on, it is the practices-institutions framework that dominates such applications. This vein of research draws especially on seminal work by Moore (2002Moore ( , 2005a, Moore and Beadle (2006), and Beadle and Moore (2006).…”