Abstract
Applied ethicists’ interest in narratives and narratives ethics has grown steadily. Some thinkers position narratives as supplements to ethics, while others see narratives as new form of ethics comparable to virtue or deontological ethics. In this paper, I analyze some of the main ethical claims being made on behalf of business and literary narratives from the perspective of Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that, while narratives can significantly contribute to the development of our character, to a better grasp of virtues and vices, and to a clarification of a virtue ethics framework, this contribution is highly nuanced. In particular, Aristotelian virtue ethics enable us to sensibly and helpfully distinguish the ethical value of narratives within business ethics from narrative business ethics per se. This paper has three parts. Part One offers a provisional definition of narrative and sketches some of the large claims that literary critics, philosophers, theologians, and others have made for narratives’ relevance to and value for ethics. In Part Two, using narratives drawn from business and literature, I take up each of these claims in turn and examine whether the claim makes sense and is compelling from an Aristotelian virtue ethics perspective. Part Three gathers together the threads of the arguments in Part Two to specify the modest, but nonetheless significant, legitimate roles narratives might play within Aristotle’s virtue ethics. I also point to some limitations inherent in an Aristotelian critique of narrative ethics and suggest some questions for future research.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In focusing on Aristotelian virtue ethics, I do not mean to deny that other forms of virtue ethics offer insights into the role of narrative. Alasdair MacIntyre’s (1984) work in particular has quite a lot to say about narrative. However, given that MacIntyre and Aristotle would not see eye to eye on some aspects of narrative, I think it makes for a more honest and persuasive argument to focus on only Aristotelian virtue ethics in this paper.
In making this case, I do not mean to deny that narrative may play an ethically legitimate and even hugely significant role in ethics of care, trust, or in deontological, pragmatic ethics (see, e.g., Rorty 1989), discourse ethics, etc. I am agnostic on that possibility and leave it to others more familiar with and vested in these ethics than I am to make the case (pro or con) regarding the possible ethical value of narrative in these frameworks.
Or perhaps the gifts did serve in the end to reveal, albeit inadvertently, how deep their mutual love was, in which case these contingent effects served to reveal something essential.
That said, I do think that narratives set some very loose bounds on what qualifies as an interpretation. If someone claims that Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is an illustrated story about a monkey befriending a penguin, we can set that reading aside on the grounds that Conrad mentions neither a monkey nor a penguin and his book contains no illustrations.
To take another case: The literary critic Wayne Booth relates how, as a young man, he delighted in Rabelais’ humor judged by many critics to be sexist. As he aged and listened to feminist critics and to the women in his classes and to his family, he began to realize that, when he looked to the larger pattern of values to which the implied author Rabelais committed him, Rabelais appeared far less funny. In other words, as Booth’s character matured and arguably became more virtuous, his reading of the story altered dramatically (Booth, 1988). Booth’s own character itself functioned as a cause of sorts, affecting the cause and effect chains he discerned within Rabelais’ fiction. Booth’s realization accords well with Aristotelian ethics and shows just how problematic it is to draw some sort of direct line between a story and an ethical effect, be it good or bad.
MacIntyre (1984, 216) insists that “I can only answer the question, ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” (emphasis mine).
Aristotelian agents can use their reason to scrutinize data, to ponder possibilities, and to challenge what others are saying. Many who lived through the rise and fall of Enron remember how some analysts glorified the company. In January 2001, when Enron was trading at $76, Bear Stearns established a $98 per share target price. Various financial analysts wrote glowing reports on Enron’s prospects (Bird 2015). Some of us recall very clearly that throughout the rise of Enron, there were a few naysayers. Richard Grubman raised concerns on a conference call with other Wall Street researchers about Enron CEO’s Jeff Skilling’s unwillingness to explain aspects of the company’s balance sheet. At that juncture, Skilling publicly attacked Grubman (Bird, 2015; Natural Gas Intel Staff, 2006). On the one hand, it might seem that MacIntyre (1984) is correct: Grubman had difficulty getting a hearing when he deviated from the dominant narrative about Enron on Wall Street. However, from an Aristotelian perspective, Grubman’s resistance could be interpreted as a courageous act. Courage seems to be a universal virtue that others can recognize when they see the virtue in action. No doubt some investors and analysts who construed Grubman’s questioning as courageous were inspired to take their own look at Enron’s balance sheet and to draw their own conclusions. John Olson of Sanders Morris Harris, for example, followed Grubman’s lead and pressed Enron to reveal more information about its balance sheet (Natural Gas Intel Staff, 2006). To the extent that we can and do challenge popular narratives, these narratives should not be thought to be absolutely controlling. Resistance is not futile.
Insofar as distinguishing among the virtues also requires ethicists to consider which emotions are correlated with—or even partially constitutive of—each virtue, virtue ethicists must examine the functioning of human emotions. One can readily imagine Aristotle reading the Iliad and noticing that Achilles never seems to experience any fear, not even when he is in the presence of someone very powerful (e.g., Agamemnon). If Aristotle were to ask himself why that is, he might consider as a hypothesis that Achilles’ rage at having not received the honor and prizes to which he thinks he is entitled has for some reason supplanted fear. But it would be a mistake to say that Homer teaches as much to Aristotle. Aristotle seeks to find for himself the basis for possible manifestations of emotions. He develops his own argument to the effect that fear is proto-deliberative (Konstan, 2015). Unlike panic or shock, which may cause us to flee or to paralyze us, we are always afraid of something in particular. When we encounter this thing we fear—a snake or the possibility of death at the hand of an enemy—we can and should consider —deliberate about—how we are going to respond. Anger, by contrast, is a desire to avenge an insult we have received from someone whom we take to be our inferior (Aristotle, 1967, 1378b26–28; 1401b15–20). Because Achilles sees Agamemnon as his inferior, he is able to confront the expedition’s leader without any fear. His rage at Agamemnon’s treating him as a mere vagabond kicks in. Unlike fear, rage is not proto-deliberative. In Aristotle’e view, anger already knows what it wants—vengeance. That is why for Aristotle Achilles’ anger displaces fear (Konstan, 2015). This explanation is something Aristotle works out for himself, not an account he takes away from Homer’s narrative. Homer’s narrative is best construed as a stimulus to think about the possible displacing relation between fear and anger, a relation which Aristotle implicitly treats as a hypothesis, not as a truth to be taken wholesale from the Iliad.
Such a project would in some ways parallel Donaldson and Dunfee’s (1994) efforts to construct an integrated social contract that is both Kantian/Rawlsian foundational (their quasi-universal hyper-norms) and constructivist (their norms derived through multifocal micro-social contracting occurring within specific local communities). As should be apparent, I share their desire to avoid normative nihilism but think that they sorely underestimate the role that character-based practical judgment inevitably plays in norm discernment and construction.
References
Albareda, L., & Waddock, S. (2018). Networked CSR governance: A whole network approach to meta-governance. Business & Society, 57(4), 636–675.
Alvesson, M. (2020). Upbeat leadership: A recipe for - or - against “successful” leadership studies. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(6), 101439.
Aristotle. (1932). Politics. In H. Rackham (Ed.), Trans. Harvard University Press.
Aristotle. (1934). Nicomachean ethics. In H. Rackham (Ed.), Trans. Harvard University Press.
Aristotle. (1967). Rhetoric. In J. H. Freese (Ed.), Trans. Harvard University Press.
Aristotle. (1973). Poetics. In W. H. Fyfe (Ed.), Trans. Harvard University Press.
Arras, J. (1997). Nice story, but so what? Narrative and justification in ethics. In H. L. Nelson (Ed.), Stories and their limits: Narrative approaches to bioethics (pp. 65–88). Routledge.
Bird, M. (2015). A hilarious 2001 Wall Street research note praised Enron’s “revolutionary” business model 9 months before it started to collapse, October 26, https://www.businessinsider.com/2001-bear-stearns-note-praising-enron-2015-10
Boje, D. (1991). The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(1), 106–126.
Booth, W. (1988). The company we keep: An ethics of fiction. University of California Press.
Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian meditations. Stanford University Press.
Brody, H. and M. Clark. (2014). Narrative ethics: A narrative. The Hastings Center Report, 44(1), S7–S11, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23597752
Burger, R. (2008). Aristotle’s dialogue with Socrates: On the “Nicomachean Ethics.” University of Chicago Press.
Burrell, D., & Hauerwas, S. (1977). From system to story: An alternative pattern for rationality in ethics. In H. T. Engelhardt Jr. & D. Callahan (Eds.), Knowledge, value, and belief (pp. 111–152). Hastings Center.
Calton, J., & Payne, S. (2003). Coping with paradox: Multi-stakeholder learning dialogue as a pluralist sense making process for addressing messy problems. Business & Society, 42(1), 7–42.
Carr, A. Z. (1968). Is business bluffing ethical? The ethics of business are not those of society, but rather those of the poker game. Harvard Business Review, 48(1), 143–153.
Cashen, M. (2012). The ugly, the lonely, and the lowly: Aristotle on happiness and the external goods. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 29(1), 1–19.
Chambers, T. S., & Lindemann, H. (2014). Searching for narrative and narrative ethics in narrative bioethics. The Hastings Center Report, 44(3), 3–4.
Charon, R. (1994). Narrative contributions to medical ethics: Recognition, formulation, interpretation, and validation in the practice of the ethicist. In E. R. DuBose, R. Hamel, & L. O’Connell (Eds.), A matter of principles? Ferment in US bioethics (pp. 260–283). Trinity Press International.
Charon, R. (2001). Narrative medicine: Form, function, and ethics. Annals of Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-134-1-200101020-00024
Cohen, S. M. (1990). Luck and happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics. Soundings: an Interdisciplinary Journal, 73(1), 209–218.
Collier, J. (1998). Theorizing the ethical organization. Business Ethics Quarterly, 8(4), 621–654.
Coplan, A., & Goldie, P. (2011). Understanding empathy: Its features and effects. In A. Coplan & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy, philosophical and psychological perspectives (pp. 3–18). Oxford University Press.
de Graaf, G. (2006). Discourse and descriptive business ethics. Business Ethics: A European Review, 13(3), 246–258.
Donaldson, T., & Dunfee, T. W. (1994). Toward a unified conception of business ethics: Integrative social contracts theory. Academy of Management Review, 19(2), 252–284.
Enrich, D. (2020). Dark towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an epic trail of destruction. Custom House.
Flynn, J. (2021). Theory and bioethics. In: E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/theory-bioethics/>.
Fontrodona, J., Sison, A. J. G., & de Bruin, B. (2013). Editorial introduction: Putting virtues into practice. A challenge for business and organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 113(4), 563–565.
Frank, R. (2016). Why luck matters more than you might think: When people see themselves as self-made, they tend to be less generous and public-spirited. The Atlantic, May, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/why-luck-matters-more-than-you-might-think/476394/
Frank, A. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. University of Chicago Press.
Frank, A. W. (2010). Letting stories breathe: A socio-narratology. University of Chicago Press.
Freeman, R. E., Stewart, L., & Moriarty, B. (2009). Teaching business ethics in the age of Madoff. Change, 41(6), 37–42.
Friedman, M. (1970). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits (p. 17). The New York Times.
Goodpaster, K. (1991). Business ethics and stakeholder analysis. Business Ethics Quarterly, 1(1), 53–73.
Guillemin, M., & Gillam, L. (2007). Ethical mindfulness: Narrative analysis and everyday ethics in health care. In B. K. Rothman, E. M. Armstrong, & R. Tiger (Eds.), Bioethical issues, sociological perspectives (pp. 157–178). Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.
Hamel, G. (2002). Leading the revolution. Penguin.
Harrison, M.-C. (2011). How narrative relationships overcome empathic bias: Elizabeth Gaskell’s empathy across social difference. Poetics Today, 32(2), 255–288.
Henry, O. (1905). The gift of the Magi. In O. Henry (Ed.), The four million. Phillips, and Company.
Homer. (1961). Iliad. In R. Lattimore (Ed.), Trans. University of Chicago Press.
Huffer, L. (2001). “There is no Gomorrah”: Narrative ethics in feminist and queer theory. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 12(3), 1–32.
Isaacs, W. (1999). Dialogue and the art of thinking together. Currency.
Keen, S. (2013). Narrative empathy. In Peter Hühn, J. C. Meister, J. Pier, & W. Schmid (Eds.), The living handbook of narratology (pp. 521–530). University Press.
Kermode, F. (2000). The sense of an ending: Studies in the theory of fiction. Oxford University Press.
Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342(6156), 377–380.
Konstan, D. (2015). Affect and emotion in Greek literature. Oxford Handbooks Online, https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935390.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935390-e-41
Kowsmann, P., Brown. (2021). Fired executive says Deutsche Bank’s DWS overstated sustainable-investing efforts. Wall Street Journal, August 1, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fired-executive-says-deutsche-banks-dws-overstated-sustainable-investing-efforts-11627810380
Lindhé, A. (2016). The paradox of narrative empathy and the form of the novel, or what George Eliot knew. Studies in the Novel, 48(1), 19–42.
Liu, C. (2021). Don’t underestimate the power of luck when it comes to success in business. Harvard Business Review, June 14, https://hbr.org/2021/06/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-luck-when-it-comes-to-success-in-business
MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtue: A study in moral theory. Notre Dame University Press.
Mathews, J. (2022). Nearly half of private investors think other startups may be just as bad as Theranos. Fortune, February 15, https://fortune.com/2022/02/15/nearly-half-of-private-investors-think-other-startups-may-be-just-as-bad-as-theranos/
Mitchell, C. (2014). Qualms of a believer in narrative ethics (pp. 12–15). Hastings Center Report.
Morgan, B. (2012). Critical empathy: Vernon Lee’s aesthetics and the origins of close reading. Victorian Studies, 55(1), 31–56.
Nash, K. S. (2014). Feminist narrative ethics: Tacit persuasion in modernist form. Ohio State University Press.
Nash, L. (2000). Intensive care for everyone’s least favorite oxymoron: Narrative in business ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly, 10(1), 277–290.
Natural Gas Intel. (2006). Enron hyped earnings to hit targets, witness testifies, February 6, https://www.naturalgasintel.com/enron-hyped-earnings-to-hit-targets-witness-testifies/
Needleman, S. (2022). Twitter’s ex-security head files whistleblower complaint on spam, privacy issues. Wall Street Journal, August 23, https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-ex-security-head-files-whistleblower-complaint-11661263009
Nelson, H. L. (1997). Introduction: How to do things with stories. In H. L. Nelson (Ed.), Stories and their limits: Narrative approaches to bioethics (pp. vii–xx). Routledge.
Nelson, J. S. (2022). The future of corporate criminal liability: Watching the ESG space. Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Corporate Liability. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Nielsen, R. (1996). The politics of ethics: Methods for acting, learning, and sometimes fighting with others in addressing ethics problems in organizational life. Oxford University Press.
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring. University of California Press.
Nussbaum, M. (1990). Love’s knowledge: Essays on philosophy and literature. Oxford University Press.
Nussbaum, M. (1995). Poetic justice: The literary imagination and public life. Beacon.
Nussbaum, M. (2001). The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
Pascal, R. (1977). Narrative fictions and reality: A comment on Frank Kermode’s “The sense of an ending.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 11(1), 40–50.
Patel, D. (2019). 9 multimillionaires who lost it all but came back: You’re never so rich you can’t go broke and you’re never so broke you can't get rich. Entrepreneur, June 17, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/335042
Prinz, J. (2011). Is empathy necessary for morality? In A. Coplan & P. Goldie (Eds.), Empathy, philosophical, and psychological perspectives (pp. 211–229). Oxford University Press.
Ranjan, R. (2021). Mortgage firm Better.com CEO Vishal Garg fires 900 employees over Zoom call. Republicworld.com, December 6, https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/us-news/mortgage-firm-better-dot-com-ceo-vishal-garg-fires-900-employees-over-zoom-call-too-lazy.html
Rhodes, C., Pullen, A., & Clegg, S. R. (2010). If I should fall from grace”: Stories of change and organizational ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 91(4), 535–551.
Roberts, R. (2012). Narrative ethics. Philosophy Compass, 7(3), 174–182.
Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge University Press.
Ruddick, G. (2015). VW admits emissions scandal was caused by “whole chain” of failures. The Guardian, December 10, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/10/volkswagen-emissions-scandal-systematic-failures-hans-dieter-potsch
Ruprecht, L. A. (2016). Fate as fiction: Homeric, Irish, and Icelandic epic in MacIntyre’s virtue ethics tradition. Soundings: an Interdisciplinary Journal, 99(1), 80–103.
Sartre, J. P. (1949). What is literature? In B. Frechtman (Ed.), Trans. Philosophical Library Inc.
Scherer, A., & Palazzo, G. (2011). The new political role of business in a globalized world—a review of a new perspective on CSR and its implications for the firm, governance, and democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 48(4), 899–931.
Solomon, R. C. (1992). Ethics and excellence: Cooperation and integrity in business. Oxford University Press.
Sorkin, A. (2022). Michael Lewis revisits Liar’s Poker. New York Times, February 5, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/business/dealbook/michael-lewis-revisits-liars-poker.html
Statler, M., & Oliver, D. (2016). The moral of the story: Re-framing ethical codes of conduct as narrative processes. Journal of Business Ethics, 136(1), 89–100.
Toledano, M. (2018). Dialogue, strategic communication, and ethical public relations: Lessons from Martin Buber’s political activism. Public Relations Review, 44, 131–141.
Vartabedian, R. (2003). Boeing brain drain linked to shuttle disaster. Los Angeles Times, July 31, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jul-31-na-shuttle31-story.html
Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the limits of philosophy. Harvard University Press.
Yam, K. C., Reynolds, S. J., Zhang, P., & Su, R. (2021). The unintended consequences of empowering leadership: Increased deviance for some followers. Journal of Business Ethics, 181, 683–700.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
I have no conflicts of interest in connection with this paper.
Research Involving Human Participants
Not applicable.
Informed Consent
Not applicable.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Koehn, D. Narrative Business Ethics Versus Narratives Within Business Ethics: Problems and Possibilities From an Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Perspective. J Bus Ethics 189, 763–779 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05399-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05399-9