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Character and Environment: The Status of Virtues in Organizations

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Abstract

Using evidence from experimental psychology, some social psychologists, moral philosophers and organizational scholars claim that character traits do not exist and, hence, that the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate and should dispose of the notion of character to accommodate the empirical evidence. In this paper, I systematically address the debate between dispositionalists and situationists about the existence, status and properties of character traits and their manifestations in human behavior, with the ultimate goal of responding to the question whether virtue ethicists need to abandon the very enterprise of building a character-based moral theory in business ethics and organizational behavior. In the course of this paper, I shall defend the claim that the situationist argument relies on a misinterpretation of the experimental evidence.

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Acknowledgements

I received particularly helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article from Steve Stich, Ed Hartman, Doug Husak, Danielle Warren, Chao Chen and Jim Wade, and two anonymous reviewers. The views expressed should, of course, be attributed to no one but myself. I also benefited from lively discussions when I presented the first version of this article at the 14th International Symposium on Ethics, Business and Society, IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Barcelona, Spain, May 18, 2006. The writing of this paper was supported in part by the Prudential Business Ethics Center at Rutgers University.

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  1. Rutgers University, 180 University Avenue, 200 f, Newark, NJ, 07102, USA

    Miguel Alzola

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  1. Miguel Alzola
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Correspondence to Miguel Alzola.

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Miguel Alzola is a Fulbright Fellow from Argentina completing his Ph.D. in Business Ethics at Rutgers University. He is doing research on moral psychology, virtue ethics and organizational behavior at the Prudential Business Ethics Center.

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Alzola, M. Character and Environment: The Status of Virtues in Organizations. J Bus Ethics 78, 343–357 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9335-7

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