Abstract
From a Kantian perspective, the good manager must serve two masters: the organization and morality. Serving morality is an encompassing and challenging task in our day and age; it involves a lot more than making employees comply with rules. We demonstrate this by making the abstract task of “serving two masters” concrete, and work out the specifics thereof. At a minimum, serving two masters means ensuring that the organization “upholds legality” or prevents organizational misconduct. This goal implies moral care tasks for the manager. These depend on historical factors. In today’s society, it includes the onerous task of stimulating employees to become “morally active employees.” An morally active employee has a specific moral character that Kant defines in terms of Denkungsart. Stimulating the development of moral character is a challenge. Moral character can only grow in and through freedom. One cannot command an employee to have a robust moral character. It also implies that each employee is given a space in which they are both able and expected to take decisions independently.
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Dubbink, W., Van Liedekerke, L. (2020). A Good Manager Serves Two Masters: A Kantian Perspective. In: Neesham, C. (eds) Handbook of Philosophy of Management. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48352-8_33-1
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