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A Virtue Ethical Approach to Organizational Culture in Finance

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Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management

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Abstract

Ethical failings of financial institutions such as banks, pension funds, and insurance firms are often blamed on their culture, rather than on the conduct of a few malicious individuals. But while appeals to culture have proven popular to explain organizational failure in finance, it is often left unclear what organizational culture precisely is and how it connects to ethical behavior. I distinguish three ways to understand organizational culture, which I call the intellectualist view, the value view, and the virtue view, and argue that the virtue view provides the best account of organizational culture. According to the virtue view, organizational culture is best understood in terms of organizational traits. These traits are virtuous if they tend to support an organization in achieving its social purpose. Hence, reflecting on the social purpose of financial organizations turns out to be crucial to assess and improve organizational cultures of financial institutions. I discuss whether financial institutions can be required to serve a social purpose and how to go about identifying it.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful for discussion and comments on versions of this chapter from Boudewijn de Bruin, Marinella Capriati, Joachim Helfer, Jens van’t Klooster, Alex Oliver, and Kate Vredenburgh, as well as the participants at the Cambridge Political Philosophy Workshop.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cambridge/University of Groningen, Sidgwick Avenue, CB3 9DA, Cambridge, UK

    Marco Meyer

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  1. Marco Meyer
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Correspondence to Marco Meyer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Navarre, Pamplona, Spain

    Alejo José G. Sison

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Meyer, M. (2016). A Virtue Ethical Approach to Organizational Culture in Finance. In: Sison, A. (eds) Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6729-4_93-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6729-4_93-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6729-4

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