Mei Todd
Department of Philosophy, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NF UK.
Philos Manag. 2022;21(1):15-29. doi: 10.1007/s40926-021-00171-3. Epub 2021 Mar 10.
One of the key debates about applying virtue ethics to business is whether or not the aims and values of a business actually prevent the exercise of virtues. Some of the more interesting disagreement in this debate has arisen amongst proponents of virtue ethics. This article analyzes the central issues of this debate in order to advance an alternative way of thinking about how a business can be a form of virtuous practice. Instead of relying on the paired concepts of internal and external goods that define what counts as virtuous, I offer a version of speech act theory taken from Paul Ricoeur to show how a business can satisfy several aims without compromising the exercise of the virtues. I refer to this as a polyvalent approach where a single task within a business can have instrumental, conventional, and imaginative effects. These effects correspond to the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary dimensions of meaning. I argue that perlocution provides a way in which the moral imagination can discover the moral significance of others that might have not been noticed before, and furthermore, that for such effects to be practiced, they require appropriate virtues. I look at two cases taken from consultation work to thresh out the theoretical and practical detail.
将美德伦理应用于商业的关键争论之一在于，商业的目标和价值观是否实际上阻碍了美德的践行。这场争论中一些较为有趣的分歧出现在美德伦理的支持者之间。本文分析了这场争论的核心问题，以便提出一种关于商业如何能够成为一种美德实践形式的另类思考方式。我并非依赖界定何为美德的内在善与外在善这一对概念，而是借鉴保罗·利科的言语行为理论版本，来展示商业如何能够实现多个目标而又不损害美德的践行。我将此称为一种多价方法，即商业中的一项单一任务可以产生工具性、规约性和想象性的效果。这些效果分别对应意义的言内行为、言外行为和言后行为维度。我认为言后行为提供了一种方式，借此道德想象力能够发现他人可能此前未被注意到的道德意义，而且，为了践行此类效果，它们需要适当的美德。我考察了两个来自咨询工作的案例，以梳理出理论和实践细节。
