Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm. Crowding in Virtue: a MacIntyrean Approach to Business Ethics

Moore, G.; Beadle, R.; Rowlands, A.

Abstract

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice, and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission—it fails to look “inside” the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources that could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes the MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST’s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis, but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be “crowded-in” to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics.

Citation

Moore, G., Beadle, R., & Rowlands, A. (2014). Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm. Crowding in Virtue: a MacIntyrean Approach to Business Ethics. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 88(4), 779-805. https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq201491830

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Sep 30, 2014
• Publication Date: Sep 19, 2014
• Deposit Date: Aug 28, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 29, 2014
• Journal: American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
• Print ISSN: 1051-3558
• Electronic ISSN: 2153-8441
• Publisher: American Catholic Philosophical Association
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 88
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 779-805
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq201491830
• Keywords: Catholic Social Teaching, Crowding-in, Goods, Institutions, Lloyds Bank, MacIntyre, Practices, Virtues.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1454996