A framework for organizational virtue: the interrelationship of mission, culture and leadership

摘要

This article presents a virtue-based theoretical framework for developing an ethical organization. After discussing the virtue perspective for personal ethics, for practical application it recommends a tripartite approach combining a contextual process of character development toward a good telos with attention to complementary deontological principles for substantive decision-making. It then suggests that this tripartite framework can be applied at the organizational level as well. Using the idea of a virtuous organization as an ethical culture metaphor and employing language familiar to business practitioners, the interrelated components of the virtue-based organizational framework can facilitate analogical application of the three complementary perspectives of a tripartite ethic - teleological via mission as telos, deontological via culture, and virtuous character via leadership. The article elaborates why and how mission, culture and leadership fit together in a virtue-based organizational context.