This article proposes a theory of the firm based on the common good. It clarifies the meaning of the term "common good" tracing its historical development. Next, an analogous sense applicable to the firm is derived from its original context in political theory. Put simply, the common good of the firm is the production of goods and services needed for flourishing, in which different members participate through work. This is linked to the political common good through subsidiarity. Lastly, implications and challenges arising from the positing of work as the common good of the firm are explored.

No abstract

No abstract

Previously we have defined the common good of the firm as work-in-common, insofar as it provides, above all, an opportunity to develop knowledge, skills, virtues and meaning (work as praxis), and secondly, inasmuch as it produces goods and services to satisfy society's needs and wants (work as poiesis). We would now like to focus on the participatory aspect of this common good. To do so, we will have to identify the different members of the firm as a community, as citizens of the corporate polity. Afterwards, we will explore how these different members can and should participate in the firm's common good. I. The Common Good of the FirmThe generic common good of the firm is the production of goods and services in which human beings participate through work. From an Aristotelian viewpoint, this is the good of the firm as an intermediate association and of each of its constituents.Insofar as the firm achieves this, it fulfils its purpose: it becomes a "good firm", one that is well-governed and that makes its members good. In the same way that citizens participate in the common good of the polis by exercising citizenship, the members of the firm participate in its common good through work.

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a special edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions that could inform the relationship between organisational virtuousness, as conceptualised by positive organisation studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. While the resources of particular virtue traditions – Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian, and the like – could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the debate between virtue traditions and positive organisation studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of positive social sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that positive social science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions that exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of positive social sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions, and introduces the remaining papers in the special edition.