In leadership, we see morality and immorality magnified, which is why the study of ethics is fundamental to the study of leadership" (Ciulla, 2012, p. 508). The financial crisis and the many corporate scandals that rocked the first decades of the new millennium have placed an unequivocal emphasis on the frailty of a modern and global economic system that is characterized by the short-sightedness of profit at-all-costs (Nielsen, 2010) together with a lack of moral integrity among financial agents (Santoro & Strauss, 2012) and business leaders (Antonacopoulou & Bento, 2018; Crossan et al., 2017). This system might also be the product of managerial education (Akrivou & Bradbury-Huang, 2015; Podolny, 2009), which has a tendency to set apart and tolerate actions performed in a company setting that would be considered deplorable in the normal behavioral sphere (Haran, 2013). Many business schools prepare their students for leadership roles with an uncritical or narrow pursuit of managerial technique, looking to the natural sciences to explain certain organizational

Finance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the pursuit of external goods, but this should encourage attempts to reform the institutionalization of finance rather than to reject its potential for virtuous business activity. This article argues that finance should be regarded as a domain-relative practice (Beabout 2012; MacIntyre 2007). Alongside management, its moral status thereby varies with the purposes it serves. Hence, when practitioners working in finance facilitate projects that create common goods, it allows them to develop virtues. This argument applies MacIntyre’s widely acknowledged account of the relationship between practices and the development of virtues while questioning some of his claims about finance. It also takes issue with extant accounts of particular financial functions that have failed to identify the distinctive goods of financial practice.

This paper aims to show how the frequently asked question about the future of work, that is, whether human beings are going to be replaced by machines and robots, arose, and why the way such question is posed is inadequate to account for the human and social value of care professions. We discuss how the dimensions entailed in care professions are specifically human and argue that any kind of human work actually reflects them (and will reflect them in the future), irrespective of the impact of technological changes. The present argument also aims to unveil the extent of the effects of the postmodern epistemological crisis regarding the concept of work, to reformulate the question about the future of human work, and to offer a characterization of care as a specific component of human work in the age of machines.

In a 2015 article entitled “The Irrelevance of Ethics,” MacIntyre argues that acquiring the moral virtues would undermine someone’s capacity to be a good trader in the financial system and, conversely, that a proper training in the virtues of good trading directly militates against the acquisition of the moral virtues. In this paper, we reconsider MacIntyre’s rather damning indictment of financial trading, arguing that his negative assessment is overstated. The financial system is in fact more internally diverse and dynamic, and more reformable, than suggested by MacIntyre’s treatment. The challenge at the heart of MacIntyre’s claims can be crystallized in the question, “under which conditions, if any, can a person be an effective trader and simultaneously live a worthy human life?” We conclude that there are realistic possibilities of integrity and growth in moral virtue for those who work in the financial sector, at least for those operating in a work environment minimally permissive toward virtue, provided they possess characters of integrity and genuine aptitude for the skills and attitudes required in their professional tasks.

The combined effect of technological innovations in the workplace and the lockdowns imposed by the COVID‐19 pandemic has rapidly increased the prominence of remote working, with an undeniable impact on both business and society. In light of this organizational and sociological change, this article analyzes how this renewed work environment can be the place where workers can develop several relevant virtues, specifically moderation, integrity, and mercy. This new environment may also present the opportunity to develop a number of opposing vices, which are also explained and analyzed. The article concludes by suggesting some implications for managers who wish to promote virtuous behaviors in the new context of remote work.