Strategy and virtue: Developing strategy-as-practice through virtue ethics

Abstract

Strategy-as-practice research has usefully built on earlier strategy process research by taking into account the social embeddedness of strategy making. While such an approach has generated valuable insights, it has curiously left unexplored the moral dimension of practice. In this paper, we show how the potential of strategy-as-practice research may be more fully realized if the moral dimension of practice is conceptualized through virtue ethics (especially MacIntyre's version).Specifically, we first reconceptualize, through virtue ethics, the three main concepts of strategyas-practice -practice, praxis, and practitioners -, underscoring the inherently moral constitution of actions undertaken in strategy-related work. Moreover, we suggest that strategic management is viewed as a particular kind of practice (what we call "competitive institutional practice"), charged with "values articulation work" and "balancing work". While the former articulates a good purpose for the organization, the latter seeks to care for both excellence and success through balancing "capabilities development work" with "differentiation work". Illustrations are provided to support this argument and several suggestions for further research are offered.

Ethical Judgments About Social Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Influence of Spatio-Cultural Meanings

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Leadership, the American Academy of Management, and President Trump’s Travel Ban: A Case Study in Moral Imagination

“…provides a truce) when a professional, diverse body is confronted with politically charged issues. It also tallies with the mainstream view that management scholarship is value-free (Fougere et al 2014;Simon 1976, p. 250;see also;Freeman et al 2004;Tsoukas 2018).…”

“…Had the AOM leadership opposed the travel ban, they would not, I suggest, have done so on narrowly political grounds, but would have opposed the arbitrary politicization of scholarly communication on grounds of moral values that are internal to the practice world of AOM and the science system at large (MacIntyre 1985;Moore 2017;Tsoukas 2018). When AOM restricts its officials from taking a political stand (as it rightly should), it is the prototypical instances-the prototypical image-of politics it implicitly refers to.…”

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