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Excellence v. effectiveness: An exploration of MacIntyre's critique of business
Abstract
Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) asserts that the ethical systems of the Enlightenment (formalism and utilitarianism) have failed to provide a meaningful definition of "good." Lacking such a definition, business managers have no internal standards by which they can morally evaluate their roles or acts. MacIntyre goes on to claim that managers have substituted external measures of "winning" or "effectiveness" for any internal concept of good. He supports a return to the Aristotelian notion of virtue or "excellence." Such a system of virtue-based ethics depends on an interrelationship of the community, one's roles in that community, and the virtues one needs to perform that role well. This study presents MacIntyre's position, stressing its implications for business ethics. It presents an empirical study to determine if MacIntyre's assertions about the existence of an excellence/effectiveness dichotomy can be supported. I use a scenario to present an ethically ambiguous situation which reflects MacIntyre's dichotomy. A sample of 25 practicing managers taking MBA courses at different New England schools participated in this study. After these respondents read the scenario and decided upon courses of action, they then performed a Q sort to prioritize their reasons for deciding as they did. The hypothesis that an excellence/effectiveness dichotomy exists for managerial priorities was supported. Factor analysis revealed four factors which accounted for 68.3% of the total variance. Eighteen of the 25 respondents clustered on a factor which strongly reflected an ethic of emphasis on excellence while the other 7 clustered on three factors which expressed various versions of MacIntyre's concept of an ethic of effectiveness. I interpret these four factors to see what they reveal about the subjective priorities of the respondents. Beyond this core hypothesis, the following research question was asked: What demographic and attitudinal variables might be associated with the respondents who report an excellent or effective orientation? Using Chi-square tests, I found that "effective" managers were more likely than "excellent" managers to be in a marketing class, to choose an aggressive marketing response to the scenario's situation, and to be younger. This study concludes with some recommendations for theoretical development and some avenues for future research.
Subject Area
Management|Philosophy|Occupational psychology
Recommended Citation
Horvath, Charles Michael, "Excellence v. effectiveness: An exploration of MacIntyre's critique of business" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9408288.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9408288