Virtue and meaningful work

Ron Beadle, Kelvin Knight

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

98 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)433-450
JournalBusiness Ethics Quarterly
Volume22
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2012

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