Virtue Ethics in Business and the Capabilities Approach

Journal of Business Ethics (2009) 84:2532 Springer 2008 DOI 10.1007/s10551-008-9686-3

Virtue Ethics in Business andthe Capabilities Approach Alexander Bertland

ABSTRACT. Recently, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have developed the capabilities approach to provide a model for understanding the effectiveness of programs to help the developing nations. The approach holds that human beings are fundamentally free and have a sense of human dignity. Therefore, institutions need to help people enhance this dignity by providing them with the opportunity to develop their capabilities freely. I argue that this approach may help support business ethics based on virtue. Since teleology has become problematic, virtue ethics has had difficulty giving itself an ultimate justification. By combining virtue ethics with the capabilities approach, it becomes possible to ground virtue ethics on the basis of the existence of human dignity. This frees virtue ethics of the need for a strict teleology, replacing it with the notion that people must work to develop the capabilities of others although those capabilities are not pointed toward a definite goal. I further suggest that by grounding virtue ethics in capabilities, the actions of a virtuous manager become clearer. Rather than simply charging a manager with serving the public, the manager is charged with serving the stakeholders in a way that develops their capabilities. For example, a manager should not just give their employees what is just but must give them the environment and the encouragement to grow and to find fulfillment in their job.

KEY WORDS: virtue ethics, capabilities approach, sen, nussbaum, business ethics, solomon

Introduction

Virtue ethics attempts to ground ethics on the basis of character rather than rules. While virtue ethics has always had its followers in business ethics, it has had a hard time establishing a theoretical foundation for itself. Traditionally, going back to Aristotle, virtue ethics has tried to ground itself on a teleological basis. As teleology has become harder and harder to defend, virtue ethics has struggled to present an alternative.

Proponents of virtue ethics, particularly Martha Nussbaum, have recently developed the capabilities approach. This approach was pioneered by Amartya Sen as a way for understanding the success of government programs in the developing nations (Sen, 1999). It holds that the role of an institution is to provide opportunities for...