Filipino Virtue Ethics and Meaningful Work (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
A number of paradigms have been proposed to understand the sources of meaningful work, but a non-Western approach has attracted little attention. Because some authors have argued that meaningful work has positive valence that has eudaimonic rather than hedonic content, a virtue-ethics approach to meaningful work has been used. Virtue ethicists acknowledge that our work and places of employment have a profound influence in shaping our character and living a fulfilled life. This study aims to make a theoretical contribution toward an understanding of meaningful work from a virtue-ethics framework that is culturally meaningful and ethically relevant to Filipino realities and their distinct national heritage. It develops a conceptual model for a Filipino view of meaningful work that could guide both researchers and practitioners in business ethics by explaining what makes work meaningful, justifying why this is important, and presenting some examples of concrete measures that management can utilize to promote meaningful work in the Philippine workplace. By integrating Filipino virtues in conceptualizing meaningful work, I believe that a theoretical advancement is made toward a pluralistic and multicultural understanding of the concept, especially through the lens of virtue-ethics.
This chapter considers empirical research into meaningful work from the perspective of the virtues. Research conducted over more than half a century has isolated a number of dimensions that animate the experience of meaningful work and a number of desirable consequences that are associated with it including improved job performance and job satisfaction. Research is fragmented however and there is no generally agreed explanatory framework though many potential candidates. A second significant problem in the field is the repeated finding that not all employees experience meaningfulness in jobs whose characteristics suggest that they should and that some employees craft meaning into otherwise mundane work. As a result of this some ethicists have maintained that meaningful work is an inherently subjective notion and therefore that it cannot function as the type of good that can be the subject of ethical claims. A MacIntyrean virtue ethics perspective overcomes this objection, in part because it accounts for the apparent subjectivity in the attributions of meaningfulness in terms of the virtues that agents have developed, or failed to develop. The case for meaningful work is its necessity to the development of the virtues.
Developing a Virtue Ethics Scale: Exploratory Survey of Philippine Managers
This paper is an exploratory attempt at generating a virtue ethics scale for managers from the Philippines, using the initial listing of Shanahan and Hyman (2003). The survey questionnaire consisting of 34 virtues was administered to a sample of 141 business and finance postgraduate students who are managers in the companies in Philippines. Based on the factor analysis of the responses to the items on the virtues questionnaire, the following were the resulting virtue or trait factors: (1) Care and concern, (2) Competence, (3) Ambition, and (4) Superiority. The four resulting virtue factors compare more or less with the virtue listings generated in the literature: "Care and concern" is analogous to "empathy" and "respect"; and "competence" seems akin to "integrity", "trust", and "reliability" in the literature. The results corroborate evidence in the Virtue Ethics literature that proposes the virtue theory as an improved ethical paradigm for business. It is indeed possible to augment teleological and deontological ethics scales with a virtue ethics scale that can cause both the researcher and the respondents to be more aware of the virtuous qualities of business people and managers. Such classifications can aid scale validation and development, which in turn could help push the strategic role of the virtue ethics theory.
TOWARD A CROSS-CULTURAL VIRTUE ETHICS PARADIGM OF MEANINGFUL WORK: ARISTOTELIANISM AND BUDDHISM
This study adds to the existing literature on meaningful work by offering a cross-cultural perspective. Since work shapes the kind of person that we are and plays an important role in our well-being, some theorists have adopted a virtue theory approach to meaningful work using Aristotelian-MacIntyrean framework. For lack of a better term, I will call this a Western virtue theory. This paper presents a contemporary virtue-focused Buddhist perspective on the topic. While a virtue-ethics interpretation of Buddhism is now widely accepted and has been applied to several issues, not much has been written about meaningful work using a Buddhist-Aristotelian comparative framework. Buddhism is an important cultural component not only of countries that are predominantly Buddhist, but of other societies that have come in contact with it. To develop a Buddhist framework, I draw heavily from the works of Buddhist scholars, particularly in the West who use a virtue framework in interpreting Buddhism. The aims of my essay are dual. The first is to articulate a straightforward application of Buddhism on the contemporary ethical discussion of meaningful work. The second is to discuss the similarities, clarify the differences, and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses relative to each other of the Buddhist and the Western virtue theory. In my analysis, I argue that consideration of Buddhist perspective enables us to construct a cross-cultural, inclusive, and pluralistic conceptual model for the deliberation of meaningful work that complements the Western virtue theory.
Business Ethics Quarterly, 2012
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.
Meaningful Work: Connecting Business Ethics and Organization Studies
Journal of Business Ethics, 2014
In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars of business ethics have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work. Keywords Business ethics Á Human rights Á Meaning of work Á Meaningful work Á Organization studies Á Positive organizational studies Á Prosocial behavior This article grew out of a panel discussion at the Society for Business Ethics Annual Meeting in Montreal, Canada, in 2010. The authors thank the members of the audience for their feedback. The authors also thank the editors and reviewers of the Journal of Business Ethics for their encouraging and constructive recommendations.
Virtue Ethics and Meaningful Work: A Contemporary Buddhist Approach
2019
This study adds to the existing literature on meaningful work by presenting a contemporary virtue-focused Buddhist view. While a virtue-ethics interpretation of Buddhism is now widely accepted and has been applied to several issues, not much has been written about meaningful work using a Buddhist-Aristotelian comparative framework. To develop a Buddhist approach, I draw heavily on the works of Buddhist scholars, particularly in the West who use a virtue framework in interpreting Buddhism. The aims of my essay are dual. The first is to articulate a straightforward application of Buddhism to the contemporary ethical discussion of meaningful work. The second is to discuss the similarities, clarify the differences, and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses relative to each other of the Buddhist and the Western virtue theories. In my analysis, I argue that while Buddhism is not an alternative to Western virtue theory, it offers significant contributions to the latter’s approach to mea...
In this essay I explore the prospects for a virtue ethic approach to business. First, I delineate two fundamental criteria that I believe must be met for any such approach to be viable: viz., the virtues must be exercised for the sake of the good of one’s life as a unitary whole (contra role-morality approaches) and for the common good of the communities of which one is a part as well as the individual good of their members (contra egoist approaches). Second, I argue that these two criteria can be met only if we are able to reconceive and transform the nature of work within contemporary business organizations. In particular, what is needed, I argue, is a retrieval of something like the older ideal of work as a ‘vocation’, or ‘calling’, whereby work can be viewed as a specific aspect of a more general calling to pursue, through the practice of the virtues, ‘the good life’ both for ourselves and for others. Lastly, I consider some important challenges to this ‘vocational virtue ethic’ approach to work within contemporary business organizations and offer a few suggestions for how they might be met.
Conceptualizing the Link Between Work Meaningfulness and Morality at Work
Despite abundant research on work meaningfulness and on morality at work, the link between both concepts has not been detailed. In this article, we propose a theoretical framework to explain how work meaningfulness contributes to enhanced morality at work. We argue that by providing a way for individuals to relate work to one's personal core values and identity, work meaningfulness leads to affective commitment toward work. This, in turn, facilitates the engagement of one's personal values in daily work routines, and so increases morality at work. On the contrary, the absence of meaning will lead to a situation of anomie in which rational commitment rather than affective commitment is expected. This is likely to lead to disengagement and consequently to a-morality at work. We conclude with implications of our model for people's affect, organizational purpose, and business theory.
Oxford Scholarship Online
Virtue at Work is about good organizations, good managers, and good people, and how these can contribute to good communities. It is aimed at practitioners—principally managers at all levels and in all kinds of organizations. It provides an integrated and philosophically grounded framework which enables a coherent approach to organizations and organizational ethics from the perspective of practitioners in the workplace, of managers in organizations, as well as of organizations themselves. The philosophical grounding comes from the work of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In line with MacIntyre’s own commitments, the book makes philosophy down to earth and practical. It provides a new way of understanding ethics and organizations which is both realistic and attractive, but also challenging. It also provides tough but realistic suggestions in order to put this approach into practice. Virtue at Work not only applies theory in a readable and compelling manner, but also shows how this ...