In search of a fitting moral psychology for practical wisdom: Exploring a missing link in virtuous management
Journal
Business Ethics: A European Review
ISSN
0962-8770
1467-8608
Date Issued
2020
Author(s)
Type
text::journal::journal article
Abstract
While business as a social activity has involved communities of persons embedded in dense relational networks and practices for thousands of years, the modern legal, theoretical psychological, and moral foundations of business have progressively narrowed our understanding of practical wisdom. Although practical wisdom has recently regained ground in business ethics and management studies, thanks mainly to Anscombe's recovery of virtue ethics, Anscombe herself once observed that it lacks, and has even neglected, a moral psychology that genuinely complements the nuanced philosophical perspective of a virtue-centered moral philosophy. Herein, we offer one way to fill this gap by suggesting two opposing psychological paradigms, namely the inter-processual self and the autonomous self, which are classified according to the assumptions they make about the self, human agency and action more broadly, as well as how they relate to practical wisdom. Upon presenting these moral psychologies, we will bring this proposal into conversation with business ethics to show how the IPS paradigm can enable and support virtuous management. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd PUBLISHER: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd