CSR and Virtue Ethics: The common good of firms, markets, and civil society

This chapter probes the social responsibility of firms using a virtue ethics approach and the concept of the common good. In particular, it highlights the contrasting assumptions of mainstream approaches and the common good of the firm approach to explaining how the latter—rooted in Aristotelian virtue ethics—provides an original conception of social responsibility. A common good approach to social justice understands social relationships essentially as duties to which one voluntarily adheres; when said justice and commitment to the common good flourishes, community ensues. Finally, a virtue ethics approach to corporate social responsibility establishes three forms of duty and social responsibility to stakeholders, including those who make up the firm, those who maintain a market-based relationship with it, and those who are related to the firm as part of society’s civic sphere.