Milano Management Brown Bag Talk | Virtues and the Common Good in Leadership

In this Milano Management Brown Bag talk, Aliza Racelis, Business Ethics professor at the University of the Philippines and Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the New York Institute of Technology, discusses her work and recent book chapter in Business Ethics: A Virtue Ethics and Common Good Approach.

In her talk, Dr. Racelis emphasizes that the importance of virtue and moral character in leaders cannot be underestimated and good leaders transcend the false dichotomy of  business and personal life. From an Aristotelian perspective, she says, good leadership is both ethical and effective; Aristotetle’s Ethics emphasizes that leadership is, above all, about character, virtuous habits and actions.

Dr. Racelis cites the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who argues that virtue can be exhibited through participation in a practice. In business practice, she says, certain virtues are necessary to achieve internal goods, and that management can and should take into account virtues or human flourishing when establishing standards of excellence and assessing achievement against them.

In addition, virtue theory in business and governance stresses that diligence, courage, justice, temperance, honesty, humility, prudence and love are all necessary in virtuous leadership. By focusing on the role of character, rather than merely seeing compliance with rules or regulations as paramount, Dr. Racelis says that we are better able to see the interplay between individual responsibility and leadership.