Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Just a brief reminder about the fast-approaching deadline for submissions (January 15, 2019) to the special issue on "Practical Wisdom and Management". Please find the details below.
Don't hesitate to contact me or the other guest-coeditors should you have further questions.
Kind Regards,
Alejo Jose G. Sison
Business Ethics: A European Review
Special Issue Call for Papers
Guest Editors: Edwin Hartman, Alejo J. Sison, André Habisch, Matthias P. Hühn
Practical Wisdom and Management
Background
Practical wisdom (phronesis) is an approach to human decision-making developed by Aristotle, and that was favoured until the Enlightenment replaced it with a rule-based logic. Phronesis is tied to the individual and his or her character, and takes a long-term view of decision-making, while the Enlightenment project tries to replace character with rules or algorithms that apply to all individuals in specific situations. In the 19th century, economics and later management followed the Enlightenment logic, with the result that depersonalised theory largely has replaced character in management thinking. Management theory has been criticised for this by some of its most important contributors. For example, Warren Bennis and James O'Toole (2005) criticised business schools for having abandoned practice for the sake of journal article production as an end in itself; Sumantra Ghoshal (2005) called management theories evil; the then dean of the Rotman School, Roger Martin (with Moldoveanu 2008), said that MBA students are trained not to have questions but to unthinkingly apply tools they do not understand; while the current dean of the Harvard Business School wants to establish management as a profession, i.e., as having a moral code. Meanwhile, theorists like Henry Mintzberg and the late Peter Drucker have been saying similar things for over 50 years. Virtue ethics is able to address a number of issues in management, among them the depersonalisation and de-individualisation of the subject of research, short-termism, positivism, excessive theorising to the detriment of practice and the role of values in management research and practice.
Virtue ethics has experienced a comeback in moral philosophy since G.E.M. Anscombe's (1958) criticised modern moral philosophy for having a conversation about values without actually any notion of
what values are. It took a while for this increased interest in virtue ethics to reach management, but a number of special issues and many books have made the topic a vibrant research stream in business ethics. Business ethicists now sometimes argue that ethics is primarily about the individual-his or her character, and the virtues and vices that are part of it-and only secondarily about the acts that person performs (Alzola, 2015). Since Solomon (1992) began to argue for understanding management in terms of virtues, others have taken up the challenge. Although virtue ethics now has a role in some theorising about leadership and organisational behavior (Hartman, Koehn, Melé, Ferrero & Sison, Schwartz, Grint, Crossan & Mazutis), it has not yet expanded its presence into other areas of management research and is, through the advent of Big Data, threatened to be further marginalised. The purpose of this special issue is to show how the virtue ethics concept and particularly practical wisdom, can contribute to make the teaching, theorising, and the practice of management richer, thicker and more useful. We particularly encourage scholars that address these issues from a philosophical perspective, but also welcome contributions form other traditions.
Research questions and themes explored by potential contributions to this Special Issue could include, but are not limited to, the following aspects:
1. Which important questions in management theory could be better addressed by using virtue ethics?
2. How can virtue ethics contribute to management education and to the development of management as a profession?
3. Can new virtues emerge? Are there virtues specific to management?
4. Can older virtue theories, such as Aristotelian or Thomist theories, be applied in modern management practice?
5. How can practical wisdom counteract any problematic effects of rule-following?
6. What is the relationship between organisational culture and practical wisdom?
7. Can practical wisdom enhance our understanding of rationality and its role in management?
8. How does practical wisdom transfer or function across cultural boundaries in a world of increasing interconnections and globalization?
9. How important is practical wisdom for our understanding what a "good" manager is?
10. What is the role of practical wisdom in management education?
SPECIAL ISSUE DEADLINE
Submission of full papers 15th January 2019
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
To submit a special issue proposal please log in at
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/beer and select "Special issue" under 'Step 1: Type, Title, & Abstract". When you get to "Step 4: Details & Comments" please select the special issue title from the available drop down list so that your work will be considered for this current Special issue on Practical Wisdom and Management.
Questions about expectations, requirements, the appropriateness of a topic, etc., can be directed to the guest editors of the Special Issue.
Submission to the special issue is required through Manuscript Central by 15th January 2019.
REFERENCES
Aristotle. (1985). Nicomachean ethics (T. Irwin, Trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
Bachmann, C., Habisch, A., & Dierksmeier, C. (2017). Practical wisdom: Management's no longer forgotten virtue. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-19.
Bennis, W. G., & O'Toole, J. (2005). How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 83(5), 96-104.
Crossan, M., Mazutis, D., & Seijts, G. (2013). In search of virtue: The role of virtues, values and character strengths in ethical decision making. Journal of Business Ethics, 113(4), 567-581.
Drucker, P. (2012). The practice of management. Routledge.
Ferrero, I., & Sison, A. J. G. (2014). A quantitative analysis of authors, schools and themes in virtue ethics articles in business ethics and management journals (1980–2011). Business Ethics: A European Review, 23(4), 375-400.
Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Academy of Management learning & education, 4(1), 75-91.
Giacalone, R. A. (2004). A transcendent business education for the 21st century. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 3(4), 415-420.
Grint, K. (2007). Learning to lead: can Aristotle help us find the road to wisdom?. Leadership, 3(2), 231-246.
Hartman, E. M. (2013). Virtue in Business: Conversations with Aristotle. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Huehn, M. P. (2016). Ethics as a catalyst for change in business education?. Journal of Management Development, 35(2), 170-189.
Koehn, D. (1995). A role for virtue ethics in the analysis of business practice. Business Ethics Quarterly, 5(3), 533-539.
Melé, D. (2008). Integrating ethics into management. Journal of Business Ethics, 78(3), 291-297.
Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers, not MBAs: A hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Moldoveanu, M. C., & Martin, R. L. (2008). The Future of the MBA: Designing the Thinker of the Future. Oxford University Press.
Rosenzweig, P. (2014). The Halo Effect:... and the eight other business delusions that deceive managers. Simon and Schuster.
Schwartz, Barry. "Practical wisdom and organizations." Research in Organizational Behavior 31 (2011): 3-23.
Shotter, J., & Tsoukas, H. (2014). In search of phronesis: Leadership and the art of judgment. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(2), 224-243.
Sison, A. J. G., & Fontrodona, J. (2012). The common good of the firm in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. Business Ethics Quarterly, 22(2), 211-246.
Solomon, R. (1992). Ethics and excellence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wright, T. A., & Goodstein, J. (2007). Character is not "dead" in management research: A review of individual character and organizational-level virtue. Journal of Management, 33(6), 928-958.
GUEST EDITORS