For-profit business as civic virtue

Citation

Brennan, J. (2012), "For-profit business as civic virtue", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 20 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2012.04420faa.010

For-profit business as civic virtue

Article Type: Abstracts From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 20, Issue 6

Brennan J.Journal of Business Ethics (The Netherlands), March (III) 2012, Vol. 106 No. 3, Start page: 313, No of pages: 12

According to the commonsense view of civic virtue, the places to exercise civic virtue are largely restricted to politics. In this article, I argue for a more expansive view of civic virtue, and argue that one can exercise civic virtue equally well through working for or running a for-profit business. I argue that this conclusion follows from four relatively uncontroversial premises: (1) the consensus definition of “civic virtue”, (2) the standard, most popular theory of virtuous activity, (3) a conception of the common good widely shared by liberal political philosophers, and (4) the mainstream economic theory of for-profit business.ISSN: 0167-4544Reference: 41AJ031

Keywords: Civic virtue, Civic Republicanism, Extrapolitical conception of civic virtue, For-profit business