What do you think?
Rate this book
Virtue at Work: Ethics for Individuals, Managers, and Organizations
Virtue at Work is about good organizations, good managers, and good people, and how these can contribute to good communities. It provides an integrated and philosophically-grounded framework that enables a coherent approach to organizations and organizational ethics from the perspective of practitioners in the workplace, managers in organizations, as well as from the perspective of organizations themselves.
The philosophical grounding comes from the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In line with MacIntyre's own commitments, this book makes philosophy down-to-earth and practical. It provides a new way of understanding ethics and organizations that is both realistic and attractive, but also challenging. And it also provides tough but realistic suggestions in order to put this approach into practice.
Virtue at Work not only applies theory in a readable and compelling manner, but also shows how this has been applied to a wide variety of organizations and occupations. Examples are drawn from Architecture, Accounting, Human Resource Management, Banking, Investment Advising, Open Source Software, Pharmaceuticals, Fair Trade, the UK's National Health Service, Churches, and Journalism, among many others.
The philosophical grounding comes from the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In line with MacIntyre's own commitments, this book makes philosophy down-to-earth and practical. It provides a new way of understanding ethics and organizations that is both realistic and attractive, but also challenging. And it also provides tough but realistic suggestions in order to put this approach into practice.
Virtue at Work not only applies theory in a readable and compelling manner, but also shows how this has been applied to a wide variety of organizations and occupations. Examples are drawn from Architecture, Accounting, Human Resource Management, Banking, Investment Advising, Open Source Software, Pharmaceuticals, Fair Trade, the UK's National Health Service, Churches, and Journalism, among many others.
240 pages, Paperback
Published December 10, 2019
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 20, 2017
Virtue at Work is a remarkable book for at least three reasons. First, it nicely summarizes, explains, and contextualizes the major findings of roughly thirty years of research in business ethics employing the framework of practices, institutions, and virtues introduced in Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. This alone is a major achievement since many of MacIntyre's readers, sympathizers and critics alike, seem unaware of this line of research. What is especially important about MacIntyrean business ethics is that the field has made great strides in showing that the MacIntyrean framework is readily applicable in a wide variety of commercial contexts. This empirical, or practical criterion - the demand that ethical theories articulate their conditions of applicability and demonstrate an ability to inform practice - is a requirement endorsed in After Virtue and reiterated in MacIntyre's most recent book Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. As such, it would be a mistake to see this research as a mere form of 'applied ethics' since MacIntyre has essentially undermined this concept. Instead, for MacIntyre, ethics is essentially 'applied', and only insofar as a particular ethical theory can inform practice do we have good grounds for endorsing it. Thus, by summarizing this research, Moore does a service both to general readers and to moral philosophers working from a neo-Aristotelian perspective since (a) economic organizations dominate our social world and (b) the book illustrates when and how the virtues find application in this context.
But this book is far from a mere summary of existing research. Its second contribution concerns the way it extends existing research, in part, by adopting a non-technical idiom that is readily understandable by educated readers. What Moore had done is to translate a sub-discipline that is often too taken with unnecessary jargon into an idiom that is more appreciable by ordinary readers. This is also an important achievement in its own right since by demonstrating the ability of the MacIntyrean framework to resonate with managers and business students, the book further illustrates the 'practice-guiding' characteristics of MacIntyre's work in general and especially in the context of business ethics. In this sense, rhetoric is not superfluous but part of the substance of ethical theory, since an ethical theory that is too esoteric, not readily understandable (at least in large part) by practitioners is doubtfully relevant to practice.
Third, another major contribution of the text, in this case both theoretical and practical, is its coherence. Moore has provide an overarching theoretical perspective that links a number of different considerations - about different types of (productive) practices, about various qualities of institutions, or formal organizations, the nature and role of the virtues, practitioners' narratives and their role in self-understanding, etc. - in a coherent and compelling way. In this way, this book goes a long way toward showing the theoretical coherence of MacIntyrean business ethics, as a comprehensive normative and empirical framework that has a wide relevance in a contemporary context. This added theoretical coherence should inform future work aimed at integrating the somewhat piecemeal findings of this sub-discipline, as well as enable engagement with rival traditions of inquiry within business ethics. Again, this book provides more than a mere review of existing literature, by providing a coherence that was sometimes lacking, Moore extends the theory itself.
Two limitations of the book involve considerations of contexts where practices are marginalized and engagement with rival traditions. The first topic is addressed in the book but readers will likely have many more questions about this issue since some modes of production or services , especially those having the characteristics of a 'profession' (i.e., doctors, accountants, engineers, etc.) are more plausibly considered 'practice-like' and others (for example retail, or janitorial work) seem to be more difficult to be conceptualized in this way. Again this book goes some way toward addressing this questions but more needs to be done. Second, more work is needed to show that MacIntyrean business ethics is vindicated against its rivals. The book engages with CSR and Stakeholder theory but much more needs to be done in this regard as well. Though doing too much of this sort of theoretical engagement in the current text would have likely made it unnecessarily technical the text would benefit from a greater consideration of the plausibility or implausibility of the profit-maximization perspective as it might be known to practitioners and considered as a rival 'theory-in-use'.
Regardless of these limitations, the book deserves a wide readership both by practitioners who will find a text that will contribute to their efforts to cultivate virtues and perform meaningful work, but also by theorists, both moral philosophers and business ethicists who will find a theory that rivals existing academic perspectives presented in a clear and coherent manner, having the advantage of including both normative and empirical considerations in one text.
But this book is far from a mere summary of existing research. Its second contribution concerns the way it extends existing research, in part, by adopting a non-technical idiom that is readily understandable by educated readers. What Moore had done is to translate a sub-discipline that is often too taken with unnecessary jargon into an idiom that is more appreciable by ordinary readers. This is also an important achievement in its own right since by demonstrating the ability of the MacIntyrean framework to resonate with managers and business students, the book further illustrates the 'practice-guiding' characteristics of MacIntyre's work in general and especially in the context of business ethics. In this sense, rhetoric is not superfluous but part of the substance of ethical theory, since an ethical theory that is too esoteric, not readily understandable (at least in large part) by practitioners is doubtfully relevant to practice.
Third, another major contribution of the text, in this case both theoretical and practical, is its coherence. Moore has provide an overarching theoretical perspective that links a number of different considerations - about different types of (productive) practices, about various qualities of institutions, or formal organizations, the nature and role of the virtues, practitioners' narratives and their role in self-understanding, etc. - in a coherent and compelling way. In this way, this book goes a long way toward showing the theoretical coherence of MacIntyrean business ethics, as a comprehensive normative and empirical framework that has a wide relevance in a contemporary context. This added theoretical coherence should inform future work aimed at integrating the somewhat piecemeal findings of this sub-discipline, as well as enable engagement with rival traditions of inquiry within business ethics. Again, this book provides more than a mere review of existing literature, by providing a coherence that was sometimes lacking, Moore extends the theory itself.
Two limitations of the book involve considerations of contexts where practices are marginalized and engagement with rival traditions. The first topic is addressed in the book but readers will likely have many more questions about this issue since some modes of production or services , especially those having the characteristics of a 'profession' (i.e., doctors, accountants, engineers, etc.) are more plausibly considered 'practice-like' and others (for example retail, or janitorial work) seem to be more difficult to be conceptualized in this way. Again this book goes some way toward addressing this questions but more needs to be done. Second, more work is needed to show that MacIntyrean business ethics is vindicated against its rivals. The book engages with CSR and Stakeholder theory but much more needs to be done in this regard as well. Though doing too much of this sort of theoretical engagement in the current text would have likely made it unnecessarily technical the text would benefit from a greater consideration of the plausibility or implausibility of the profit-maximization perspective as it might be known to practitioners and considered as a rival 'theory-in-use'.
Regardless of these limitations, the book deserves a wide readership both by practitioners who will find a text that will contribute to their efforts to cultivate virtues and perform meaningful work, but also by theorists, both moral philosophers and business ethicists who will find a theory that rivals existing academic perspectives presented in a clear and coherent manner, having the advantage of including both normative and empirical considerations in one text.
September 23, 2025
Moore’s book has its place in a discussion of MacIntyre’s ethical thought and in corresponding applications to management and organization, even if in part because of the questions it raises.
Nonetheless, Virtue at Work is marred by various blind spots: first, it evinces a basic and pervasive misunderstanding of MacIntyre’s account of goods and their relations to the virtues; second, it depends upon an unstructured and vague understanding of the virtues themselves; and third, it does not do justice to MacIntyre’s concerns about the corrupting effects of legal, political, and economic systems on the practice of management in the modern corporation.
Ultimately, what is needed is a more thoroughly Thomistic account of the virtues and their applications in the sphere of work.
Nonetheless, Virtue at Work is marred by various blind spots: first, it evinces a basic and pervasive misunderstanding of MacIntyre’s account of goods and their relations to the virtues; second, it depends upon an unstructured and vague understanding of the virtues themselves; and third, it does not do justice to MacIntyre’s concerns about the corrupting effects of legal, political, and economic systems on the practice of management in the modern corporation.
Ultimately, what is needed is a more thoroughly Thomistic account of the virtues and their applications in the sphere of work.
June 18, 2026
This is an extremely helpful book for those seeking a framework for applying Virtue ethics (from a Macintyre point of view) to work and management.
March 15, 2025
The content of this is really good—it’s a MacIntyre-inspired framework for thinking about organizations. I used it as a business ethics textbook.
The content is very good. I do worry that on the several points where Moore takes a more optimistic view of modern work organizations, management, etc., MacIntyre’s pessimism might still be more warranted. But it’s one of those disagreements where all parties agree with the same basic description in principle: it is possible, but difficult, to maintain virtue as individuals and organizations at work today. The disagreement regards whether the “possible” or the “difficult” aspect gets emphasized more.
I don’t love the writing in this book. In some cases, Moore seems to have learned sentence-writing from MacIntyre (bad idea). The worse problems are structural—often, transitions from one thought to the next are basically: “and here’s this next thing!” I also would’ve laid out the chapters differently, for example, integrating the case studies from later chapters into the earlier chapters.
There is a lot of academic literature on business ethics, on MacIntyre, and even on MacIntyre on business ethics, but this is an entirely unique large-scale project that does a pretty good job, so it deserves four stars. But if I continue to teach business ethics, I’d like to rework the material for (what I think would be) more clarity and student-friendliness. I’d also like to supplement it with some material on the bigger social questions of political economy—from a MacIntyrean perspective, of course.
The content is very good. I do worry that on the several points where Moore takes a more optimistic view of modern work organizations, management, etc., MacIntyre’s pessimism might still be more warranted. But it’s one of those disagreements where all parties agree with the same basic description in principle: it is possible, but difficult, to maintain virtue as individuals and organizations at work today. The disagreement regards whether the “possible” or the “difficult” aspect gets emphasized more.
I don’t love the writing in this book. In some cases, Moore seems to have learned sentence-writing from MacIntyre (bad idea). The worse problems are structural—often, transitions from one thought to the next are basically: “and here’s this next thing!” I also would’ve laid out the chapters differently, for example, integrating the case studies from later chapters into the earlier chapters.
There is a lot of academic literature on business ethics, on MacIntyre, and even on MacIntyre on business ethics, but this is an entirely unique large-scale project that does a pretty good job, so it deserves four stars. But if I continue to teach business ethics, I’d like to rework the material for (what I think would be) more clarity and student-friendliness. I’d also like to supplement it with some material on the bigger social questions of political economy—from a MacIntyrean perspective, of course.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews