It’s a three-ring circus: how morally educative practices are undermined by institutions
It’s a three-ring circus: how morally educative practices are undermined by institutions
Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the relationship between morally educative practices and the institutions that house them have been widely noted. We propose a taxonomy of the ways in which the pursuit of external goods by institutions undermines the pursuit of the internal goods of practices. These comprise substitution, where the institution replaces the pursuit of one type of good by another; frustration, where opportunities for practitioners to discover goods or develop new standards of excellence are frustrated by institutional priorities and resource allocation; and injustice, which undermines the integrity of relationships within the organization and/or with partners. These threats, though analytically distinct, are often mutually reinforcing. This conceptual contribution is illustrated both by the extant literature and by a novel context, the three-ring circus.
MacIntyre, frustration, injustice, practice-institution, substitution, virtue
Beadle, Ron
6007db2d-8d53-42b6-a334-490162a2493d
Sinnicks, Matthew
63b27aef-8672-4fa7-b2fa-388c9af51c57
11 March 2024
Beadle, Ron
6007db2d-8d53-42b6-a334-490162a2493d
Sinnicks, Matthew
63b27aef-8672-4fa7-b2fa-388c9af51c57
Beadle, Ron and Sinnicks, Matthew
(2024)
It’s a three-ring circus: how morally educative practices are undermined by institutions.
Business Ethics Quarterly.
(doi:10.1017/beq.2024.1).
Abstract
Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the relationship between morally educative practices and the institutions that house them have been widely noted. We propose a taxonomy of the ways in which the pursuit of external goods by institutions undermines the pursuit of the internal goods of practices. These comprise substitution, where the institution replaces the pursuit of one type of good by another; frustration, where opportunities for practitioners to discover goods or develop new standards of excellence are frustrated by institutional priorities and resource allocation; and injustice, which undermines the integrity of relationships within the organization and/or with partners. These threats, though analytically distinct, are often mutually reinforcing. This conceptual contribution is illustrated both by the extant literature and by a novel context, the three-ring circus.
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Beadle & Sinnicks - It’s a three-ring circus AM
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Beadle & Sinnicks - 2024 - Its-a-three-ring-circus-how-morally-educative-practices-are-undermined-by-institutions
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Accepted/In Press date: 18 December 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 March 2024
Published date: 11 March 2024
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Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2024.
Keywords:
MacIntyre, frustration, injustice, practice-institution, substitution, virtue
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Local EPrints ID: 485880
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/485880
ISSN: 1052-150X
PURE UUID: 91453215-7aff-468a-8e49-61bbcf5d4508
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Date deposited: 03 Jan 2024 19:34
Last modified: 01 May 2024 02:05
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Author:
Ron Beadle
Author:
Matthew Sinnicks
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