The Morality of Everyday Activities: Not the Right, But the Good Thing To Do

This article attempts to understand and develop the morality of everyday activities in organizations. Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, practical wisdom, is utilized to describe the morality of the everyday work activities at two call centres of an Australian insurance company. The ethnographic data...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Nyberg, Daniel (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer 2008
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2008, Volume: 81, Issue: 3, Pages: 587-598
Further subjects:B ethical codes
B Situated ethics
B Phronesis
B Organizational Ethics
B Aristotle
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Description
Summary:This article attempts to understand and develop the morality of everyday activities in organizations. Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, practical wisdom, is utilized to describe the morality of the everyday work activities at two call centres of an Australian insurance company. The ethnographic data suggests that ethical judgements at the lower level of the organization are practical rather than theoretical; emergent rather than static; ambiguous rather than clear-cut; and particular rather than universal. Ethical codes are of limited value here and it is argued that by developing phronesis members of the organization can improve their capacity to deal with this ethical complexity.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-007-9530-1