Institutions and the Common Good. Reconceptualizing Institutional Values as Virtues

Elke Weik

doi:10.37725/mgmt.2024.8781

Elke Weik Department of Business and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37725/mgmt.2024.8781

Keywords: Institutions, values, virtue, emotions, ethics, MacIntyre, Friedland

Abstract

This paper addresses the critique regarding the apolitical nature of institutionalist theorizing by developing the concept of virtuous institutions. I start from the observation that current public discourses are often characterized by a destructive pitting of ‘my values’ against ‘your values’. Values, in this usage, represent personal emotion-laden beliefs that are ultimately incompatible. In addition to fueling destructive public discourses, incompatible values (a feature that is central to institutional value theorizing) make system integration (a feature that is also central to institutional theorizing) very difficult. I therefore propose to reconceptualize values as virtues. Drawing on the communitarian ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre and the concept of institutional valuation of Roger Friedland, I suggest a reconceptualization of institutional values that introduces the notion of a common good, understands institutional practices as co-constitutive with such a good, and abolishes the assumption that values are fundamentally irrational and beyond reasoning.

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Author Biography

Elke Weik, Department of Business and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Dr. habil Elke Weik is an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark. She is a critical management scholar with a vivid interest in organizational theory, social theory and philosophy. She has worked on theorizing post-1989 transformation processes, the history of the university and the market for knowledge, the problem of “teflon” academics, and the influence of culture on markets. Her most recent projects revolve around the aesthetic dimension of the social. She has written two monographs and published in many leading journals in the field, such as the Academy of Management Review, Organization and Management Learning.