The Character of the Manager From Office Executive to Wise Steward

by Beabout, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9781137304056
• ISBN10: 1137304057
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-07-23
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The Character of the Manager is a sustained argument advancing a transformed conception of the character of the manager as wise steward. If we listen carefully to the warnings of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, we are awakened to a series of problems raised when thinking of the manager as office executive. MacIntyre has hinted that we need a new sort of manager, but his work has not gone far enough to propose and build up a transformed manager. To take up that task, this volume proposes a way to re-conceive both the activity of managing and the excellences of character and intellect needed to manage well. Retrieving two ancient characters, the 'steward' and the 'person of practical wisdom,' this volume is an argument for how moral philosophy might help bring about a transformed conception of the character of the manager.

Author Biography

Gregory R. Beabout is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, USA. He teaches and does research in virtue ethics, the history of philosophy, and personalism. His books, as author or co-author, include Freedom and Its Misuses, Beyond Self-Interest, and Applied Professional Ethics.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Dreams of Future Managers
2. Moral Philosophy and the Manager
3. MacIntyre, Our Gadfly
4. The Manager as Office Executive: Emotivism Embodied in a Character
5. Strengths and Weaknesses of Treating the Manager as a Stock Character
6. Plot and Perspective: Character Traits and their Cultivation
7. The Setting: Institutional Social Structures, Success, and Excellence
8. MacIntyre Against the Manager
9. The Virtuous Manager, the Art of Character, and Business Humanities
10. Character Transformation in the Friendship of Readers and Writers
11. Transforming the Character of the Moral Philosopher
12. Transforming Character: The Manager and the Aesthete
13. Transforming the Character of the Rhetorician
14. The Manager as Wise Steward: Activities, Practice, and Virtue
15. Management is a Domain-Relative Practice
16. The Dispositions of the Wise Steward and the Parts of Practical Wisdom
Conclusion