Virtue at Work: Ethics for Individuals, Managers, and Organizations

by Geoff Moore

Assuming, then, that we could arrive at some kind of judgement about how good the purpose of an organization is both in relation to its products or services and the development of its people, we might think of this as representing one dimension of the organization. Another dimension would then be the extent to which the organization pursued external goods, and most generically success, versus the extent to which it pursued internal goods, and most generically excellence; in other words, the extent to which it prioritized external over internal goods, the institution over the practice, or vice-versa. It would be possible to conceive of an organization that, as perhaps with DesignCo, overall had a good purpose (the design of buildings for office use and the appropriate development of its people in the process), but nonetheless did so in such a way which prioritized external goods such as profit over internal goods, success over excellence, to an inordinate degree.

compare perez lopez