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Ron Beadle

Northumbria University, Newcastle Business School, Faculty Member

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Professor Ron Beadle's work aims to defend, extend and apply MacIntyre's thinking on goods, virtues, practices and institutions. To this end Ron conducts empirical work in the traditional circus and engages in debates in business ethics and organisation theory. He also writes a regular column for the North East of England regional newspaper, 'The Journal'.
Phone: 078998 40565
Address: Newcastle Business School
City Campus East
Newcastle upon Tyne
England
NE1 8ST

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Papers by Ron Beadle

It's a Three-Ring Circus: How Morally Educative Practices Are Undermined by Institutions

Business Ethics Quarterly, 2024

Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the rela... more 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.

'Whose Call?' The Conflict Between Tradition-Based and Expressivist Accounts of Calling

by Sally Wightman and Ron Beadle

Journal of Business Ethics, 2022

Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent yea... more Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent years. At the same time, concerns have been expressed about the conceptual coherence of the notion as studies have posited a wide variety of senses in which both workers and scholars understand what it means for workers to be called, what they are called to do and who is doing the 'calling'. This paper makes both conceptual and empirical contributions to the field. We argue that Bellah et al.'s (Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life, University of California Press, 1996) contrast between tradition-based and expressivist understandings of 'calling' highlights a fundamental but neglected fissure in the literature. Expressivist accounts amongst both scholars and research participants require only that 'calling' be deeply felt by those who experience it. However, tradition-based accounts require an external caller. Exemplifying this, workers who attest to a divine call and scholars who write about 'calling' in the context of particular Christian traditions understand 'calling' in terms of a relationship with God. These accounts cannot but be in radical tension. We suggest that this conceptual confusion can be understood in terms of MacIntyre's notion of 'tradition-constituted rationality.' The implications of this argument for practice are evidenced in our report of a study of adherents to one such tradition, workers at a Christian organization that supports people in poverty. Through in-depth interviews with long-term volunteers, we seek to assess if tradition-based 'calling' can be evidenced in unpaid work for the lack of pay and career progression opportunities strongly suggest the presence of 'calling.' This study demonstrates that even in the context of work that exhibits duty and altruism associated with expressivist accounts of 'calling,' these workers' understanding of the relationships between themselves, their clients and Jesus Christ dominate their work choices. It is the meaning derived from a divine caller, understood in terms of Christian tradition, that accounts for their decision to begin and to continue this work.

'Whose Call?' The Conflict Between Tradition-Based and Expressivist Accounts of Calling

Journal of Business Ethics, 2022

Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent yea... more Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent years. At the same time, concerns have been expressed about the conceptual coherence of the notion as studies have posited a wide variety of senses in which both workers and scholars understand what it means for workers to be called, what they are called to do and who is doing the 'calling'. This paper makes both conceptual and empirical contributions to the field. We argue that Bellah et al.'s (Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life, University of California Press, 1996) contrast between tradition-based and expressivist understandings of 'calling' highlights a fundamental but neglected fissure in the literature. Expressivist accounts amongst both scholars and research participants require only that 'calling' be deeply felt by those who experience it. However, tradition-based accounts require an external caller. Exemplifying this, workers who attest to a divine call and scholars who write about 'calling' in the context of particular Christian traditions understand 'calling' in terms of a relationship with God. These accounts cannot but be in radical tension. We suggest that this conceptual confusion can be understood in terms of MacIntyre's notion of 'tradition-constituted rationality.' The implications of this argument for practice are evidenced in our report of a study of adherents to one such tradition, workers at a Christian organization that supports people in poverty. Through in-depth interviews with long-term volunteers, we seek to assess if tradition-based 'calling' can be evidenced in unpaid work for the lack of pay and career progression opportunities strongly suggest the presence of 'calling.' This study demonstrates that even in the context of work that exhibits duty and altruism associated with expressivist accounts of 'calling,' these workers' understanding of the relationships between themselves, their clients and Jesus Christ dominate their work choices. It is the meaning derived from a divine caller, understood in terms of Christian tradition, that accounts for their decision to begin and to continue this work.

The discovery of a peculiar good: towards a reading of Nell Stroud's 'Josser: days and nights in the circus

Tamara Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 2003

This paper draws on the author's experiences as a member of a circus family to give attention to ... more This paper draws on the author's experiences as a member of a circus family to give attention to a neglected area of research. The paper draws on a range of readings and published accounts of circus life and in particular it examines Nell Stroud's book, Josser: Days and Nights in the Circus and weaves them together with personal experiences and reminiscences. In doing so, Beadle seeks to develop an understanding of the localised meaning of goodness.

Virtue and Meaningful Work

Business Ethics Quarterly, 2012

ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfu... more ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries.

CAN FINANCE BE A VIRTUOUS PRACTICE? A MACINTYREAN ACCOUNT

by Ron Beadle and Ignacio Ferrero

Beusiness Ethics Quarterly, 2020

Finance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the ... more Finance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the pursuit of external goods, but this should encourage attempts to reform the institutionalization of finance rather than to reject its potential for virtuous business activity. This article argues that finance should be regarded as a domain-relative practice (Beabout 2012; MacIntyre 2007). Alongside management, its moral status thereby varies with the purposes it serves. Hence, when practitioners working in finance facilitate projects that create common goods, it allows them to develop virtues. This argument applies MacIntyre's widely acknowledged account of the relationship between practices and the development of virtues while questioning some of his claims about finance. It also takes issue with extant accounts of particular financial functions that have failed to identify the distinctive goods of financial practice.

Trade Unions and the 2016 UK European Union Referendum

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2020

This article reports on pre and post interviews with trade union leaders and senior Trades Union ... more This article reports on pre and post interviews with trade union leaders and senior Trades Union Congress (TUC) and union officials who held campaign responsibilities for the 2016 UK European Union (EU) Referendum. The article considers the development of union policy towards the EU, the determination of unions' final positions, campaign resources and media, the arguments made and the drivers of and constraints upon active campaigning. Campaign intensity, resourcing and strategic decision-making varied widely across unions and was frustrated by resource constraints, fear of alienating members and in some cases lack of priority. The article concludes that unions must be better prepared to commit material resources and national officers' time so that campaign issues are effectively framed in terms of member concerns.

Institutions and moral agency: the case of Scottish banking

Journal of Institutional Economics, 2019

It has been an enduring concern of institutional economics and critical realism to understand how... more It has been an enduring concern of institutional economics and critical realism to understand how individuals are able to exercise agency in the context of social structures, and to maintain appropriate connections, separations and balances between these two levels of causal power. This paper explores the contribution of Alasdair MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian philosophy to the topic. Empirical data are provided from the career narratives of senior Scottish bankers recalled in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007/8. The method of the study is interpretive, using themes drawn from MacIntyre's writings. These bankers faced moral choices as tensions developed between their own professional standards and the new corporate goals of the banks. We discuss MacIntyre's understanding of individual moral agency as a narrative quest in the context of different types of institution with different and often conflicting ideas about what constitutes good or right action. Habituation and deliberation are important in enabling action, but fully developed moral agency also depends on individuals being able to make choices in the space opened up by tensions within and between institutions.

CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY AS A CONTEXT FOR MORAL AGENCY, A MACINTYREAN ENQUIRY

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019

It has been claimed that 'virtuous structures' can foster moral agency in organisations. We inves... more It has been claimed that 'virtuous structures' can foster moral agency in organisations. We investigate this in the context of employee involvement in corporate philanthropy, an activity whose moral status has been disputed. Employing Alasdair MacIntyre's account of moral agency, we analyse the results of eight focus groups with employees engaged in corporate philanthropy in an employee-owned retailer, the John Lewis Partnership. Within this organisational context, Employee-Partners' moral agency was evidenced in narrative accounts of their engagement in philanthropic activities and in their disputes about the moral status of corporate philanthropy.

On Running Away to The Circus

Politcs and Poetics, 2018

This paper uses the example of circus to illustrate the relationship between self-understanding a... more This paper uses the example of circus to illustrate the relationship between self-understanding and social order that underscores MacIntyre’s diagnoses of developments in mainstream moral and self-understanding. ‘Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity’ provides a largely sociological account as to why the distinctive and incoherent Morality of modernity persists, and moreover must persist, if the illusions of the conventional social order are to be maintained. MacIntyre’s allusions to such contexts as the circus manifest the same intimate relationship between self-understanding and social order, but in contrast to modernity, provide a context for coherence.

MacIntyre, Empirics and Organisation

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

Philosophy of Management, 2008

MacIntyre, neo-Aristotelianism and organization theory

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2011

In this chapter, we set out to demonstrate how organizational theory and analysis can benefit fro... more

Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2014

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice and incul... more Catholic Social Teaching (CST) aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission-it fails to look "inside" the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre"s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources which could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes the MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST"s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be "crowded-in" to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics.

MacIntyre on Virtue and Organization

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

Organization Studies, 2006

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, ... more

Virtue and the Case for Meaningful Work. In Sison, A and Fontrondona, J. Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business, New York: Springer. pp835-843; 2017)

This chapter considers empirical research into meaningful work from the perspective of the virtue... more This chapter considers empirical research into meaningful work from the perspective of the virtues. Research conducted over more than half a century has isolated a number of dimensions that animate the experience of meaningful work and a number of desirable consequences that are associated with it including improved job performance and job satisfaction. Research is fragmented however and there is no generally agreed explanatory framework though many potential candidates. A second significant problem in the field is the repeated finding that not all employees experience meaningfulness in jobs whose characteristics suggest that they should and that some employees craft meaning into otherwise mundane work. As a result of this some ethicists have maintained that meaningful work is an inherently subjective notion and therefore that it cannot function as the type of good that can be the subject of ethical claims. A MacIntyrean virtue ethics perspective overcomes this objection, in part because it accounts for the apparent subjectivity in the attributions of meaningfulness in terms of the virtues that agents have developed, or failed to develop. The case for meaningful work is its necessity to the development of the virtues.

MacIntyre's Influence on Business Ethics (In Sison, A and Fontrondona, J. Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business, New York: Springer. pp59-67; 2017)

Business Ethics scholars have made much use of Alasdair MacIntyre's distinctive account of the vi... more

Individual and Organizational Virtues (from Sison, A & Akrivou, K. (Eds.) The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. pp166-184; 2016)

Studies from a variety of theoretical perspectives confirm that work organizations impact the dev... more Studies from a variety of theoretical perspectives confirm that work organizations impact the development of employees' moral agency. But how and in what direction? Rival answers to these and related questions include those who extol the bourgeois virtues required by market orders and those who regard business organizations as corrosive of the virtues. Empirical research into virtues in organizations has done little to resolve the issue. This paper will illustrate the dimensions of these disputes and attempt to diagnose their cause. It turns out that rival accounts of the impact of business on moral agency presuppose radically different accounts of those individual, public and common goods to whose achievement the virtues must be directed; or so I shall argue. I A familiar argument about agency is that social phenomena are rarely explained by variables operating at the same level as those for which explanation is sought; we should look to higher social levels for such explanations (Hackman 2009), hence individual behaviour requires analysis at the level of groups, group behaviour at the level of organizations and so on. In addressing whether and how capitalism impacts on the development of virtues and the achievement of common goods we should therefore proceed with some caution. Capitalism incorporates not just a set of interlocking economic, institutional, legal and behavioural processes enabling the private accumulation and deployment of resources but also characteristic ways of thinking about these very institutions and processes. Despite this complexity virtue ethicists of different stripes have presented theoretical accounts of the relationship between capitalism and the virtues whilst empirical research suggests that moral agency is significantly influenced by a range of organizational dynamics. At least six research programmes have developed our understanding of these influences and this chapter will begin by highlighting how research undertaken within positive organizational scholarship, moral identity, economic identity, work design, self-determination theory and work orientation provides just such evidence. Research undertaken by Positive Organizational Scholars has examined relationships between organization-level virtues1 and a number of potentially related performance variables (Bright, Winn and Kanov 2014). Cameron, Bright and Caza's (2004) foundational work with American employee survey data established positive correlations between five clusters of virtues – namely, organizational forgiveness, organizational trust, organizational integrity, organizational optimism and organizational compassion with perceived organizational performance, profitability, product quality, innovation and customer retention. To develop a dynamic, explanatory account for such reported relationships Positive Organizational Scholars have focussed attention on what they call the 'amplifying effect' of 1 1 Other chapters in this volume examine whether and how virtue might be understood at the organizational level so I will leave that vexed question to one side.

Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm. Crowding in Virtue Ethics: a MacIntyrean Approach to Business (with Geoff Moore and Anna Rowlands) (American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88: 4, 779-805; 2015)

by Geoff Moore, Ron Beadle, and Anna Rowlands

This is the final pre-publication version of a joint authored publication: Moore, G; R. Beadle an... more

'Introduction: Virtue and Virtuousness; When will the twain ever meet'? (With Alejo Sison and Joan Fontondona,) ('Business Ethics: A European Review' Vol 24 (S2): S67-S77; 2014)

by Ron Beadle and Alejo José G. Sison

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a Special Edition... more This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a Special Edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions which could inform the relationship between organizational virtuousness, as conceptualised by Positive Organization Studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. Whilst the resources of particular virtue traditions-Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian and the like-could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the debate between virtue traditions and Positive Organization Studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of Positive Social Sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that Positive Social Science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions which exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of Positive Social Sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions and introduces the remaining papers in the Special Edition.

It's a Three-Ring Circus: How Morally Educative Practices Are Undermined by Institutions

Business Ethics Quarterly, 2024

Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the rela... more 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.

'Whose Call?' The Conflict Between Tradition-Based and Expressivist Accounts of Calling

by Sally Wightman and Ron Beadle

Journal of Business Ethics, 2022

Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent yea... more Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent years. At the same time, concerns have been expressed about the conceptual coherence of the notion as studies have posited a wide variety of senses in which both workers and scholars understand what it means for workers to be called, what they are called to do and who is doing the 'calling'. This paper makes both conceptual and empirical contributions to the field. We argue that Bellah et al.'s (Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life, University of California Press, 1996) contrast between tradition-based and expressivist understandings of 'calling' highlights a fundamental but neglected fissure in the literature. Expressivist accounts amongst both scholars and research participants require only that 'calling' be deeply felt by those who experience it. However, tradition-based accounts require an external caller. Exemplifying this, workers who attest to a divine call and scholars who write about 'calling' in the context of particular Christian traditions understand 'calling' in terms of a relationship with God. These accounts cannot but be in radical tension. We suggest that this conceptual confusion can be understood in terms of MacIntyre's notion of 'tradition-constituted rationality.' The implications of this argument for practice are evidenced in our report of a study of adherents to one such tradition, workers at a Christian organization that supports people in poverty. Through in-depth interviews with long-term volunteers, we seek to assess if tradition-based 'calling' can be evidenced in unpaid work for the lack of pay and career progression opportunities strongly suggest the presence of 'calling.' This study demonstrates that even in the context of work that exhibits duty and altruism associated with expressivist accounts of 'calling,' these workers' understanding of the relationships between themselves, their clients and Jesus Christ dominate their work choices. It is the meaning derived from a divine caller, understood in terms of Christian tradition, that accounts for their decision to begin and to continue this work.

'Whose Call?' The Conflict Between Tradition-Based and Expressivist Accounts of Calling

Journal of Business Ethics, 2022

Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent yea... more Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent years. At the same time, concerns have been expressed about the conceptual coherence of the notion as studies have posited a wide variety of senses in which both workers and scholars understand what it means for workers to be called, what they are called to do and who is doing the 'calling'. This paper makes both conceptual and empirical contributions to the field. We argue that Bellah et al.'s (Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life, University of California Press, 1996) contrast between tradition-based and expressivist understandings of 'calling' highlights a fundamental but neglected fissure in the literature. Expressivist accounts amongst both scholars and research participants require only that 'calling' be deeply felt by those who experience it. However, tradition-based accounts require an external caller. Exemplifying this, workers who attest to a divine call and scholars who write about 'calling' in the context of particular Christian traditions understand 'calling' in terms of a relationship with God. These accounts cannot but be in radical tension. We suggest that this conceptual confusion can be understood in terms of MacIntyre's notion of 'tradition-constituted rationality.' The implications of this argument for practice are evidenced in our report of a study of adherents to one such tradition, workers at a Christian organization that supports people in poverty. Through in-depth interviews with long-term volunteers, we seek to assess if tradition-based 'calling' can be evidenced in unpaid work for the lack of pay and career progression opportunities strongly suggest the presence of 'calling.' This study demonstrates that even in the context of work that exhibits duty and altruism associated with expressivist accounts of 'calling,' these workers' understanding of the relationships between themselves, their clients and Jesus Christ dominate their work choices. It is the meaning derived from a divine caller, understood in terms of Christian tradition, that accounts for their decision to begin and to continue this work.

The discovery of a peculiar good: towards a reading of Nell Stroud's 'Josser: days and nights in the circus

Tamara Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 2003

This paper draws on the author's experiences as a member of a circus family to give attention to ... more This paper draws on the author's experiences as a member of a circus family to give attention to a neglected area of research. The paper draws on a range of readings and published accounts of circus life and in particular it examines Nell Stroud's book, Josser: Days and Nights in the Circus and weaves them together with personal experiences and reminiscences. In doing so, Beadle seeks to develop an understanding of the localised meaning of goodness.

Virtue and Meaningful Work

Business Ethics Quarterly, 2012

ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfu... more ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries.

CAN FINANCE BE A VIRTUOUS PRACTICE? A MACINTYREAN ACCOUNT

by Ron Beadle and Ignacio Ferrero

Beusiness Ethics Quarterly, 2020

Finance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the ... more Finance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the pursuit of external goods, but this should encourage attempts to reform the institutionalization of finance rather than to reject its potential for virtuous business activity. This article argues that finance should be regarded as a domain-relative practice (Beabout 2012; MacIntyre 2007). Alongside management, its moral status thereby varies with the purposes it serves. Hence, when practitioners working in finance facilitate projects that create common goods, it allows them to develop virtues. This argument applies MacIntyre's widely acknowledged account of the relationship between practices and the development of virtues while questioning some of his claims about finance. It also takes issue with extant accounts of particular financial functions that have failed to identify the distinctive goods of financial practice.

Trade Unions and the 2016 UK European Union Referendum

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2020

This article reports on pre and post interviews with trade union leaders and senior Trades Union ... more This article reports on pre and post interviews with trade union leaders and senior Trades Union Congress (TUC) and union officials who held campaign responsibilities for the 2016 UK European Union (EU) Referendum. The article considers the development of union policy towards the EU, the determination of unions' final positions, campaign resources and media, the arguments made and the drivers of and constraints upon active campaigning. Campaign intensity, resourcing and strategic decision-making varied widely across unions and was frustrated by resource constraints, fear of alienating members and in some cases lack of priority. The article concludes that unions must be better prepared to commit material resources and national officers' time so that campaign issues are effectively framed in terms of member concerns.

Institutions and moral agency: the case of Scottish banking

Journal of Institutional Economics, 2019

It has been an enduring concern of institutional economics and critical realism to understand how... more It has been an enduring concern of institutional economics and critical realism to understand how individuals are able to exercise agency in the context of social structures, and to maintain appropriate connections, separations and balances between these two levels of causal power. This paper explores the contribution of Alasdair MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian philosophy to the topic. Empirical data are provided from the career narratives of senior Scottish bankers recalled in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007/8. The method of the study is interpretive, using themes drawn from MacIntyre's writings. These bankers faced moral choices as tensions developed between their own professional standards and the new corporate goals of the banks. We discuss MacIntyre's understanding of individual moral agency as a narrative quest in the context of different types of institution with different and often conflicting ideas about what constitutes good or right action. Habituation and deliberation are important in enabling action, but fully developed moral agency also depends on individuals being able to make choices in the space opened up by tensions within and between institutions.

CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY AS A CONTEXT FOR MORAL AGENCY, A MACINTYREAN ENQUIRY

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019

It has been claimed that 'virtuous structures' can foster moral agency in organisations. We inves... more It has been claimed that 'virtuous structures' can foster moral agency in organisations. We investigate this in the context of employee involvement in corporate philanthropy, an activity whose moral status has been disputed. Employing Alasdair MacIntyre's account of moral agency, we analyse the results of eight focus groups with employees engaged in corporate philanthropy in an employee-owned retailer, the John Lewis Partnership. Within this organisational context, Employee-Partners' moral agency was evidenced in narrative accounts of their engagement in philanthropic activities and in their disputes about the moral status of corporate philanthropy.

On Running Away to The Circus

Politcs and Poetics, 2018

This paper uses the example of circus to illustrate the relationship between self-understanding a... more This paper uses the example of circus to illustrate the relationship between self-understanding and social order that underscores MacIntyre’s diagnoses of developments in mainstream moral and self-understanding. ‘Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity’ provides a largely sociological account as to why the distinctive and incoherent Morality of modernity persists, and moreover must persist, if the illusions of the conventional social order are to be maintained. MacIntyre’s allusions to such contexts as the circus manifest the same intimate relationship between self-understanding and social order, but in contrast to modernity, provide a context for coherence.

MacIntyre, Empirics and Organisation

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

Philosophy of Management, 2008

MacIntyre, neo-Aristotelianism and organization theory

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2011

In this chapter, we set out to demonstrate how organizational theory and analysis can benefit fro... more

Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2014

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice and incul... more Catholic Social Teaching (CST) aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission-it fails to look "inside" the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre"s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources which could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes the MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST"s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be "crowded-in" to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics.

MacIntyre on Virtue and Organization

by Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle

Organization Studies, 2006

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, ... more

Virtue and the Case for Meaningful Work. In Sison, A and Fontrondona, J. Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business, New York: Springer. pp835-843; 2017)

This chapter considers empirical research into meaningful work from the perspective of the virtue... more This chapter considers empirical research into meaningful work from the perspective of the virtues. Research conducted over more than half a century has isolated a number of dimensions that animate the experience of meaningful work and a number of desirable consequences that are associated with it including improved job performance and job satisfaction. Research is fragmented however and there is no generally agreed explanatory framework though many potential candidates. A second significant problem in the field is the repeated finding that not all employees experience meaningfulness in jobs whose characteristics suggest that they should and that some employees craft meaning into otherwise mundane work. As a result of this some ethicists have maintained that meaningful work is an inherently subjective notion and therefore that it cannot function as the type of good that can be the subject of ethical claims. A MacIntyrean virtue ethics perspective overcomes this objection, in part because it accounts for the apparent subjectivity in the attributions of meaningfulness in terms of the virtues that agents have developed, or failed to develop. The case for meaningful work is its necessity to the development of the virtues.

MacIntyre's Influence on Business Ethics (In Sison, A and Fontrondona, J. Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business, New York: Springer. pp59-67; 2017)

Business Ethics scholars have made much use of Alasdair MacIntyre's distinctive account of the vi... more

Individual and Organizational Virtues (from Sison, A & Akrivou, K. (Eds.) The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. pp166-184; 2016)

Studies from a variety of theoretical perspectives confirm that work organizations impact the dev... more Studies from a variety of theoretical perspectives confirm that work organizations impact the development of employees' moral agency. But how and in what direction? Rival answers to these and related questions include those who extol the bourgeois virtues required by market orders and those who regard business organizations as corrosive of the virtues. Empirical research into virtues in organizations has done little to resolve the issue. This paper will illustrate the dimensions of these disputes and attempt to diagnose their cause. It turns out that rival accounts of the impact of business on moral agency presuppose radically different accounts of those individual, public and common goods to whose achievement the virtues must be directed; or so I shall argue. I A familiar argument about agency is that social phenomena are rarely explained by variables operating at the same level as those for which explanation is sought; we should look to higher social levels for such explanations (Hackman 2009), hence individual behaviour requires analysis at the level of groups, group behaviour at the level of organizations and so on. In addressing whether and how capitalism impacts on the development of virtues and the achievement of common goods we should therefore proceed with some caution. Capitalism incorporates not just a set of interlocking economic, institutional, legal and behavioural processes enabling the private accumulation and deployment of resources but also characteristic ways of thinking about these very institutions and processes. Despite this complexity virtue ethicists of different stripes have presented theoretical accounts of the relationship between capitalism and the virtues whilst empirical research suggests that moral agency is significantly influenced by a range of organizational dynamics. At least six research programmes have developed our understanding of these influences and this chapter will begin by highlighting how research undertaken within positive organizational scholarship, moral identity, economic identity, work design, self-determination theory and work orientation provides just such evidence. Research undertaken by Positive Organizational Scholars has examined relationships between organization-level virtues1 and a number of potentially related performance variables (Bright, Winn and Kanov 2014). Cameron, Bright and Caza's (2004) foundational work with American employee survey data established positive correlations between five clusters of virtues – namely, organizational forgiveness, organizational trust, organizational integrity, organizational optimism and organizational compassion with perceived organizational performance, profitability, product quality, innovation and customer retention. To develop a dynamic, explanatory account for such reported relationships Positive Organizational Scholars have focussed attention on what they call the 'amplifying effect' of 1 1 Other chapters in this volume examine whether and how virtue might be understood at the organizational level so I will leave that vexed question to one side.

Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm. Crowding in Virtue Ethics: a MacIntyrean Approach to Business (with Geoff Moore and Anna Rowlands) (American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88: 4, 779-805; 2015)

by Geoff Moore, Ron Beadle, and Anna Rowlands

This is the final pre-publication version of a joint authored publication: Moore, G; R. Beadle an... more

'Introduction: Virtue and Virtuousness; When will the twain ever meet'? (With Alejo Sison and Joan Fontondona,) ('Business Ethics: A European Review' Vol 24 (S2): S67-S77; 2014)

by Ron Beadle and Alejo José G. Sison

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a Special Edition... more This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a Special Edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions which could inform the relationship between organizational virtuousness, as conceptualised by Positive Organization Studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. Whilst the resources of particular virtue traditions-Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian and the like-could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the debate between virtue traditions and Positive Organization Studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of Positive Social Sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that Positive Social Science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions which exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of Positive Social Sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions and introduces the remaining papers in the Special Edition.

Review of 'Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity' by Alasdair MacIntyre (2016), published in Journal of Business Ethics

Journal of Business Ethics, 2017

Review of ‘Tradition, Rationality and Virtue. The Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre’ by Thomas ‘D’Andrea, Philosophy of Management 7:1 138-140; 2008

Review of Thomas D'Andrea's text on MacIntyre

Stroud, N.(1999) Josser: Days and Nights In the Circus, London: Little Brown & Co. (Culture and Organisation 9:2 139-144; 2003)

Culture and Organization, Jan 1, 2003

Beadle Journal Article December 2024 - The Assisted Dying Bill

My reflections on the large level of agreement that underlay the debate last Friday on the disput... more

Beadle Journal Article November 2024 - Remembrance

A column in anticipation of Remembrance Sunday (and the US Presidential election)

Friendship and Politics -Beadle Column October 2024

In the autumn of 2024, Sir Keir Starmer and other Ministers were criticised for accepting gifts o... more

In praise of Freddie Flintoff -

My column in September 2024 argued that cricketer Freddie Flintoff's mentoring of a group of youn... more

Beadle Journal Article August 2024 - Riots, Nazis and History

This column reflects on historic parallels of this month's racist riots in England

Bruce Springsteen was playing at the Stadium of Light as Rishi Sunak called the 2024 General Elec... more

Beadle Column May 2024 - Growing old Gracefully

My column in May 2024 reflected on growing older as an analogue man in a digital world

Beadle Journal Article April

Inspired by Lord Sugar's comments in the Final of the year's 'The Apprentice' this column asked '... more

My column for late March 2024 was more personal than usual, welcoming the return of traditional c... more

Beadle Column March 2024 Lessons from Rochdale

My column for the Journal in March 2024 was about the lessons of the previous week's Rochdale by-... more

Should I stay or should I go? Beadle Column January 2024 (2)

My second column of January 2024 is something of an homage to Jurgen Klopp whose departure from L... more

Beadle Column January 2024 - A New Year's resolution

My column on Jan 1st 2024 encouraged readers to join a political party in this most important of ... more

Jamie Driscoll's bid for the Mayoralty - Column from December 2023

I went to one of Jamie Driscoll's Mayoral Roadshows. This is what I thought.

Beadle Column November 2023 How to end the bus strike

My column in November 2023 argued that both sides in the damaging Go North East bus strike should... more

Why work? Beadle Column October 2023

My column in October 2023 looked at research into why people work and the consequences of differe... more

The Bottom Line isn't the only line

My column in September 2023 looked at the Tories' attack on so-called 'Mickey Mouse' degrees

Why we should keep our ticket offices

In this month's Journal article, I use institutional logic to try to explain why ticket offices a... more

Mickey versus the Tories

My column for the Journal in July 2023 reflected on Robert Jenrick's decision to have images of M... more

The Honours system

My column for June 2023 looked at the impact of Boris Johnson's resignation honours for the syste... more

Beadle Column May 2023 - The Liberal Democrats are back

My Journal article of May 2023 argued that the local elections earlier in the month marked a wate... more

MacIntyre on Virtue and Care

Presentation Slides from a talk given at the International Care Ethics Observatory, University of... more Presentation Slides from a talk given at the International Care Ethics Observatory, University of Surrey on January 9, 2019. The invitation was to present an introduction to MacIntyre's approach to care in the week of his 90th birthday; Rev. Dr Peter Hayter was the other speaker. The presentation attempts to locate and summarise the contribution of MacIntyre's 1999 work 'Dependent Rational Animals'

On Running Away to the Circus Final, 2018.pptx

My slides from my talk at the Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck College, University of London December 6 2018

Utopia in the Commonplace: Running Away to the Circus in the 20th Century (2017)

This was my presentation to the 11th Conference of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enqu... more

Institutional Change, Practices and Transition: The case of the three ring circus (2016)

Presentation on the impact of the three ring circus as a distinct institutional form. Presented ... more

How have the virtues been understood in business ethics?(2015)

An overview of the literature on the virtues in Business Ethics. Presented to the Jubilee Centre... more

Meaningful Work Symposium Presentation (2015)

A presentation on current research in meaningful work presented to the first Meaningful Work Symp... more

'Virtue and Meaningful Work' (2012)

A presentation on Virtue and Meaningful Work given to Kingston Philosophy Café in November 2012

Management in the travelling circus – The role of calling, the virtue of constancy(2012)

Presentation at a Staff seminar at Durham Business School reporting results of the empirical proj... more

Practices Institutions and empirics (2011)

A presentation to Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics Seminar at London Met.... more

Can organisations be virtuous

Reponse to Consultation on Wild Animals in Circus Wales Bill20190924 80582 fir2my

My response to the consultation by the Welsh National Assembly on their Bill to ban wild animals ... more

Reponse to Call for Evidence on Wild Animals in Circus (No 2 ) Bill

This is my response to the consultation on the Wild Animals in Circus Bill that, sent to the Publ... more

Response to Call for Evidence on Wild Animals in Travelling Circuses (Scotland) Bill.docx

My response to the Scottish Government's Call for evidence on the proposal to ban Wild Animals in... more

The Ordinary Virtues Presentation at Notre Dame

My slides from the paper presented at the 'To What End: Narrative, Tradition and Practices' confe... more

What can we learn from misappropriations of MacIntyre - Beadle Keynote Address

This is my Keynote Lecture to the Hungarian Institute of Philosophy's Conference: 'MacIntyre at 9... more This is my Keynote Lecture to the Hungarian Institute of Philosophy's Conference: 'MacIntyre at 90: Practice, Tradition and Natural Law' held at the National University for Public Service in Budapest on June 27 and 28, 2019.

In it, I argue that those who seek to defend, apply and extend MacIntyre's theses and arguments must also do whatever we can to combat the misappropriation of his work. In particular I argue that we should highlight reasons why it is a grave error for MacIntyre to be labelled as a Virtue Ethicist or a Communitarian.

Local Virtues: The Case of the Circus

A short conference paper for the Jubilee Centre Conference on 'Local and Universal Virtues' at Or... more

Learning from MacIntyre Introduction

This is the Introduction to the volume 'Learning from MacIntyre' (2020, Wipf and Stock, Eugene:O... more

'Whose Call?' The Conflict Between Tradition-Based and Expressivist Accounts of Calling

by Garrett W Potts and Ron Beadle

Journal of Business Ethics, 2022

Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent yea... more Research evidencing the consequences of the experience of 'calling' have multiplied in recent years. At the same time, concerns have been expressed about the conceptual coherence of the notion as studies have posited a wide variety of senses in which both workers and scholars understand what it means for workers to be called, what they are called to do and who is doing the 'calling'. This paper makes both conceptual and empirical contributions to the field. We argue that Bellah et al.'s (Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life, University of California Press, 1996) contrast between tradition-based and expressivist understandings of 'calling' highlights a fundamental but neglected fissure in the literature. Expressivist accounts amongst both scholars and research participants require only that 'calling' be deeply felt by those who experience it. However, tradition-based accounts require an external caller. Exemplifying this, workers who attest to a divine call and scholars who write about 'calling' in the context of particular Christian traditions understand 'calling' in terms of a relationship with God. These accounts cannot but be in radical tension. We suggest that this conceptual confusion can be understood in terms of MacIntyre's notion of 'tradition-constituted rationality.' The implications of this argument for practice are evidenced in our report of a study of adherents to one such tradition, workers at a Christian organization that supports people in poverty. Through in-depth interviews with long-term volunteers, we seek to assess if tradition-based 'calling' can be evidenced in unpaid work for the lack of pay and career progression opportunities strongly suggest the presence of 'calling.' This study demonstrates that even in the context of work that exhibits duty and altruism associated with expressivist accounts of 'calling,' these workers' understanding of the relationships between themselves, their clients and Jesus Christ dominate their work choices. It is the meaning derived from a divine caller, understood in terms of Christian tradition, that accounts for their decision to begin and to continue this work.