Title: Quality is to a product what character is to a man -is virtue ethics the missing piece in quality management?
Abstract: Background It is a growing trend within the field of management studies to argue that virtue ethics is necessary for good management. This quite recent trend goes against the common view of ethics in business as fundamentally deontological or consequentialist, rather than a focus on character. Business ethics in general, including project management, is often reactive rather than affirmative. In other words, to avoid problems and scandals, managers and employees use rule-based ethics that prohibits infraction and wrongdoing instead of becoming role models that strive for the good. Quality is seldom discussed in relation to virtue ethics. In this paper, we argue that virtue ethics should also be a fundamental part in quality management by bringing quality down to the personal level which has a processual focus (continuous improvements, and commitment), and thereby fits well into for example Total Quality Management. We stay true to the Heinzian statement that character is to a man, or woman, what quality is to a product, or process. Purpose To to argue for the use virtue ethics in quality management. Methodology We have emulated the methods employed by Loo using a general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. Responses on three ethical dilemmas were collected between 2011 and 2015. These include 88 responses from Project management students and 31 responses from well-established PMs. The respondents were asked to give their solution to the dilemmas, and also give their solution if they had the dilemma themselves as a PM. All the response will serve as the basis for the analysis in this paper. Findings TQM and ethics have in common that an integral perspective is needed in order to achieve the intended goals and quality management can benefit from a more direct engagement with theories of virtue ethics. Organizations have to find out what kind of behaviors (virtues) is necessary for quality improvements and what kind of character is best for co-worker working with quality issues. Virtue ethics, as maximalistic ethics, is not enough, but must be complemented with a minimalistic ethics to promote quality
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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