The Commons and the Moral Organization

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin M. Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Second Order ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Complex Organization ◽  
The Commons

Abstract:A complex organization is in effect a commons, which supervisory techniques cannot preserve from free riding. A corporate culture strong enough to create the requisite community-minded second-order desires and beliefs may be morally illegitimate. What morality requires is not local enforcement of foundational moral principles—a futile undertaking—but that the organization be a good community in that it permits the disaffected to exit, encourages reflective consideration of morality and the good life, and creates appropriate loyalty.

Justice, Impartiality, and Reciprocity a Response to Edwin Hartman

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia H. Werhane
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Organizational Ethics ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Moral Point ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Heuristic Device

Readers of Business Ethics Quarterly will be grateful to Professor Hartman for this very fine paper. He has, at last, advanced the dialogue on organizations. Instead of the usual attack on Peter French, et al., Hartman has introduced the notion of the commons as a heuristic device to get at the moral dimension (or lack thereof) or organizations. And unlike much of what goes on in business ethics, he has avoided the usual utilitarian/deontology/Rawlsian approaches. Instead he has depended on work of Frankfurt and Aristotle to introduce the notions of second-order desires, virtue, and community, all of which, at the very least, enriches the notion of an organization and the scope of its moral point of view.I cannot respond to all the arguments in the paper, and I found myself surprisingly in agreement with much of it. However, agreement is not one of the virtues of a commentator. So I shall comment on two points: first on what I shall label Hartman’s communitarian approach, and second, on the notions of exit, voice, and loyalty.In response to what is sometimes called “individualism” in ethics which, Hartman alleges, takes “time-honored moral principles as foundational and try[s] to figure out what communal or organizational arrangements best encourage people to treat one another according to them,” Hartman argues that a more propitious approach in organizational ethics is to “try to say something about what a good community looks like, and then see how a good community requires people to treat each other.” It turns out that a good community is, minimally, one in which “the commons is preserved, and [where] there is enough consensus that people are able to have extended conversations about morality from which moral progress may emerge.”

Tensions Between the Good Life, the Good Profession, and the Good Society

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (10) ◽  
pp. 667-668
Author(s):  
Isaac Prilleltensky
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Good Society

Is the Good Life the Easy Life?

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christie K. Napa ◽  
Laura A. King
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life

AESTHETICS AND THE GOOD LIFE

1990 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-155
Author(s):  
Esmee Cromie Bellalta
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life

Beautiful Beach Bodies and Muscle Heads

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-123
Author(s):  
John D. Fair
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Guise Of The Good ◽  
Beach Boys ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Age Of Aquarius

Uneasily situated between counterculture images projected by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and the dawning of the “Age of Aquarius” a decade later, there emerged a motion picture interlude of innocence on the beaches of Southern California. It was fostered by Gidget (1959) and then thirty “surf and sex” movies that focused on young, attractive bodies and beach escapades rather than serious social causes.The films, argues Kirse May, “created an ideal teenage existence, marked by consumption, leisure, and little else.” Stephen Tropiano explains how their popularity helped shape “the archetypal image of the American teenager” and, reinforced by the surfin' sounds of Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys, and other recording groups, “turned America's attention to the Southern California coastline,” where “those who never set foot on its sandy shores were led to believe that life on the West Coast was a twenty-four-hour beach party.” This study examines a notable film of this genre to determine how musclemen were exploited to exhibit this playful spirit and how their negative reception reinforced an existing disregard toward physical culture. Muscle Beach Party illustrates how physical culture served other agendas, namely the need to address American fears of juvenile delinquency and to revive sagging box-office receipts within the guise of the “good life” of California.

Zeit und gutes Leben

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-513
Author(s):  
Holmer Steinfath
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Good Life ◽  
External Factor ◽  
Life Time ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
Gutes Leben

Time is a neglected subject in recent, especially analytically minded reflections on the good life. The article highlights the fundamental role of time and temporality for an adequate understanding of the good life. Time functions both as an external factor with which we have to reckon in our practical deliberations and as an internal structure of living our lives. It is argued that striving for a good life also means striving for being in harmony with the time of one's life. The exploration of this idea allows to link analytical with phenomenological approaches to time and good life.

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