NO MORE QUANDARIES - A LOOK AT VIRTUE THROUGH THE EYES OF SOLOMON,ROBERT - A REVIEW-ESSAY OF ETHICS AND EXCELLENCE - COOPERATION AND INTEGRITY IN BUSINESS

Business ethics, as a contemporary discipline, has focused primarily o n the principle based ethics of deontology and utilitarianism. The foc us of these principle-based theories is on the belief (generally unsta ted) that the individual can and does act alone. Recently, however, so me have expressed dissatisfaction concerning the direction that this m ainstream business ethics research and teaching is taking. Robert Solo mon in his book Ethics and Excellence is one such critic. Solomon take s the notion of business as a community and also a practice. For Solom on a community is further defined in the concepts of excellence, membe rship, integrity, judgment, and holism. Solomon's theory establishes a starting place for discussing virtue and its application to business ethics. Its major strength is its focus on humanizing the business org anization and its recognition of every business as a community of indi viduals within a larger community. Virtue ethics refocuses our attenti on. We turn towards a study of the individuals that comprise business organizations. We begin discussing the kinds of communities they need to flourish. In so doing we stand a real chance at influencing these c ommunities.