In Pursuit of Eudaimonia: How Virtue Ethics Captures the Self-Understandings and Roles of Corporate Directors

A recent special issue in the Journal of Business Ethics gathered together a variety of papers addressing the challenges of putting virtue ethics into practice (Fontrodona et al in J Bus Ethics 113(4):563–565, 2013). The editors prefaced their outline of the various papers with the assertion that exploring the practical dimension of virtue ethics can help business leaders discover their proper place in working for a better world, as individuals and within the family, the business community and society in general (Fontrodona et al in J Bus Ethics 113(4):563–565, 2013). Scholars are yet to explore the role of virtuous organisational leaders in the pursuit of Eudaimonia. This paper is a qualitative study which considered company directors’ self-understandings in light of a virtue ethics conceptual framework. The aim of the study is to explore whether virtue ethics rather than deontology and consequentialism is a better vehicle for expressing directors’ self-understandings about their ideals and role.