On virtue and peace: creating a workplace where people can flourish.

• Author: Beck-Dudley, Caryn L.

ABSTRACT

In this Article, Professors Beck-Dudley and Hanks explore the virtues necessary for individuals to flourish within a business organization. Through this exploration, they conclude that modern discussions of business ethics fail to account for the value and virtue of peaceableness. Then, focusing on the freedom from conflict aspect of peaceableness, they use Champion Paper Products, Sartell Minnesota Paper Mill, as a case study in the significant improvements in human flourishing and organizational performance that can occur when management and labor choose peaceable solutions to labor conflicts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION A. Human Flourishing B. Virtue C. The Virtue of Peaceableness II. PEACEABLENESS AS FREEDOM FROM CONFLICT: THE SARTELL PAPER MILL--A CASE STUDY III. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

Peace has traditionally been defined as freedom from war, and has been associated with the affairs of nations and communities. (1) While it is intuitive that corporate action and businesses are affected by peace or the lack thereof, (2) little discussion has revolved around what businesses can do to promote peace and which business practices build skills aimed at conflict resolution. (3) In taking a fresh look at these issues, it is important to consider the notion that all business organizations are comprised of individual human beings coming together as a community. As such, all such organizations should be involved in promoting human flourishing. The work of John Finnis (4) creates a starting place for analyzing what is necessary to promote human flourishing. Related to the notion of human flourishing is the question of what constitutes a virtuous organization. Early philosophers understood the connection between virtue and human flourishing, (5) but only recently have current business ethicists explored the connection in more detail. In fact, the resurgence of virtue ethics is credited with the work of Elizabeth Anscombe (6) in 1958 and, while it has been more recently applied to the business ethics arena by Robert Solomon, (7) much work is still to be done. This work involves detailing the types of virtues that are important for businesses to possess, and discussions concerning how those virtues can be acquired and maintained in a business setting.

This Article explores in greater detail what virtues are necessary for human flourishing to occur in a business organization. In particular it argues that the virtue of peaceableness is missing from the current discussion of business ethics. It further argues that without peaceableness, human flourishing cannot exist. After an exploration of the connection between human flourishing and virtue ethics, the Article will look at the proposed virtue of peaceableness. In so doing, it examines one dimension of peaceableness, namely, freedom from conflict. In the discussion of freedom from conflict, this Article will highlight, as an exemplar, the case of Champion Paper Products, Sartell Minnesota Paper Mill, where management and labor, after a protracted labor conflict, jointly chose a proactive path toward peaceableness. This choice resulted in significant improvements in human flourishing and organizational performance.

1. Human Flourishing

   Much of the theoretical work on businesses, especially businesses in a capitalistic market setting, focuses on rationality and rational behavior. (8) The assumption is made that individuals within an organization make rational decisions and that organizations act rationally. (9) Under this view, it can be argued that human flourishing need not be considered because the very nature of humans assumes that their decisions are rational and, therefore, compatible with the human condition. (10) Much of this assumption is credited to the work of Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations. (11) What is generally missing from the discussion, however, is the role that individual virtues play within any organization. The absence of this discussion is perplexing given that Adam Smith's work was predicated on his earlier work in A Theory of Moral Sentiment. (12) In this work, Smith argues that individuals are not inherently selfish and spends much time focusing on the virtues of sympathy and fellow-feeling as essential to human flourishing.

   A starting point for a modern discussion about human flourishing comes from the work of John Finnis. (13) While Finnis is primarily concerned with formalistic legal systems and ensuring that those legal systems conform to the notion of practical reasonableness as the cornerstone of natural law, it need not be so narrowly viewed. It has been argued that "natural law is able to determine what is good for humanity in general, and what is good for persons in specific situations." (14) Finnis himself argues that "[a] theory of natural law claims to be able to identify conditions and principles of practical right-mindedness, of good and proper order among men and in individual conduct." (15) He further argues that "[al theory of natural law need not be undertaken primarily for the purpose of thus providing a justified conceptual framework for descriptive social science. In may be undertaken ... primarily to assist the practical reflections of those concerned to act, whether as judges or as statesmen or as citizens." (16) For those of us who are concerned to act, it is important that we turn our attention to the role of human flourishing and practical reasonableness in business organizations.

   Human flourishing is the underpinning for any discussion of what is "good" for humans, and is an important component to a Finnisian analysis. Finnis states,

   An account of basic reasons for action should not be exclusively rationalistic. It should not portray human flourishing in terms only of the exercise of our capacities to reason. We are organic substances, animals, and part of our genuine well being is our bodily life maintained in health, vigour and safety, and transmitted to new human beings. (17) For Finnis, the only way to determine what is necessary to human flourishing is to identify those practical principles, or goods, that are essential to human well-being. These practical priniciples, or goods, include knowledge, life, play, aesthetic experience, sociability and friendship, practical reasonableness, and "religion." (18) Finnis admits that the list can be criticized and that others have developed similar lists with slightly different "goods." (19) Providing a list of goods is important, however, because it helps orient practical reasoning. Also, the goods are not judged against their utility; rather, they are valued because they help us achieve other goals. For Finnis, these goods are incommensurable; that is, they are valued for their own sake and one is not more valued than another. He states "[e]ach is fundamental. None is more fundamental than any of the others, for each can reasonably be focused upon, and each when focused upon, claims a priority value. Hence there is no objective priority of value amongst them." (20)

   Practical reasonableness is not only a practical principle but is also the process by which practical principles are identified. As such, practical reasonableness "is a basic aspect of human well-being and concerns one's participation in all the (other) basic aspects of human well-being." (21) The basic requirements of practical reasonableness are set out as (1) having a coherent plan of life; (22) (2) expressing no arbitrary preference among values; (23) (3) having no arbitrary preference among persons; (24) (4) detachment; (25) (5) commitment; (26) (6) limited relevance of consequences: efficiency, within reason; (27) (7) respect for every basic value in every act; (28) (8) favor the common good; (29) and (9) follow one's conscience. (30) Finnis argues that the product of these requirements is morality, to which we now turn.

   Morality is inherently a human activity. While some have given animals human characteristics, one does not hear of a moral tiger or a moral mosquito. Because it is uniquely human, it is important to place a discussion of morality in the context of human existence. (31) As humans, it is important to remember that we are social, (32) and one aspect of being social is to remember that humans live and work in communities. (33)

   This notion that business is a community has been explored by Jeff Nesteruk (34) and Tim Fort. (35) In tying the notion of business as community to peace, Nesteruk notes,

   [u]nder such a view, the corporation, by tailoring its relationships to diminish its own accountability, risks corrupting its own character. It thus does not necessarily escape responsibility by strategically structuring its relationships with the other actors involved with corporate undertakings. Indeed, this structuring may itself be irresponsible because of the way it diminishes the potentially positive influences corporate relationships can have over the character of other such actors. (36) Nesteruk then goes on to explore how a corporation can avoid legal liability for governmental acts of brutality even when the company had tacit knowledge of the brutality, and financially benefited from the brutality. (37)

   Tim Fort also utilizes the language of business as a community to promote the concept that mediating institutions are necessary in large multinational corporations to promote ethical behavior. (38) He uses the example of a small town used car dealer who must be careful not to take advantage of her customers not only because word might get around, but also because of a basic commitment to honesty and fair play. In applying this concept to corporations, he argues, "[w]e thus must have a corporate community which maintains internal feedback mechanisms as an ongoing communal approach valuing all of the goods important (to at least internal) constituents." (39) This reference to business and business organizations as communities may have a long-term effect on our...