Abstract
This article deals with the question whether the widely accepted integrity can still be seen as the foundational virtue for responsible leadership within the banking sector. This question emerged in the face of the recent public and political outrage concerning an increase in the salaries of the members of the executive board of the ABN AMRO bank in the Netherlands, while apparently there was no breach of integrity. A theoretical/conceptual analysis of the core concepts in this article: responsible leadership (the key factor in sound and virtuous banking), integrity (the current foundational virtue banks act upon) and honour (a virtue related to integrity, but which encompasses it) has been made in order to find an explanation for the public outrage. It is concluded that the virtue of honour – as a foundational virtue – offers a more solid base than integrity in the banking sector, because honour is fundamentally closer related to the public’s ideals, concerns and values, and ascribed virtues to responsible leadership than integrity. It is therefore argued that honour should replace integrity as foundational virtue for responsible leadership in the banking sector.
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Walker and Avant’s model for conceptual analysis has the following steps: (i) determine the aims and purpose of the analysis (ii) identify all uses of the concept (iii) determine the defining attributes (iv) identify a model case or related case or contrary case in order to assess the antecedents and consequences (v) define the empirical referents. Näsi uses a model which analyses a concept on basis of (i) the creation of a knowledge foundation (ii) conducting an external analysis (versus other related concepts) (iii) conducting an internal analysis (breaking the concept into parts and (iv) drawing conclusions.
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Bouwer, J. (2017). Honour as the (New) Foundational Virtue for Responsible Leadership in the Banking Sector: A Theoretico-Conceptual Analysis. In: Rendtorff, J. (eds) Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business Ethics. Ethical Economy, vol 51. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46973-7_11
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