Friendships of Virtue, Pursuit of the Moral Community, and the Ends of Business

The three-part title of this article suggests interactions between a category of social relations, moral motivation, and the ends of business organizations. It is a trite observation that modern society is built around the social institutions of family, church, civic, and business organizations, with the latter certainly not being the least in either amount or importance of activity. This places business in a significant role for facilitating friendly social interactions, for which Sommers (1997), Koehn (1998), and Cooley (2002) suggest that only friendships of advantage (or utility) are likely to result. Below, I argue against this view of business-related friendships. I argue that friendships of virtue are facilitated by business; that they can be, and likely are important for facilitating the pursuit of a moral business community. An outline of my argument is presented immediately below. The body of this article supports each of these three points in greater detail.

To explore these interrelated issues in depth, the article first addresses the issue of moral motivation, both in a general social sense and in the specific sense applicable to business. For this, as indicated above, the “Moral Motivation” section reviews a Kantian approach, but from a somewhat different perspective than previously addressed by the literature. Following this, in the “Classic and Recent Applicable Notions of Friendship, Sociability, and Moral Community” section the article examines the role of friendships in business; “The Pursuit of Business as a Moral Community, Friendships of Virtue, and Duty” section examines the role that relations of virtue play in enhancing the scope and commitment to positive duty in business; the “Relations of Virtue and Avoidance of Evil in Business” section examines the role of these relations in avoidance of evil in business. The last section summarizes the roles that development of virtuous relations can play in operationalizing the pursuit of a moral business community.

Immanuel Kant argued that the moral law should be respected and followed because it is self-imposed. (See the Kant 1785, “First Section,” and also Hill 1992, p. 6, Korsgaard 1996, pp. 22–23, and Wood 1999, p. 32.) This argument, however, appears less than complete, and rather inadequate as a motivation for morality. Why should someone self-impose moral duty, and why should it be respected? It is argued below that the answers to these questions have profound consequences for the conceptualization of business ethics.

These answers also properly pertain to the broader question of the potential morality and benefits of a competitive-market economy. This “broader question” is manifested by the apparent contradiction between Adam Smith’s ethical philosophy as expressed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and the egoistic agent of the invisible-hand as expressed in Wealth of Nations (1776). (See White 2011, pp. 114–115.) White (2010) argues that Smith did not favor egoism. Since agents know their self-interests, Smith pointed out that markets can operate with a degree of efficiency, but Smith did not argue that they should operate that way. The moral behavior of business participants still determines the extent that market interactions fulfill societal interests. It is argued here that the moral motivation of pursuit of a moral business community determines this behavior.

Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory was published within a twenty-one-year span after Smith’s Wealth of Nations. This ethical theory is founded on Kant’s categorical imperative process (CI process) with its three formulae. (See below and also see Sullivan 1994.) In Kantian analysis, it is essential to recognize that this CI process is both a method of forming personal maxims, and after social discourse, of forming political commitments to these maxims. The three formulae are, as Kant argued, interrelated where one logically follows from the other. They are usually viewed as logical restatements of each other. It is argued below, however, that they are more unique than mere “restatements.” Each formula plays a particular role in the CI process. They may logically follow from one another, but they still express differing principles necessary for the process to function.

To this end, it is argued below that the third formula of the CI properly specifies ethical motivation: Act so as to pursue the Kingdom of Ends of a moral community (K of E). This point concerning ethical motivation has not been previously emphasized, but only indirectly alluded to, and therefore not clearly presented in previous literature.³ This, and only this, socially and personally justifies a rational respect for the moral law; the other nonsocial reasons being egoistic, that is either religious (other-worldly as in the pursuit of a heavenly reward), or the pursuit of virtue for the purpose of achieving personal contentment. In fact, the third formula is the reason for the moral law’s existence. Pursuit of the K of E is the logical-political reason we self-impose our moral maxims, i.e., we pursue a moral community in both general society, and in the context of our particular business and economic relations. Indeed, this motivation is communal in that it is a moral commitment to all the communities one belongs to.⁴ Business is one of the most important (next to family and friends) of these communities, or at the very least it is extraordinarily ubiquitous. This non-egoistic motivation should therefore be emphasized in explorations of business ethics.

What is meant by Kant’s claim that the moral motivation should be respect for the moral law? Why should respect be the paramount argument? The reason offered is that through the categorical imperative process, the moral law is self legislated. The implication is that once the moral law is logically imposed, a violation would be against the agent’s own logic, i.e., illogical, but why impose this moral law on one’s actions to begin with? The possible reasons are consequentialist, either personal or social consequentialist.

The first non-religious motive for this respect is egoistic as presented in the Socratic dialogue Gorgias: moral violations cause disharmony with oneself (with one’s conscience), hence they are self destructive. (See Arendt 1978, p. 181.) The second non-religious reason is that moral violations attack the community.

“As citizens, we must prevent wrong-doing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong-sufferer, and spectator, is at stake; the city (community) has been wronged.” (Ibid, p. 182, parentheses added.)

Bowie particularly argued the applicability of the third formula for business.

“Loosely put, this formulation of the categorical imperative says that you should act as if you were a member of an ideal kingdom of ends in which you were both subject and sovereign at the same time. But what did Kant mean? Kant recognized that human beings interacted with other human beings (ends). Thus, the arena of interactions was called a “kingdom of ends.” A business organization, like any other organization, is composed of individual persons and since persons are moral creatures, the interactions of persons in an organization are constrained by the categorical imperative.” (Bowie 1999, pp. 87–89)

Although this K of E is an unreachable ideal, its pursuit motivates notions of duty usually founded in Kant’s first two formulae of the CI.⁵ This K of E goal should be intended, of course, to conceptualize the pursuit of a wide moral society, but it should also conceptualize a single organization (a business organization) as a union with harmonious pursuit of moral maxims with implied duties. As reviewed below, the profit motive of classical economics must be properly interpreted as subsumed within the broader pursuit of a moral business community, and this view is best founded on Kant’s CI process.⁶

Bowie (1999) does not explicitly argue that the third formula should be considered the motivational formula, but following Hill (1992), he argues that the third formula provides a “heuristic model of the appropriate moral attitude to take when deliberating from basic moral values to moderately specific principles.” (Hill 1992, p. 244) The “appropriate moral attitude” is close to stating “motivation” for action. Bowie continues, however, to state that these “moderately specific principles” provide the afore mentioned “heuristic,” that in particular “… a firm should be managed so both the organizational rules and the organizational structures are neither coercive nor deceptive and are supportive of meaningful work for employees. … Finally, the organizational rules and structures must be fair to all stakeholders.” (Bowie 1999, p. 89)

Bowie’s “heuristic” is not meant to be a statement of moral motivation, but rather a design of moral codes that guide a firm. It is argued below that Bowie’s vision of the K of E is incomplete. This “pursuit” requires more than the “heuristic” mentioned above. It not only requires a motivational view for forming and following a business’s maxims, but as a central feature this view also benefits from the formation and utilization of friendships of virtue. The benefits of friendships within business have been previously addressed by Sommers (1997), and Koehn (1998), but not within the context of the utilization of friendships of virtue for operationalizing the pursuit of the K of E. The desirability of this utilization is emphasized here.

This analysis begins with a review of classic notions of moral community which lay the foundation for the Kantian view. These notions include Aristotelian and Stoic ideas of virtuous social interaction relevant for proper exploration of such a community. It is one thing to be motivated to pursue a moral community, it is another to form the necessary maxims for this pursuit, and still another to operationalize this pursuit. The following section pertains to this operationalization.

Aristotelian virtue ethics is founded on individual pursuit of “eudaimonia”—literally “having a guardian spirit,” but generally interpreted as having a flourishing life. Its usual definition is “having an objectively desirable life, universally agreed by ancient philosophy to be the supreme good.” (Taylor 1995, p. 252.) This is not the modern philosophical concept of happiness as in a subjectively satisfying life. The objectively desirable life, i.e., the pursuit of the good, is the aim of virtue ethics where Socratic-Platonic and Stoic notions of virtue are posed as possibly sufficient for this objective.⁷

Kant posed that our non-egoistic-consequentialist moral maxims should be independent of our search for personal wellbeing. Taylor points out, however, that a philosophy of primacy for eudaimonia does not imply egoism (since altruism may be a constituent of eudaimonia) or even narrow consequentialism (since the virtuous moral life is viewed as absolutely required for eudaimonia). (See Taylor 2000, p. 260.) Hence the supposed gulf between Kantian and eudaimonist theories need not be real. I argue below that properties of virtue ethics are necessary for the Kantian pursuit of a moral community. How do we envision this pursuit? Virtue ethics, I argue, plays an important role in this pursuit.

Kant (1785, vol. 4, pp. 402–403) posed a process for deriving the moral maxims necessary for practical living, i.e., the categorical imperative process (CI process), and claimed that his categorical imperative merely reflects common reasoning concerning moral principles, a reasoning captured by three specifications (formulae), each consistent with and necessitated by each of the other two. From his first specification, the formula of autonomy or of universal law, Kant showed, all our notions of duty, both perfect and imperfect follow.¹⁵ His second formula, the formula of respect for the dignity of persons, however, more clearly indicates those duties both to others and to ourselves.¹⁶

The second specification most clearly motivates a set of maxims we usually classify as duties although the interrelatedness of the three formulae implies that all duty can be derived from each of the three. (See Kant 1785, vol. 4, pp. 421, 429, 433). O’Neil (1995, pp. 114–115), however, terms the second formula “the formula on the ends-in-itself,” and emphasizes its use as the foundation for duty, both positive and negative (explained below). This vision of duty is particularly applicable to business which requires a set of moral rules to function, both negative rules of prohibition and positive rules for diligent action. In particular, the second formula is generally interpreted as not only establishing prohibitions against the unethical actions of theft, fraud, coercion and the like, but also as requiring some degree of beneficence (positive duty), but also, as argued in this section, for diligence in managerial performance. Since the specification of this formula concerns treating both oneself and others as serving their own personal ends, and not merely serving as a means to another’s ends, the positive duty side naturally requires practical limits on beneficence and diligence, limits Kant founded in “circumstance and inclination.” (See Kant 1797, vol. 6, pp. 452–454.) Below I indicate how friendships of virtue potentially extend those “circumstances and inclinations.”

Without such practical limits, one could impoverish oneself, or so exhaust oneself in pursuit of beneficence and diligent performance, that this duty would largely interfere with obligations to oneself. If broad obligations of beneficence or duty were absolutely applied to business as though they were all perfect duties, i.e., those without practical limits, then business could not function in its primary role of rationing and utilizing resources so as to provide goods and services to the general public since these resources would be entirely used for beneficence. This is also true for positive obligations of diligent performance in that one must ration personal resources (time and concentrated effort) towards its most effective use in business without destroying personal health and wellbeing. Friendships of advantage and virtue can effectively help with this rationing. This issue is also explored in more detail below.

The third specification of the CI is the formula of legislation for a moral community: “All maxims that proceed from our own making of law ought to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends.” (Kant 1785, vol. 4, p. 433) Here legislating means self-legislating, i.e., establishing self-imposed maxims. Legislating a moral community can be viewed as the motivational formula for establishing and pursuing duty since this “kingdom of ends” is generally interpreted as a “moral community.” (Kant 1785, vol. 4, p. 433.) As reviewed by Korsgaard (1996, p. 23):

“The human will must be seen as universally legislative. Each of us has a will that makes laws for itself as if for everyone. Since human beings together legislate the moral law, we form a moral community: a Kingdom of Ends. … Each citizen takes his own perfection and the happiness of others as an end and treats every other as an end in itself. It is a community engaged in the harmonious and cooperative pursuit of the good.”¹⁷

To seek one’s own perfection and the happiness of others as an end is likely to lead to Aristotle’s friendships of virtue.¹⁸ This is an essential component of the moral community in that in order to seek the happiness of others without developing friendships would require a sort of callous isolation, which is not Kantian. To seek the happiness of others for the sake of others, and also to pursue duty for the sake of others, is to be friendly. This pursuit includes fulfilling juridical duty for sure, but it also includes more than this.

For example, in Kantian analysis the pursuit of those duties that are consistent with the first and second formulae should be motivated by a desire to pursue a moral community. This is particularly applicable to business where laws, regulations, enforceable contracts, and numerous internal-to-the-firm rules, as well as external ethical and professional codes, are common. This nexus of maxims exists to establish business as a myriad of moral agreements ultimately within an overall social/moral economy. The general purpose of this overall institutional economy is ultimately the pursuit of the public good. This pursuit can only be effective if business generally desires to be moral. The motivation for following these maxims should therefore not merely be fear that if caught in violation of law and/or other rules, the negative consequences will be personal, but rather that any violation ultimately attacks the very potential for existence of any business as a moral community, i.e., the motivation itself must be moral.

As an example, consider the auditing accountant who because of a conflict of interest considers violating generally accepted rules. Such violations could lead to significant negative consequences for the firm at question, or even collapse of this firm. If the motivation for respecting these procedural rules is “I might lose my license to practice if I am discovered” (an egoistic motive), then believing that discovery has very small probability, the accountant has little incentive to not personally benefit at the expense of the other constituents of the firm. A commitment to pursue the interests of the moral community of this firm, however, requires a positive interest in the ends of other firm constituencies, of friends of virtue and of advantage. This positive empathetic-interest in others poses recognition of a risk of higher stakes than the fate of only the isolated individual, stakes that could be destroyed by moral violation. These are the high stakes at risk from moral depravation. Which motivation is therefore likely to be effective: the egoistic consequentialist motive, or the broader motive of service to society and friendships? I argue the latter, and hence the importance of the pursuit of the kingdom of ends as motivation.

Note that this is a consequentialist argument, which is typically perceived as non-Kantian since Kantian moral motivation is expressed as “respect for the moral law” without regard to consequences. This is the motivational point challenged in the “Moral Motivation” section above. To repeat the elucidation presented there, “respect” provides an incomplete argument for motivation; the third formula, however, provides the motive that is non-egoistic community-consequentialist.¹⁹ This is the non-religious motivation particularly applicable to business.

The ethical community of friends is one directed towards collective rational ends of which, according to Kant, there are two kinds: the ends of happiness, and the ends of morality. Happiness, however, can only be conditionally good as dependent upon morality, i.e., conditional upon the good will, and the good will pursues the moral community. A eudaimonist approach cannot aim for happiness unless it entails participation in a moral community, i.e., it must be subsumed by this moral pursuit. The communal-consequentialist motive can therefore serve the ends of morality even in Kantian terms.

People in general, and business people in particular, know that to live a flourishing life, where flourishing is defined broadly and philosophically, requires participation in a flourishing community, which in turn can only exist in a moral community.²⁰ This eudaimonist argument is developed further below, but some reflection on Kantian implications needs reference here.

It has been effectively argued above that for establishing and pursuing our business duties, we must envision our ideal kingdom of ends as being the ideal moral business community. This conclusion results from a logical analysis. This, however, might be perceived as a eudaimonist argument, one that Kant argues against (1797, vol. 6, p. 377). He referred to this eudaemonist approach as the doctrine of happiness, and argued that “… if eudaimonism (the principle of happiness) is set up as the basic principle of eleutheronomy (the principle of the freedom of internal law giving), the result is euthanasia (easy death) of all morals.” (Ibid, vol. 6, p. 378.) Is it possible that this desire for pursuit of a moral community is not eudaimonist?

We can recognize that this harmonious pursuit by its community members is a necessary requirement for that community to flourish to the extent possible, but surely we recognize that it is not a sufficient condition to assure happiness for each member, or even that it maximizes the probability of happiness for our individual self. One can view duty as possibly a sacrificial obligation necessary for the community to flourish, and not perceive that our duty originates in egoistic consequentialist reasons. We cannot help but know that we might indirectly benefit by our actions since we live in that community, but that particular knowledge need not lead to our motivation. In fact, we commonly observe duty being pursued from apparently non-egoistic motives, i.e., as members of a community, people may purse duty from motives of love and respect for fellow members, and certainly for developing friends of virtue. As stated more succinctly by Kant,

“The duty of love for one’s neighbor can, accordingly, also be expressed as the duty to make others’ ends my own (provided only that these are not immoral). The duty of respect for my neighbor is contained in the maxim not to degrade any other to a mere means to my ends (not to demand that another throw himself away in order to slave for my end).” (1797, vol. 6, p. 450.)²¹

Does making the ends of others our own connote egoistic motivation if the process involves developing friendships of virtue? The degree of uncertainty might be large concerning the possible benefits, but developing friends constitutes a duty to oneself under the second formula of the CI. Since each of the three CI formulae imply, or are necessitated by the others, duty can be derived from each. Hill, however, establishes the notion that social duty (as different from duty-to-oneself as asserted by the second CI formula) is best expressed in the third formula:

“…I have sketched a reconstruction of Kant’s idea of an inclusive commonwealth (“kingdom”) united by common moral laws or principles. The members are conceived as both lawmakers and subjects. They each have their own set of ends but in legislating they abstract from personal differences. They legislate as rational and autonomous, and so they make only laws they can justify to each other. As legislators they respect humanity in each person as an end in itself, and so they are guided and constrained by all the values and precepts inherent in this fundamental ideal. As a formulation of the Categorical Imperative, the principle tells us always to act in accord with a possible kingdom of ends. Various supplementary ideas are needed to bring this abstract model down to real-world conditions where, for example, local conditions vary and people are often partisan, weak, corrupt, and divided. For the most part we should expect that only very general and defeasible principles can be justified as universal. These would need to be applied to various historical circumstances in light of more specific information. The ideal is to find well-grounded principles that all reasonable autonomous people would endorse; but because disagreements in applying principles are to be expected, as a practical matter the best we can do is to take ideas here as guide for conscientious judgement and choice rather than a sure path to moral truth.” (Hill 2012, p. 81)

The well-grounded principles … endorsed by all reasonable autonomous people are the foundation of business, and they certainly include developing relations of virtue for the reasons reviewed above. These principles declare morality in business interactions, and without which economic failure is inevitable. Disagreements are surely common in business, but the well-grounded principles establish conscientious judgement as a path to moral choice. It is this conscientious judgment that is strengthened by having the second selves. This occurs because of comparisons with, and learning from one another, and this should especially occur within the necessary intense and sustained relations of business.

It must be recognized that understanding, acceptance, and consistent pursuit of these duties within business requires sufficient social discourse as should be facilitated by relations of virtue. (See Kant 1793, vol. 8, pp. 146–147. This is particularly emphasized by Wood 1999, Chap. 9, Sect. 4.) This should especially be so among management, between management and employees, and to a lesser extent between management and other stakeholders. This open discourse, particularly among virtuous relations, promotes collective development of agents’ rational powers, and commitment to their use. This acceptance requires an understanding of the duties’ necessity for the sustainability of the organization, an understanding that can only come from this required communication largely among friendly relations. In fact, this required communication is itself an ethical duty of managerial leadership just as friendship is a Kantian duty. We are used to thinking of business management as autocratic, but the success of the firm requires a commitment to duty from those who participate, and this ideal cannot be expected from a servile following, but can be expected from a friendly following of committed agents. The ideal requires that all constituents understand and follow the generally accepted duties that constitute pursuit of the moral community. A lack of clarity among constituents concerning this pursuit is likely to lead to egoistic motivation and possible moral failure. These are points also suggested by Bowie (1999, pp. 88–89).

A fully-moral community clearly requires that all are committed to both perfect and imperfect duties, even though the latter has limits due to individual circumstances and virtuous inclination. (See Korsgaard 1996, p. 20.) It is more realistic, however, to expect that the latter classification of duty should be stronger within certain arrangements where agents are more knowledgeable about the needs of other participants, perhaps because of closer connections, perhaps because of developed friendships. This might occur among friends imbedded in the same firm rather than in the broader more impersonal relations where people are distant from each other and perhaps less knowledgeable about the needs of other participants. We could assert this principle as a duty from familiarity: The more familiar (knowledgeable) agents are about the needs of each other, and about how to contribute to those needs, the wider the degree of imperfect duty of beneficence between them. ²²

Positive duties are clearly necessary for promoting the interests of those both internal and external to the firm. In Kantian analysis, the self-worth of agents motivates them to “pursue their own morally permissible welfare and happiness, but also to promote those of others.” (Sullivan 1997, p. 156.) These “others” should certainly include our friendly business relations especially those of virtue. One suspects that self-worth, as needed to overcome our unsocial sociability, would suffer greatly if the promotion of the welfare and happiness of our friendly relations were lacking. In the context of business, we note that our relations are expressions of mutual dependence aimed at fulfilling mutual needs especially within the firm. We can assert this principle as a duty from mutual dependence: Mutual respect requires that both sides of any business interaction are not only interested in their own ends, but are also interested in enabling others to achieve their ends, i.e., “we make ourselves an end of others” and “through our will we make others our ends as well. The happiness of others is therefore an end that is also a duty.” (Kant 1797 , vol. 6, p. 393.)

The simple question, “What can I do to help?” offered among business friends of either advantage or virtue, expresses the principle stated above. This question could even be used as part of a description of either a friendship of advantage or of virtue. If we combine the duty from familiarity with the duty from mutual dependence, then we conclude that business transactions between agents who are more knowledgeable about each other’s needs (perhaps because they are more familiar), should have an expectation of positive duty with limitations that are wider the greater the degree of knowledge. This obligation of beneficent assistance should be stronger the more familiar (or knowledgeable) the agents are about the obligations and needs of each other, and this knowledge or familiarity is largely determined by the nature of the particular business relation in question. Those of friendship, especially virtuous friendship, must have wider limits concerning these obligations towards one another.

In Kantian analysis, however,

“… human beings have a duty of friendship.—But it is readily seen that friendship is only an idea (although a practically necessary one) and unattainable in practice, although striving for friendship (as a maximum of good disposition toward each other) is a duty set by reason, and no ordinary duty, but an honorable one.” (Kant 1797, vol. 6, p. 470.)

It appears that Kant is somewhat pessimistic concerning the moral heights that friendships of virtue might reach. Those with similar views (certainly darker than Aristotle’s) appear likely to pose philosophies that rely on juridical duty for proper behavior among fellow mangers. Those with more optimistic views of humanity (more in line with Aristotle’s) appear likely to include both juridical and broader notions of imperfect duty for managerial behavior.

For business to properly serve society, at minimum participants must fully conform to juridical requirements. Businesses based on fraud and deception could not possibly be viewed as optimally meeting society’s needs since these organizations would interfere with the worthy ends of participants, and therefore would implode in that they would be abandoned. The more participants perceive the probability of encountering outright fraud or even partial deception concerning the product, service, or payment, the more those participants would abandon those institutions in question. Furthermore, without the commitment to pursue a moral community, we might not expect agents to fully conform to these negative duties, although fear of retribution, or ostracism if caught, might motivate a considerable degree of conformance depending upon the probability of discovery. (The auditing accountant example presented above illustrates this principle.) We must, however, ask whether purely juridical constraints would be more likely followed by a community with at least some virtuous friends as compared to a community lacking such relations? The answer is obvious. There are two reasons we answer “yes” to this question. First, relations of virtue reinforce a developed sense of duty and conscience among those touched by these friendships. Second, the disappointment over lapses, especially of the juridical sort, would result in ostracism of the violators from the community, an unwelcomed ostracism from friends. These views are expanded in the section below.

This section examines the proposition that the avoidance of evil in business is substantially facilitated by the development of relations of virtue within management. As a result, this development should be an integral component of the pursuit of a moral community.

Kant’s most striking anthropological doctrine is that human nature contains a radical (extreme) propensity to evil, an innate propensity to make choices against the moral law. (See Wood 1999, pp. 283–284.) Kant explains three types of human evil:

According to Kant, evil is a product of our unsocial sociability, of ambition and envy as reviewed in the “Classic and Recent Applicable Notions of Friendship, Sociability, and Moral Community” section above. The pursuit of a moral community, including virtuous relations, can be the preventative of evil. As in the quote from Hill concerning “well-grounded principles” presented above, pursuit of the K of E can theoretically admit a knowledge of and commitment to duty that counters our unsocial tendencies. This can allow both the formation and sustenance of business as indicated in the next section, but for the immediate problem at hand, we should focus on Kant’s second and third types of evil since perhaps they appear endemic to business.

A market-system economy is based upon the price system for allocating resources. This is a monetary incentive system, and there are practical reasons for this. Monetary compensation expresses general purchasing power, whereas other business compensation (flexible schedules, titles, product, position advancement) are not as generally acceptable, although in some cases they are acceptable as incentives, but usually more difficult to negotiate. Even in the human resource market that is internal to the firm (as well as external human resource markets), monetary compensation is the norm. The relevant question is whether compensation is necessary for managers or other employees to seriously pursue their duty, especially imperfect duties? Monetary compensation, however, does communicate to employees the importance the firm places on the performance of duty, i.e., rhetorical commitment without compensation may be perceived as not being a serious commitment by the firm.

If widely present in the firm, however, Kant’s second and third types of evil (those based on incentives for pursuing or completing duty) hardly describes a moral community. It describes, rather, a community of egoistic consequentialists with all its incentive flaws. Kant’s ethical community described in Religion Within the Boundaries of Reason (1793–1994), however, is the completion of the Kingdom of Ends concept first described in Fundamentals (1785) and repeated in the Metaphysics (1797). This concept of the moral community goes beyond one in which negative coercive-type laws are obeyed by all. It involves a union under norms of virtue that cannot be established by legislation, but requires virtuous disposition of all. (See Kant 1793, vol. 6, p. 94 and Allison 2012, p. 222.) It forms a practical pursuit for humanity even though the actual goal is unattainable. It cannot even be pursued by the individual in isolation since, as described above, it requires overcoming social evils not just individual imperfections. Kant argued that all must be virtuous in order for each individual to be fully virtuous. (Kant 1793, vol. 6, pp. 93–102.) It should be clear, however, that a business community of developed virtuous relations, with its positive reinforcement and desires for inclusion of all members, is also likely to provide incentives to avoid evil and pursue the moral community. Kant terms this “an impurity” due to the requirements and provisions of incentives. (See Kant’s second third types of evil listed above.) Can this conflict be resolved?

Kantian ethics require people “to unite their ends into a single, reciprocally supporting teleological system, or realm. The ideals of Kantian ethics are autonomy, equality, and community.” (Wood 1999, p. 335.) These ideals can only be pursued as a unit; to fail to pursue one means failure to pursue the other two. This view concerns the natural conflict between the individual and a rational striving for an agreeable community. “It is about the process of enlightenment enabling us to form the idea of the laws and principles of such a community, and about the hope that gradually, through the historical progress of reason, we may overcome the conflict that is natural to us and make progress towards an ideal realm of ends on earth.” (Ibid, p. 335.)

“…. The proper model for that collective pursuit is neither a closed society based on pious adherence to tradition nor an ever-shifting nexus linking people solely through self-interest, strategic bargaining, and exploitation. Real solidarity between mature human beings can grow only from their shared commitment to universal principles that are given content and universal validity by an ongoing process of free, enlightened communication.” (Ibid, p. 336.)

This “shared commitment” is a description of virtuous relations. Such a shared commitment to universal principles can certainly be a vision for an ideal business, but in Kantian analysis, this worldly ideal is perhaps too extreme. Businesses are combinations of worldly men.

“….Men … mutually corrupt one another’s moral predispositions. Despite the good will of each individual, because they lack a principle which unites them, men abandon, through their dissensions, the common goal of goodness and, just as though they were instruments of evil, expose one another to the risk of falling once again under the rule of the evil principle.” (Kant 1793, vol. 6, p. 97.)

Again the question begged is “Can we find a principle that can unite us within business?”

“But because the highest moral good cannot be achieved merely by the exertions of the single individual to unite into a whole directed toward the same goal, that is into a system of well-disposed men … the idea of such a whole as a universal republic based on laws of virtue is an idea sharply distinguished from all moral laws which concern what we know to lie in our power. It involves a union of which we do not know whether, as such, it lies in our power or not. Hence this duty is distinguished from all others both in kind and in principle.” (Kant 1793, vol. 6, pp. 98–99.)

The principle sought is the pursuit of virtuous relations among business associates. A business can, and certainly should, be a juridical community where all coercive laws and norms are obeyed. The question is “Can such a business also be a community of virtue?” As stated in “The Pursuit of Business as a Moral Community, Friendships of Virtue, and Duty” section, this requires that both perfect (negative) and imperfect (positive) duties be pursued under the motivation of pursuit of a moral community. This latter pursuit implies the former pursuit. To be pure, such a motivation must be untainted from monetary or other incentives. Still, to more properly answer the above question, we best recognize that a business organization is a nexus of perfect and imperfect duties, the latter including not only beneficence, but also all of the managerial obligations that have practical limits which themselves are widened by the development of virtuous relations.

For example, all obligations of due diligence have practical limits. Due diligence is also a moral obligation of management owed to all stakeholders. The relevant question for managerial agency (agents who represent the interests of owners) concerns where these limits are drawn. At what point do we have sufficient data and analysis concerning a proposed capital project in order to make an appropriate decision, or perhaps concerning an employee development proposal, or newly proposed outsourcing strategy? There are practical limits to expenditures of managerial time, effort, or financial resources on all managerial efforts whether they involve traditionally defined beneficence or more broadly defined imperfect responsibilities. As stated above, full managerial pursuit of a moral community requires these expenditures up to the point of practical limits, but the setting of those limits are still at issue, and therefore the extent of the moral obligation. Here we get to the crux of the matter. Immediate diligent effort is not the same as a development of expertise, perhaps of the specific knowledge, but also the general knowledge required for the effective managerial decision making. This expertise development is itself a long-run obligation of diligence. Relations of virtue provides a long-run dynamic that potentially facilitates this development of expertise. How? In a virtuous friendly way, senior management assists those in junior positions through direction, and senior managers assist and reflect each other’s efforts. Knowledge makes diligence easier and more effective, and virtuous relations facilitate development of knowledge, both firm specific and general.

In an effort separate from his two major publications concerning morals (1985 and 1797), Kant (1793, vol. 6, pp. 98–99) argued a religious basis for pursuing a moral community, that such a community could only be pursued through a visible church. I argue, however, that business organizations also aspire to being moral. We can view a secular organization as pursuing a moral community, and this is especially practical within business. It is not a visible church that should be pursued in this context, but a business community that fosters virtuous relations. Business firms potentially qualify as secular visible institutions ideally constructed to aspire to being moral communities facilitated by friendships of virtue as developed from friendships of advantage.

The explicit and implicit contractual structure of a business, its standard procedures, internal controls, employee management specifications, external communication controls, contracts with suppliers, etc., all express its moral obligations, but beyond these specifications, the company’s established behaviors with constituencies, particularly its fairness in negotiations with constituencies, define the business’ moral content. These behaviors define the company’s degree of pursuit of a moral community. These declared procedures and precedents of shared commitments to universal principles established through ongoing enlightenment communication among virtuous business associates are all aimed at counteracting our tendency towards mutual corruption. Such is the potential of any business organization. This is the meaning of having a motivation of pursuit of a moral community, but such a pursuit is centered on internal and external relations of virtue, i.e., internal and external to the firm.