Virtue Ethics and CSR: The Two Sides of Sustainable Organizational Performance

The book chapter explores business ethics insights of a virtue ethics orientation to add a normative component to empirical research on CSR concerned with intrinsic and extrinsic drivers for organizational social performance. It argues that we need to adopt a broader perspective concerning the intrinsic motivations of business organizations to pursue goals that go beyond short-term, basic economic performance and strive for long-term, sustainable performance. This broader perspective can be achieved by taking into account the overall organizational internal context that stimulates both managers and employees to engage in ethical behaviour. The chapter thus appeals to the organizational virtues developed by the Corporate Ethical Virtues to assess whether an organization is intrinsically motivated to be socially responsible. To this end, it analyses how the virtues embedded by the organizational context foster organizational virtuousness, which is interpreted as an intrinsic driver for organizational ethical performance. This is further correlated with CSR reporting guidelines, interpreted as an extrinsic driver for organizational social performance. The chapter argues that organizations need to address both of them in order to reach a desirable level of long-term, sustainable performance, with the good news that both can be improved through ongoing practice.