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The purpose of this paper is to bring definitional clarity to the term “virtue” as pertinent to the behavioural sciences literatures on leadership; to identify a short and consolidated list of cardinal virtues commonly associated with leadership effectiveness; to provide a model relating leader virtues to leader outcomes (i.e. ethics, happiness, life satisfaction, and effectiveness); and to propose a program of research.

The authors systematically and comprehensively review Aristotelian and Confucian literatures on virtue ethics, and the literatures on seven leadership styles – i.e. moral, ethical, spiritual, servant, transformational, charismatic, and visionary leadership.

Six virtues, including four considered cardinal by Aristotle (courage, temperance, justice and prudence), and two considered cardinal by Confucius (humanity, and truthfulness), were common to all seven leadership styles.

Researchers should aim to develop and validate a measure of virtuous leadership based on the six cardinal virtues presented here and also to test both the proposed measurement and structural models.

The authors' recommended program of research will ideally inform development and design of selection and training programs for enhancing virtuous leadership.

The authors provide definitional clarity to the term “virtue” – one that is well grounded in the moral philosophy and virtue ethics literatures; consolidate vast and varied literatures on seven different widely subscribed leadership styles and identify six cardinal virtues most likely to positively impact leadership effectiveness; present an organizing framework, structural model, and research agenda to catalyze research on virtuous leadership.

Current headlines depicting the billion dollar government bailouts of some of the world's largest business corporations suggest that a new paradigm of management is needed. This paper seeks to propose that the management theory of Peter F. Drucker and certain Aristotelian concepts, expressed in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, are applicable to the business community today.

Drucker's management philosophy is synthesized with the moral philosophy of Aristotle to suggest a practical management framework for contemporary business practitioners. In providing a virtue‐based moral framework for management grounded in a concern for character, communal wellbeing, and ultimate purpose, Drucker's Aristotelian‐style of business management provides a viable, virtue‐based management theory that contemporary managers should be able to embrace.

Drucker has been regarded as one of the most influential management thinkers of the twentieth century. It is suggested that, given the current level of morality shown in the behaviour of business people today – business leaders in particular, what is needed is a change in managerial perspective. A change from the prevailing concern with one's own wellbeing – how much one has, or can get for oneself – to include a concern for the wellbeing of others. It is proposed that Drucker's management philosophy, which reflects Aristotelian matters of character, community and telos, though formulated many years ago, provides a framework for improving managerial behaviour today.

Drucker's pragmatic business commentary and advice reveal a deep understanding of the complexity of the business world and the realities of business from the perspective of the business person, and yet do not reject the overriding moral principles of integrity, community and achievement that serve as the foundation for society.

The paper offers a business‐relevant, virtue‐based perspective that, in the author's opinion, is more than adequate for a renewed vision of management in the twenty‐first century.

Current headlines depicting the billion dollar government bailouts of some of the world's largest business corporations suggest that a new paradigm of management is needed. This paper seeks to propose that the management theory of Peter F. Drucker and certain Aristotelian concepts, expressed in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, are applicable to the business community today.

Drucker's management philosophy is synthesized with the moral philosophy of Aristotle to suggest a practical management framework for contemporary business practitioners. In providing a virtue‐based moral framework for management grounded in a concern for character, communal well‐being, and ultimate purpose, the paper argues that Drucker's Aristotelian style of business management provides a viable, virtue‐based management theory that contemporary managers should be able to embrace.

Drucker has been regarded as one of the most influential management thinkers of the twentieth century. The author suggests that, given the current level of morality shown in the behaviour of business people today – business leaders in particular – what is needed is a change in managerial perspective. A change from the prevailing concern with one's own well‐being – how much one has, or can get for one's self – to include a concern for the well‐being of others. The author proposes that Drucker's management philosophy, which reflects Aristotelian matters of character, community and telos, though formulated many years ago, provides a framework for improving managerial behaviour today.

Drucker's pragmatic business commentary and advice reveal a deep understanding of the complexity of the business world and the realities of business from the perspective of the business person, and yet does not reject the over‐riding moral principles of integrity, community and achievement that serve as the foundation for society.

The paper offers a business relevant virtue‐based perspective that, in this author's opinion, is more than adequate for a renewed vision of management in the twenty‐first century.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if the failure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to persecute Madoff is, in fact, an ethical failure. The authors turn to the extension of Aristotelian theory of moral values, virtue epistemology, to identify specific failures. The authors generalize this study’s conclusions to an overall responsibility of regulatory agencies to exercise epistemic virtues in their decision-making process. The authors explore how behavioral biases confound the execution of epistemic duty, and how awareness of behavioral biases can alleviate epistemic failures. The authors conclude this study with recommendations to prevent future frauds of Madoff proportions.

The authors rely on recent advances in virtue epistemology and behavioral finance. The authors combine these two theoretical approaches to better understand the duty of competence inherent in being a finance professional, and even more so in being a regulator entrusted with overseeing financial industry, and psychological biases that may prevent finance professionals and regulators from performing this duty.

The paper concludes that the SEC employees failed to exercise epistemic virtues in their handling of the complaints implicating Madoff’s firm of fraud. This failure reveals a consistent pattern of behavioral biases in decision-making. The authors posit that knowledge of ethical theory, specifically virtue epistemology, as well as awareness of behavioral biases, which inhibit epistemically virtuous cognitive process, can improve the functioning of both finance industry and its overseers. The authors suggest that future finance professionals and regulators need to acquire this knowledge while pursuing their undergraduate education: it is the duty of business schools to facilitate this progress.

This paper combines the theory of virtue epistemology with the current knowledge of behavioral biases, which distort rational decision-making, to explain the failures of regulators to analyze fraud reports. The authors extend this finding to recommend the inclusion of the theory of virtue epistemology in business schools’ ethics curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a functional framework encapsulating a wide range of contributions to the ongoing debate on virtue as a critical dimension of contemporary organizations. In so doing, the authors elaborate and develop an encompassing framework that is in a position to capture the diversity of research in this very field.

Extant literature on virtue in organizational settings is properly categorized through a taxonomy articulated around the potential foci, as well as loci of virtuous behavior. Virtuousness denotes an ethical attribute of managers, leaders or employees and as such, it may be situated at the micro-individual, meso-organizational or macro-societal level, respectively.

Based on the potential foci and loci of virtuous behavior, the paper differentiates between virtuous managerial, leaders’ and employees’ attitudes on one hand, and virtuous management and leadership development, as well as virtuous employee training on the other. Furthermore, ethically grounded managerial initiatives and leaders’ responsibilities to further the common good are entwined with endeavors to transform employees into virtuous corporate citizens affirming organizational ethicality.

By identifying both targeted group and level of analysis, organizations can effectively design and implement interventions promoting virtuousness as a valued end in itself.

The paper introduces a framework that can help integrate varying trends on organizational virtuousness that substantially differ in terms of both scope and perspective. In addition, the taxonomy will facilitate both researchers and practitioners to better navigate into the dispersed, and ultimately fragmented streams of literature on the role of virtue in business environments.

The presence and use of the informal and formal measures of business ethics implementation may be crucial and should therefore be known to managers/owners. Based on the case study research, this paper aims to suggest that enterprise awareness of importance of business ethics implementation can be of essential meaning for its long‐term existence, success, growth, and development. The purpose of this paper is to discover the presence and use of the informal and formal measures of business ethics implementation and to identify their importance for active measure care by the enterprises.

In this paper, qualitative research is applied. The research cognitions on informal and formal measures of business ethics implementation are discussed in application of the dialectical systems theory.

The paper finds that on one side the enterprises' key stakeholders (owners and managers) are aware of the importance of their ethical behaviour as well as of impact of their ethical behaviour to the enterprises' behaviour. The research results also show that enterprises' key stake holders are conscious of the impact of enterprises' ethical behaviour to the enterprises' long term existence, growth, and development. On the other hand, the research findings show that such informal awareness is usually not formalized, which can be argued as a reason for enterprises' unethical behaviour.

This paper gives us some insights as to the state of informal and formal measures of business ethics implementation in Slovenian enterprises. In a frame of practical implications, a further research should be done to show which formal measures of such ethics implementation should be used to stimulate the enterprises' innovative behaviour in assurance of enterprise effectiveness, efficiency, and social responsibility in order to achieve and maintain enterprise's long term existence, growth, and development.

The available literature does not provide for a similar research of linkage between the formal and informal measures of business ethics implementation.

The chapter tries to highlight the critical importance of values to leadership, and argues that the research design of the ‘social scientific’ mainstream is incommensurable with the language of the scientific discipline that studies values: moral philosophy. The chapter shows that (a) through goals and actions, ethics is a central aspect of leadership and (b) that ethics cannot be reinterpreted as being ‘value-neutral’. Therefore, ‘effective’ leadership must always be connected to a specific value set. After arguing that leadership cannot be meaningfully looked at without reference to virtue ethics, two case studies are used to demonstrate the relationship between the two. By looking at two prominent terrorist leaders, the chapter shows how values are at the heart of their visions and actions. There are at least two practical implications: the study of leadership, and leadership education, must be reconnected with moral philosophy. The chapter connects three hitherto unconnected topics: leadership, (virtue) ethics and terrorism, presenting new insights into especially leadership.

This paper aims to propose an ethical approach best suited to dealing with the issues of digital ethics in general and internet research ethics in particular.

This article engages with the existing literature on virtue ethics, situationism and digital (research) ethics.

A virtue-based casuistic method could be well-suited to deal with issues relating to digital ethics in general and internet research ethics in particular as long as it can take place in communities with shared practices and traditions.

These insights could add and further deepen the rich debate about research ethics that is already ongoing within the internet research community.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate the correlation between the perception of respondent accountants (N = 164) on ethics elements and their demographic factors and to examine the gap between the expectations of employers (accountants) and the coverage of ethics in the education of professional accountants.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect the data. An analysis of the relevant documents (syllabi and codes of ethics) was conducted to generate and group appropriate items that represent ethics themes. This led to 17 themes such as integrity, conflict of interest, ethics theories and resolving ethical dilemma. Using inputs from the qualitative study and relevant literature, a questionnaire was framed for the quantitative phase of this study.

Within accounting ethics education, more emphasis and awareness is required on the themes of integrity, independence, corruption and insider trading. Four categories emerge for the ethics themes related to education in accounting: “Integrity to Accounting Profession”, “Regulatory Compliance”, “Practical Ethical Issues” and “Sense of Responsibility”. The results of this study reveal there are gaps between ethics education and accountants’ expectations. It is found that accountants perceive more virtue-related elements be put in accounting education.

This study will make accounting educators, accountants and accounting professional associations to be more aware and work together to bridge this gap as well as contribute to a more effective ethics education for accountants in Hong Kong.

End of education is character and not merely the acquisition of intellectual prowess. With Aristotle’s wisdom and the learnings from the many corporate scandals, it would be safe to conclude that education should result in nurturing hearts and character and not just the transfer of worldly knowledge. While there are many studies focusing on perceptions about ethics, ethics education of business students or academics, there are hardly any studies available on accounting professionals’ perceptions on ethics education, especially in Hong Kong. The authors found that accountants want more virtue-related ethics elements included in accounting education.