IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-37272-6_14.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Empowerment in a Community of Purpose

In: Ethics and Empowerment

Author

Listed:
  • Richard C. Warren

Abstract

Is empowerment an ethical management practice in business? This chapter presents a virtue-theory perspective on the ethics of empowerment. It begins with a consideration of what empowerment is, and how it is implemented inside the firm. Empowerment strategies are often portrayed as a neutral set of techniques for improving the efficiency of the firm, but it should be recognised that they are also underpinned by normative assumptions which should be open to scrutiny. The persistent criticism made about the exploitative nature of empowerment is considered and partly rejected. The chapter also examines the argument made in the empowerment literature that the common purpose of business is the generation of shareholder value. An alternative conception of business as a community of purpose is proposed as both a more realistic and a useful idea, and one that can hold out the prospect of real empowerment for employees. Some criteria for thinking about the ethics of empowerment according to its effects on character and the common good are then outlined. Finally, in this chapter, suggestions are put forward regarding the institutionalisation of business in society such that it can operate as a community of purpose which contributes to the common good.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard C. Warren, 1999. "Empowerment in a Community of Purpose," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: John J. Quinn & Peter W. F. Davies (ed.), Ethics and Empowerment, chapter 13, pages 369-392, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37272-6_14
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230372726_14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37272-6_14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.