Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T08:32:12.744Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Workplace Civility: A Confucian Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Tae Wan Kim  and
Alan Strudler
Tae Wan Kim
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Alan Strudler
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

We argue that Confucianism makes a fundamental contribution to understanding why civility is necessary for a morally decent workplace. We begin by reviewing some limits that traditional moral theories face in analyzing issues of civility. We then seek to establish a Confucian alternative. We develop the Confucian idea that even in business, humans may be sacred when they observe rituals culturally determined to express particular ceremonial significance. We conclude that managers and workers should understand that there is a broad range of morally important rituals in organizational life and that managers should preserve and develop the intelligibility and integrity of many of these rituals.

Keywords

civilityConfucianismsacredritualmanagement ethics
Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 557 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adams, R.M. 1999. Finite and infinite goods: a framework for ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Adams, R.M. 2006. A theory of virtue: excellence in being for the good. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, E. 1993. Value in ethics and economics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, L.M., and Pearson, C.M. 1999. Tit-for-tat?: The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3): 452–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, D.G., & Bowie, N.E. 2003. Sweatshops and respect for persons. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13(2): 221–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Audi, R. 2004. The good in the right. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Blackburn, S. 2004. Salvaging the sacred. In Rogers, B. (Ed.), Is nothing sacred? New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bowie, N.E. 1999. Business ethics: A Kantian perspective. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Brockner, J. 2002. Making sense of procedural fairness: How high procedural fairness can reduce or heighten the influence of outcome favorability. Academy of Management Review, 27: 58–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brockner, J., Chen, Y., Mannix, E., Leung, K., & Skarlicki, D. 2000. Culture and procedural fairness: When the effects of what you do depend upon how you do it. Administrative Science Quarterly, 45: 138–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, C. 2000. The virtue of civility. Philosophy & Public affairs, 29: 251–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, D. 1986. A nice derangement of epitaphs. In Lepore, E. (Ed.), Truth and interpretation: 433–46. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dawson, R., trans. 1993. The analects. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dworkin, R. 1993. Life’s dominion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Feinberg, J. 1973. Some conjectures about the concept of respect. Journal of Social Philosophy, 4(2): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fierson, P. 2005. The moral importance of politeness in Kant’s anthropology. Kantian Review, 9(1): 105–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fingarette, H. 1972. Confucius: The secular as sacred. Long Grove: WaveLand.Google Scholar
Fingarette, H. 1978. Response to Professor Rosemont. Philosophy East and West, 28(4): 511–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fingarette, H. 1983. The music of humanity in the conversations (analects) of Confucius. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 10: 331–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fingarette, H. 2008. Discovering the analects. In Jones, E. (Ed.), Confucius now. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Gutmann, A., & Thompson, D. 1990. Moral conflict and political consensus. In Douglass, R.B., Mara, G.M., & Richardson, H.S. (Eds.), Liberalism and the good. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hurka, T. 2007. Audi’s marriage of Ross and Kant. In Petersen, T.S. & Ryberg, J. (Eds.), Rationality and the good: Critical essays on the ethics and epistemology of Robert Audi. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hursthouse, R. 1999.On virtue ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ihara, C.K. 2004. Are individual rights necessary? A Confucian perspective. In Shun, K.-L. &Wong, D.B. (Eds.), Confucian ethics: A comparative study of self, autonomy, and community: 183–99. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ivanhoe, P.J. 2008. The shade of Confucius: Social roles, ethical theory, and the self. In Chandler, M. & Littlejohn, R. (Eds.), Polishing the Chinese mirror: Essays in honor of Henry Rosemont, Jr. New York: Global Scholarly Publications.Google Scholar
Kant, I. 1996. The metaphysics of morals. In Gregor, Mary J. (Ed. and Trans.), Practical philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. 2001. Moral philosophy: Collins’s lecture notes. In Heath, Peter and Schneewind, J.B.(Eds.), Lectures on ethics, trans. Heath, PeterCambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kekes, J. 1984. Civility and society. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 1(4): 429–43.Google Scholar
Koehn, D., & Leung, A.S.M. 2004. Western and Asian business ethics. In Kwok, Leung and White, Steven (Eds.), Handbook of Asian management: 265–92. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, C.M. 1996.The sources of normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, C.M. 2009.Self-constitution: agency, identity, and integrity. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legge, J., trans. 1885. The li ki, or the collection of treatises on the rules of propriety or ceremonial usages. In Max Muller, F. (Ed.), The sacred books of the East, vol. 27. Oxford: Clarendon (reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass in 1968).Google Scholar
Lewis, M. 1989. Liar’s poker: Rising through the wreckage on Wall Street. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Lim, S., & Cortina, L.M. 2005. Interpersonal mistreatment in the workplace: The interface and impact of general incivility and sexual harassment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(3): 483–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lim, S., Cortina, L.M., & Magley, V.J. 2008. Personal and workgroup incivility: Impact on work and health outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93: 95–107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neville, R.C. 2000. Boston confucianism. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Norcross, A. 2006. Reasons wihout demands: Tethinking rightness. In Dreier, J. (Ed.), Blackwell contemporary debates in moral theory. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
O’Neill, O. 2002. Autonomy and trust in bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patrick, F. 2005. The moral importance of politeness in Kant’s anthropology. Kantian Review, 9(1): 105–27.Google Scholar
Porath, C.L., & Erez, A. 2007. Does rudeness really matter? The effects of rudeness on task performance and helpfulness. Academy of Management Journal, 50: 1181–97.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, J. 1993. Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 2001. Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosemont, H. Jr. 2008. Responses to contributors. In Chandler, M. & Littlejohn, R. (Eds.), Polishing the Chinese mirror: Essays in honor of Henry Rosemont, Jr. New York: Global Scholarly Publications.Google Scholar
Schwartz, B.J. 1985. The world of thought in ancient China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shinn, S. 2003. Luv, Colleen. BizEd. March/April.Google Scholar
Shun, K.-L. 1993. Jen and li in the analects. Philosophy East & West, 43: 457–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smart, J.J.C. 1973. An outline of a system of utilitarian ethics. In Smart, J.J.C. and Williams, Bernard, Utilitarianism: For and against. New York: Cambridge University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slote, M. 2001. Morals from motives. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slote, M. 2009. Comments on Bryan Van Norden’s Virtue ethics and consequentialism in early Chinese philosophy. Dao, 8: 289–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tu, W. 1972. Li as process of humanization. Philosophy East & West, 22: 187–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Norden, B., trans. 2008. Mengzi: With selections from traditional commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.Google Scholar
Van Norden, B.W. 2007. Virtue ethics and consequentialism in early Chinese philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walton, D. 1985. Are circular arguments necessarily vicious? American Philosophical Quarterly, 22(4): 263–74.Google Scholar
Woodruff, P. 2001. Reverence: Renewing a forgotten virtue. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, D.B. 2008. Chinese ethics. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 9: Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-chinese.Google Scholar
Yao, X. 2000. An introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yearley, L.H. 1990. Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of virtue and conceptions of courage. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar