Dissertation: An Aristotelian virtue ethics approach to examine the ethicality of employee empowerment
Interest in employee empowerment philosophy and practice has been increasingly spreading in business organizations to better understand the concept’s benefits to employees as well as the business organizations themselves and their management. However, despite the popularity and benefits of the employee empowerment phenomenon, previous studies have tended to recognize it as a managerial tool to promote the bottom line of the business. Only a few studies have conceived of employee empowerment as an ethical phenomenon.
The literature analysis, viewed through an Aristotelian virtue theory lens, showed that employee empowerment is a worthy subject for empirical investigation from an ethical standpoint. Semi-structured and open-ended interviews were conducted with 41 members from two multicultural business organizations in Finland, and the data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.
The results of the empirical study theorized seven significant virtues and related vices of employee empowerment.
- To conclude, it is proposed in this study that specific virtues, namely, information transparency, participation, helpfulness, respectfulness, responsibility, fortitude, and continuous learning, are connected to employee empowerment, says Irina Shatilova.
As its practical contribution, this dissertation offers ideas and information to business organizations to be virtuous and promote organizational ethics.
-The study has the potential to enrich the “organizational virtue” language in practice and, as a result, enhance ethical development and outcomes in organizational life. The virtue ethics viewpoint on employee empowerment stresses the importance of the cultivation of virtues, Shatilova continues.
- Do you enrich moral language on virtues in your organization or it remains narrow and ignores virtues?
More information
Irina Shatilova defends her doctoral dissertation “A Virtue Ethics Approach to the Ethicality of Employee Empowerment” on 16 February at 12:00 in the Main Building, lecture hall C4.
Opponent is Docent and Senior lecturer Anna Hannula (Tampere University) and custos is University teacher, Docent, Dr. Elina Riivari (Ģֱ). The language of the dissertation is English.
is available in the JYX repository.
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Further information
Irina Shatilova, irina.i.shatilova@student.jyu.fi
