Abstract
In this paper, I am adopting the point of view of the first person as a generator of positive actions. It presents human’s freedom in the search for excellence in action. Aristotelian ethics is structured in a system of goods, norms and virtues that is configured by means of individual action in the institutions of a particular culture. In this view, the firm’s role as a social institution is presented, whereby its social responsibility is to encourage the ability of individuals to create new ends and means of action in the reality around them. Good entrepreneurial practice (eupraxia) occupies a central position, defining the paradigm that each society and culture sets as the model of economic life.
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Notes
- 1.
I quote Aristotle in the classical style, i.e., book, chapter, paragraph and lines of the text.
- 2.
For a critique of mainstream homo economicus expanded to all human behavior and presenting an alternative approach based on a theory of human action see Aranzadi (2006).
- 3.
For a full developed version of what follows in sections (2) see Aranzadi (2011).
- 4.
As Solomon (1992, p. 163) says ‘buyer’ and ‘seller’ are established roles within an organized system.
- 5.
- 6.
If we pause over this definition we see that the discovery of an entrepreneurial element within human action is excluded by definition in G. Becker’s (1976) neoclassical theory.
- 7.
The same idea was masterfully expressed by Professor Julián Marías in the following words: “My life is not a thing, but rather a doing, a reality projected into the future, that is argumentative and dramatic, and that is not exactly being but happening” (J. Marías 1996, p. 126). More bluntly, Peter Drucker says: “the best way to predict the future is to create it” (P. Drucker 1998, p. 197).
- 8.
It is impossible here to deal with the capabilities approach developed by A. Sen and M. Nussbaum (Nussbaum and Sen 1993). The first point should make the differences –remarkably I would say- between Sen and Nussbaum approaches. For instance, Sen (2009) presents what he considers to be distinctive of his approach, and Nussbaum (2011) does the same. For a general and critical assessment of both approaches see H. Richardson (2000, 2007).
- 9.
P. Koslowski (1996, p. 53) states emphatically that the market allow not only freedom of consumption but also of action and production.
- 10.
This efficiency criterion requires the two formulations in order to correspond to the two views of human freedom introduced at the beginning of the chapter. Our first formulation refers to the conception of freedom as ‘freedom from’. This first view presents the freedom of indifference. The second view corresponds to the concept of freedom as ‘freedom for’ or the search of excellence in action. See S. Pinckaers (1985).
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Aranzadi, J. (2012). The Social Role of the Firm: The Aristotelian Acting Person Approach. In: Prastacos, G., Wang, F., Soderquist, K. (eds) Leadership through the Classics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32445-1_15
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