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The Possibilities of the Acting Person Within an Institutional Framework: Goods, Norms, and Virtues

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Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the dynamics of the structure of human action to enable us to link the organizational level of institutions, norms, and culture of the firm. At the organizational level, the existing institutions and culture are the confines of our individual action. However, at the individual level, we focus on the external consequences of our acts. It is our acts that maintain social institutions and culture. The ethics of personal virtues demands an ethics of institutions, the ethics which deals with the institutional means of realizing individual ends. All individuals choose courses of action by deciding what type of life is worth living. In this view, virtue (areté) occupies a central position, defining the paradigm that each society with its institutions and norms sets as the model of life to be lived (eudiamonia).

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Correspondence to Javier Aranzadi.

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Aranzadi, J. The Possibilities of the Acting Person Within an Institutional Framework: Goods, Norms, and Virtues. J Bus Ethics 99, 87–100 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0751-y

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