the challenge of the humanistic management

ABSTRACT. According to the origin of the word“humanism” and the concept of

humanitas where theformer comes from, management could be calledhumanistic when its outlook emphasizes commonhuman needs and is oriented to the development ofhuman virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent. Afirst approach to humanistic management, althoughquite incomplete, was developed mainly in the middleof the 20th century. It was centered on humanmotivations. A second approach to humanistic man-agement sprang up in the 80’s and centered onorganizational culture. This implied a wider approachto the human condition while taking into account theinfluence of culture on behaviors and decision-making, but it is incomplete, too. There is a thirdapproach to humanistic management, which is stillemerging, that considers a business enterprise as a realcommunity of persons. That means promoting unityand favoring the acquisition of human virtues. Thishumanistic management approach is a real challengein order to achieve a higher moral quality in man-

agement, human virtues among people and moreefficient organizations.

KEY WORDS: Christian social teaching, humanizingbusiness, humanizing culture, humanistic manage-ment, organizational culture, organizational virtueethics

Introduction

It is very well known that management under-went a tremendous development throughout thetwentieth century. During the first decades ofthat century, with Taylor’s scientific organizationof work, Fayol’s managerial principles and HenryFord’s assembly line, management was based ontechnique and little attention was paid to thehuman condition of workers, except for makingthem more efficient in productive operations.Taylor only focused on the self-interest of theworker to get money and the organization oftime and activities in order to improve produc-tivity, while Fayol limited his approach to thefunctions of management and Ford focused onincreasing productivity through the assembly line.In all these approaches and in some others afterthem, the image of the person was quite “mech-anistic”. Managers planned the work and gaveorders, which had to be obeyed by employees;the reward for that was basically money.

This engineering outlook of management wasfollowed by another that focused on humanbehavior from the assumptions of experimentalpsychology and psychoanalysis. This outlook wasexpanded by one of the most outstandingpioneers of management thought, AbrahamMaslow. He introduced a new approach, which

The Challenge of Humanistic Management Domènec Melé

Journal of Business Ethics 44: 77–88, 2003.© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Domènec Melé is Professor and Director of the Departmentof Business Ethics at IESE Business School, Universityof Navarra, Spain. He also chairs the bi-annual“International Symposium on Ethics, Business andSociety” held by IESE. He has a Doctorate degree inIndustrial Engineering from the Polytechnic Universityof Catalonia, Spain (1974) and another in Theologyfrom the University of Navarra (1983). He is authorof three books on economic and business ethics and socialethics (in Spanish) and has edited eight books (inSpanish), which include different topics on businessethics. In addition, he has written 20 study cases (IESEPublishing) and about 40 articles and chapters in thisfield. He has published in journals as Business EthicsQuarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, BusinessEthics: A European Review, and Reason inPractice. The Journal of Philosophy ofManagement.

he himself considered a “humanistic” approach.In his own words, Maslow “attempted to enlargeour conception of the human personality byreaching into the ‘higher’ levels of humannature” (1970, p. ix). He accepted the previousfindings coming from experimental psychologyand psychoanalysis but he went beyond thesedisciplines by adopting “a new general philos-ophy of life” which led him to a deeper knowl-edge of human needs.1

Apart from Maslow, some other authors haveadopted conceptions of management whichcould be considered as approaches to humanisticmanagement, at least in a broad sense, since theyemphasize several aspects of the human condi-tion. The first purpose of this paper is to explorethese historical approaches. So after a shortdiscussion about the meaning of humanistic man-agement three approaches to humanistic manage-ment will be distinguished. Then it will endeavorto show that the third approach to humanisticmanagement is more complete in considering thehuman condition and the capacity of everyoneto develop better human qualities than theprevious ones.

What humanistic management means?

“Humanistic” is related to “humanism”, an oldand rich concept. The term “humanism”,although it does not have a univocal sense,2 isgenerally understood as the realization of certainhuman ideals. More specifically, humanism isusually conceived as an outlook emphasizingcommon human needs and is concerned withhuman characteristics. It leads to structuringsocial life in a way that is appropriate for thehuman condition. However, this way of under-standing humanism is too vague. So it is neces-sary to start by clarifying what humanism, andhumanistic management, will mean in thecontext of this paper. In fact, the meaningadopted here is very close to the origin of theterm “humanism” and its meaning in theAncient World, although it includes certainconceptual enrichment.

The term “humanism” was introduced by theGerman scholar F. J. Niethammer as humanismus

in 19th century to designate the Renaissanceemphasis on studying classical authors and lan-guages (Latin and Greek) in education.3

However, the roots are much older. In 15thcentury, those who pursued and endorsed theseclassical studies were called umanisti, an Italianword. According to R. Grudin (1989, p. 723),author of the article on “humanism” in the NewEncyclopedia Britannica, umanisti comes fromLatin studia humanitatis, which was a course ofclassical studies that included grammar, poetry,rhetoric, history and moral philosophy. Infact, in Renaissance, the concept of humanitasbecame a key educational and political ideal.“Renaissance humanism – he affirms – in all itsforms defined itself in its straining towards thisideal. No discussion, therefore, of humanism canhave validity without an understanding of human-itas.” Accordingly, Grudin gives us an explana-tion of the meaning of humanitas in AncientGreece:

“Humanitas meant the development of humanvirtue, in all its approaches, to its fullest extent.The term thus implied not only such qualities asare associated to the modern word humanity –understanding, benevolence, compassion, mercy –but also such more aggressive characteristics asfortitude, judgment, prudence, eloquence, andeven love of honor. Consequently the possessor ofhumanitas could not be merely a sedentary andisolated philosopher or man of letters but was ofnecessity a participant in active life. Just as actionwithout insight was held to be aimless and barbaric,insight without action was rejected as barren andimperfect. Humanitas called for a fine balancebetween action and contemplation, a balance bornnot of compromise but of complementarity.”

A complementary explanation is provided byMiralles (1975, p. 518) who holds that the wordhumanitas which gives origin to “humanism”is the Latin translation of the Greek word

ϕιλανθρωπ

ια ( filantropia) that means “love tothe human condition”. It seems it was employedfirst by Aeschylus who applied this term to thebenevolence of Prometheus towards mankind. Inthe Hellenistic and Roman era it was a qualitydesirable in a monarch. St. Paul attributed it toChrist. In Stoic writers or those influenced by

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Stoicism, humanitas has a sense of somethingcommon that maintains humans united to eachother beyond race, beliefs, origin and socialconditions.

Accepting this meaning of humanistas, herehumanistic management is understood as a man-agement that emphasizes the human conditionand is oriented to the development of humanvirtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent.

First set of approaches to humanisticmanagement

In a paper presented in 1925, Mary ParkerFollett, who has been called “a prophet ofmodern management” (Graham, 1994), wrote:“We can never wholly separate the human fromthe mechanical side . . . But you all see every daythe study of human relations in business and thestudy of operating are bound up together” (1940,p. 124). In her view there were no psycholog-ical, ethical or economic problems, but humanproblems and these cover aspects which couldbe psychological, ethical, economic andwhatever. This outlook was one of the firsthumanistic approaches to management.

Chester I. Barnard, another outstandingpioneer in management thought, was also con-cerned with the human and ethical side ofmanagement. In his words, organizations last “inproportion to the breadth of the morality bywhich they are governed” (1968, p. 282). Butwhat is even more remarkable in Barnard is theway in which he pointed out the importance toachieve a correct vision of the human beingbefore dealing with organizations. In his mem-orable book The functions of the executive, firstpublished in 1938, he wrote:

“I have found it impossible to go far in the studyof organizations or of behavior of people inrelation to them without being confronted with afew questions which can be simply stated. Forexample: ‘What is an individual?’ ‘What is aperson?’ ‘To what extent do people have power ofchoice or free will?’ The temptation is to avoidsuch difficult questions, leaving them to philoso-phers and scientists who still debate them aftercenturies. It quickly appears, however, that even

if we avoid answering such questions definitely, wecannot avoid them” (1968/1938, p. 8).

A third author, quite different from Follett andBarnard but more than likely with a significantinfluence on Maslow and other authors who willbe mentioned, was Elton Mayo. He introducedan approach based on satisfaction for social con-ditions of work. From the famous Hawthorneexperiments of the Western Electric Company inChicago (Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1939),Mayo (1933, 1945) realized that informal orga-nization exists in all organizations and theinformal group is an outlet for the aspirations ofworkers. That means a certain humanisticapproach, since it includes human relations inwork organizations.

However, the consideration of persons byMayo was exclusively related to increased pro-ductivity. Mayo’s aim is made clear in his ownwords: “a research study of human behavior andhuman relations was eminently desirable. Suchstudy, if made without presuppositions other thanthose justified by biology or the human aspectof clinical medicine, might, we believed, bemore productive than a direct attack on laborrelations” (1945, p. xi). His findings showed worksatisfaction depends to a large extent on theinformal pattern of the work group, and satis-faction is related to productivity. Mayo consid-ered that management ought to provide the basesfor group affiliation and to foster spontaneouscooperation. But, for this purpose he onlyproposed a suitable communications system,particularly upwards from workers to manage-ment.

From clinical psychological observation,Maslow (1970/1954) stated that humans aremotivated by multiple needs and those needs arehierarchical. He identified five general levels ofmotivating needs: physiological needs, safetyneeds, belongingness and love needs, esteemneeds and the need for self-actualization. Hepresented a more comprehensive approach tohuman beings than the current psychology of hisdays and rejected the images of man that thelatter generated.

Regarding the need of self-actualization,Maslow stated:

The Challenge of Humanistic Management 79

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint,a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peacewith himself. What a man can be, he must be. Hemust be true to his human nature. This need wemay call self-actualization (. . .) It refers to man’sdesire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendencyfor him to become actualized in what he is poten-tially. This tendency might be phrased as the desireto become more and more what one idiosyncrat-ically is, to become everything that one is capableof becoming” (1970, p. 46). (The italics are theauthor’s)

It is an interesting approach, but it is morethan questionable that “what a man can be, hemust be”. A person can become a lot of differentthings, since each human being has many poten-tialities, some better than others. He or she canbecome someone with an excellent character or,on the contrary, someone quite depraved. Hereit underlines a crucial ethical aspect.

Maslow could have in mind the self-fulfillmentof the idiosyncrasy of each one excluding badaspects. However, he did not talk about that.In fact, self-fulfillment can have two differentmeanings: developing personal idiosyncrasy,whatever that can be, and developing the noblestpotentialities of each human being. The formerhas only a psychological sense, while the latterhas an ethical sense related to character.Unfortunately, Maslow, as the psychologist hewas, only paid attention to the development ofthe idiosyncrasy of each one, without consideringthe ethical side of this development.

The need for self-actualization is also veryimportant in the contribution of DouglasMcGregor (1960) through his well-known YTheory. He considered that the satisfaction of theindividual’s “self-actualizing needs” is the bestway to obtain commitment. He pointed out thatthe average human being learns, under properconditions, not only to accept but also to seekresponsibility, and many more people are able tocontribute creatively to the solution of organi-zational problems that do so. A variant of thisapproach is that given by Likert (1961, 1967). Hemaintains that a leader must always adapt his orher behavior to take persons into account, to leadthem with their expectations, values and skills.Other scholars, as Argyris (1957) and Herzberg

(1968), focused on the development of the indi-viduals as well. All these authors, like Maslow,avoid talking about the ethical side of humangrowth.

Concluding, the scholars of this first set ofapproaches to humanistic management insistedon the necessity of managers being concerned formotivating human needs and considered indifferent ways the need for self-actualization (ortheir equivalent: personal growth or developmentof the individual) but they did not delve toomuch into the specific contents of these concepts.In fact, they were more interested in knowinghow human behavior could be motivated toimprove outcomes than in investigating what ahuman being actually is both as an individual andas a social being.

Second approach to humanistic management

A second set of approaches to humanistic man-agement came from considering organizationalculture. Culture within human groups and howthe group influences the individual have beenstudied by cultural anthropology since 19thcentury. But the study of organizational culturesdidn’t become popular until the 1980’s with theworks of Peters and Waterman (1982), whorelated some strong organizational cultures withbusiness excellence, and those of Deal andKennedy et al. (1982), who studied 200 corpo-rate cultures and their relation to performance.Schein (1985/1992, 1990) and Kilmann et al.(1985) made a significant contribution to thetheoretical development of this concept.Afterwards some attempts have been made to linkorganizational culture and improvement initia-tives in organizations (Detert et al., 2000) andnow many relate organizational culture withpositive organization results (Goffee and Jones,1998).

Organizational culture has been defined, invery simple but intuitive words, as “the way wedo things around here” (Deal and Kennedy,1982, p. 4). Pettigrew described it as “anamalgam of beliefs, ideology, language, ritual andmyth” (1979, p. 572). Gordon and DiTomaso

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state that a corporate culture is “a pattern ofshared and stable beliefs and values that aredeveloped within the company across time”(1992, p. 784). From a different perspective, ithas been said that “culture is what a group learnsover a period of time as that group solves itsproblems of survival in an external environmentand its problems of internal integration. Suchlearning is simultaneously behavioral, cognitive,and an emotional process” (Schein, 1990, p. 111).

Two levels can be distinguished in an organi-zational culture: an inner and invisible one andanother that is superficial and visible; the lattercontains external manifestations of the former(Sathe, 1983; Schein 1985/1992). The innerlevel, which basically contains beliefs (hypothesis,assumptions, and the business model the organi-zation holds to be true) and values (principles orqualities considered worthwhile by the organi-zation), seems the most essential for character-izing a certain culture. In Schein’s view, the termculture “should be reserved for this deeper levelof basic assumptions and beliefs that are sharedby members of an organization, that operateunconsciously, and that define, in a basic ‘taken-for-granted’ fashion, an organization’s view ofitself and its environment” (1985, p. 6).

The importance of organizational culture inorganization performance is a matter of fact. Formany years, organizational theory has paidattention to strategy, structure and managerialsystems to control an organization. But nowthere is an increasing conviction that a set ofelements less visible and difficult to measure, asshared values and beliefs, have a great influenceon human behavior and the decision-makingprocess within the organization (Kotter andHeskett, 1992; Goffee and Jones, 1998, amongothers). Thus organizational culture cannot beignored by management any more.

Regarding the role of management on orga-nizational cultures, it has been questionedwhether or not their leaders can promote them.Schein, who many consider as one of the mostoutstanding scholars on organizational culture,does not hesitate to affirm: “Organizationalcultures are created by leaders, and one of themost decisive functions of leadership may well bethe creation, the management, and – if and when

that may become necessary – the destruction ofculture” (1985, p. 2). But not everyone agreeswith this position. Smircich (1983), e.g., thinksthat organizational culture “is” a part of theorganization (something inherent to any organi-zation) and it is exclusively the outcome of theinteractions between the individual and theorganization. So managers have nothing to dowith building up an organizational culture.Others give a deeper knowledge of how to doit as a pre-condition for changing cultures. ThusFitzgerald (1988, p. 9) holds that “although themanagement of culture has been declared aneeded instrument for strengthening organiza-tional control and producing improvements, wecan’t talk intelligently about changing culturesuntil we understand how to change underlyingvalues.”

The debate on the role of management inbuilding up an organizational culture is still goingon, but more and more it is accepted thatmanagers have a real influence on organizationalculture. In a very pragmatic way, The PriceWaterhouse Change Integration Team (1996),after interviewing over 200 senior-level corpo-rate executives in a variety of manufacturing andservice organizations, strongly recommends thatmanagers focus directly on culture, but indirectlythrough some organizational aspects which shapean organization’s culture, such as: leadershipactions; vision, purpose, and strategy; perfor-mance measures; structure; people practices; andcompetitive context.

In fact, many managers are aware of the orga-nizational culture in their respective organizationsand are trying to promote it. Now, the questionis whether or not a management focus on theorganizational culture, apart from motivations, ismore humanistic than one that only considersmotivations.

There is no doubt that human beings livewithin a culture; they influence culture anddevelop themselves under a culture. In veryprecise words, Pope John Paul II has pointed outthe need to take culture into account to betterunderstand persons:

“It is not possible to understand man on the basisof economics alone, nor to define him simply on


the basis of class membership. Man is understoodin a more complete way when he is situated withinthe sphere of culture through his language, history,and the position he takes towards the fundamentalevents of life, such as birth, love, work and death.At the heart of every culture lies the attitude mantakes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God.”(1991, n. 23)

In conclusion, if culture is part of human lifeand organizational cultures have such an influ-ence on the behavior of its members, there is nodoubt that considering organizational culture isa better way to understand the human conditionthan considering only human needs. Accordingly,this second approach to humanistic managementfocused on building up organizational cultures isricher than the first one. However, it is also quitelimited.

The goal for many scholars who deal withorganizational cultures is to use this concept tobetter explain the variations in patterns oforganizational behavior, stability of a group andits influence on performance. Actually, they haveobtained interesting findings by employingmethods of organizational psychology, includingsurveys, interviews, documentation, history,observation of behaviors, etc. Their main interestlies only in how values and other elements oforganizational cultures influence behavior andperformance from a psychological or sociologicalperspective.

In a more specific way, other researches havestudied the relationship between organizationalculture and ethical behavior. At the beginning ofthe 80’s, Fisse and Braithwaite (1983) showed thatorganizational cultures have an impact on theethical behavior and moral practices of peoplein organizations. Afterwards, many other scholarshave supported this finding. Trevino et al. (1985)found that when ethical behaviors are reinforcedby organizational culture, these behaviorsincrease, and conversely, when unethical behav-iors are reinforced by culture, members tend toexhibit more unethical behavior. In anotherresearch, Trevino (1986) established that when aculture is more democratic it is associated withan increase in ethical behavior including a greaterwillingness to take individual responsibility.

Gagliardi (1990) stated that organizational

culture helps to explain both the incidence ofethical and unethical behavior. In the same way,other authors have pointed out that the pressureto adapt one’s behavior to an organizationalculture may lead to unethical behavior (Shetiaand Von Glinow 1985; Baucus, 1989; Trevino,1990; Stead et al., 1990; Sims, 1992, 2000;Douglas et al., 2001; Sims and Brinkmann, 2002)or can reinforce ethical decision-making (Chenet al., 1997). Knouse and Giacalone (1992) notedthat a possible cause of the behaviors within anorganization could be that an organizationalculture sends messages of sanctioned or unsanc-tioned ways of making decisions. More specifi-cally, it has been reported that certain ethicalclimates-an aspect of organizational cultures,which permit quantitative measurements-canfoster crime (Werhane, 1991; Sims, 2000).

However, most of these approaches are boundby the limits of the empirical research andemphasize the influence of organizationalcultures on the favoring of unethical behaviorsrather than on the fostering of character.

Third approach to humanistic management

There is a third approach to humanistic man-agement centered on building up a communityof persons embedded with an organizationalculture which fosters charater. In this way, it takesinto account human needs and motivations, likethe first approach, but considers the ethical sideof the need for self-actualization. Promoting anorganizational culture is also included in thisapproach, but it adds an appropriate culture fordeveloping people.

This approach takes, as a starting point, thesocial nature of the persons and their capacity foracquiring virtues that perfect them and, as aconsequence, for growing as human beings. Dueto their social nature, human individuals have thecapacity to form communities with real bonds.

The idea of community comes from the Latinword communitas meaning “common” and evokesindividuals united for something they have incommon. Communities have a certain organiza-tion, which gives them support, but what really

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makes a community is its unity. That implies thatthe members of the community have a certainbond between them; sometimes it is a naturalbond as in the family with the relationshipsbetween parents and children, or a voluntarybond connected with some common goals sharedby the members of the community. The latter isthe case for business enterprises, as I will try toshow later on.

The concept of “community” has been usedat length in sociology and philosophy, althoughnot too much in management and organizationaltheory so far. There is not a unique definitionof community, but it generally refers to the socialstructures of people with specific actions, rela-tions and a sense of unity. In other words, in acommunity there is not only mutual relationsamong persons, but these persons appear as aunity and forming a “we” (Stein, 1998, p. 248).In fact, those who belong to a community say“we”, but without lacking their own personalcondition.

According to Wojtyla (1979–80), who employsa phenomenological approach, “we” expressesdirectly a multiplicity of individuals while indi-rectly refers to persons who belong to thismultiplicity. Usually, for community we do notunderstand only the multiplicity of subjects, butthe unity of such a multiplicity; a unity that is aconsequence of the relations and bonds estab-lished between these subjects. Communityincludes both relationships and the sum of therelationships. In this way, a community has asupra-personal character but individuals remainwith their own personality. “We” are manysubjects who exist and act in common. Themeaning of “in common” is not, however, amultiplicity of actions made together, but a setof individuals doing actions that respond to acommon value, that is to say, in a cooperativeway for the sake of common goals. This commonvalue deserves to be called “common good”, thecommon good of a community.

After this short introduction about the conceptof community, it is time to ask whether or nota business enterprise is a community. Answeringthis question requires an analysis of the bonds andthe corresponding motives of the people involvedin a firm, since the unity of a community as a

firm, which one is free to join, demands certainrelations and voluntary bonds. An elementalobservation points out that people who consti-tute a business enterprise can have three kindsof motives to remain united to it:4

• There are motives directly related withsome external compensation: salaries, materialrewards or other benefits, training receivedor for the personal learning associated withthe job, power, the position or prestigeobtained by being a member of a commu-nity with a certain role and doing someactivity.

• Other motives are found in some pleasureassociated with the present situation withinthe firm, such as having an enjoyable job,being proud of belonging to a firm with agreat reputation, working in a certain groupor occupying a prestigious post within thefirm, liking the quality of human relationsand so on.

• Finally, there are motives that lead to atti-tudes of identification, commitment andloyalty to the mission, values or goals of thefirm. This group of motives is derived fromdiscovering that serving or cooperating withthe enterprise is something worthy foreverybody; it is a common good for theenterprise and even for society at large. Sothese motives, which could be called tran-sitive motives, are related with a sense ofservice and cooperation.

Individual interests for scarce resourcesmotivate competition, but that does not bringabout unity. On the contrary, the perception ofcommon goals fosters cooperation. Whilecompetition urges people to dominate others,cooperation is essential for the maintenance ofsociety in general and organizations in particular.

The two former groups of motives mentioned(compensation and pleasure), intrinsically con-sidered, are directly related to the self-interest ofthe individuals involved in the organization andthe unity between an individual and the organi-zation will only be possible if the interests do notcompete for some scarce resources. However,there could also be some common interests, likethe survival of the firm, which produces a sense


of cooperation which fosters unity. When thereare transitive motives for a “common value” andaccordingly identification, commitment andloyalty, besides other motives, then the unitybecomes stronger.

If business firms were a mere collection of self-interested individuals continuously competing toachieve their personal goals, without any concernfor common goals and with an absolute lack ofcooperation, they could not survive. In practice,those who form an organization are persons withsome degree of identification, commitment andwillingness to achieve common goals, even whensometimes achieving these goals could meansacrificing some personal interests. The historyand culture of an enterprise, especially when ithas a certain age, contribute to creating unitytoo. All of that leads to considering enterprisesas communities of persons, beyond being aninstrument for profits and a sort of organismwhich tries to adapt itself to the environment.

Furthermore, firms are part of society andinteract continuously with it. They cannot be aparasite or a cancer for society but a pillar forsocial life and therefore the only correct attitudeis cooperation between firms and society andconcern for the common good. So consideringenterprises as communities within society is alsoan ethical requirement. According to Solomon(1992, p. 148) “the first principle of businessethics is that the corporation is itself a citizen, amember of the larger community, and incon-ceivable without it.” He reminds us of theAristotelian view that we are, first of all,members of a community, adding: “corporationbecomes one’s immediate community and, forbetter or worse, the institution that defines thevalues and the conflicts of values within whichone lives much of one’s life” (Solomon, 1992,p. 148).

On the other hand, considering a businessenterprise as a human community is not entirelynew. Catholic social teaching has already pre-sented business enterprises as communities ofpeople at least since the beginning of the 60’s.5

More recently, Pope John Paul II has alluded tothe creation of “working communities” by adisciplined work in close collaboration withothers (that is what happens within business

enterprises). He adds: “a business cannot beconsidered only as a ‘society of capital goods’because it is also a ‘society of persons’” (1991,n. 43 and 32). In addressing businesspersons andexecutives he has insisted on the importance ofconsidering business corporations as communi-ties of persons (Kennedy et al., 1994; Melé,1992). But this proposal has not been diffusedso much yet.

An important consequence of consideringfirms as a community of persons is taking intoaccount that its unity and conditions ought to beappropriate for the persons who constituted it.As Aristotle pointed out long ago, a human indi-vidual is a free and rational being who continu-ously changes and, in a dynamic way, acquireshabits which increase his or her moral quality(human virtues) or, on the contrary, this qualitybecomes worse (Sherman, 1989; Mintz, 1996).This is the point where this third approach fitsthe sense of humanitas explained at the beginningof this paper and related to human virtues.

But, what do we understand by humanvirtues? In fact, that is an old subject, developedin Ancient Greece by Socratic philosophers,mainly by Aristotle. Now, with the currentdevelopment of virtue ethics it is again a highlytopical subject. However, not all kinds of virtuescan be considered human virtues. Furthermore,some current virtue ethics theories present arelativistic approach. As Nussbaum (1993) pointsout; there is a striking divergence betweenAristotle and contemporary virtue ethics. Shereminds us that Aristotelian virtue creates theright disposition to choose and respond wellin the important spheres of shared human expe-rience. She adds that there is no completelynon-relative, culturally-independent way ofunderstanding spheres of human experience (e.g.friendship will be expressed through differentcustoms at different times and in different places),but there are virtues such as justice or couragewhich are required in every sphere of humanexperience.

On the other hand, MacIntyre (1985) hasshowed that there are different traditions ofunderstating virtue. One conception is thatfound in Homer that a virtue is a quality whichenables an individual to discharge his or her role,

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like courage in the warrior. Another one is thatvirtue is a quality which has the utility ofachieving earthly or heavenly success (havingqualities as a strategist, being a good negotiator,or a laborious individual): this is the conceptof virtue found in the writing of BenjaminFranklin, among others. The third conception ofvirtue is found in Aristotle and in the NewTestament: here virtue is understood as a qualityof the character that enables an individual tomove towards achieving his or her fulfillment asa human being. In this conception, virtues areinterior strengths that foster a person to actaccording to the noblest human capacities. Thatleads to concern for people and to respect andlove them with a benevolent rational love,without sentimentalism.6

In business each role needs certain habits andindeed certain habits are also required to besuccessful in achieving an objective. Nevertheless,I think that in a humanistic approach it is betterto reserve the term “human virtue” for the thirdconception (related with human fulfillment).However, the development of these other habits(or “virtues” in a broad sense, if you like) is notexcluded from humanistic management, unlessthey, in a certain case, would become incompat-ible with genuine “human virtues”.

Conclusion

The concept of humanistic management pre-sented here, which strives to build up a com-munity of persons and foster the developmentof human virtues, gives a deeper content toprevious humanistic approaches to management.Namely, this one which considers human needsand their motivation and the other whichendeavors to build up an organizational culture.

As has been discussed, the classic motivationtheories only considered the human needs thatshould be satisfied to achieve good results, whilethe humanistic management proposed hereincludes motivating people but taking intoaccount the need for growing as a personthrough human virtues. On the other hand, thecurrent organizational culture approachesconsider the role of values and beliefs on

behavior and decision-making but so far theyhave not paid too much attention to promotingorganizational cultures appropriate for fosteringhuman virtues within the organization. Ahumanistic management approach should do so.

Humanistic management should build upunity to achieve that the community of persons,which is an enterprise, becomes stronger as acommunity. In addition, it has to reconsidermotivations and organizational culture. Managershave to motivate people around them to acquirevirtues and try to discover and promote beliefsand values within the organizational culture thatfoster human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullestextent. That leads to the need for new researchin order to delve into the relationship betweenthese concepts and practical ways to carry outthis humanistic management.

Last, but not least, this humanistic manage-ment is not a naïve approach nor a lack ofrealism. On the contrary, there is growingevidence that human virtues and some habits,that some authors called virtues too, are quiterelevant for business performance (Horvath,1995; Solomon, 1999; Walton, 2001).

On the other hand, it is easy to see thathuman virtues favor cooperation, and coopera-tion is absolutely necessary for business organi-zations, as Ch. Barnard (1968/1938) pointedout many years ago, and since then it hasbeen repeated again and again. In the currentsituation, in which organizations tend to beflattened, a strong sense of cooperation is evenmore necessary. As Ghosal and Barlett (1995)stress, for today’s managers the purpose-process-people doctrine of management rests on thepremise that the organizational task is to shapethe behaviors of people and create an environ-ment that enables them to take initiatives, coop-erate and learn.

In conclusion, it seems that a humanistic man-agement approach as has been sketched here isa real challenge for achieving a higher ethicalquality in management. It is a challenge foracademics: it would be useful to clarify, developand spread some concepts outlined in this paper.On their part, managers have the challenge tostrive to build up communities of persons, withall their implications. Adopting this approach


they are fostering both the human growth ofpeople and, as a consequence, their sense ofservice and cooperation which indubitably arecrucial for the long-term outcomes.

Notes

1 In his own words: “I certainly accepted and builtupon the available data of experimental psychologyand the psychoanalysis. I accept also the empirical andexperimental spirit of the one, and the unmasking anddepth probing of the other, while yet rejecting theimages of man which they generate. (. . .) However,what I took then to be an argument within the familyof psychologists has in my opinion turned out sincethen to be rather a local manifestation of a newZeitgeist (spirit of the times), a new general philos-ophy of life. This new ‘humanistic’ Weltanschauung(philosophy of life), seems to be a new and morehopeful and encouraging way of conceiving any andevery area of human knowledge” (1970, pp. ix–x) (theitalics are the author’s; their translation betweenbrackets is mine).2 That is why an adjective frequently goes togetherwith the word “humanism”. So we talk aboutpragmatic humanism, religious or secular humanism,naturalistic humanism, integral humanism, etc.3 In his work Der Streit des Philantropismus und desHumanismus in der Theorie des Erziehungsunterrichtunserer Zeit, published in 1808 (Ferrater-Mora, 1984,p. 1566, mentioned A. Campana, “The origin of theword ‘Humanist’”, Journal of the Warburg and CourtauldInstitute, IX (1946), 60–73).4 Meyer and Allen (1991) and Pérez López (1993)present three similar motives. 5 Pope John XXIII, in his Encyclical Letter Mater etMagistra affirms: “We consider it altogether vital thatthe numerous intermediary bodies and corporateenterprises – which are, so to say, the main vehicleof this social growth – be really autonomous, andloyally collaborate in pursuit of their own specificinterests and those of the common good. For thesegroups must themselves necessarily present the form andsubstance of a true community, and this will only be thecase if they treat their individual members as humanpersons and encourage them to take an active part inthe ordering of their lives (. . .) Every effort must bemade to ensure that the enterprise is indeed a true humancommunity, concerned about the needs, the activitiesand the standing of each of its members” (1961, n.65 and n. 91) (the italics are mine).

6 That is, at least, the sense of human fulfilment andthe role of virtues in Augustine and Aquinas (see, e.g.Wadell, 1992). Other religious and moral wisdomtraditions also understand reciprocity and altruism asa great expression of moral human quality.

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Department of Business Ethics,IESE Business School,

Av. Pearson, 21 – 08034 Barcelona,University of Navarra,

Spain,E-mail: [email protected]

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