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76

Book reviews

present as a perfectly acceptable state of affairs the

following educational nightmare:
As more business organizations take on the form of
rationality in various ways and more countries participate
in global society noneconomically as well as economically, MBA programs and B-Schools will continue to spread
to churn out modern managers. (p. 135)
Perhaps this is a group of academics whose attention has not
yet been drawn to the Academy of Management Learning
and Education Journal in which they might have read
Sumantra Ghoshal on this topic. Preferring Hayeks (1989)
critique of such scientization as leading only to the pretence
of knowledge, he asserts:
Unfortunately as the philosophy of science makes clear, it
is an error to pretend that the methods of sciences can be
indiscriminately applied to business studies because such
a pretention ignores some fundamental differences that
exist between different academic disciplines (Ghoshal,
2005, p. 77)
Reverting to the subject text, similarly in corporate
responsibilitytheorised here by Shanahan and Khagram,
and without evident irony, as a tenuous union of leftprogressive support for human rights, the environment, etc.
with a right neoliberal market logic (p. 199). We can be
reassured however by Milton Friedmans insistence that
business is about making money and money alone still
prevails (p. 198).
Consequently it comes as no surprise to find in the
conclusion, that resistance to market globalizationitself a
globalized movementis regarded as only implausibly
successful to these authors. And while structural approaches
to globalization agglomerate the polluting destroyers of the
ozone layer (thus cattle ranchers, fast food operators,
airports, airlines, car manufacturers, oil refiners and
exponential multiples of consumers), this activity is all in
fact legitimated by the scripts of corporate responsibility.
Globalization benignly and positively: speeds the sending
of diseases to the exposed populations of impoverished
countries, and also organizes a huge worldwide movement
about the right to health (p. 267). This last revelation will
be resounding good news for Moore (2007).
This book is an interesting curiosity. On this basis I
commend it to readers of mainstream and critical organizational behaviour and/or for specific insights into the
arguments, which support globalization. It is a wellrationalised text that avoids the nauseating extremes of

other conventional mono-dimensional, business-as-usual

apologias (Norberg, 2005; Wolf, 2005). While not explicitly
enthusiastic for the consequences of globalization, yet
neither is it critical: this is globalization in reverent analysis.
A perfect, politically correct analysis that mentions Beck,
Giddens, Foucault and Baumanbut does not engage
intellectually with what any of them represents. Thus, it
condones and strengthens the status quo and superficially
palliates the critics of globalization, foreclosing critique. In
this dubious achievementand truly evoking Bauman
(1998)this book manages to tastefully fulfil his apparent
anticipation that the faster and more glibly globalization
can supplant orthodox practices and beliefs, the faster it
will become a no-questions-asked canon.
These authors have provided such a canon. Globalization
as a concept is deftly deployed as a means of concealing the
political appropriations that it effects in the name of market
capitalism. Such incidentals are neither an issue of sinister
remark nor any morally questionable consequence in this
pristine volume.

References
Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences.
New York City, NY: Columbia University Press.
Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London:
Sage.
Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (2006). The new spirit of capitalism.
London: Verso.
de Toqueville, A. (2000). Democracy in America. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press [(1836)].
Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad management theories are destroying good
management practices. Academy of Management Learning and
Education, 4, 7591.
Giddens, A. (1986). The constitution of society: Outline of the
theory of structuration. Cambridge: Polity.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2001). Empire. London: Harvard University
Press.
Moore, M. (2007). Sicko!. USA: Lionsgate (113 min).
Norberg, J. (2005). In defence of global capitalism. New Delhi:
Academic Foundation.
Ventresca, M. (1996). When states count: International and political
dynamics in modern census establishment. Stanford University.
Wolf, M. (2005). Why globalization works. Boston, MA: Yale Nota
Bene.

David Bevan
The School of Management, Royal Holloway,
University of London EGHAM TW20 0EX, UK
E-mail address: david.bevan@rhul.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.scaman.2007.09.001

Deirdre N. McCloskey, The bourgeois virtues

ethics for an age of commerce. Chicago and London:
Chicago University Press, ISBN: 978-0-226-55663-8,
2006 (616pp., price (cloth) USD 32:50)
Having read and reflected upon this book I feel I have
become a different person. It is not that the book is
particularly exciting or easy to read, in fact it is quite
demanding. It is that now I look differently at my empirical

material. I see things in it that I did not notice before. I have

already revised an article manuscript that I was about to
submit. What is it? Why does this book speak to me?
We all know Deirdre McCloskey and her role to be a thorn
in the flesh for all the rationalist (prudent) economists of
the world. This volume (and the three complementary
ones yet to be delivered to complete the argument)
is the strongest argument to date, and a hopeful one
because it promises to put management and economics on
speaking terms with one another, that is, if our friends, the

ARTICLE IN PRESS
Book reviews
thoughtful economists, come to their senses and realise that
the Hobbes Problem
Can a group of asocial monsters, who have never been
children and have never loved anything, never had faith
or hope or justice or temperance, be shown on a
blackboard to create out of rational self-interest a civil
society? (p. 497)
is insoluble, at least under instrumental rationality axioms
and strict self-interest, and should be recognised as such.
The economists who have tried again and again to solve the
problem want to find society on contract without ethics.
What McCloskey proposes is to go back to Smith (whom most
of us refer to without having read the relevant texts) and do
both: agreement and morals, reason and ethics.
For management scholars this is very hopeful because
in our fieldwork we have found again and again that
people care about each other, that organisations keep
promises, and managers are honest because this is the
proper way to act, even if it may be uncomfortable.
Tales about such irrational behaviour are often dismissed
by our journals as anecdotal evidence of failed management. In the rationalist science of economics there
is no place for what Adam Smith called the faculty of
speech, which people can use to express all kind of
concerns that are not relevant in a world of monolithic
decision makers. But when we observe what managers
actually do when they manage we find that talk is their
business (Tengblad, 2002), thereby acquiring a sense of
community and moral responsibility; however, they may
have started their journey.
So, what is McCloskeys argument?
Well, first and foremost the whole argument is in defence
of the benefits of capitalism, which has been such a
worldwide success because it develops and attends to the
bourgeois virtues. This is the point, the success of capitalism
is because it fosters the virtues, not because of greed. It is
virtuous to buy low and sell high because it is a virtue to be
true (Faith) to your duty to improve yourself and be alert
to the opportunity to help the seller to get rid of something
and the buyer to get hold of the same thing. We live in an
age of commerce, which is also the age of the bourgeoisie,
and to live a full and flourishing life we have to come out
well on all seven bourgeois virtues. It will not do to live by
prudence alone in solitary utility maximisation.
McCloskey fights a battle on two fronts. She attacks
Samuelsonian economics for having reduced the meaning of
prudence from its original phronesis (practical wisdom/good
judgement) to a calculus of pleasure and pain (utility). She
attacks the clerisy1 who view commerce, and the
bourgeoisie, with disdain. Making and selling steel or
hamburgers is not the most prestigious field among
intellectuals. Writing long books is (p. 469!). On both
fronts there is a distinct preference for using deductive logic
to arrive at certain conclusions (our heritage from Des1

The species seems to have arisen after 1848, even if in the time
of Aristotle it was quite natural to think of those who provided all
the life-sustaining services as slaves. One informative definition
of the clerisy is contained in a quote from Harry Truman (p. 73): An
expert is someone who does not want to learn anything new,
because then he would not be an expert.

77
cartes), which in turn requires that we reduce the complexity either by resorting to utility calculation or by retreating
into emotivism. This latter doctrine, the result of
philosophy falling from religious faith as a basis for ultimate
values, holds that all evaluative judgements and more
specifically all moral judgements are nothing but expressions of preference (p. 397). There is no (rational) way to
determine what goals one should strive for, so when people
disagree in normative judgement the only methods left for
resolving value issues are the ballot or shooting it out on the
barricades. Shame on you! McCloskeys solution is to bring
the values (virtue ethics) in, to bring Adam Smith back in
and to recognise that thesebourgeois virtuesare not
contradictory. It is the way we live now, mainly, at work, on
our good days, and the way we should, Mondays through
Fridays.
How does she organise the argument?
Well, such a long book needs a map, which is given
in a summary called apology in the Greek/Christian
tradition of arguing for the defendant by giving reasons.
The defendant is capitalism and the reasons for its defence
are that it makes us richer, it lets us live longer, and
it improves our ethicsoh, and anti-capitalism is bad for
us. Then comes an appeal to us to listen with an open
mind, and then the basis for the argument is introduced
(virtue ethics) with the seven virtues to be dealt within
the text:









Hope (optimism, entrepreneurship).

Faith (identity, integrity, loyalty, honesty).
Love (benevolence, friendship, agape).
Justice (social balance and honesty).
Courage (autonomy, daring, endurance).
Temperance (individual balance and restraint, humility).
Prudence (know-how, foresight, phronesis).

These virtues cover what we need in order to flourish as

human beings living our bourgeois lives.
Then follows a thorough exposition of these seven virtues,
their treatment through history, in literature, in different
cultures, and in current controversies (Chapter 7 is called
Bourgeois economists against love).
Love can be thought of as a commitment of the will to
the true good of another (p. 91) Yes! Well put! Then comes
the counter-argument quoted from a French author (1671)
sounding like a modern (male) economist regarding love in
terms of exchange: Human civilityyis only a sort of
commerce of self-love, in which one endeavours to arouse
the love of others by displaying some affection towards
them. No, dear! It is not!
Then comes the argument that mobilises the heroes
of our culture in the defence of lovefrom Aristotle
and Cicero to Aquinas, Grotius, Adam Smith, CS Lewis
and Amartya Sen, and many more. It is great reading
(relaxed style) and you learn a lot along the way. One feels
educated, and that is an outcome of the authors benevolence, offering us many inroads to the understanding of
these virtues.
But we need to understand these virtues as a set.
McCloskey quotes MacIntyre (1999, p. 5): The virtues
that we need if we are to develop from our initial

ARTICLE IN PRESS
78
animal condition into that of independent rational agents
[viz. prudence, temperance, and justice], and the virtues
that we need if we are to confront and respond to
vulnerability and disability both of ourselves [courage,
hope] and in others [love, faith], belong to one and
the same set of virtues, the distinctive virtues of dependent
rational animals. McCloskeys argument is, first, that his
set cannot be reduced, either with Kantianism by elevating
the analysis to the will to good in order to avoid selfcontradiction or with utilitarianism to utility calculation.
Second, that the seven virtues are connected, in at
least two dimensions; there is one dimension autonomy/
freedomconnection/solidarity (community) with the
ends represented by courage/hope, and faith/love/temperance, respectively. The other dimension is the sacred
(transcendent)profane one, represented by hope/faith/
love (the Christian virtues), and justice/temperance/
prudence (pagan, cool virtues). Together this spaced
set of virtues constitutes a philosophical psychology
not cognition and preferences but judgement and good
reasons one comes to think of Adam Smiths sympathy
as a possible summary of judgement in all seven virtues.
But how can we manage all these dimensions? First,
we need to recognise that TRUTH is an asymptote,
and so is GOOD. They represent absolute limits, not
achievements. In most disciplines we are not yet thereand
most disciplines are well advised not to judge other
disciplines by their own utopian standards. (McCloskey
reminds us of how Lord Kelvin, at the apex of physics selfconfidence, dismissed the absurd theory of Darwin by
asserting that the sun could not possibly have had enough
chemical energy to accommodate the eons necessary for
Darwins species to evolve.) Second, it is a matter of
toggling between exemplars and rules (p. 330). We need
to be ethical realists, since there is no known test for
ultimate ontology, and to recognise that ethics exists
because, as Nozick (1989) put it, at least sometimes it is
possible to coordinate actions to mutual benefit. The
choices we make are not the result of applying a formula but
of rhetorical and narrative reflection. We do what is
appropriate for a person like me in a situation like this, and
it comes out all right often enough.
We can discern some sorrow (chapter 34) over the way
virtues fell into disuse between Machiavelli and Bertrand
Russell but then we arrive at Part 6, starting with chapter
38, about the bourgeois uses of the virtues. Here, McCloskey
returns to Smith, who still had the social solidarity virtues in
focus (although the Christian virtues hope and faith were to

Book reviews
some extent suppressed), as she prepares to demonstrate
that prudence, the major bourgeois virtue, isand must
betempered by the other virtues. Granted that prudence
serves as a grammar for behaviour, efficiency should be
sought and waste avoided, but limitless accumulation of
resources is a Weberian/Marxian myth. At the core of
Kapitalismus2 is the purpose of becoming a respected
citizen. Greenfeld (2001) argues that full citizenship in
Dutch cities, i.e., with voting rights, was achieved when a
man had accumulated the required capital (had become a
capitalist).3
After seeking to demonstrate the presence of the
solidarity virtues in most of our activitieseven Gary
Becker accepts that bourgeois virtues are not a betrayal of
the science of economicsand exposing the myth of modern
rationality, McCloskey comments on some applications of
virtue reasoning to topics such as good work, wage
slavery, the rich, and robber barons who spot
undervalued assets and then, like Carnegie, for instance,
donate their capital to good causes. (Well, there are also
some bad robber barons around.)
She closes this first volume with a discussion of her point
of view, which includes a revival of Smiths almost
complete theory of bourgeois virtues. That his theory
was unmoored from virtue ethics and abandoned by later
exponents of contractarianism was an ethical catastrophe.
The final words (to repeat): Bourgeois virtues is no
contradiction. It is the way we live now, mainly, at work, on
our good days, and the way we should, Mondays through
Fridays sound like preaching. Maybe she does preach now
and then, but wow! she certainly speaks to me! What do
you think?

References
Greenfeld, L. (2001). The spirit of capitalismnationalism and
economic growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1999). Dependent rational animals: Why human
beings need the virtues. Chicago: Open Court.
Nozick, R. (1989). Invariances: The structure of the objective
world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tengblad, S. (2002). Time and space in managerial work. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 18(4), 543566.

S. Jo
nsson
Gothenburg Research Institute, Sweden
E-mail address: sten.jonsson@gri.gu.se

doi:10.1016/j.scaman.2007.05.003

2
McCloskey honors its German origin, I wonder if it is not Dutch
(Greenfeld, 2001, p. 80property tax registers of capitalisten
from 1621, four years later there were also halve capitalisten.
3
It is perhaps also worth noting that property ownership was a
requirement for acceptance as a soldier in the Roman army
(property-owners would be more courageous soldiers than mercenaries), up to the point where Hannibal demonstrated that there
were not enough capitalists around to defend the nation.