Excellence: capturing Aristotelian notions of meaning and purpose.

Anderson, Alistair R.; Crockett, Carter

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that conventional models for excellence are too narrow, too internally focused, too instrumental and too functionalist to achieve excellence in dealing with emerging broad socioeconomic concerns. We try to show that Aristotle’s theory of virtue has useful contemporary relevance and can be developed and used to understand a fuller notion of business excellence. We develop a qualitative research instrument to discover and illustrate excellence and to establish its modern nature. Our application of virtue demonstrated that purpose was the key to achieving excellence. We find that the virtue theory can be a useful and practical guide to producing excellence.

Citation

ANDERSON, A.R. and CROCKETT, C. 2008. Excellence: capturing Aristotelian notions of meaning and purpose. International journal of business excellence [online], 1(3), pages 262-281. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBEX.2008.017883

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 21, 2008
• Online Publication Date: Apr 21, 2008
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2008
• Deposit Date: Sep 25, 2008
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 25, 2008
• Journal: International journal of business excellence
• Print ISSN: 1756-0047
• Electronic ISSN: 1756-0055
• Publisher: Inderscience
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 262-281
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBEX.2008.017883
• Keywords: Aristotle; Balance; Excellence; Meaning; Purpose; Theory of virtue; Business excellence; Socio-economic concerns
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/211