Conclusion

For the virtues to be successfully applied to business, business activity must be viewed as a 'practice' as defined above. Whether or not any business activity qualifies as a practice depends less on the type of activity, and more on the character and motivations of the people engaged in it. The challenge that any organization faces, therefore, is to educate managers as to the desirability of virtue-based behavior.

As a 'true professional', the good manager strives to achieve a certain specific type of morally inclusive excellence. One critical feature of this excellence is that its achievement entails adherence to certain 'virtues' of character, such as honesty, fairness, prudence, and courage. The excellence pursued by the true professional, therefore, is not something that can be measured in strictly material terms, it is a moral as well as an economic excellence. Albeit hard to quantify, individuals, 'exemplars' who have achieved this excellence are generally identifiable by their predisposition to place personal integrity over and above any material considerations.