Abstract

Management has changed in the last few decades, in what Khurana (2007) called “the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession”. Nowadays, it is not difficult to affirm that the trends he already observed then have been confirmed and even increased. The invasion of the field of management, mainly by economics, but also by other disciplines, has continued and gone further, leaving schools (and their graduates) in the hands of the market. If markets and organizations have often been seen as two alternative ways of organizing human cooperation, markets seem today to be managing organizations through mainstream economism, which consists in believing that the elementary notions of economics that we can find in any introductory textbook are a good description of the real world of organizations and the economy. This paper intends to formally establish that intellectual virtues (knowledge) and moral virtues (justice mainly) are necessary to bring actions into practice successfully. We will show how the decisions of both consumers and organization employees depended both on the knowledge they possess, (more specifically, Aristotelian practical wisdom and the “information of time and place” that Hayek 1945 considered fundamental for an efficient allocation of resources); and that, besides, this kind of Hayekian information and practical wisdom push in the same direction. Finally, that to put those decisions into practice the development of moral virtues, mainly justice as well as temperance are needed.