Abstract
A key idea of virtue ethics is the idea that people’s narrative identity is basic to their good. After considering the notion of narrative identity itself, this chapter suggests that the idea helps to clarify the concept of meaningful work and also to understand how important aspects of people’s identities are affected by the organizations they work in, with implications for issues of work-life balance. Work is meaningful when it has narrative-type connections to other parts of an individual’s life, and work-life balance requires such connectedness between work and other parts of life. However, individuals’ narrative identities have to be contrasted with their social group identities, gained just through people categorizing themselves as members of social groups. Social group identities interact with narrative identities, but so far as possible diversity policies should concentrate on individuals’ narrative identities.
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Provis, C. (2022). Organizations, Virtue Ethics, and Narrative Identity. In: Neesham, C., Reihlen, M., Schoeneborn, D. (eds) Handbook of Philosophy of Management. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76606-1_23
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