Cultivating Moral Character and Virtue in Professional Practice

Cultivating Moral Character and Virtue in Professional Practice is a pioneering collection of essays focused on the place of character and virtue in professional practice. Professional practices usually have codes of conduct designed to ensure good conduct; but while such codes may be necessary and useful, they appear far from sufficient, since many recent public scandals in professional life seem to have been attributable to failures of personal moral character. This book argues that there is a pressing need to devote more attention in professional education to the cultivation or development of such moral qualities as integrity, courage, self-control, service and selflessness. Featuring contributions from distinguished leaders in the application of virtue ethics to professional practice, such as Sarah Banks, Ann Gallagher, Geoffrey Moore, Justin Oakley and Nancy Sherman, the volume looks beyond traditional professions to explore the ethical dimensions of a broad range of important professional practices. Inspired by a successful international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic, the book examines various ways of promoting moral character and virtue in professional life from the general ethical perspective of contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue theory. The professional concerns of this work are of global significance and the book will be valuable reading for all working in contemporary professional practices. It will be of particular interest to academics, practitioners and postgraduate students in the fields of education, medicine, nursing, social work, business and commerce and military service.

David Carr is Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh and lately Professor of Ethics and Education in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues of the University of Birmingham (UK).

Contents Introduction by DAVID CARR Part 1: Virtue, practical wisdom and moral psychology in professional practice Chapter 1: Why you cannot regulate for virtuous compassion, by PAUL SNELLING Chapter 2: Thin 'thank you's': resentment and gratitude in homecoming rituals, by NANCY SHERMAN Chapter 3: Role duties, role virtues, and the practice of business, by MIGUEL ALZOLA Chapter 4: Practising professional ethical wisdom: the role of 'ethics work' in the social welfare field, by SARAH BANKS Chapter 5: Attachment, detachment and indifference in clinical practice, by PETER TOON Part 2: The social, historical and institutional context of virtuous professional practice Chapter 6: Creating regulatory environments for practical wisdom and role virtues in medical practice, by JUSTIN OAKLEY Chapter 7: Progress in nursing ethics: something old, something new..., by ANN GALLAGHER Chapter 8: Organizations, character, virtue and the role of professional practices, by GEOFF MOORE Chapter 9: The institutional framework of professional virtue, by ANNE-MARIE SØNDERGAARD CHRISTENSEN Chapter 10: Character in the British army: A precarious professional practice, by DAVID WALKER Part 3: Learning professionally virtuous character: research and development Chapter 11: Experienced UK nurses and the missing U-curve of virtue-based reasoning, by JINU VARGHESE AND KRISTJAN KRISTJANSSON Chapter 12: Beyond research ethics: How scientific virtue theory reframes and extends responsible conduct of research, by ROBERT T. PENNOCK Chapter 13: Transformation needs an agent: Preparing senior professional practitioners to nurture character, virtue and professionalism in their supervisees, by DELLA FISH AND LINDA DE COSSART Chapter 14: Practitioner research, practical wisdom and teaching, by WOUTER SANDERSE Chapter 15: Why is there lack of growth in character virtues? An insight into business students across British business schools, by YAN HUO AND KRISTJAN KRISTJANSSON Postscript by DAVID CARR Index