Ethical Judgment and Radical Business Changes: The Role of Entrepreneurial Perspicacity

Massimiliano Pellegrini () and Cristiano Ciappei ()

Journal of Business Ethics, 2015, vol. 128, issue 4, 769-788

Abstract: This study examines the implications of practical reason for entrepreneurial activities. Our study is based on Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of such virtue, with a particular focus on the partition of practical reason in potential parts such as synesis, or common sense, and gnome, or perspicacity. Since entrepreneurial acts and actions deal with extremely uncertain situations, we argue that only this perspicacity, as the ability of correctly judging in exceptional cases, has the power to find wisdom under such blurred conditions. Perspicacity frees entrepreneurs from their cognitive schemata rendering them able to be truly entrepreneurial. Based on this vision and thanks to a semantic analysis of the meaning of the Greek word gnome, we construct an interpretative model for entrepreneurial judgment composed of three dimensions, specifically, knowledge-cognitive, external-affective and personal-reflective. The model highlights how a ‘successful’ entrepreneurial judgment is also such from a holistic point of view. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Practical reason; Entrepreneurial perspicacity or gnome; Common sense or synesis; Virtue ethics; Thomas Aquinas; Decision-making process; Ethical judgment; Successful entrepreneurs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-013-1988-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:128:y:2015:i:4:p:769-788

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1988-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().