BusinessBartleby: The grip of viceNobody’s perfect. Managers should not forget thatThe arc of current management thinking bends towards virtue.Co-operation is what makes teams purr.Low-ego empathy is the hallmark of a thoroughly modern boss.Purpose matters to employees as much as pay; society looms as large as shareholders.But appealing to people’s better nature, and ignoring their vices, is an incomplete approach.Nor is being good necessarily great for your own career.Take a look at the seven capital virtues and the seven deadly sins laid out in Christian tradition.The virtues are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility; the vices are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath and pride.In aggregate the first set of qualities is the one for managers to emulate.Neither chaste charity nor lustful gluttony have much to recommend them as a management ethos; but only one is a lawsuit waiting to happen.Diligence clearly beats sloth.Greed is out of fashion.
