Roles and Role-Play

To a great extent, social life is role-play. When people enter a store to purchase goods, they view themselves as “shoppers”; the shopper deals with a person who views himself or herself as a “salesperson.” “Shopper” and “salesperson” are social statuses; that is, they identify a position in a complex social order (Linton Reference Linton1936; Gould Reference Gould2002; Jensen and Roy Reference Jensen and Roy2008; Jensen, Kim, and Kim Reference Jensen, Kim and Kim2012). The interaction between the shopper and the salesperson is governed by expectations that guide the behavior of both status holders; that is, both shopper and salesperson are performing a social role. Similarly, a lawyer and a client, a police officer and a suspect, a parent and a child, and the participants in a boardroom discussion are all performing roles (Biddle Reference Biddle1979, Reference Biddle1986; Merton Reference Merton1968). Social life therefore depends on our common understanding of roles.

The roles that are attached to social statuses are themselves social constructs. The role of “shopper” exists only because of our collective understanding of the rules according to which certain goods are exchanged, and a shopper behaves in a particular way in a particular context because she or he is expected to do so. The social norms, beliefs, and preferences that underpin role expectations are influenced by social context (Searle Reference Searle1995), and hence the same role in two different cultures, or at two different points in history, may come with significantly different behavioral expectations. For example, a lawyer may be expected to engage in corruption in some cultures, whereas in others, that kind of behavior would be vehemently condemned. It may be that, in some cases, a change in shared expectations with regard to a business activity is so deep that one can no longer say that it involves the same role: for example, if a society came to believe that, in some circumstances, its doctors no longer had a fiduciary responsibility to the sick and could instead prioritize financial interests, then it might be more appropriate to give their activity a new name, such as “schmoctoring” (Applbaum Reference Applbaum2000, 51). Nevertheless, when a certain level of consensus exists with regard to the content of a role, each set of people in that role normally exhibits characteristic behaviors (Biddle Reference Biddle1979; Burt Reference Burt1982): parents nurture and educate their children, doctors promote good health and alleviate suffering in their patients, and so on.

Roles are “facilitating as well as constraining” of human action (Sunstein Reference Sunstein1996, 922); that is, roles facilitate complex human interaction because, in limiting the range of behavioral patterns that is socially permissible in each context, they reduce the unpredictability of social interaction and so reduce the cognitive burden imposed by social life. Some authors have claimed that, because they constrain behavior, social roles unacceptably reduce, and perhaps even deny, individual freedom (Adorno Reference Adorno1973, Reference Adorno2000, Reference Adorno2006). Relatedly, excessive identification with social roles may distort people’s perceptions of their own and others’ needs and interests (Reeves and Sinnicks Reference Reeves and Sinnicks2021). A less pessimistic argument holds that it may be desirable for individuals to adopt role-derived reasons for action, and that they can do so without experiencing any diminution of their individual freedom (Chappell Reference Chappell, Dare and Swanton2020). But, even if they are freely accepted, role-related reasons for action may, as a matter of fact, lead to behavior that would be unacceptable if exhibited outside of the particular role that dictates it (Applbaum Reference Applbaum2000; Oakley and Cocking Reference Oakley and Cocking2001), and such behavior may be in opposition to the role holder’s moral standards. It is to this possibility that we turn next.

Moral Disjunction

Moral disjunction occurs when the collectively held behavioral expectations associated with a business or professional role violate personal morality. The standards of personal morality that we have in mind derive from the virtues for, as Annas (Reference Annas2011, 102) says, it is hard to imagine that a person could consciously nurture a “commitment to badness:” that is, a commitment to be a better liar or a better coward (say). If, as we do, one accepts Annas’s position, then moral disjunction is a problem that occurs when the social expectations associated with a role are inconsistent with a personal desire to live virtuously.

To illustrate moral disjunction, consider the LIBOR rigging scandal. LIBOR, or London Inter Bank Offered Rate, is a market reference interest rate intended to reflect the price at which banks could borrow short-term funds from one another. LIBOR is being phased out in the wake of the revelation that banks systematically misreported their borrowing rates to generate profits on their derivatives trading books. Brokers involved in LIBOR rigging claimed that they were merely doing their jobs, and many other bankers agreed with them (Enrich Reference Enrich2017, 95, 266, 316); for example, in interviews with the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office, the derivatives trader Tom Hayes claimed that “I have told you from the beginning that [rigging the LIBOR fix] was just part of doing my job” (Enrich Reference Enrich2017, 333). It is clear from these and other public statements on the scandal that derivatives traders believed that their role required them to engage in this sort of misrepresentation. And yet the same people had families for whom they cared, and they were often active in their communities (one of them volunteered at a retirement home, for example: Enrich Reference Enrich2017, 302). There is therefore strong evidence that derivatives traders operating in the LIBOR markets experienced moral disjunction. It seems likely that this is a more general problem in finance: Cohn, Fehr, and Maréchal (Reference Cohn, Fehr and Maréchal2014) present evidence that financial market professionals behave differently in their professional and personal lives.

Moral disjunction is not restricted to the financial sector; it pervades modern societies, because the functioning of those societies is dependent on the performance of complex social roles. The literature on role ethics discusses a number of cases that could be characterized as instances of moral disjunction. For example, Dare (Reference Dare, Ulatowski and Van Zyl2021, 235) reports a situation in which two lawyers “faced an appalling conflict between the well settled norms of their roles as lawyers and the norms of ordinary morality” because lawyer–client privilege prevented them from disclosing that their client was guilty of a murder for which another person had been imprisoned for life. Likewise, Applbaum (Reference Applbaum2000, 48–49) discusses a legal case in which a doctor felt that his role as an insurance company expert justified his failure to disclose a life-threatening ailment to a victim of a car accident.

It is common to justify the behavioral standards associated with business and professional roles in terms of “efficiency” (see, e.g., Weber Reference Weber1946, 337; Simon Reference Simon1957, 39–41; Williamson Reference Williamson1975, 17). But the normative force of an argument founded on efficiency is not obvious. Indeed, the emotivist philosophers of the mid-twentieth century held that there is no objective reason to favor any normative standard (Ayer Reference Ayer1936; Hare Reference Hare1952) and, hence, that normative statements were merely expressions of approval that, when they were deployed in an argument, were really attempts to exert power. Some authors have argued that emotivism informs modern management, which, by their account, is largely concerned with the exertion of this type of persuasive power (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 30). It may be almost impossible for managers to avoid embodying emotivism and so behaving manipulatively (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 23–27), but they are possessed of agency and may nevertheless succeed in doing so, especially if they are supported by appropriate governance structures (Moore Reference Moore2017, 106–7; Reference Moore2012; Sinnicks Reference Sinnicks2018). We wish to deny the emotivist claim that the logic of bureaucratic efficiency has the same moral standing as any other reason for action. Such a denial gives people in business and professional roles a reason to resist emotivist logic and grounds our investigation of moral disjunction; in turn, our denial is founded on the virtue-ethical position that some human characteristics are objectively excellent. To pursue this line of reasoning, we now turn to a discussion of moral disjunction and virtue ethics.

Disidentification

Disidentification occurs when a person plays a social role while maintaining a belief that the role-play does not constitute a part of his or her imaginary of authenticity. For example, a derivatives trader who understood that his manipulation of LIBOR rates was wrong but who convinced himself that his trader identity was a mask that he wore at work, so that trading was not part of his “real life,” would have successfully disidentified. Researchers have demonstrated that disidentification is commonly used to minimize the discomfort experienced by people who find themselves in a work role that they view as inconsistent with their authentic selves (Elsbach Reference Elsbach, Sutton and Staw1999; Pratt Reference Pratt2000; Elsbach and Bhattacharya Reference Elsbach and Bhattacharya2001; Brown and Humphreys Reference Brown and Humphreys2006). Disidentification succeeds by allowing workers to feel that they have protected their real selves from the smothering embrace of entrenched corporate power (Kosmala and Herrbach Reference Kosmala and Herrbach2006; Van Maanen Reference Van Maanen, Frost, Moore, Louis, Lundberg and Martin1991; Mumby Reference Mumby2005).

Disidentification is a strategy that enables a life simultaneously to exhibit several distinct narrative threads. However, although it may be a rational response to the psychological discomfort caused by moral disjunction, it provides only short-lived and superficial relief (Brown and Matsuo Reference Brown and Matsuo2020, 169; Rozuel Reference Rozuel2011, 696). Moreover, some authors argue that fragmenting a life across several narrative threads is morally problematic, because doing so may preclude a clear sense of self and so undermine the reasoning that underpins moral choices (Frankfurt Reference Frankfurt1971; Williams Reference Williams1981). Vicious behavior may ensue when reasoning is impaired in this way (Aristotle [350 bc] Reference Brown and Ross2009), and when a life is fragmented, it may be impossible to ascribe meaning or purpose to it and, hence, to pursue the good (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 217; 2016, 228).Footnote ¹

It is important to distinguish the morally unacceptable fragmentation caused by moral disjunction from other, acceptable, types of fragmentation. As a practical matter, real lives are messy, and good people usually have life narratives that are fragmented to some extent (Dare Reference Dare, Ulatowski and Van Zyl2021); the requirement that a life be perfectly unified therefore seems unrealistic and impossibly demanding (Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 154). For example, a budding artist who tells herself that her mundane call center job does not express her true self is disidentifying and has a disunified life narrative. But the call center work does not demand vicious behavior and does not, in principle, cause moral disjunction; if it enables her to pursue her primary life goals, then it makes sense for the artist, and it may be admirable. The artist’s life exhibits what Swanton (Reference Swanton, Ulatowski and Van Zyl2021b) calls the virtue of appropriate disunity.

However, when disidentification is a response to moral disjunction, it cannot be justified from a virtue-ethical perspective. To see why, suppose that a person imagines his authentic self to be kind and courageous and that he takes a job in which, because he fears his superiors, he bullies his subordinates. That person may attempt to deal with the resultant moral disjunction by disidentifying from his work self and excluding his cruel and cowardly behavior toward his colleagues from the facts that he uses to sustain his imaginary of authenticity. But this position is unsustainable, because virtues, as character traits, are dispositions that manifest in all areas of life. This person could claim to do kind and courageous things in his private life but cannot claim to be a kind and courageous person. Swanton (Reference Swanton, Ulatowski and Van Zyl2021b, 31) characterizes the problem in this case as a violation of the requirement that a life exhibit overall narrative goodness.

Disengagement

To explain how people can engage in harmful conduct without experiencing psychological pain, Albert Bandura (Reference Bandura and Reich1990a, Reference Bandura1990b, Reference Bandura1999, Reference Bandura2002, Reference Bandura2016) has theorized moral disengagement, which is the process by which people selectively exclude some activities from normal moral consideration so that they can maintain a positive self-image. Bandura was an early contributor to a psychology literature that denies the claim that moral reasoning is performed by rational and autonomous agents and instead characterizes moral behavior as resulting from the interaction of social, cognitive, and affective influences (see also Haidt Reference Haidt2001). That interaction gives rise to self-evaluative, affective, and behavioral reactions that together constitute the self-regulatory mechanisms that mediate moral reasoning and moral actions. Under normal circumstances, individuals avoid immoral behavior to avoid self-condemnation, and they choose to behave morally because doing so reinforces their sense of self-worth (Bandura Reference Bandura2002, 102; 2016, 29; see also Blasi Reference Blasi1983). Bandura’s central claim is that people are only able to do bad things without experiencing psychological discomfort if their self-regulatory mechanisms have been deactivated. This deactivation generates moral disengagement: it can occur through the redefinition of a person’s actions so as to make those actions appear less harmful or seem morally justified, through a displacement or diffusion of responsibility, or through the dehumanization or blaming of the victims. Moral disengagement is not about convincing one’s peers that one has not behaved unethically; it requires one to convince oneself (Bandura Reference Bandura2016, 33–34). However, it is not necessarily a purely individual phenomenon: some social systems are structured in such a way that they only function if different people, engaged in different tasks, contribute to a harmful outcome. In those cases, participants exonerate each other from moral responsibility; collective moral disengagement therefore arises out of “synergistic group dynamics” (Bandura Reference Bandura2016, 100).

Moral disengagement appears to have been common among the derivatives traders who were caught up in the LIBOR scandal. In line with this claim, Enrich (Reference Enrich2017, 105) identifies a common perception among participants in the financial sector that they “[operated] within a closed system facing off other predatory professionals.” Tom Hayes, who received a lengthy jail sentence in 2015 for his manipulation of the LIBOR fixing, reportedly “didn’t spend much time thinking about whether what he was doing was right or wrong. Those weren’t values he assigned to his job” (Enrich Reference Enrich2017, 185). That is, traders like Hayes appear to have managed to deactivate their self-regulatory mechanisms by situating their trading activities in an amoral space. This seems to be a clear case of collective moral disengagement. Something similar appears to have occurred when many Enron employees convinced themselves that the manipulation of earnings reports was a technical, rather than a moral, decision (Newman et al. Reference Newman, Le, North-Samardzic and Cohen2020; for an outline of the Enron case, see McLean and Elkind Reference McLean and Elkind2013).

Bandura (Reference Bandura2016, 26) claims that moral disengagement “resolves the conflict between virtue and harm,” because it “enable[s] virtuous individuals to behave in harmful ways but still retain a self-view as virtuous.” We disagree with this claim. It is true that moral disengagement is a way for people to cope with moral disjunction and to protect an imaginary of authenticity that is oriented toward the virtues. However, we do not think that it resolves the conflict between virtue and harm. Individuals who are morally disengaged cannot be virtuous, for their vicious behavior in certain situations is compounded by the fact that moral disengagement suppresses or distorts morally relevant information (Moore Reference Moore2008, 133–35), so that they cannot understand what the virtues require in those situations. Disengaged people tell themselves a false story about their behavior: their lives therefore lack the virtue of narrative accuracy, and they misunderstand who they are (Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 166). The consequence of that is a lack of integrity and the resultant inability to build a meaningful life narrative in pursuit of eudaimonia (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 217; 2016, 229). As in the case of disidentification, a morally disengaged person can do virtuous things when his or her self-regulatory mechanisms are activated, but he or she cannot be virtuous because, if the virtues are character traits, then they should be deeply entrenched and so motivate behavior in every context.

Discardment

We use the term discardment to refer to situations in which people inhabit one role so fully that the behavioral expectations associated with that role drive their actions in all aspects of their lives. A celebrated fictional example is the butler in Ishiguro’s (Reference Ishiguro1989) Remains of the Day, who identifies so closely with the demands of his professional role that he denies the need to mourn his dead father; similarly, members of the Night’s Watch in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novel series swear to “live and die at [their] post” and, hence, discard every personal commitment from their lives (Martin Reference Martin1996). MacIntyre (Reference MacIntyre2007, 29) is speaking of discardment when he describes managerial “characters” in whom “role and personality [are] fused.” People in organizations sometimes overidentify with their work role to the extent that they may engage in pro-organizational workplace crime (Vadera and Pratt Reference Vadera and Pratt2013; Dukerich, Kramer, and Parks Reference Dukerich, Kramer, Parks, Whetten and Godfrey1998). Wieland (Reference Wieland, Ulatowski and Van Zyl2021, 220) identifies a form of discardment when she discusses willful self-abnegation in cases of extreme religious devotion. And Zimmerman (Reference Zimmerman2003) argues that some people may discard their selves entirely to withstand the vicissitudes of their work environments; it is conceivable, for example, that a LIBOR trader who mixes only with other traders and brokers might manage to suppress his or her nonwork self entirely.

Discardment is a way to avoid moral disjunction, but it undermines the pursuit of virtue, and it constitutes a loss of integrity. Successful discardment renders personal morality irrelevant so that conflict dissipates and moral disjunction is impossible. Discardment prevents people from tailoring their behavior appropriately to the context and, hence, from pursuing the virtues across their lives. Moreover, because personal morality is typically aligned with the virtues, if discardment resolves moral disjunction in favor of a problematic work role, then it necessarily involves the embrace of some vicious behavioral patterns. For this reason, and because people typically want to view themselves as good, it is unlikely that discardment could occur without at least some level of moral disengagement.

Finally, discardment involves a sacrifice of integrity, because people of integrity accept that commitments across all parts of their lives have the capacity to generate valid claims on them; integrity therefore requires people actively to monitor their performance across their various roles to ensure that “no part is left out” from their search for coherence (Davion Reference Davion and Card1991, 185). Discardment precludes this sort of monitoring and, in particular, prevents people from acknowledging the moral strength of their personal commitments.

We have now shown how the behavioral expectations associated with social roles can cause moral disjunction, and we have examined three strategies that allow people to deal with the resultant psychological discomfort. We have argued that each of those strategies undermines integrity. People who are faced with moral disjunction therefore need an alternative way to cope with it. The following section addresses this need.

Role Coadunation

In different ways, each of the three strategies that we have identified for coping with moral disjunction succeeds by suppressing morally relevant facts. Disidentification works when people manage to disavow the morally important fact that their selves are constituted by their behavior in every part of their lives. Disengagement succeeds when people manage to exclude activities from moral consideration, even though those activities are morally important. And discardment succeeds when people cease to acknowledge the real moral strength of commitments in their personal lives.

We claim that a virtuous response to moral disjunction has an epistemic and a behavioral aspect. The epistemic aspect rests on a complete reading of the situation that omits nothing and denies no moral facts, and the behavioral aspect is constituted by the capacity to use a complete reading to perform an integrated enactment of a role in a way that allows for a life of integrity. Both aspects relate to the focal business or professional role, and also to the life narratives of individuals who hold that role. And the two aspects are tied up in one another: it is impossible to understand a role without performing it, and it is impossible to perform a role with integrity without understanding that role and how it fits with one’s life narrative. People who can make a complete reading and then perform an integrated enactment of a role are able thereby to unify the disparate strands of their lives. When they do so, we say that they are engaged in role coadunation, from the Latin verb coadunare, meaning “to join together” or “to make one.”

To explain role coadunation, we discuss in turn its epistemic and behavioral aspects, and we show how they relate to the content of both a role and the life narratives of people who occupy that role. Each aspect of role coadunation bottoms out in individual understanding and behavior, but, in order that individuals can understand their roles and enact them virtuously, they may need the support of others. As a practical matter, knowing and doing are closely bound up, and hence the epistemic and behavioral aspects are developed together.

Understanding Role Content

A person can only make a complete reading of a role if he or she understands its content. By this, we mean that the person must know what the role demands, what impact its enactment has on the world, and also how to exhibit the virtues when occupying it. We therefore start our discussion of role understanding by explaining how role demands are learned.

The sociology literature identifies four stages of role learning: out-of-role exposure, mimicking, tacit knowledge acquisition, and role reflection. Out-of-role exposure ensures that social actors have some understanding of that role even before they deliberately attempt to learn about it. Their understanding is acquired partly through direct contact with role holders and partly through the consumption of movies, novels, and online material. For example, new lawyers approach their jobs with a superficial understanding of its content derived from out-of-role exposure; they may even adopt social mores, relating, for example, to dress and personal style, that they associate with the role (Biddle Reference Biddle1979, 318). But people who understand lawyering solely in terms of their out-of-role exposure to press comment, gossip, and popular culture have at most a shallow understanding of that role; deeper learning relies on practice and immersive experience.

The most basic experiential knowledge of a new role is acquired by observing and mimicking the behavior of more senior practitioners. Observing allows the learner to understand how to recombine and reproduce examples of domain-specific knowledge and behaviors in contextually appropriate ways (Bandura Reference Bandura1971). This type of mimicking allows learners to identify role-appropriate behavior in the most common social circumstances, but it need not endow them with a sophisticated appreciation of the reasons for acting in a particular way. Consequently, they are unlikely to be able in unfamiliar social contexts to adapt their behavior in role-appropriate ways.

The ability to adapt to unfamiliar contexts is likely to require the tacit knowledge that is inherent to any social practice (Polanyi Reference Polanyi2009). Tacit knowledge acquisition relies on more than mimicking: it takes place as actors learn the nuanced expectations of others, including their peers, role models, and mentors (Biddle Reference Biddle1979, 148). This type of learning constitutes a form of apprenticeship, and it enables neophytes to see themselves from the perspective of others. They thus learn to internalize the expectations others have of the role; at the same time, they are likely also to internalize the attitudes and predilections of other role holders (Biddle Reference Biddle1979; Mead Reference Mead1934, 162). Hence learning is an experiential process that results from apprentices’ interactions with their environment (Kolb Reference Kolb1984; Kolb and Kolb Reference Kolb, Kolb, Armstrong and Fukami2009). Experiential learning does not occur solely in apprentice relationships, nor within single organizations; it also happens when communities of practice bring together practitioners from a range of organizations to share knowledge, raise standards, and foster a shared sense of purpose (the term community of practice is from Lave and Wenger Reference Lave and Wenger1991; for a review, see Nicolini et al. Reference Nicolini, Pyrko, Omidvar and Spanellis2022).

Role expertise requires the ability to reflect on a role (Schön Reference Schön1983). That ability may be acquired through long experience, but an apprenticeship is a quicker and possibly more effective path, because apprentices are able to interrogate their mentors and learn how those mentors reason (Brown and Treviño Reference Brown and Treviño2014; Lankau and Scandura Reference Lankau and Scandura2002). As a result, apprentices learn correctly to anticipate the behavior of their mentors in situations that the learners have never observed in practice (Bandura Reference Bandura1971, 1:10). When role holders become experts, they are able to identify the right response to each specific situation in an intuitive way, and they implement that response faster than a novice could (Dreyfus and Dreyfus Reference Dreyfus and Dreyfus1986; Dreyfus Reference Dreyfus2004).

In short, technical expertise in a role requires a particular kind of education, a deep immersion in the relevant environment, the acquisition of tacit and explicit knowledge, and the development of reflective skills. This learning process generates the expertise needed to identify and respond to relevant information concerning the role and, hence, significantly increases the likelihood that a role occupant will perform a complete reading of his or her situation. But, to choose the right action, the role occupant must also understand how the virtues are manifested in the role and how the role relates to the rest of his or her life. The following section discusses this requirement.

Understanding Differentiated Virtue

The virtues are learned by doing, and that doing always happens in particular contexts. Character traits are developed as people engage with the practical problems that the world presents, reflect on their choices, and attempt to modify their motivations and habits in response to their experience. A virtue-ethical account of moral learning must therefore recognize the importance of both experience and context. Our discussion in this section starts with the analogy between skill and virtue. We then address contextual factors in light of Swanton’s (Reference Swanton2021a, 161) account of differentiated virtue, which explains how roles and individual life narratives give shape to the virtues.

Virtuous behavior is rather like a skill. A woodworker learns through repeated practice how best to turn a table leg, and a person learns through the repeated performance of kind acts how best to be kind. Learning virtue, like acquiring role expertise, requires careful and reflective practice that is often aided by the guidance of expert mentors (Narvaez and Lapsley Reference Narvaez, Lapsley, Lapsley and Power2005; Dunne Reference Dunne, Beadle and Moore2020). In addition to transferring technical know-how, mentoring relationships can facilitate moral learning (Dunne Reference Dunne, Beadle and Moore2020); that the dialogue between apprentice and mentor can lead to better, arguably wiser decisions is well documented (Moberg Reference Moberg2007; Staudinger and Baltes Reference Staudinger and Baltes1996; Athanassiou and Nigh Reference Athanassiou and Nigh1999).

While virtuous behavior is often an instinctively deployed skill, it is not thoughtless. Like a skilled woodworker, the virtuous person can explain her or his actions (Annas Reference Annas2011, 25–29). Virtue ethics thus highlights the developmental nature of morality; this is in line with Kohlberg’s (Reference Kohlberg1981, Reference Kohlberg1984) account of moral development, which requires progression through cognitive stages that involve increasingly complex reasoning. Finally, which virtues are developed, and how, depends on embedded contexts (Narvaez and Lapsley Reference Narvaez, Lapsley, Lapsley and Power2005; Snow Reference Snow2015).

To understand what virtue demands, it is first necessary to understand the context in which it is to be exhibited (Hartman Reference Hartman2013, 150–51). The way that a soldier and a monk exhibit courage is often very different, for example; so, too, is the meaning of kindness for a person teaching in a kindergarten and a medical school. Christine Swanton addresses the importance of context in her discussion of basic and differentiated virtues. A basic virtue is “virtue understood at a high level of generality … or abstraction” (Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 160; see also Swanton Reference Swanton, Ulatowski and Van Zyl2021b, 19; Reference Swanton, Dare and Swanton2020, 50). So, for example, the basic virtue of courage corresponds to what people perceive as courage without having to refer to a person’s role, life narrative, or cultural context. To understand what a basic virtue demands in a given context, the virtue must be “contoured” by the relevant contextual features (Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 161). That contouring generates differentiated virtue. Differentiation could reflect cultural or historical factors, social roles, or individual life narratives; for the purposes of this article, we focus on differentiation by social role and life narrative.

Basic and differentiated virtue have an important and complex relationship. First, basic virtue anchors differentiated virtue in the sense that it prevents differentiation from amounting to a form of wrongness. For example, basic virtue should tell a manager the difference between being, on the one hand, tough and fair and, on the other hand, cruel. Second, differentiated virtue gives substance to basic virtue by providing the contextual information needed to understand what the target of the virtue is in a particular situation. One cannot understand precisely what it means to be kind until one knows the context in which one acts. In short, as Swanton (Reference Swanton2021a, 162) states, “basic and differentiated virtue are mutually constraining.”

A complete reading of a role requires an understanding of how virtue is differentiated by that role and by the role holder’s life narrative. First, like the basic virtues, role-differentiated virtues are learned by doing and by reflecting on doing; that learning depends to a large extent on the processes described in the previous section. An important account of situated moral learning comes from Alasdair MacIntyre (Reference MacIntyre2007), who argues that the virtues are learned through participation in practices. MacIntyre defines a practice to be a complex, coherent social activity with its own standards of excellence that generates internal goods that are only available to its practitioners (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 187). Internal goods are therefore inseparable from the practice and are in contrast to external goods, such as money or power, that are available to anyone (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 191). MacIntyre claims that practices provide “the arena in which the virtues are exhibited and in terms of which they are to receive their primary, if incomplete, definition” (187). This is because one can achieve the internal goods of a practice only by possessing and exercising the virtues (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 191, 196). MacIntyre is concerned with the way that a particular type of role-differentiated virtue is learned, but he would not accept that many of the business and professional roles with which this article is concerned sit within practices. We take the view that virtue can be differentiated by any role and, hence, that situated moral learning must necessarily extend beyond MacIntyrean practices. But, in every case, learning is accomplished by performing a role and reflecting on the way the role constrains, and is constrained by, basic virtue. That reflection could be solitary, but, as we discuss later, it is often a social activity.

Individual life narratives are the second dimension along which virtue is differentiated for role holders. Virtue ethics attributes normative force to the sequence of events and identity-conferring projects and commitments that, together, constitute a directed life narrative (see, e.g., MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 205–19; Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 164). A clear understanding of how a role fits with a life narrative is therefore an essential component of a complete reading; it allows the role holder to achieve an undistorted picture of his or her life narrative and so to exhibit the virtue of narrative accuracy (Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 166). To illustrate the subtlety of a complete reading of a life narrative, consider Jon, an oil worker with no other employment opportunities whose life narrative includes identity-conferring commitments to environmental activism and to the care of a relative, Bran, who is rendered immobile by a disability.Footnote ² The oil worker role is virtue differentiating in itself: courage manifests differently for the oil worker and the carer roles, for example. But, in addition, Jon’s commitment to environmentalism may create moral disjunction because he may perceive the extraction of fossil fuels as a moral wrong. And, at the same time, Jon’s commitment to the care of Bran prevents him from seeking alternative employment in another location. Jon’s recognition of his personal commitments precludes discardment; absent disidentification and disengagement, Jon will be able to make a complete reading of his situation that foregrounds the potential incompatibility of his various commitments. He could do this alone, but it might be a social activity; we will see how when we return to Jon in the next section.

We have now explained how a complete reading of a role draws on two skills. First, a complete reading employs technical expertise of the role that facilitates an understanding of its content and its impact on the world. Second, the quality of a complete reading depends on the role holder’s capacity to identify the targets of the virtues in light of the role and the role holder’s life narrative. The more developed these skills are in a role holder, the more likely he or she is to consider all morally relevant information and, hence, to identify the integrated enactment that allows him or her to live with integrity.

The Epistemic Contribution of Interpretive Communities

A complete reading may be achieved individually, but in practice, it is often more easily and effectively performed collectively. In this section, we show how complete readings can be improved with the support of an interpretive community that helps role holders to uncover morally relevant information and to understand how virtue should be differentiated.

Because it requires an awareness of all morally relevant facts, the complete reading of a role must include an appreciation of the impacts of that role on the world. Such an appreciation may not be easy to achieve from within the role, because many business and professional roles appear to their holders to exist within a closed social system. When that happens, role holders may become blind to the effect that their activities have on other people, groups, and the environment, and they may find it very difficult, if not impossible, to understand how virtue should be differentiated in that role and for each individual holder. Stanley Fish (Reference Fish1976, Reference Fish1980) refers to a community of readers who establish common conventions for making sense of, and so creating, literary works as an interpretive community; we adopt the same term to refer to a community of people who can make moral sense of a social role.

Modern virtue ethics acknowledges the importance of communities and of the epistemic and virtue-supporting functions that they play, but it does not study the types of interpretive communities that we have in mind. MacIntyre notes that, without a community to provide a set of “givens” by maintaining cultural stories and common understandings of purpose, it would be impossible to embark on a life that pursued the virtues (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre2007, 216; 1999a, 74). And communities play an important role in teaching their members what is virtuous and how to reason independently about the virtues (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre1999a, 71). While MacIntyre (Reference MacIntyre1999b) does discuss the ways in which communities can help people to make sense of their identities and practical choices, his analysis is typically not concerned with roles (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre1999a, 95). When he discusses the communal interpretation of roles, he generally does so in the context of practices, and, as we have already noted, many modern business and professional roles cannot be viewed as sitting within a practice: for MacIntyre (Reference MacIntyre1999a, 96–97), practice-oriented interpretation is performed in a relatively narrow community of “expert coworkers.” He presents a discussion of the ways in which market-oriented activities are embedded in the wider networks of relationships of giving and receiving that, by fostering noninstrumental giving and allowing people to acknowledge their mutual dependence, serve to foster the virtues (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre1999a, 117). That type of embedding could enable people to pursue the virtues in non-practice-oriented organizations (Bernacchio Reference Bernacchio2018), but it does not constitute the type of wide-ranging, sometimes deliberately designed, and role-focused network that constitutes an effective interpretive community.

In performing a complete reading, an individual role holder may rely on one interpretive community to determine how the role relates to his or her life narrative, and on another to uncover role-related information. Narrative-related information is most directly accessible by the individual concerned; however, that individual might need others to trigger deeper reflection or to point out blind spots caused by coping strategies, such as moral disengagement and disidentification. For example, Jon the oil worker might only be able to appreciate how his role fits, or does not fit, with his life narrative as a result of conversations with his relative Bran, his friends, other environmentalists, or candidates for political office.

The role-related information required for a complete reading might only be revealed by a much larger and more diverse interpretive community. Such a community ideally comprises overlapping networks of people with different levels of technical skill and different moral perspectives. Diversity within the interpretive community is important to neutralize the artificial sense of separation often caused by the deep immersion necessary to achieve technical expertise in complex roles. This type of separation can be countered by viewing oneself from a perspective that is external to any particular role, and that external perspective can be achieved through critical dialogue in the right milieus (MacIntyre Reference MacIntyre1999b, 321–22). A great deal of clarity and creativity can be achieved through the dialectical interaction of actors with different backgrounds and different points of view (Brown and Duguid Reference Brown and Duguid1991; Powell, Koput, and Smith-Doerr Reference Powell, Koput and Smith-Doerr1996; Burt Reference Burt2004; Subramaniam and Youndt Reference Subramaniam and Youndt2005).

To illustrate the ideal composition of interpretive communities for role-related information, we consider again the cases of Jon the oil worker and of Tom Hayes, the trader convicted of LIBOR manipulation. For Jon to make a complete reading, he should include in his interpretive community actors capable of understanding all of the ramifications of fossil fuel extraction for the environment and his local community, such as people working in the nonrenewable and renewable energy sectors as well as nongovernmental organizations, local residents, politicians, and journalists.

Tom Hayes’s interpretive community included the network of expert traders and brokers who engaged in the quotidian business of trading derivatives. But that network experienced the market as a technically complex closed system that was largely divorced from the rest of their lives. For example, Enrich (Reference Enrich2017, 348) reports that Hayes believed that his LIBOR-linked trades were part of a “closed-loop system” and that they had no impact outside this world. Hayes therefore failed to achieve a complete reading of his role. To do so, he could have included in his interpretive community others who could bring a variety of specialisms to bear on his role. For example, he could have included journalists, who are less concerned with market technicalities than interest rate swaps traders are but, because their role requires them to make sense of the market for their nonspecialist readers, are arguably better at identifying ethical blind spots. Similarly, Hayes could have engaged with regulators, because they have a holistic understanding of the linkages between financial markets, and between professional and retail investors, and so are better able to appreciate that, like every other business activity, swaps trading is not a closed system. And, of course, lawyers and judges could also have been included in Hayes’s interpretive community.

To summarize our argument so far: the epistemic aspect of role coadunation is a complete reading, which consists in uncovering information about the role, its impacts on the world, how it shapes basic virtue, and how it fits with an individual’s life narrative. That information can be accessed only by developing technical expertise and engaging in reflective practice. In addition, it may require dialogical interaction with one or more interpretive communities. Achieving a complete reading renders integrated enactment possible.

Appropriate Disunity, Overall Goodness, and Role Coadunation

How a person achieves integrated enactment depends on the information acquired in the complete reading and on whether problems are uncovered concerning the role or its relationship to the role holder’s life narrative. We address each of these possibilities in turn.

Role-related information in cases of moral disjunction should include the fact that at least some of the behavioral patterns associated with the role contradict basic virtue. When that happens, integrated enactment requires that the role holder modify those behaviors to preserve overall narrative goodness. This modification could take one of three forms. First, the role holder could make minor adjustments to his or her actions, if it is possible to do so without generating organizational conflict, exclusion from a professional body, or complicity with organizational wrongdoing. Second, if the complete reading demonstrates that the behavioral problems are organization specific, then the role holder can either leave the organization or attempt to alter the way in which the role is performed within the organization. For example, an academic working at a university that is so obsessed with rankings that it misrepresents its students’ employment outcomes or its faculty research output can resolve moral disjunction by seeking employment with a more honest institution. Alternatively, he or she could attempt to change the way the institution operates; doing so would be possible only if the academic had sufficient power, and it could also require the support of an interpretive community. Third, if the complete reading determines that the problem is not organization specific, then the role holder may attempt to change the behavioral expectations associated with the role; doing so would certainly require the support of an interpretive community. We discuss the behavioral contribution of interpretive communities below.

A complete reading may also demonstrate that moral disjunction is caused by the relationship between an individual’s life narrative and the behavioral expectations associated with his or her role. This could occur because, in addition to being differentiated by an individual’s role, the virtues are differentiated by the events, projects, and commitments that make up a life narrative (Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 164; Reference Swanton, Ulatowski and Van Zyl2021b).

To illustrate the complexity of integrated enactment when narrative-related problems are uncovered in a complete reading, we return to Jon, the oil worker who is also an environmentalist and a carer for Bran, the relative who is rendered immobile by a disability. For the sake of argument, we assume that the role of oil worker does not in itself demand vicious behavior.Footnote ³ After performing a complete reading, Jon may realize that narratively differentiated virtues cause him to experience moral disjunction, because his oil work appears incompatible with his identity-conferring commitment to environmentalism. The complete reading reveals further complications, because his hometown has no other employment opportunities, and Jon’s commitment to Bran’s care prevents him from moving. Jon faces a very difficult choice: if he continues to live in the same location to care for Bran, then he may disrespect his commitment to environmentalism; if he moves to an area where he can find a job that does not clash with his environmentalism, then he may disrespect his commitment to Bran. If Jon cannot find a way to reconcile his roles, then he may be forced to make the tragic decision to give up part of himself by abandoning one of his identity-conferring commitments. Role coadunation in that case would resolve Jon’s moral disjunction, but, because he would leave part of himself out, he would sacrifice a degree of integrity. There are two ways for Jon to avoid this sacrifice: he could remain in his roles but change the way he enacts them, or he could use his complete reading to make sense of the disunity in his life. We consider these possibilities in turn.

If Jon can change the way he enacts the roles that generate conflicting narrative threads, then he need not abandon one of them. Jon could have explored options for doing so as part of the complete reading, either on his own or with the help of an interpretive community. For example, he could modify the role he occupies in his organization, perhaps by participating in the company’s transition to renewable energy. He could associate with others in his community to push for the creation of other types of employment in the area: if that push was successful, he could seek a different work role; if it was not, then he would at least have exercised his agency in a way that respected his identity-conferring commitments. Jon could also move out of the area, hire a good and kind person to care for Bran, and visit him frequently; alternatively, Jon could attempt to move Bran to a different location, however difficult that might be. Whatever option Jon ultimately selects, his choice will be made with complete awareness of its moral implications.

Even if it is impossible for Jon to change the ways that his roles are enacted, an informed exercise of his agency may allow him to resolve his moral disjunction without experiencing a tragic loss of identity and integrity. This is possible only if Jon successfully performs a complete reading that prevents him from succumbing to one of the psychological coping mechanisms that we identify earlier. Integrated enactment in this case starts from an understanding of which of his identity-conferring commitments has the most moral force in his life. Suppose, for example, that Jon’s complete reading reveals that caring for Bran is the most important of his commitments. Then, provided his work is not vicious in itself, Jon can accurately characterize his oil work as a sacrifice he makes in order that he can respect his most important commitment. With this characterization, Jon’s life exhibits appropriate narrative disunity; that conclusion is only valid in this particular case, for, if Bran were not Jon’s concern, then Jon could not justify his oil work in the same way. Moreover, if Jon decides to stay at the oil company, then he will likely reaffirm his commitment always to behave in an environmentally friendly way in his nonwork roles and so avoid the total obliteration of that thread of his life narrative. Resolving his moral disjunction in this way also requires him to exhibit the virtues of narrative transition and flexibility: that is, to move smoothly between, and to accommodate appropriately, different narrative threads, without allowing any to exert an excessive influence on the others (Swanton Reference Swanton2021a, 167–68). In this case, Jon cannot be said to engage in meaningful work (Beadle and Knight Reference Beadle and Knight2012; Sison, Ferrero, and Guitián Reference Sison, Ferrero and Guitián2016; Sinnicks Reference Sinnicks2021; Yeoman Reference Yeoman2014), but his life is nevertheless meaningful and directed to the pursuit of virtue.

The Behavioral Contribution of Interpretive Communities

Although the most important thing that interpretive communities do is to ensure that the complete reading is accurate and unbiased, they also have a significant role to play in integrated enactment. Interpretive communities are able to alter role expectations in a way that individual actors typically cannot. This is because roles are socially constructed and rely on collective intentionality (Searle Reference Searle1995, 45–50). Consequently, changes to role expectations require a sufficiently large number of people to foreground the expectations, and then deliberately to change them. This could occur at the level of a specific organization, or it could involve a general reconceptualization of a problematic role. Of course, this depends on the effective operation of the interpretive community, and it is to this topic that we now turn.