Reimagining the application of sustainability to the hospitality industry through a virtue ethics framework

Abstract

There is growing recognition that achieving sustainability through current means is not making progress. This awareness has led to the development of a wide range of alternative ways of viewing and approaching sustainability. In these attempts to reconfigure how to achieve sustainability, the potential contribution of virtue ethics is not explored fully. This conceptual paper addresses the ethical dilemma of whether keeping the hospitality industry sustainable is necessarily in conflict with the world's sustainable development agenda. This dilemma arises from the perceived tension in balancing the “good of the hospitality industry” with the “greater good of the world”. This paper discusses the tensions of the hospitality industry's domestic “virtue” tradition and commercial “vice” tradition, and addresses how the hospitality industry can be virtuous in a capitalist market ideology of vice that “greed is good”. The anti-capitalist and contemporary philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's virtue theory is employed here to argue that commercialism is not necessarily a vice when exercised in congruence with the virtues. Macintyre's “virtues-goods-practice-institution” framework provides a way of re-imaging sustainability and reconciling the competing demands of sustainability. The paper explores how to achieve virtue in organisations and concludes by drawing out implications for further research.

通过一种美德伦理框架来重新想象酒店业可持续性的应用

现在有一种持续增长的认识，就是通过现有的定义来达到可持续性是不能有任何进展的。该认识引致一种看待和达到可持续性广泛的多种方式的发展。在这些重新配置如何实现可持续性的尝试中，美德伦理的潜在贡献并没有完全被探索。该概念型文章讨论了维持酒店业可持续性是否一定和世界的可持续性发展目标冲突的道德困境。该困境时从为了平衡``酒店业的好处''和``世界的更大的好处''中收到的紧张冲突而出现的。该文章讨论了酒店业内``美德''传统和商业``副''传统之间的紧张关系，和讨论了酒店业如何能在一个在资本主义市场副意识形态``贪婪是好的''情况下成为道德的。反资本主义和现代哲学家，Alasdair Macintyre的美德理论在这里应用来讨论当一致性行使美德时商业化不一定要作为其次的。Macintyre的``美德-好事-实践-企业''框架为重新思考可持续性和协调可持续性发展的竞争性需求提供了出路。该文章探讨路在组织中如何实现美德和为进一步研究总结了一些重点。

Keywords:

• sustainable development through tourism
• commercialism
• capitalist globalisation
• socially responsible behaviour
• morality of management
• conscious corporate growth

关键词:

• 通过旅游的可持续性发展
• 商业化
• 资本主义全球化
• 社会负责任的行为
• 道德管理
• 有意识的企业增长

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gayathri Wijesinghe

Dr Gayathri (Gee) Wijesinghe is a lecturer in tourism, hospitality and events at the School of Management, University of South Australia, Adelaide. Her research concentrates on the sociology of hospitality and tourism. She has a special interest in understanding the nature of the embodied experiences (and related labour conceptions such as sexualised labour and creative labour) of interactive service workers who work in the tourism and hospitality industries. She is an editor of the book The heart of the good institution: Virtue ethics as a framework for responsible management.