Aristotle famously said that man is a social animal. What he meant was that people cannot thrive in isolation but need to interact with others to flourish as individuals. There are many types of free association ranging from sports organizations, dance clubs, religious groups, schools, universities, political associations to name just a few. One of the deepest human needs is that of a sense of belonging, membership, a sense of the 'we' in the pursuit of common goals by means of cooperation and shared values. All these associations satisfy that need, but when we look at the company and the amount of time devoted to it in a lifetime, we realize the considerable impact it has on our lives, for good or ill, not only professionally, but also personally. Personal and professional life are not mutually exclusive but rather mutually enhancing, or could and should be.
With the advent of the Renaissance and Reformation there emerged novel cultural, historical, religious, and philosophical concepts, a very significant one being that of Individualism, and the accompanying social fragmentation. With its rise, new institutions followed as a natural corollary. This is not the place to rehearse the complex technological and religious causes, among others, of these changes, but rather to place the focus on the freedom of association in the widest sense, protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Chapter Two, Section One, Article 22 of the Spanish Constitution, since it is fundamental to our conception of human freedom. One of the myriad types of free association is the company, incorporated or unincorporated, because what is important is not only the legally protected corporate person, but the organic entity itself, that is, the result of the right of free association voluntarily entered into by its members and conferring upon them rights and obligations, shared values, and a sense of belonging. We are thinking here especially of small- and medium-sized businesses since the larger the company, the greater the chance that it will become increasingly impersonal and the team spirit, which is to say the sense of belonging, not to mention executive accountability (witness the 2008 banking crisis), increasingly eroded.
There is a complex dynamic involved in the interaction between individuals who make up a company and the company itself. The character of the company is expressed by individuals, but the company exerts a formative influence on the individual. As a result of this dynamic, values are generated and a moral personality of the company emerges, and in the ideal situation, an upward spiraling virtuous circle is created in which the individuals are empowered by the company, which is in turn powered by the individuals, and society, by extension, benefits.
Plato believed that the highest good was the rational and moral development of one's personality (the unexamined life was not an option), and in that direction lay the true goal of life: happiness. In Delphi inscribed on the temple of Apollo, the Greek god of reason and intelligence, is the injunction: Know Yourself. This was an admonition to become aware of one's defaults and capacities accepting one's limitations but also exploring and developing one's potential. Morality for Plato thus had a different meaning to the current popular conception we have of it. What was important was good judgement understood in the sense of that which results in the fullest development of the personality. The ideal to try to attain was arete, a word often translated as virtue, but which does the Greek word scant justice. The word would be more suitably translated as excellence and is related to the Greek superlative adjective aristos meaning the best and to the noun harmony. The full flourishing of one's potential, intellectual and physical, was thus the ideal and inner harmony and happiness the result of that development.
Applying this line of reasoning to the company, we can then understand the moral obligation of the company not solely as an institution designed to generate profit, though it is of course that, too, but as an undertaking consisting of rational moral agents pursuing their personal and professional development to the best of their ability, consistent with the shared values of the company, while simultaneously contributing to the company culture as defined by the company's mission. The moral company, read: the excellent company, is an institution which plays a crucial role in providing a sense of membership to the employees, meaningful jobs, prosperity, social stability, and environmental sustainability. It also serves as a model for other companies which enter into competition with each other ideally obligating them to be the best that they can be not only in providing quality products and services but in creating a healthy work environment conducive to the detection and enhancement of talent and human betterment based on merit.
