The virtues of joint production: ethical foundations for collaborative organizations

Organizations often involve collaboration such that when they function well, their members engage in purposive coordination and cooperation with others. Previous research has focused on the role of shared, organizational -level goals and supportive governance mechanisms in promoting collaboration. But this research has not adequately addressed the question of the role of moral legitimacy in sustaining commitment to organizational goals and in facilitating good governance. In this article, we identify novel ethical microfoundations of collaborative organizations, explaining the role of organizational ethics in supporting organization -level goals and good governance. We draw upon virtue ethics, adopting a practice perspective on joint production to explain how standards of professional excellence and the virtues function so as to sustain commitment to organizational goals within collaborative organizations. We also draw upon goal -framing theory to articulate the reciprocal and mutually supportive relationship between governance and virtue, where governance requires virtue to function well, and virtue is sustained by governance mechanisms.