Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño – Principles of Management Philosophy

Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño – Executive President IE University.

Reading:

Principles of Management Philosophy (Principios de la filosofía aplicada a la gestión) by Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño (2024).

In moral philosophy, three kinds of paradigms to explain the rightness of a decision.
These are paradigms that are used, for example, to justify if a business decision is the right one.
If it is ethical, moral, for example to carry out a layoff process.
Or if it is ethical, moral, to launch a product that could have some kind of social impact.
The first of the three paradigms is ontological, and was first proposed by Immanuel Kant.
The idea of this paradigm is that decisions emanate from a series of principles and values from which a decision is inferred.
This is the classic principle that has been used in philosophy.
The second paradigm, proposed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill is known as consequentialist or utilitarian, which measures the rightness of a decision based on its consequences or results. Generally, this is the most accepted paradigm used in business, where directors tend to focus on making a profit.
Finally, the third of the paradigms, which is usually called the philosophy of virtue, and that is rooted in Aristotle, but can also be found in the work of more recent thinkers
such as Philippa Foot.
I think that we educators could focus much more on developing business leaders with a philosophy based more on virtue.
We’re neither angels or devils, and very often we’re not able to distinguish between a rational approach to taking the best possible decision.
It’s not easy either to guess what the outcome or results of a decision will be.
That said, if we cultivate the virtues on a daily basis, working hard on developing good operating habits, then possibly we could be on the right path to taking the best possible decisions.