Journal of Perspectives in Organizational Behavior, Management, & Leadership
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2015)
From Productivity to Performance: Re-Thinking the University of
Phoenix in Light of Alasdair MacIntyre's Virtue Ethics
Robert J. King
University of Phoenix, Phoenix, Arizona, USA &
APUS-American Military University, Charles Town, West Virginia, USA
Corresponding author: Robert J. King, M.Div., Th.M., Ed.S., 222 Snell Isle Blvd., NE, #1
St. Petersburg, FL 33704, U.S.A. rjoking7@email.phoenix.edu; robert.king44@mycampus.apus.edu (813) 361-8274
ABSTRACT
Ron Beadle, Professor of Economics and Management at Northumbria University at Newcastle, UK, applied the
critique of modern bureaucratic systems of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre to questions of business
management. Beadle's contextualized reading of MacIntyre highlights not only MacIntyre's critique of
Enlightenment assumptions, and corresponding organizational structures, but also how a return to virtue ethics can
assist management theory in adopting models of organizational behavior attuned to excellence in performance.
Given the shift in mission statement of the University of Phoenix now highlighting performance, rather than
productivity per se, MacIntyre offers a model of organizational excellence leading to more sustainable institutional
success, especially by highlighting internal goods of excellence (performance) as necessary for producing long-term
success within proprietary higher education.
Keywords: Ron Beadle, William Deresiewicz, Alasdair MacIntyre, management, neoliberalism, performance, U. of
Phoenix, productivity, virtue
INTRODUCTION
According to former Yale University English Professor, William Deresiewicz (2015), in his recent essay,
The Neoliberal Arts: How College Sold Its Soul to the Market, the shift in higher educational mission and selfidentity can be aptly summarized by looking at the syntax, and format, of mission statements. Whereas a mission
statement from the 1920’s focused on academic virtues such as “thinking clearly and independently” with “the
ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully,” the newer, atomistic mission statement from 2015 included
such virtues as free-floating words, possibly detached from a context that provides fuller meaning (p. 25).
Leadership. Service. Integrity. Creativity. Not that there is anything wrong with brevity, but so Deresiewicz
argues, such detached virtues point to a shift in teleology of higher education away from learning for its own sake,
and toward learning in service to productivity in the market. To quote Deresiewicz, “the purpose of education in a
neoliberal age is to produce producers” (p. 26).
Given this pointed critique, especially in light of recent concerns about for-profit higher education in
general, this essay will engage such popular, often Ivy League-level, academic polemics (such as Deresiewicz’s) by
offering a counter-narrative of virtue theory as applied to management practice. Specifically, given recent problems
plaguing the University of Phoenix, ranging from investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice
Department and the U.S. Department of Education to a ban on further military funding for active duty personnel
(AL.com, 2015), I will argue for a shift away from bureaucratic “productivity” to a practice-based model of
excellent performance (arête or virtue). Hopefully, such a counter-narrative can offer an alternative that addresses
critiques such as those posed by Deresiewicz, yet absconds from models set against individual meritocracy.
IF NOT NEOLIBERAL PRODUCTIVITY, THEN WHOSE COUNTER-NARRATIVE OF EDUCATION?
In order to provide a counter-narrative of practice-based virtue theory some further acknowledgement of
critiques posed by Deresiewicz is warranted. First, Deresiewicz acknowledged how shifts away from STEM
(Science Technology Engineering and Math) related fields have helped to cause such a reconceptualization of higher
education toward market-based ends. For example, Deresiewicz noted that as of 2013 only 1.5% of graduates
majored in physics, chemistry, and the rest of the natural sciences, along with only 1.1% who had majored in math
(Deresiewicz, 2015, p. 26). Second, Deresiewicz also noted how an earlier tradition of liberal arts higher education
had been expanded with the land-grant acts of 1862 and 1890 so that the privileges of WASP (White Anglo Saxon
Protestant) aristocrats were more broadly disseminated (p. 27). Thus, the problem with U.S. higher education in its
current form, so Deresiewicz argued, is neither its reemphasis upon STEM fields, nor its oscillating use of the liberal
19
Copyright by Author(s): CC-BY
wyvernpublishinggroup.com
Journal of Perspectives in Organizational Behavior, Management, & Leadership
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2015)
arts, but rather in its entire sublimation (liberal or conservative) to the needs of the market (p. 31). In a critique not
of merit per se, but of meritocracy wedded to Neoliberalism as the dominant liberal and conservative set of
economic and political philosophies (either Reaganism or Clintonism), so according to Deresiewicz collective good
might be jettisoned. To quote Deresiewicz again, “But meritocracy means looking out for number one, and
neoliberalism doesn’t believe in the collective. As Margaret Thatcher famously said about society, ‘There’s no such
thing. There are individual men and women, and there are families” (p. 31).
Although certainly astute in his critical analysis, Deresiewicz nonetheless concludes with a solution simply
reifying a public solution of mixed economic socialism as a panacea. Thus, without engagement of prevailing
counter-arguments concerning potential disincentives toward productivity intrinsic to either heavy progressive
taxation or free public higher education, so Deresiewicz concluded simply by praising current Obama White House
Democrat proposals of free community college education, and Senator Bernie Sanders’ heavy taxation to fund even
free four year higher education (Dereiewicz, 2015, p. 32).
In many ways, critiques as posed by Deresiewicz point to growing unease with prevailing free market
philosophies (and sets of correlative practices) grouped under the term Neoliberalism itself. Although a full
exploration lies beyond the scope of this essay, it must be noted that “Neoliberalism” as a definition lacks
uniformity. However, given Neoliberalism’s perceived (if not real) hegemony at least some mention of this debate
is necessary to explain why such vociferous critiques cannot easily be dismissed. First, as Thorsen, and Lie (n.d.)
argued, Neoliberalism, due to its hegemonic status, lacks precise definition, although attempts to refrain from
governmental intrusion into the activity of individuals participating in “free and self-regulating markets” would be
the beginning of a definition (p. 2). Granted, the term has older historical usage dating to the nineteenth century
originating with the French cooperative movement ideologue Charles Gide in his 1898 critique of Italian
“neoliberal” economist Maffeo Pantaleoni (p. 9). Also, although it had fallen out of popular usage for almost 40
years, the 1950 doctoral thesis by Jacques Cros (Le ‘neo-liberalisme’ et la revision du liberalisme) offered a
seminal critique of perceived distortions of modern economic liberalism (such as the more egalitarian Keynes)
toward a more “right-wing or laissez-faire stance on economic policy issues” (p. 9).
Avoiding such straw-men fallacious caricatures of “Neoliberalism” as “far right,” a centrist mid-century
German interpretation of the term by Edgar Nawroth sought to demonstrate how this reformulated economicpolitical philosophy could chart a course between fascism and communism by offering a “third way” fusing a
market economy with a liberal democracy, and some elements of Catholic social teaching as rooted in the common
good (p. 10). Although more recent contemporary interpreters of Neoliberalism debate its precise parameters, such
historical inception demonstrates how due to post-WW II shifts toward either communism or fascism the
international political-economies left remaining arguably became some form of Neoliberalism. Thus, although
Gilbert (2013) cites the origination of the term slightly later with Arthur Rustow in the 1930’s, the hegemonic
quality of Neoliberalism is similarly noted (p. 7). In short, how does one offer a critique of what simply is the
prevailing economic-political philosophy? To answer this question one must espouse an economic-political
philosophy (or set of practices) jettisoning lesser governmental intrusion into the market. Thus, Deresiewicz
proposed an analytically precise solution. If not a free market shaping higher education then socialism is perhaps
the next most logical alternative within a U.S. context.
As an antithesis to such a growing academic critique (as espoused by Deresiewicz and others) of the
market’s influence upon higher education, and itself perhaps the greatest recipient of the vitriol of such gadfly
critics, stands the icon of perhaps all for-profit higher education—the University of Phoenix. Granted, such
agonistic evaluations of the University of Phoenix are based upon an actual enrollment decline of 460,000 students
in 2010 to only 213,000 students in 2015, and a stock rating of “F” given in March 2015 (CNNMoney, 2015). Thus,
through such a rapid decline in enrollment even the most modest evaluation cannot claim that such implosion simply
represents the patina of administrative, stakeholder, and regulatory concerns requiring a slight polishing. Instead, an
entire reorientation of the university’s mission might be warranted.
The current mission of the University of Phoenix is to provide “access to higher education opportunities
that enable students to develop knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their professional goals, improve the
performance of their organizations, and provide leadership and service to their communities” (University of
Phoenix, 2015). Given such an alignment to employer needs, even with a recent shift from productivity to
performance, it should thus come as no surprise that the critique as posed by Deresiewicz against Neoliberalism’s
influence upon higher education would thus apply. However, although unabashedly for-profit, and thus open to any
such critique of whether or not higher education should be proprietary, in many ways Deresiewicz’s critique is
20
Copyright by Author(s): CC-BY
wyvernpublishinggroup.com
Journal of Perspectives in Organizational Behavior, Management, & Leadership
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2015)
misplaced. A university, albeit for-profit, founded to serve the needs of the workforce through accessible, flexible,
and financially comparable market-sensitive higher education cannot be critiqued internally for simply operating
according to its own founding theoretical, and operational, criteria. A concern for the influences of Neoliberalism
could be applied to Harvard, Duke, Stanford all of the way down to one’s local community college. Thus, rather
than a question of higher education’s connection to the free market, if that is granted at the outset, then a greater
emphasis must simply be levied on how well such a university succeeds in its stated internal criteria of institutional
success in satisfying internal and external stakeholder demands?
To this question, a fuller explication of virtue as applied to management can perhaps bridge the division
between traditional liberal arts higher education less influenced by Neoliberalism and the newer, vocationallyaligned, models that for-profit higher educational upstarts such as University of Phoenix represent. To help answer
this question of internal criteria of success moral philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre (who spent his career at
Vanderbilt, Duke and Notre Dame critiquing the Enlightenment, its assumptions, the social history within which it
arose, and its institutional ramifications) offered an approach to organizational management that incorporated
concerns such as those later posed by Deresiewicz. However, as Ron Beadle’s reading of MacIntyre potentially
demonstrated, such critical analysis can be utilized without simply abandoning altogether the internal standards of
excellence necessary for high performance within the free market (Thorsen & Lie, n.d., p. 15). Through a focus on a
practice-based, local community-focused, coherent embodiment of the natural virtues the philosophical work of
Alasdair MacIntyre transcends such bifurcation as the explication of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics by Northumbria
University, UK, professor Ron Beadle hopefully demonstrates.
INTERNAL GOODS OF EXCELLENCE AS KEY TO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
In order to understand Alasdair MacIntyre’s possible constructive contribution of virtue as embodied in
small community practices aligned toward preserving and perfecting internal goods of excellence, some mention of
his critical project must be made. In his seminal critique of Enlightenment moral philosophy, After Virtue,
MacIntyre (1981) painted an almost apocalyptic post-Enlightenment portrait of moral terms, and therefore
consequent practices, bereft of uniform meaning or teleology. Moral terms have been used, arguments have been
tested for internal coherence, yet by and large no one, at least until MacIntyre, recognized that anything was amiss
(p. 2 – 3). Whereas once the university system might have provided an external objective gaze from which to
evaluate such creeping incoherence, now, according to MacIntyre, even the claims to objectivity produced by
academic guilds instead result in a further masking of such underlying schematic incoherence (p. 4). Thus, with no
way to evaluate effectively the normative claims of moral argumentation, usually with differing conceptual schemes
from widely divergent historical origins, all moral evaluative judgments plunge into a peculiar form of intuitivism
(p. 10 – 11). Such intuitivism MacIntyre described as emotivism, “the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and
more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling,
insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character” (p. 11 – 12).
Although it lies beyond the scope of my own or Beadle’s constructive application of MacIntyre’s virtue
theory to business management, one cannot simply apply MacIntyre’s version of the natural virtues without
recognizing how his project was primarily critical. Thus, any appropriation of MacIntyre for business ethics (or
theology, higher education, etc.) must recognize and account for any underlying tension, or even incoherence,
potentially produced by MacIntyre’s critical project. If MacIntyre called into question the Enlightenment, and the
social context and structures it produced, then any use of MacIntyre’s virtue theory applied within such social
context and structures might prove ad hoc at best, and incongruous or untenable at worst. If the typologies of the
rich aesthete, the bureaucratic manager, and the therapist (p. 30 – 31) are even somewhat accurate descriptions of
how normative moral claims can be held in a semi-permanent stasis of incoherence then what positive contribution
can one include for business ethics if the content of MacIntyre’s virtue theory lacks definitional conformity, much
less universally-binding agreement?
Such tensions exist when surveying a brief literature review of recent applications of MacIntyre’s account
of the natural virtues for business ethics and management studies. Certainly, MacIntyre’s project can be applied to
financial advising as Wyma (2015) argued, even claiming internal goods rooted in natural virtues necessary for
success in investment. But, if MacIntyre argued critically concerning how the social context and structures of
modernity mask underlying conceptual incoherence then even if specific virtues are heralded as applied to financial
investment vocations the problem of particularism versus universality still remains. As MacIntyre later argued in his
published Gifford Lecture, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, concerning the possible incommensurability of
Aristotle and St. Augustine’s Neo-Platonism, “if one is compelled to enquire where the truth lies between
alternative, rival, and incommensurable overall points of view, one cannot but entertain the possibility that either or
21
Copyright by Author(s): CC-BY
wyvernpublishinggroup.com
Journal of Perspectives in Organizational Behavior, Management, & Leadership
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2015)
both of these points of view is systematically false” (MacIntyre, 1990, p. 121). Thus, the point is not whether or not
Alasdair MacIntyre is “anti-business,” but whether or not moral claims, and underlying traditions of ethical
reflection and practice, are commensurable or not, and even if one or both sets of claims might be false.
Assuredly, such rapprochement between apparently incompatible theoretical and practical moral schema
can be attempted as can be seen in a proposal to reconcile global sustainability with the hospitality industry through
use of MacIntyre’s virtues that might transform apparent vices through redirection of teleology toward good ends
(Wijesinghe, 2014). But, such vices (“greed is good”) must also be defined, and redefined, internally so that the
virtues, and practices supporting these virtues, are truly good in se, and not simply good according to teleology, for
example by redefining hospitality itself as a set of practices sustaining this virtue (p. 37 – 39). Thus, through
accurate redefinition of practices leading to virtues in a way that does not stretch the terms beyond historical or
empirical accuracy of common usage then yes, one could constructively appropriate MacIntyre's project. One could
possibly even incorporate his Enlightenment critique by showing how such historic practices and virtues began to
lose their connections to internal goods of excellence (original or contemporary), and thereby ultimately simply
morphed into Priceline.com and other travel sites.
Here, similar to MacIntyre's recovery of virtue, if the application of MacIntyre’s virtue theory to hospitality
industry standards holds water, the problem might also yield the solution as consumer rating systems force the hand
of travel industry middlemen such as travel agents so that anyone can post reviews of hotels, hospitality companies,
etc. thereby highlighting where practices and virtues have broken down. Applied to the University of Phoenix the
question thus becomes not whether or not it is wedded to Neoliberalism (after all, Duke, Notre Dame, and even the
historic Ivy League schools produce and are produced by free market-based cycles of supply and demand). Instead
the question becomes whether or not the University of Phoenix has sustained internal goods of excellence sufficient
enough to justify its existence. Historic upstarts Yale, and eventually Duke and Stanford, have all succeeded by
achieving pinnacles of success according to their own criteria of merit. If the University of Phoenix has faltered
then it has been due to lack of success according to its own internal standards, simply having the wrong standards, or
some combination of the two.
Fortunately, as interpreted by Beadle, in critique of earlier attempts to apply MacIntyre to management
theory, such tensions that must be overcome in constructively applying the virtue ethics of MacIntyre to more
general business ethics were well noted. In critiquing a series of papers by Geoff Moore, Beadle similarly argued
that one cannot simply call business managers “craftsmen” in an Aristotelian translation of MacIntyre’s modern
types since the typologies themselves might challenge and undermine whether or not businesses can be conceived as
defining practices which sustain virtue (2008). Granted, Beadle builds upon the work of Moore and other
interpreters of MacIntyre toward business and management. However, more pointedly, can a general understanding
of “business” be used to then define practices supposedly unique to it as a craft? Beadle claimed that Moore cited
“no specific activities that are internal to business qua business” (p. 234). Similar to Beadle’s concern that the
particularistic rendering of virtues as embodied in sets of practices resisting unqualified translation to universal
appropriation was a similar recent critique levied by Sinnicks (2014). Noting both MacIntyre’s originality and
commitment to Aristotelian accounts of the virtues, more generic application or translation of practices resulting in
virtue accumulation cannot be described apart from either the teleology of the virtues as producing human
flourishing (eudaimonia) or practices as defined according to quite specific crafts such as “architecture, chess,
portrait painting, physics, football and farming” (p. 231).
Thus, if generic appropriations of MacIntyre’s work for business ethics are misapplied, incoherent, and thus
not actually reflective of MacIntyre (in addition to reading such virtue theory apart from MacIntyre’s critical project
as critic of the Enlightenment), then how might MacIntyre’s work be applied? How can an Aristotelian account of
the natural virtues, correlative practices, and teleology of human flourishing (Aristotle’s eudaimonia), inform a shift
from productivity to performance, especially in a for-profit institution wedded to Neoliberalism such as the
University of Phoenix? Interestingly, in a subtle shift away from universal application of MacIntyre’s work for
business ethics, Beadle and Konyot (2006), in closer fidelity to MacIntyre’s account of the natural virtues, described
a thick ethnographic community of practices that resists any easy reduction to more universal standards of success.
Through ethnographic description narrated by MacIntyre’s understanding of practice-based communities, Beadle
and Konyot (2006) showed how the circus can be understood as one such practice-based community in which
perfection of practices according to standards embodying internal goods of excellence, and as guided by the central
virtue of practical wisdom (phronesis), must all coalesce for the circus to be successful (p. 127 - 128).
22
Copyright by Author(s): CC-BY
wyvernpublishinggroup.com
Journal of Perspectives in Organizational Behavior, Management, & Leadership
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2015)
At first glance the example of the circus might seem irrelevant at best and nonsensical at worst, but upon
closer examination the specificity of practices intrinsic to such an economic community (circuses exist to earn
money) is truer to MacIntyre’s constructive account of the natural virtues, and thus more applicable to reforming an
organization such as the University of Phoenix. Such practices resulting in cultivation of the virtues would thus
include for circus performers traits such as “versatility, balance, dexterity, strength, grace and dispositions of
character involving pride in performance, determination, courage and tacit knowledge of matters such as audience
reaction, timing, and the mood of animals” (p. 129).
When such specific practices are applied to the recent shift within the University of Phoenix mission and
purpose statement from inculcating improved “performance” rather than “productivity” per se not only are critiques
such as that of Deresiewicz (2015) addressed by no longer rendering higher education entirely subservient to
Neoliberalism, but misplaced universal accounts of virtue are similarly avoided. Thus, as the University of Phoenix
becomes internally transformed under new leadership of President Tim Slottow (former CFO at the University of
Michigan) the reading of MacIntyre’s virtue theory by Ron Beadle is especially helpful. Contrary to the more
generic accounts of virtue applied to management that Beadle critiques, instead specific practices and virtues are
necessary for successful online, proprietary, and adult higher educational excellence in performance. Similar to
Beadle (2013) who argued that virtues such as constancy and vocational calling are necessary for successful longterm flourishing as circus managers and performers, so also must the University of Phoenix inculcate similar virtues
unique to its institutional identity, internal and external stakeholder demands, and alignment to specific training
necessary for employers to hire University of Phoenix graduates (p. 682). As an online Faculty member of the
University of Phoenix since 2009 many of the practices that sustain my vocational calling can only be described
according to such specificity: punctuality in grading and responding to individual messages; professional, yet
approachable tone in communication; time-efficiency through recording all hours worked, to include faculty
meetings and required training; conference presentations on a yearly basis; publications every two years; and
communication with key institutional decision-makers. Such best practices have produced student survey response
ratings as high as 9.9/10 and all 9.6/10 or higher for all courses taught. My students are well-served, and the internal
cultivation of excellence (arête) enhances, rather than detracts from, institutional success.
CONCLUSION
If the University of Phoenix is to survive, much less thrive, then a similar shift toward the natural virtues,
and the specific practices necessary to achieve such excellence (arête), must be discovered, and inculcated.
Critiques of Neoliberalism as espoused by Deresiewicz (2015) are compelling due to the free market’s influence on
all U.S. higher education. Simply dismissing such concerns, even if critiques of Neolberalism are unwarranted,
might fail to recognize how underlying concerns for the collective good might be viewed as antithetical to
meritocracy. Through shifting its mission statement from emphasizing productivity to performance, although not
immune to critiques of Neoliberalism’s influence upon U.S. higher education, at least virtue (arête) can be reclaimed
as a conceptual and practical category that can include such concerns for the societal common good. Although the
moral philosophical work of Alasdair MacIntyre has influenced discussions throughout applied ethics, the
application to management theory and business ethics represents a more recent appropriation of his work, especially
in narrating economics as rooted in local communities (for example, the hospitality industry). As an interpreter
attuned to not only management theory, but also philosophical intellectual history, Ron Beadle’s appropriation of
Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics demonstrated that such communities of practice resist universalization, but
instead must be found in particularistic, even individualistic, cultivation of virtue. Granted, such a conceptualization
of business ethics away from ruled-based (Kantian deontological) or consequentialist ethics (forms of
utilitarianism), and toward virtue (arête) will require a shift in how the effective higher educational leader will be
envisioned, much less evaluated. For such a leader (or leaders) proprietary U.S. higher education has been waiting.
To quote Alasdair MacIntyre, “We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St.
Benedict” (as cited in MacIntyre, 1981, p. 263).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge and thank especially the President of the Golden Key International Honour Society at
APUS-AMU, graduate student in humanities, Bridget Chaney. Her early reading of my first two drafts of the
introduction and theoretical discourse, especially in noting my indebtedness to Michel Foucault (and Saussure’s
philosophy of language descriptions of signs and signification) proved especially valuable in creatively engaging the
23
Copyright by Author(s): CC-BY
wyvernpublishinggroup.com
Journal of Perspectives in Organizational Behavior, Management, & Leadership
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2015)
critiques of Neoliberalism posed by Deresiewicz. I would also like to acknowledge fellow Knight of Columbus
Caleb Congrove (Oberlin College, BA, Yale University, M.Div, University of Notre Dame Ph.D. studies) for clearly
delineating how practices must be authentically construed according to each respective craft in order to be true to
MacIntyre’s virtue theory (arguably, even to be true to Aristotle’s natural law virtues). I would also like to
acknowledge and thank my students and colleagues at Kaplan for instantiating the practices of arête (virtue)
whereby my own local community of practice can be sustained economically, culturally, and epistemologically.
Finally, I would like to thank MENSA for including me by 125 cumulative GRE points, itself a testimony to the
practice of arête (virtue).
REFERENCES
AL.com (2015). University of Phoenix: Why for-profit college is in hot water with feds.
Retrieved from http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/10/university_of_phoenix_why_the.html
Beabout, G.R. (2012). Management as a domain-relative practice that requires and develops practical wisdom.
Business Ethics Quarterly, 22(2), 405 – 432.
Beadle, R. (2008). Goods, virtues, practices, institutions: Defending, applying and extending Alasdair MacIntyre’s
theory of organization. Newcastle, UK: Northumbria University. Retrieved from
http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.537332
Beadle, R. (2013). Managerial work in a practice-embodying institution: The role of calling, the virtue of
constancy. Journal of Business Ethics, 113, 679 – 690.
Beadle, R. (2008). Why business cannot be a practice. Analyse & Kritik, 30, 229 – 241.
Beadle, R. & Konyot, D. (2006). The man in the red coat—Management in the circus. Culture and Organization,
12(2), 127 – 137.
Bull, C. & Adam, A. (2011). Virtue ethics and customer relationship management: Towards a more holistic
approach for the development of ‘best practice. Business Ethics: A European Review, 20(2), 121 – 129.
CNNMoney (2015). University of Phoenix has lost half its students. Retrieved from
http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/25/investing/university-of-phoenix-apollo-earnings-tank/
Deresiewicz, W. (2015). The neoliberal arts: How college sold its soul to the market. Harper’s, 331(1984), 25 – 32.
Deresiewicz, W. (n.d.). Excellent sheep. Retrieved from http://www.excellentsheep.com/
Gilbert, J. (2013). What kind of thing is ‘neoliberalism’?. New Formations: Neoliberal Culture, 80/81, 7 - 22
MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
MacIntyre, A. (1990). Three rival versions of moral enquiry: Encyclopaedia, genealogy, and tradition. Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Moore, G. (2008). Re-imagining the morality of management: A modern virtue ethics approach. Business Ethics
Quarterly, 18(4), 483 – 511.
Sinnicks, M. (2014). Practices, governance, and politics: Applying MacIntyre’s ethics to business. Business Ethics
Quarterly, 24(2), 229 – 249.
Thorsen, D.E., & Lie, A. (n.d.). What is neoliberalism? Retrieved from
https://www.scribd.com/doc/119694628/What-is-Neo-Liberalism-FINAL
University of Phoenix. (2015). Mission and purpose. Retrieved from
http://www.phoenix.edu/about_us/about_university_of_phoenix/mission_and_purpose.html
Wijesinghe, G. (2014). Reimagining the application of sustainability to the hospitality industry through a virtue
ethics framework. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 22(1), 31 – 49.
Wyma, K. D. (2015). The case for investment advising as a virtue-based practice. Journal of Business Ethics, 127,
231 – 249.
Robert J. King received his B.A. (full academic-leadership scholarship) from Davidson College, his M.Div. (Duke
Scholar) and Th.M. from Duke University, and spent three years in the Ph.D. program in Ethics and Christian
History at the University of Notre Dame. King received his Ed.S. in Ethics, and Public Policy from Walden
University (directed by Cheryl Keen, Ed.D., Harvard) where he is completing his Ed.D. dissertation in Higher
Educational Leadership (dissertation director, Carol Phillips, Ed.D., Harvard). King received two National
Endowment for the Humanities grants (2010, 2011), and the inaugural Excellence in Publishing Award (2012) at the
University of Phoenix.
24
Copyright by Author(s): CC-BY
wyvernpublishinggroup.com