Dr. Kim Cameron's Wisdom: Virtuousness

Dr. Hite, my BYU professor, gives us tons of reading to do each week. Therefore, when she sent us an email recommending that we read one more article, I laughed and said to myself, "I can barely find time to read what you have already assigned let alone one more article." Yet, when I discovered it was only 6 pages long, I felt it was manageable.

This 6 page article, "Good or Not Bad: Standards and Ethics in Managing Change," by Dr. Kim Cameron from the University of Michigan, has had a profound impact on my thinking. Every leader who desires to make a difference will want to become familiar with Dr. Cameron's work.

In this particular article, Dr. Cameron emplains why an emphasis on positive practices, not merely the absence of negative or harmful practices, should be emphasized if an organization is to have successful performance. He calls these positive practives VIRTUOUSNESS. He points out that virtuousness is different than ethics which merely focuses on avoiding the negative.

Dr. Cameron goes onto stress that we live in a time when it is impossible to manage change when it is occurring constantly. For this reason it is essential that we have and live by unchanging, undisputed guiding principles. These fixed points or principles will give us stability in the midst of ambiguity and chaos.

To achieve this, Dr. Cameron adds, we must move from ethics. Ethic standards that focus on avoiding harm are not the same as standards that lead to doing good. In order to lead to doing good, ethical standards must be supplemented with what Dr. Cameron calls viruousness standards.

Viruousness is what individuals aspire to be when they are at there very best Dr. Cameron notes that these aspirations of virtuousness are universal and unchanging in essentially all societies, cultures, and religions.

The results of empirical research are revealing that organizations that are virtuous organizations significantly outperform less virtuous organizations with positive outcomes, not just the absence of negative outcomes.

Virtuousness obviously needs to be a topic for not only every management classroom, but it also should be included in the curriculum for every education leadership programs. It has the potential to make a huge difference for our diverse learners.


For more information on Dr. Cameron's work, visit his website: www.bus.umich.edu/Positive (Positive Organizational Scholarship) and/or read one or both of the books he co-authored:

• Leading With Values: Positivity, Virtue of High Performers
• Competing Values Leadership: Creating Values in Organizations.