Professional Civility—Communicative Virtue at Work

Fritz (communication and rhetorical studies, Duquesne U.) offers this text as an entry point for remedying what she terms "the crisis of incivility plaguing today's workplace." She advocates the virtue ethics of Alastair MacIntyre and an appreciation for publicly agreed-upon standards of communication, rather than "an individualistic ethic of emotivism" that plagues professional organizations. She treats professionalism as a kind of eudaimonistic meta-practice. She argues for the communicative virtues of civility and a new rhetoric of professions; that there are pragmatic pay-offs to cultivating civility in the workplace; and that "productivity is the first good of the profession(s) as tradition(s)" and must be protected. She draws on Hannah Arendt in distinguishing intellectual from manual labor, focusing on middle-class occupations as a result. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Janie M. Harden Fritz received her PhD in communication arts from the University of Wisconsin. She is professor in the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. She is co-editor (with Becky L. Omdahl) of Problematic Relationships in the Workplace Volumes 1 and 2 (Peter Lang, 2006, 2012), co-editor (with S. Alyssa Groom) of Communication Ethics and Crisis (2012), and co-author (with Ronald C. Arnett and Leeanne M. Bell) of Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (2009). She is a past president of the Eastern Communication Association and the Religious Communication Association.