Business Ethics: A European Review

Volume 20 Number 2 April 2011

Virtue ethics and customer

relationship management:
towards a more holistic
approach for the development
of best practice
Christopher Bull1 and Alison Adam2
1. Digital Business and Management Systems, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, Manchester, UK
2. School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History, University of Salford, Salford, UK

This paper focuses much-needed attention on the ethical nature of customer relationship management
(CRM) strategies in organisations. The research uses an in-depth case study to reect on the design,
implementation and use of best practice associated with CRM. We argue that conventional CRM
philosophy is based on a fairly narrow construct that fails to consider ethical issues appropriately. We
highlight why ethical considerations are important when organisations use CRM and how a more holistic
approach incorporating some of Alasdair MacIntyres ideas on virtue ethics could be relevant.

Introduction
During the last decade, a number of diverse
organisations have been attracted to the concept of
customer relationship management (CRM). Obtaining reliable gures for the adoption of CRM is
difcult. However, according to AMR Research and
Gartner, in 2008, the specic market for CRM
information systems (IS) alone was estimated to be
US$13 billion. The research associated with CRM
continues to evolve and focuses on a range of topics,
such as strategic objectives and the development of
strategic frameworks (Bull 2003, 2010, Newell 2000,
Zablah et al. 2004), project implementation, the
assessment of risk (Parr & Shanks 2000) and reviews
of classications and academic approaches (Das
2009, Kevork & Vrechopoulos 2009). Despite some
relatively rare examples (Adam & Light 2004,
Wagner & Newell 2004, Polomino Murcia &

Whitley 2007, Adam & Bull 2008), there remain

relatively few studies that assess the ethical or the
cultural issues associated with the diverse aspects of
CRM.
This paper seeks to contribute to our knowledge
of CRM by evaluating some of the ethical and
cultural issues arising from a real-world CRM
project. We reect on an in-depth organisational
case study of a CRM strategy within the United
Kingdom. The remainder of this paper is structured
as follows: rst, we evaluate conventional notions of
best practice in CRM philosophy and highlight the
neglect of ethical considerations in such development. We consider the ways in which the ethical
dimension in CRM philosophy could benet from
concepts drawn from Alasdair MacIntyres virtue
ethics approach (MacIntyre 1985). This leads to a
brief overview of the case study and details some of
the practices deployed in a typical CRM strategy.

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Business Ethics: A European Review r 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8608.2011.01613.x

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We then proceed to discuss some of the signicant

organisational changes arising from the use of such
practices associated with CRM and how they can affect
individuals in organisational life. Finally, we reect on
how a consideration and the use of a more holistic
notion of best practice, incorporating ideas from
Alasdair MacIntyres virtue ethics, could be relevant.

CRM philosophy and notions of best

practice
The concept of CRM and the symbiotic relationship
between customer-centric business processes and
supporting IS technologies has a longer tradition
than some may think (Synnott 1978). However,
CRM evolved signicantly from 1998 when Siebel
CRM Systems moved from producing Sales Force
Automation and Marketing Information Systems to
offering what was claimed to be more holistically
oriented organisational packaged software IS for the
management of customer relationships.
CRM is primarily concerned with focusing attention on improving customer interaction, relations,
service, satisfaction and delivery. Such objectives are
often considered through an emphasis on improving
customer retention and recruitment. One of the rst
philosophies proposed to meet such needs was to use
CRM systems to change the management of
customer relations through a targeting approach.
The CRM targeting approach is based on the idea
that customers in many organisations represent
diverse levels of value and expectation. Customers
are often categorised into two groups: transactional
and relational customers. Transactional customers
are those who appear to be primarily motivated by
cost, are often less protable to a company and offer
low potential for loyalty. Relational customers are
those who express interest in a range of value-added
business services, who may therefore be seen as
better prospects in terms of protability and
sustained loyalty (Newell 2000, Thompson 2000,
Cheung et al. 2003). Thus, within such thinking, it is
important for organisations to recognise and appreciate diverse levels of value by distinguishing
between such diverse groups and then to develop
approaches that target such customers appropriately
with a differentiated level of service.

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Another important development in the concept of

CRM is the use of a knowledge management (KM)
approach, through the concept of linking knowledge
and interaction management (termed as an IKM
model) (Zablah et al. 2004). The IKM approach is
based on a process of collecting and disseminating
customer-related intelligence and knowledge and
ensuring that this is disseminated to reach and be
used appropriately in all customer-facing areas, e.g.
product and service delivery, human contacts and all
forms of digital communication (Zablah et al. 2004).
Some have extended such concepts to be more
holistic in nature to include the use of such
information and knowledge to reformulate the
design of products and services in terms of focusing
on improving after-sales services (Ciborra & Failla
2000, Bull 2003).
Despite such interventions, there have been some
difculties in developing a more mature and coherent
concept of CRM. CRM could still be perceived as a
relatively fragmented environment, where it often
means different things to different people. The
problems of trying to develop a shared concept of
CRM could be rooted in the multi-disciplinary nature
of CRM environments (and subsequent diverse
stances), the scope of CRMs boundaries and a divide
relating to CRM and relationship marketing (RM).
Such difculties are perhaps best typied by the latter
problem. While almost all agree that CRM and RM
are distinct entities, there are disagreements on how
the two differ. In the early development of CRM
theory, a consensus emerged that CRM is a concept
that was evolving from the relative narrower connes
of RM (Berry 1995, Reichheld 1996, Payne et al.
1999, Kotler 2000) into a more strategic and holistic
concept involving the entire enterprise (Light 2001,
Bull 2003, Zablah et al. 2004). However, more
recently, some appear to be departing from such a
position by reformulating and elevating the concept of
RM to be more strategic in nature and conning
CRM to be the tactical implementation of RM using
information technology (Das 2009).
In IS packaged software design, the concept of
best practice often refers to a belief that supposed
best practices, in other words, the best way of
doing things, can be transferred to organisations
when they purchase software packages. If business is
considered in terms of practice (see below), then an

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Business Ethics: A European Review

Volume 20 Number 2 April 2011

appropriate IS could contribute to the maintenance

of excellence in the practice. Best IS-led business
practices are often created through commercial
partnerships between software producers and a few
consumer organisations (often those who are
involved in the piloting or initial uses of the original
design stages of the software). In other words, such
software can be seen as encapsulating elements of
the practice of consumer organisations who worked
with software producers and who will lter and
select which elements of practice are going to be
included in the software. There are tensions here. On
the one hand, some organisations may perceive
packaged software products to be benecial in terms
of helping them to achieve their objectives more
efciently and rapidly, hence more protably. On
the other hand, while the purchase of an off the
shelf package software system could save time if
compared with a design of an individual bespoke
system, its implementation, training and migration
are often broadly similar in timescale. Hence,
whether a software system is bespoke or off the
shelf, whatever the ultimate benets to the practice
of the organisation, it will still require signicant
investment in order to achieve those benets.
There is also a danger of embracing the best
practice seemingly offered by such systems and
implementing many of the best practice design
features, and perhaps abandoning existing procedures within the organisation, without a sufcient
evaluation of the changes, consequences or risks
involved. Pollock et al. (2002: 328) note:
Organizations are increasingly reliant on the use
of packaged software solutions because of the
economic benets of commodied solutions,
the interoperability benets of standard platforms and the desire to align with best practice.
However, there is often a large gulf between standardized generic solutions and the specic contexts, practices and requirements of particular
organizations.

Furthermore, a more fundamental issue can arise in

the use of packaged software systems to guide
business change. The so-called best practice encapsulated within the system cannot be accepted
uncritically; it may not t the organisation appropriately. Indeed, Wagner & Newell (2004) explicitly

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Business Ethics: A European Review r 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

ask best practice for whom? There are several

different cultures within an organisation; inevitably,
the views of senior management will prevail. This
points to a concern that best practice is a politically
charged term. Not everyone will agree as to what
best practice represents. The practice of some
members lower in the hierarchy may not even be
acknowledged as working practice.
The decision to implement CRM inevitably disrupts organisational life and many existing business
and information/KM processes. The scale of change
and disruption varies depending on the nature and
scope of the strategy. In the sourcing, implementation
and use of CRM, the effects can be very signicant
for many organisations because such systems are
designed to meet not only the needs of local
organisational environments, but often also their
regional/global operations and some of the other
external relationships, e.g. suppliers and customers.
This highlights one of the aspects of the practice
institution relationship. Where the practice is business, the external relationships of customer and
supplier are not (just) actors in support of external
goods of prot, they are integral to the maintenance
of excellence of the internal goods of the practice.
Hence, CRM systems are not (just) about increasing
prots; they are integral to the maintenance of
excellence in the practice of business. Given that
such issues are important dimensions, it is somewhat
surprising that there still remains a dearth of studies
that highlight and reect on the ethical nature of
CRM. This research now attempts to address such a
void by considering the relevance of Alasdair
Macintyres work on virtue (character-based) ethics
(MacIntyre 1985) in relation to reformulating the
philosophy and practices in CRM.

Alasdair MacIntyres virtue

ethics approach
In order to evaluate further some of the ethical and
cultural issues in the use of CRM, we refer to
Alasdair MacIntyres virtue ethics (MacIntyre
1985), particularly his notion of practice. MacIntyres elaboration of virtue ethics was an explicit
attack on the moral project of the Enlightenment
and its lack of moral purpose. He is highly critical of

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the utilitarianism of capitalism. Although MacIntyres stance would seem inimical to the world of the
corporation, nevertheless, it attracts growing attention in the business ethics literature (Whetstone
2001, 2003, 2005, Solomon 2003, Dawson 2009), not
least because it offers a substantial alternative to the
endless pursuit of material prot (Moore & Beadle
2006). Of particular relevance to this paper is
MacIntyres concept of practice.
A practice is a cooperative human activity whereby
goods internal to that activity are produced in the
course of achieving standards of excellence appropriate to that activity.
(MacIntyre 1985: 187)

Thinking in terms of the use of CRM within an

organisation, then external goods would relate to
the increase in prot that the organisation can
expect from a successful implementation and internal goods would relate to the ways in which CRM
can improve the practice of the organisation. This
would mean improvements to the service or material
goods that the organisation offers as well as better
service for customers and job satisfaction, training
and development for staff. Virtues are related to
goods and practices; they are the character dispositions that allow people involved in a practice to
attend to the maintenance of internal goods. They
are not necessarily practice-specic. For the successful achievement of goods internal to practice, we
look to attributes such as courage, justice, fortitude
and temperance (Moore & Beadle 2006: 373). A
virtuous organisation is one that affords its members opportunities to act virtuously, in maintaining
the practice enshrined within the organisation, in
other words to act as moral agents. Thus, MacIntyres virtue ethics is not necessarily at odds with
some of the notions associated with CRMs philosophy, i.e. the need for supplier and client organisations
to generate tangible benets, e.g. prot (an external
good), as long as external goods (prot) are not
pursued at the expense of internal goods (improving
the practice that the organisation houses). It is easy to
lose sight of internal goods and prioritise external
goods of prot and reputation to the extent that
internal goods are destroyed. But, on the other hand,
a business cannot ignore external goods; otherwise, it
can be as virtuous as it likes but it will ultimately

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suffer in other important respects. In summary, the

notion of virtuous organisation is one that affords its
members opportunities to act well, in maintaining
external and internal goods of excellence in practices,
including the use of management philosophies within
the organisation.
Among contemporary writing on MacIntyres
approach applied to business ethics, Moore (2002,
2003, 2005a, 2005b) offers an approach to the
practiceinstitution distinction that is particularly
relevant to our discussion of best practice. Moore is
a leading exponent of Macintyres virtue ethics in
the eld of management, more specically, business
ethics. He argues that one of the reasons why
MacIntyre has not been widely taken up in the
world of business lies in his apparent anti-business,
anti-modernist position.
He makes a plea Moore (2002: 19) for those who
have abandoned business ethics in favour of the
language of stakeholders to reconsider. In particular, he is at pains to work out the detail of the
practiceinstitution distinction, a distinction that is
very relevant to our study but that remains underexplored. The problem is that MacIntyre regards
institutions, whose aims are money, power and fame
(i.e. external goods), as corrupting of practice that is
concerned with internal goods of excellence. A
practice must be housed in some sort of institution
that can be thought of as an exoskeleton holding
the practice together. But the institutions that house
practices need not be corrupting.
Moore argues that MacIntyre can be applied to
business as a practice and corporations as institutions. MacIntyre (1985) describes how a productive
practice, e.g. as applied to shing or farming, can
also apply to business. Business-as-practice should
be conceived of holistically to include production
and marketing. Given that MacIntyre sees his ethics
as communitarian and not tied to the actions and
duties of the individual alone, the practice as a
whole has a moral life. A practice is a coherent and
complex form of socially established cooperative
human activity (Moore 2002: 24). Even though
MacIntyre might disagree, Moore (2002) argues that
management and the employment relationship are
also practices.
The practiceinstitution schema always contains a
tension, between the ideals of the practice and the

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Volume 20 Number 2 April 2011

acquisitiveness of the institution, but the tension

need not always be negative.
Maclntyres schema, when worked through, indicates that the tension he initially observes that
the practice is always vulnerable to the acquisitiveness and competitiveness of the institution
may not be as destructive as he suggests.
(Moore 2002: 28)

Following from this, the corporation must always be

aware that it is founded on maintaining the excellence
of practice. The practice must maintain its integrity in
the face of the corporation, which will inevitably focus
on external goods. Therefore, those in charge of the
corporation must develop a corporate nature of a
virtuous corporation. This suggests that MacIntyres
initial view may have been too pessimistic. Although
MacIntyre does not regard business as a practice,
Moore (2002, 2005a, 2005b) argues that it is appropriate to regard business as a practice, although there
are necessary tensions in relation to the institution
that houses the practice, namely the corporation or
the organisation. The virtuous corporation is possible
and Moore argues that the focus on excellence would
improve performance rather than diminish it.
Moore (2002) discusses the ways in which
MacIntyres practiceinstitution schema applies in
business ethics. A later paper (Moore 2005a) offers
craftsmanship as an answer to the re-description of
business-as-practice:
The point about using this term at all, however, is
that it perhaps encapsulates how the individual
might best approach working in business organisations if the notions of virtue, practice, narrative
quest and telos . . . are seen to provide a convincing
way of coming at moral philosophy in general
and a serious way of attempting to overcome the
potentially deep-seated problems of business organisations set in a capitalist system in relation to the
individual and the community.
(Moore 2005a: 247)

MacIntyre uses the term craftmanship in relation

to the productive crafts of farming, shing, architecture and construction. Moore (2005a: 249) notes
that the terminology of craftsmanship is useful while
some of the historical baggage might not be (for
instance, exclusionary practices in guilds and so on).
However, we would gain much by viewing ourselves

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as craftspeople in business. Not only would individuals benet, but they would play an important role
in humanising business.
For the individual, rediscovering craftsmanship
means concentrating on intrinsic values (internal
goods) of business work rather than instrumental
values (external goods of salary and prot). This
means producing the best of which one is capable.
Thus the marketing manager would design and
execute not just a marketing plan but the best
marketing plan of which she was capable. And,
bearing in mind the virtue of phronesis (practical
wisdom), the concept of best would involve not
just a plan that was conceptually and creatively
excellent but one that would deliver as far as the
organisation was concerned.
(Moore 2005a: 250)

As institutions can corrupt, exercising the virtues

not only means producing internal goods, but it is
also a way of maintaining the practice. Community
is important. Craftsmanship, by its very nature,
requires the pursuit of excellence in the craft, and
this can be done only by craftspeople working
together in community (Moore 2005a: 250251).
Craftsmanship is more than just being in a community. It involves training, apprenticeship and so on.
High job involvement is involved. Craftspeople must
stand together against the organisation when the
excellences of practice are under threat (Moore
2005a: 251). Craftspeople are likely to be loyal to an
organisation as well as courage and truthfulness,
trust is required. Magnanimity or just generosity is
required (Moore 2005a: 251).

Research approach
In order to evaluate the ideas of best practice in
relation to CRM, this research reects on the
organisational use of a CRM system utilising a
case-study approach (Walsham 1995, Stake 2000,
Van Der Blonk 2003). An in-depth case study was
conducted over a period of a year. The researcher
(one of the authors) was based at the organisation at
various periods for approximately 45 days in total.
The company was visited on many occasions and
interviews were conducted with 32 people involved

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in the project, including more detailed interviews

(approximately 50 min) with all of the key organisational stakeholders involved. Evidence was also
collected from ethnographic observations of spending time in the company and from attending several
key meetings. Finally, the researcher was also
allowed access to a number of corporate documents
and insights into the negotiations and dealings with
third parties such as external management consultants, software suppliers and training organisations.
We regard the philosophical position adopted in
this study as interpretive rather than critical, and we
acknowledge that such a position makes a difference, not only to the ways in which the research is
conducted but also to the ndings of the research
(Howcroft & Trauth 2008). Our aim was to understand the interpretations that our respondents were
making of their organisational lives, in their own
terms, rather than attempting to make an intervention of the sort implied by an action research
(Baskerville & Wood-Harper 1998) or critical
approach (McGrath 2005).
For a variety of commercial reasons, the company
featured in this research expressed a wish to remain
anonymous and is therefore given a pseudonym of
NAL Co. Also, while respecting their wishes, we are
allowed to say that the company itself is an
established international manufacturer of urban
furniture (450 years trading) employing approximately 220 employees, servicing approximately
1,200 highly diverse customers.

Case study
NAL Co.s CRM strategy was originated by the
directors of the company. They made two key
strategic decisions before initiating the full project
and the forming of a project team. These included
the decision to outsource the services of external
management consultants to perform an initial audit
of their readiness for CRM and to guide them
regarding the major changes that would be needed.
One of the consequences of the consultant report
was to replace NAL Co.s internal ad hoc customerfacing IS with an outsourced packaged software
system (Goldmine CRM). The CRM strategy was
then delegated to a project team primarily involving

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the Sales Director and the Sales and Marketing and

Information Technology teams. There was some
minor involvement and representation from other
people within the company mainly the managers
of Design & Logistics, Human Resources and
Accounting & Finance. The IT Manager was
appointed as the CRM Project Manager, reporting
to the Sales Director. This decision was based on
several criteria that centred mostly on a view that he
possessed many project management capabilities, he
was a counterbalance to Sales and Marketing, and
also because the company were using an outsourced
packaged software IS.
A number of areas were prioritised for change.
These included the need to improve the quality of
the design for some products and the need to use the
CRM system to attempt to improve product
delivery, customer liaison and after sales services.
Space does not allow a discussion of all of the
strategic initiatives undertaken, nor of all the
unintended consequences arising during the CRM
project at NAL Co. What follows is a specic focus
on the more signicant aspects of two main strategic
objectives. These help to highlight the nature of
organisational life, which can be exhibited through
typical CRM initiatives and the various issues that
can restrict moral agency and ultimately the delivery
of organisational excellence.
NAL Co.s rst strategic objective was to improve
the design quality of some of their products in order
to make them more attractive to existing and
potential new customers. In the pursuit of this
objective, NAL Co. appeared to be split in respect of
what they seemed to value and what they actually
did. Some of NAL Co.s products were designed,
manufactured and installed by certain specialists
within the company. Some products were considered
to be cutting-edge innovations, highly praised and
valued in the market, e.g. urban lighting schemes.
However, some products were considered to be
increasingly dated and somewhat unattractive, e.g.
transportation shelters.
Some of the innovations in lighting schemes
included hoist mechanisms to help customers (or
service agents) lower posts for easy cleaning and
maintenance. The lighting products were also fairly
innovative in terms of their directional capabilities,
resulting in the need for fewer lights (within an

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Volume 20 Number 2 April 2011

overall scheme) and the additional benet of reducing

light pollution. There were some problems, however,
which included the bespoke or the idiosyncratic
nature of some customer contracts, which limited
some replication of good practices elsewhere. Also,
the company worked on some fairly prestigious
projects, e.g. at internationally renowned sporting
stadiums. While such projects were not always easy to
install or were not always that protable, NAL Co.
regarded such projects highly. This is because they
could use such prestigious projects for showcasing
and marketing purposes. By contrast, NAL Co.s
position in the transportation furniture market was
increasingly problematic because they had failed to
innovate. NAL Co. was losing orders and becoming
out of touch with customers who were increasingly
interested in more modern and aesthetically sympathetic architecture that could be more easily maintained and cleaned. This research observed this
contrast in terms of a greater involvement and
satisfaction by people working on lighting schemes
vs. some opposite traits exhibited by those working on
urban transportation projects.
Several problems were observed from NAL Co.s
differentiated approach. First, the support awarded
to certain products often acted as a disincentive to
improve weaker areas of the business because it
often reinforced negative values. Second, such
distortions were a problem because the market for
transportation furniture offered greater potential for
revenue and protability, due to its size and location
and because of the nature of the products with the
potential to achieve greater economies of scale.
Third, NAL Co. struggled to coordinate tasks
because they did not really work on the basis of
cross-functional teams. Furthermore, there was a
widely held, but ultimately unproven, view that the
design and production of such products was so
differentiated that it would be futile to consider
trying to adopt best practices from one specialism
and supporting team, to the much-needed other.
Thus, before the CRM project, apart from the
sharing of certain organisational processes (e.g.
purchasing, logistics), important aspects of NAL
Co.s sales and production processes operated as
fairly independently functioning silos. The CRM
project did not manage to change this unfortunate
position. This was because the CRM project team

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did not engage with sufcient numbers of those

people from the design, purchase and production
areas of the business. Thus, those who may have
been in a position to affect change, by coming
together and exchanging ideas on adopting other
practices, were somewhat ignored and thus prevented from making a contribution.
The second major character disposition at NAL
Co. relates to the value placed on external systems
and management philosophies (often at the expense
of internal goods of excellence) for improving
customer contact and service. The use of external
consultants to diagnose problems and prescribe the
important initial stages of the CRM strategy,
including the recommendation to outsource a Goldmine CRM IS, was perceived by senior managers as
an essential element of the project. This was because
of a perception (rightly or wrongly) of the poor state
of NAL Co.s legacy IS and the subsequent impact
on failing to meet customer needs. Also, Goldmine
CRM appeared to offer the potential to change such
inadequacies quickly. In addition, NAL Co. bought
into the idea that the Goldmine CRM system had
inscribed superior features because such systems had
been tried and tested by other companies. This is a
classic story of the deployment of packaged software, in that companies often hope to transform
problematic business activities through procuring
established best practice. However, this path is
often initiated without fully exploring the implications of such an approach, particularly how such
software can impact on ignoring established and
often, fairly idiosyncratic working practices.
Space does not allow detailing of the full ramications of all of the changes brought about by using
external management consultants and the Goldmine
CRM system and what follows is a specic analysis of
the issues in relation to changes in autonomy, task
allocation, performance setting and surveillance.
The changes arising from such impositions were
barely allowed to be discussed or questioned by the
appointed project team and some had broader
repercussions for some individuals (or groups) within
the company than others. Changes for individuals
within the Sales Team included the need to record all
diary appointments, customer contacts, customer site
visits, pricing advice, competitor intelligence, an
estimation of a customers interest in products, the

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potential of a tender to quote and the chances of an

order or follow-up order. Also, others within the
company could schedule a range of operational tasks
for Sales personnel to perform. The recording of such
tasks soon became universally unpopular because of
the uncertain, short-term, fairly narrow, quantitative
criteria involved. Many Sales staff resented the
amount of time required to adapt to the needs within
Goldmine CRM and the time now being spent
on recoding individual tasks, the number of tasks
pending or completed, the number of contacts or
visits conducted, percentage estimate of a likely quotation or order from a customer, the size of a
customer order, the cost of sales of each contract, the
possibilities of a repeat quotation or order and a
customer satisfaction rating, etc. Furthermore, many
Sales staff resented the ability of others to schedule
their tasks, mostly because they claimed that others
lacked sufcient expertise for such tasks. Finally,
almost all of the Sales staff resented some forms of
the monitoring and surveillance features within
Goldmine CRM for many reasons. In particular,
there were concerns relating to the integrity of using
such data, the lack of collaboration involved in
implementing such changes and a perception that
senior managers had lost faith in their ability to
perform such work reliably.

Discussion
The case study raises a number of interesting issues
in respect of the ethical and cultural issues associated with organisational notions and the development of best practice in CRM strategies. This
discussion will now reect on some of the specic
features of the case study in light of the two notions
of practice.
The failure to recognise and coordinate the sharing
of best practices at NAL Co.s design, manufacturing and installation processes was interesting from
many perspectives. First, it highlights a lack of
willingness by NAL Co.s senior managers or the
CRM project team to fully evaluate certain established norms and practices. Second, it highlights a
failure to recognise the value of internal goods of
excellence and to acknowledge or involve such people
in areas of the business where they could have made a

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contribution to improving important crafts and

practices for the benet of others. Third, while there
were some important areas of divergence in practice
that were not easily transferable between processes,
there were some areas of practice that were worth
exchanging. Most of these relate to broader considerations that could offer a perceivable value to
customers. Such issues included the consideration
and implementation, where possible, of using simpler
designs in products, the use of more common
components, ensuring that products were more
aesthetically pleasing to customers and, nally, that
more attention be given to improving the maintenance issues involved when customers (or installation agents) install, use and maintain such products.
Thus, in summary, this case highlights the tangible
values arising from the recognition of the values
placed on improving ones craft, the ability of some
to help others and the value of MacIntyres notion of
community. This is particularly true in terms of the
problems arising from the existence of disparate
communities, but also how a more holistic community-based approach within organisations can ultimately benet external communities, in this respect
improving customer experiences and provision.
In terms of the second character disposition at
NAL Co., it is clear that the use of external
consultants, and the outsourcing and subsequent
use of the Goldmine CRM IS, was motivated by a
perceived value in external goods of excellence over
internal. Senior managers at NAL Co. perceived
that the company was in a very problematic state
with its existing IS and customer relations strategy.
Senior managers believed, and the CRM project
team were not allowed to question sufciently, that
there were alternatives in adopting the notions of
best practice prescribed, either by the external
consultants, by elements of CRM philosophy or
inscribed within a packaged software system. The
main problem with such thinking is that important
decisions are often taken without sufcient evaluation of such systems or management approaches and
because there was a perceived need to act with
immediacy in order to try and resolve a range of
problems. This actually resulted in the de-motivation of traditionally well-regarded people, who
opposed how work was now being allocated,
recorded and monitored.

r 2011 The Authors

Business Ethics: A European Review r 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Business Ethics: A European Review

Volume 20 Number 2 April 2011

Conclusion

References

CRM is an increasingly important and global

business phenomenon. While there are many studies
on CRM, there is still much to learn. Our research,
using an in-depth case study, highlights in specic
detail why and how existing notions of best practice
in CRM are often narrowly dened and applied,
resulting in a series of unsatisfactory outcomes.
The main argument in this research is that CRM
strategies should be managed more holistically and
based on the development of both external and
internal goods excellence. We propose that organisations could benet signicantly with an alternative
approach for CRM-based on ideas adapted from
MacIntyres virtue ethics. Our adaption of MacIntyre
is somewhat at odds by some recognition of protmaking organisations vs. a more community-based
concept for the role of organisations. However, such
thinking does align with MacIntyre and a more
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Such a philosophical approach in the interpretation
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satisfaction and motivation. Finally, this study also
reveals how organisations could benet from placing
more emphasis on not only evaluating more rigorously
but also supporting and disseminating internal goods
of excellence to other areas of the organisation.

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