ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to illustrate MacIntyre’s writing about organisations by drawing on our experience of the travelling circus. It begins with a sketch of the conceptual architecture of practices, institutions and goods that frames his understanding of the role of the virtues in organisations. A revival in the use of Aristotelian virtue notions is evident across studies of management, organisations and professions. The essential unit of the production process in traditional travelling circus is the family and this marks a distinctive feature of its employment relations. Traditional circuses are privately owned and shows are developed for a season through the employment of the director’s family and others in offering a programme of acts. The role of the ringmaster outlined here is part of the definition of traditional one-ring travelling circus. A wire-walker whose closing trick was a double backward somersault would go into a whole routine of falling off, getting back on the wire and completing trick to rapturous applause.
