Pretending you have virtue is not being virtuous. It is the opposite of virtuous. The "ancient view of virtue" was concerned with the internal, not external. Whether you say something is true, whether you say are virtuous has no bearing on reality. The ancients did not know about performativity.
And the suspicion here is well earned. Being purpose and mission driven is usually just code for: the CEO likes to take big piles of your money, set it on fire, and then hop on CNBC and tell people how setting fire to your money makes them virtuous. Anyone who feels they need to signal their virtue, to me and use that as a pretext for getting my money, is likely someone who I should not trust with my money (so far, as someone who saw this over and over working in the investment business, this suspicion has never been unfounded). It is far easier to work with someone who says they will act in their own self-interest than someone who claims they have no interests at all (and btw, this is where things mostly go wrong: managers who say and believe there are disinterested whilst only following their own self-interest...something like LTSE sounds very much another mechanism for managers to shed accountability).
And the suspicion here is well earned. Being purpose and mission driven is usually just code for: the CEO likes to take big piles of your money, set it on fire, and then hop on CNBC and tell people how setting fire to your money makes them virtuous. Anyone who feels they need to signal their virtue, to me and use that as a pretext for getting my money, is likely someone who I should not trust with my money (so far, as someone who saw this over and over working in the investment business, this suspicion has never been unfounded). It is far easier to work with someone who says they will act in their own self-interest than someone who claims they have no interests at all (and btw, this is where things mostly go wrong: managers who say and believe there are disinterested whilst only following their own self-interest...something like LTSE sounds very much another mechanism for managers to shed accountability).