The ethical tension over whether countries have differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation evokes the tale of a master and a man. The one who thinks she is the master is analogous to the wealthier, industrialized nations and their market actors, and the human is the rest of humanity, particularly those citizens of less developed countries. Since 1992, there has been formal, stated agreement that there should be differentiated responsibilities for climate change mitigation between developed and developing nations, but differentiation (...) remained a sticking point in negotiations over implementation at Copenhagen in 2009. Putting the parties in the climate change differentiation debate in analogy with the characters of Tolstoy’s story, “Master and Man,” this paper seeks to advance the common appreciation for the moral foundations of differentiation. (shrink)

The main question dividing classical and high liberals is about how economic rights rank compared to other rights and public goals. That is, the question is about what can or cannot outweigh such rights. High liberals argue that economic rights can be outweighed by any legitimate state interest, such that they are prima facie rights. Neoclassical liberals, conversely, have recently sought to elevate economic rights to basic rights, which could then only be outweighed by other basic rights. This paper shows (...) where the real debate should be for classical liberals, challenging Samuel Freeman’s widely held distinction between classical and high liberalism. Economic rights are prima facie for all liberals in that they can be outweighed by, say, considerations of utility or social justice. Although neoclassical liberals are correct to say that such rights are much more important than high liberals normally recognize, it does not follow that economic rights are basic. (shrink)

Most criticism and exposition of John Rawls’s political theory has focused on his account of distributive justice rather than on his support for liberalism. Because of this, much of his argument for protecting the basic liberties remains under explained. Specifically, Rawls claims that representative citizens would agree to guarantee those social conditions necessary for the exercise and development of the two moral powers, but he does not adequately explain why protecting the basic liberties would guarantee these social conditions. This gap (...) in his argument leads to two problems. First, the Rawlsian argument for the priority of liberty would fail if the gap could not be filled. His argument would still support the protection of individual freedoms, but these freedoms would be treated like other primary goods and regulated by the difference principle. Second, without a full argument, there is not sufficient reason to favor Rawls’s left-liberal conception of the basic liberties over a more right-leaning conception that would prioritize the protection of free-market rights. To address these two problems, this paper fills in the gap in order to better explain Rawls’s full argument for egalitarian liberalism. (shrink)

The macro-level business ethics in Scholasticism contrasts with modern Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, which is very influential worldwide. Scholasticism, developed between the thirteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, deals with key elements of free market morality, including private property, contracts, profits, prices, and free competition. For over 500 years Scholasticism tried to understand economic phenomena and business activities and reflected on them from an ethical perspective. Scholasticism offered the crucial lesson of the centrality of justice and the role of practical wisdom in considering (...) market morality. Justice is seen as both a virtue and a principle, and commutative justice with the common good of society as the reference for the Scholastics, is regarded as being especially important. (shrink)

Scholars who favor shareholder primacy usually claim either that managers should not fulfill corporate duties of beneficence or that, if they are required to fulfill them, they do so by going against their obligations to shareholders. Distinguishing between structurally different types of duties of beneficence and recognizing the full force of the normative demands imposed on managers reveal that this view needs to be qualified. Although it is correct to think that managers, when acting on behalf of shareholders, are not (...) required to fulfill wide duties of charity, they are nevertheless required to fulfill a variety of narrow duties of beneficence. What is more, the obligation to fulfill these duties arises precisely because they are acting on behalf of shareholders. As such, this article 1) refines our understanding of the duties of corporate beneficence and 2) helps to identify which duties of beneficence are imposed on managers when they are acting on behalf of shareholders. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The distinction between what I call nonelective obligations and discretionary obligations, a distinction that focuses on one particular thread of the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, helps us to identify the obligations that carry over from principals to agents. Clarity on this issue is necessary to identify the moral obligations within “shareholder primacy”, which conceives of managers as agents of shareholders. My main claim is that the principal-agent relation requires agents to fulfill nonelective obligations, but it does not always (...) require discharging discretionary obligations. I show that the requirement to fulfill nonelective obligations is more far-reaching than has been acknowledged by most defenders and critics of shareholder primacy. But I also show that managers are not bound by certain discretionary obligations like charity, showing that their moral obligations are more circumscribed than the obligations that apply to human beings in general. (shrink)

Anti-capitalist thinkers in the West have long argued that the expansion of markets creates new wants faster than it can satisfy them, and that consumption under capitalism is a form of addictive behavior. Recently, however, the relentless expansion of desire has come to be seen as a strength rather than a weakness of capitalist regimes. To understand this change socialists must consider whether there is a point to consumer spending that goes beyond satisfaction with what one gets. Freud's notion of (...) instinctual ambivalence illuminates the ways in which spending itself is a fusion of the desires to lose and to gain. This helps to explain how the socialist distinction between satisfying and addictive consumption misses the mark. Broadening this insight, we can see that Western thought about justice, originating in Judeo-Christian theology, conceals a fundamental ambivalence about both domination and gain by suggesting that inequality (beginning with that between God and man) is justified when the dominating party loses and the gainer submits. Ironically, however, the new post-utilitarian rationale for capitalism undermines this putative justification of social inequality in consumer-oriented capitalist societies by bringing our internal ambivalence about gain and dominance to the surface. This development creates an opportunity for a new beginning in Marxian social theory. The final sections of the essay suggest that social theory has been trapped in a debate over whether predators (and their human counterparts) kill in order to eat or eat in order to kill (Marx vs. Nietzsche). To break this trap we must shift the basis of social criticism from the metaphor of predation to the metaphor of parasitism. This changes the focus of critical analysis from unmasking the predator in every situation to identifying in every social structure the mechanisms of incorporation, mutual subversion, asymmetrical exchange, and surplus-creation (as distinct from equilibrium). If neither the desire for gain nor the desire for dominance are self-explanatory, then the Marxian critique of Nietzsche and the Nietzschean critique of Marxism both have valid points. The essay concludes with reflections about the importance of addressing the post-utilitarian rationale of capitalism with the same depth and comprehensiveness that we find in Marx's critique of its utilitarian rationale. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In his 1979 lecture series now translated as The Birth of Biopolitics, Michel Foucault suggests that there is an important relationship between neoliberalism and the cluster of phenomena he had previously named “biopower.” The relationship between these two apparently very different forms of governmentality is not obvious, however, and Foucault does not explicate it. The question has become a pressing one for feminists because it underlies a set of issues surrounding the emerging field of “reprogenetics.” Feminists have been highly critical (...) of invasive reproductive technologies for decades, viewing them as demeaning to and dangerous for women's bodies and as staunchly traditional in their reinforcement of gender roles and of maternity as female desire and destiny. Reprogeneticists accuse feminists of hypocrisy in seeking to curtail the widest technically possible range of “procreative choice.” This essay traces some ways in which reprogenetics may be interpreted as a biopolitical formation as well as a neoliberal formation and suggests how the two seemingly antithetical types of phenomena might actually be overlapping and mutually reinforcing—perhaps opening the way for a more effective feminist critique. (shrink)

As a result of numerous, highly publicized, ethical breaches, firms and their agents are under ongoing scrutiny. In an attempt to improve both their image and their ethical performance, some firms have adopted ethical codes of conduct. Past research investigating the effects of ethical codes of conduct on behavior and ethical attitudes has yielded mixed results. In this study, we again take up the question of the effect of ethical codes on ethical attitudes and find strong evidence to suggest that (...) business professionals employed at firms with ethical codes of conduct are significantly less accepting of ethically questionable behavior toward most stakeholders. One notable exception relates to ethical actions toward customers. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy has enjoyed renewed attention as an egalitarian alternative to contemporary inequality since it seems to uncompromisingly reassert the primacy of the state over the economy, enabling it to defend the modern welfare state against encroaching neoliberal markets. However, I argue that, when understood as a free-standing approach to politics, Kant’s doctrine of right shares essential features with the prevailing theories that legitimate really existing economic inequality. Like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Kant understands the state’s function (...) as essentially coercive and, in justifying state coercion, he adopts a narrow conception of political freedom that formally preserves the right to choose while denying that the range of choices one actually has can be a matter of justice. As a result, Kant cannot identify various forms of social pressure as potential injustices even as he recognizes their power to create and sustain troubling inequalities. For both Kant and the neoliberals, the result is that economic relations almost never count as unjust forms of coercion, no matter how unequal they are. Views that identify coercion as the trigger for duties of justice are thus particularly ill-suited to orient us to contemporary inequality. (shrink)

Christian social thinkers who strongly support the free-market system often have drawn connections between the social values of their faith and the ideas of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. Hayek's comments on religion, however, seem to predict its demise for the sake of progress, whereas his colleague Wilhelm Röpke posits “transcendent” religion and established moral traditions as essential to a humane economy. This essay contends that what Röpke described as “enmassment” has similarities to the present “financialization” of society, which involves the (...) rising influence of financial values in all institutions, exaggerated emphasis on quantitative performance measures, and reliance on technical processes in lieu of human relationships. Röpke's “Christian humanist” philosophy advances the kind of ethical entrepreneurialism needed to morally sustain a global society experiencing enmassment and financialization simultaneously. (shrink)

Transnationals operate in what may be called the margins of morality because the historical, cultural, and governmental mores of the world''s nation-states are not uniform. There is a gray area of ethical judgment where the standards of the transnational''s home country differ substantially from those of the host country. Following the argument of institutional theory in providing stability and meaning to social behavior, in matters of moral conduct the transnational is likely to yield to at least four policing authorities: itself, (...) in terms of the integrity of its management and by decision-making that follows its own code of ethics, other corporations within its competitive set, governmental agencies including those of the host country, and public exposure, which includes the media as well as non-governmental agencies such as offshore watchdog groups. The fourth mechanism, public exposure, is thought to be the most effective in policing transnational conduct. (shrink)

This paper tests the ethics-is-good-for-profits as well as the ethics-and-profits-are-joint-outcomes-of-good-management hypotheses in the context of the U.S. defense industry in the 1988–1992 period. Both ethical behaviors (defined and measured as the number and dollar cost of convictions for violations of civil and criminal law as well as reimbursement obligations arising under environmental statutes) and espoused ethical values (in the form of membership in the Defense Industry Initiative and average level of PAC contributions) are compared with measures of profitability for the (...) defense-oriented business segments of sixty-two major U.S. defense contractors. From 1988 to 1992, the U.S. Defense Department gave these contractors an average of 65% of all prime contract awards over $25,000 to business firms for work in the U.S.We found statistically significant, positive correlations between (1) our two measures of espoused ethical values and (2) both measures of espoused ethical values and violative ethical acts. In other words, those contractors with worse ethics records were more likely to be members of the Defense Industry Initiative and give larger PAC contributions. However, we were unable to reject the null hypothesis of no correlation between either ethical behavior or espoused ethical values and profits. The public policy implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The introduction of the concept of capital inCapital– with the words ‘we find’ – has provoked a great deal of discussion about the precise relation between the categories of simple circulation and the concept of capital. In this article, I argue that Marx derives the concept of capital by way of an analysis of the immanent contradictions of money, and that this dialectical derivation can be understood as a conceptual movement in which the concepts of money and capital progressively change (...) their modal status. Furthermore, I examine the development of this transition to capital throughout Marx’s writings from the period 1857 to 1872, arguing that the same arguments can be found in all the relevant writings. Finally, the article provides a critical review of the literature on the transition to capital. (shrink)

The accounting profession has regarded itself as ethical ever since the first modern professional accounting body was founded in the second half of the 19th Century. However, the code by which members have bound themselves have been professional ethics codes, which are more concerned with the relationship between professional and professional, or professional and client, than that of the professional and society as a whole. Recently, a number of educational programmes have been developed which attempt to go beyond the limited (...) view of professional ethics, and into the field of ethics and professionalism. These programmes are based on an application of the work of Kohlberg and that of Rest. In the opinion of the author these aspects of ethics and professionalism are important developments, which need to be followed up by the development of social accounting, which would be a practical demonstration of ethical concerns by members of the accounting profession. This aspect of business ethics is outlined in the chapter. (shrink)

The contribution of this work is a classification of corporate social action underlying the Social Ratings Data compiled by Kinder Lydenburg Domini Analytics, Inc. We compare extant typologies of corporate social action to the results of our exploratory factor analysis. Our findings indicate four distinct latent constructs that bear resemblance to concepts discussed in prior literature. Akey finding of our research is that positive and negative social action are both empirically and conceptually distinct constructs and should not be combined in (...) future research. Additionally, we recommend that some prior research results be reconsidered to determine whether these newly derived measures might clarify some previous findings. (shrink)

The paper demonstrates its ‘CSR at a tipping point’ thesis by juxtaposing views of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as essential for business and societal sustainability against those that see CSR as unaffordable or irrelevant in the current economic climate. Drawing from Kohlberg's seminal theory of moral development, CSR is conceptualised as the development of organisation moral reasoning, and the proposition is illustrated by demonstrating inter-disciplinary similarities in levels of ethical concern within different approaches to the practice of marketing, human resource (...) management (HRM) and performance management. Levels of concern for CSR are related to environmental and firm-specific drivers and constraints that influence the CSR dynamic. Environmental influences on organisational CSR stances emanate from a range of stakeholder constituencies, while the importance accorded to CSR is also influenced by firm-specific factors such as the organisation's stage of development, strategy and leadership. The paper's identification of inter-disciplinary similarities in the varying levels of concern for CSR and its delineation of CSR drivers and constraints contribute to CSR theory, and these frameworks also represent analytical tools that managers can use to assess or to change an organisation's CSR stance. The multi-level perspective on CSR adopted by the paper links an organisation's overall or ‘macro’ CSR stance to the ‘meso’ levels of CSR represented by practice within its specialist functions. It proposes that the ‘CSR at a tipping point’ proposition is assessed by utilising the conceptual model in the paper within a case-study research design to determine whether specific organisations – identified as ‘CSR-positive’ ones by their relatively high level of concern for stakeholder welfare – are changing the importance they accord to CSR as a result of the new business context, and the extent to which practice in their marketing, HRM and performance management functions are shapers or consequences of this. (shrink)

This article is the fourth dialogue in a series in which two characters, a pro‐business experienced manager and a critical management academic idealist, debate contemporary management. In this dialogue, the discussion concerns the curriculum of business and management courses. Though as usual there is little agreement between the two participants, the discussion clearly shows just how difficult it will be to change business education without also changing the market position of business schools. Other topics concern the sort of economic assumptions (...) embedded in much of the curriculum, and the relationship between practical skills and political descriptions of capitalism. (shrink)

Who should decide how a machine will decide what to do when it is driving a car, performing a medical procedure, or, more generally, when it is facing any kind of morally laden decision? More and more, machines are making complex decisions with a considerable level of autonomy. We should be much more preoccupied by this problem than we currently are. After a series of preliminary remarks, this paper will go over four possible answers to the question raised above. First, (...) we may claim that it is the maker of a machine that gets to decide how it will behave in morally laden scenarios. Second, we may claim that the users of a machine should decide. Third, that decision may have to be made collectively or, fourth, by other machines built for this special purpose. The paper argues that each of these approaches suffers from its own shortcomings, and it concludes by showing, among other things, which approaches should be emphasized for different types of machines, situations, and/or morally laden decisions. (shrink)

Global environmental problems, such as global warming, pollution, or deforestation, are critical issues that require a rapid and common response. In this context, companies play a decisive role in achieving environmental objectives through the ecological knowledge they can store and manage. In this context, the present research focuses its interest on analyzing how the set of green intangibles possessed by organizations, i.e., Green Intellectual Capital, affects their Green Performance. Specifically, the study shows how GP is influenced by GIC through the (...) mediating role of the Green Innovation variable. Therefore, the research questions to be answered by this study are as follows: Does GIC influence environmental performance? Does GI mediate the GIC-GP relationship? What actions can companies take to improve their GP? There are several reasons that have led us to carry out this research. First, there is little empirical evidence of the relationships proposed in this study. Second, to the best of our knowledge, there is no previous research that has contextualized the relationships raised in the wine industry, thus representing an advance in the comprehension of the constructs studied. Third, GIC represents an incipient field of study that needs to be developed and established within the literature linked to Intellectual Capital. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, data from a survey of 202 wineries in Spain were used and a quantitative approach was followed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results of the research indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between GIC and GP. In addition, GI partially mediates the relationship between these two variables, playing a key role in the environmental management of wineries. The theoretical and practical contributions of the study improve the understanding of the relationships raised, being a pioneering study due to its contextualization in the wine industry, as well as providing a series of guidelines for both environmental managers and winemakers to improve their GP. (shrink)

This paper proposes a description of the moral obligations of economic agents. It will show that a threefold division should be adopted to distinguish moral obligations applying to their interactions in the market, obligations applying to their interactions inside business firms and obligations applying to their interactions with agents outside the market. Competition might be permissible in the first case since markets are special patterns of social interactions (called adversarial schemes). They produce their benefits when agents try to satisfy exclusive (...) preferences at the expense of others. However, moral obligations inside the firm and moral obligations outside the market are of a different nature. This argument will be developed in the two first parts of this paper. In the third part, it will outline the relevant strengths of that account in relation with two popular views of economic agents’ moral obligations: the shareholder primacy view and the stakeholder theory. (shrink)

The American public university is losing status vis-à-vis the Ivy League private sector. In mass education it is challenged by for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix. Declining state financing is symptomatic of the evacuation of public values inside and outside the university. This has proceeded furthest in the USA. Other university systems are affected by national/local as well as global/American factors. Nevertheless, most public universities are on the defensive. Intensified status competition, locking neatly into neo-liberal government, is reconstituting (...) the field of higher education (Bourdieu, 1988) as a competitive market in private status goods. This, not a structural transformation consequent on changes in scale, is decisive. Universities have a capacity for bounded diversity and an underutilized potential in public discourse that enables them to combine openness with research and academic excellence, but not with high student selectivity and social exclusivity. The article comments on the implications of Craig Calhoun’s essay for reinventing the public university, focusing on two theorizations that provide resources for this: Samuelson (1954) on public and private goods, and Habermas (1989) on the public sphere. However, neither fully encompasses the university’s role in learning, scholarship, identity formation and self-alteration. (shrink)

The study of engineering ethics tends to emphasize professional codes of ethics and, to lesser degrees, business ethics and technology studies. These are all important vantage points, but they neglect personal moral commitments, as well as personal aesthetic, religious, and other values that are not mandatory for all members of engineering. This paper illustrates how personal moral commitments motivate, guide, and give meaning to the work of engineers, contributing to both self-fulfillment and public goods. It also explores some general frameworks (...) for thinking about these commitments and calls for further exploration of them. (shrink)

Unfortunately, Adam Smith’s undeserved legacy as a proponent of laissez-faire and liberal institutions at the international scope inhibits profiting from his refined analysis of international affairs. I argue that the Wealth of Nations’ chapter on colonies contains Smith’s discussion of the sovereign’s adaptation to ignorance in global politics. I examine the sense in which the sovereign is ignorant according to Smith and how sovereigns adapt to ignorance with varying success. His comparative analysis suggests that reduction of one’s share in ignorance (...) is not always desirable, and a priori rejection of ignorance is impractical because it deprives of a potentially advantageous resource. A careful reading of his work enables learning from his approach to global politics, without filtering it through his ideas on the free market. (shrink)

This article draws on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to explore whether a corporate ‘duty of beneficence’ to non-shareholders is consistent with the orthodox ‘shareholder theory’ of the firm. It examines the ethical framework of Milton Friedman’s argument and asks whether it necessarily rules out the well-being of non-shareholders as a corporate objective. The article examines Kant’s distinction between ‘duties of right’ and ‘duties of virtue’ (the latter including the duty of beneficence) and investigates their consistency with the shareholder (...) theory. The article concludes that it is possible within the ethical framework of shareholder theory for managers to pursue directly the happiness of non-shareholders. Furthermore, shareholders have a duty to hold management to account for the moral consequences of the firm’s activities on non-shareholding stakeholders. (shrink)

This article brings together two concepts of ethical practice into a single construct that describes how modern corporations can responsibly meet the information needs of their stakeholder networks in a way that promotes both corporate self-interest and widespread distributive justice. Internet technology is providing corporations with transformative tools that permit and encourage the exercise of social responsibility through "dynamic transparency." "Prudential justice" is a concept representing a set of values that can provide an ethical justification for corporate implementation of dynamic (...) transparency. This article argues that by using dynamic transparency in accordance with the provisions of prudential justice, firms can avoid many crises and manipulative or deceptive information transfers, can fulfill their responsibilities regarding stakeholders' informational rights, and can undergo an organizational culture transformation that allows them to move from pure corporate egoism to a beneficial mix of self-interest and corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Investors with a pro-social or sustainability agenda increasingly attempt to influence firm managers to adopt socially responsible behavior, either through positive/reward tactics or negative/punishment tactics. This paper considers how investors can use each approach to differentially influence managers to make more CSR investments. The paper uses game theory with an all-pay contest structure to model how a large institutional investor could reward firms for CSR activities by creating a socially responsible investment fund (reward contest) or punish firms via shareholder activism (...) (punishment contest). We identify conditions under which the punishment contest induces a higher level of CSR activity among firms compared to the reward contest. Managers bearing substantial private costs stemming from the activism is one such condition. Spillover effects are seen as the other managers in the economy engage in CSR to avoid being punished by the investor’s activism. This level of engagement is not the case when rewards are used—only those managers with an expectation of being rewarded increase their CSR activity in that scenario. This suggests, for example, that incorporating thresholds or tiers (e.g. gold, silver, and bronze-level winners) can increase the effectiveness of reward contests. Implications for designing both positive and negative CSR inducements are explored. We also identify the ethical dilemmas that relate to such influence attempts. (shrink)

The view that CSR performance can be improved most effectively through external pressures is shown to be invalid for most firms. In exploring why this is the case, the authors demonstrate that most small and medium enterprises are not exposed to the same pressures as large firms, and that this undermines many of the assumptions that underpin the externally driven business case (EDBC) for voluntary CSR practices. The analysis does this by looking at the external drivers of one of the (...) components of CSR; namely, the environmental behaviour of firms. This shows that the strength of the EDBC is largely determined by five factors. Importantly, the analysis provides the basis for the claim that -- and helps to explain why -- the EDBC for voluntary environmental behaviour is likely to remain a weak form of pressure for many small firms. (shrink)

Contemporary versions of natural rights libertarianism trace their locus classicus to Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But although there have been many criticisms of the version of political libertarianism put forward by Nozick, many of these fail objections to meet basic methodological desiderata. Thus, Nozick’s libertarianism deserves to be re-examined. In this paper I develop a new argument which meets these desiderata. Specifically, I argue that the libertarian conception of self-ownership, the view’s foundation, implies what I call the Asymmetrical (...) Value Claim: a dubious claim about the importance of choice relative to other valuable capacities. I argue that this misunderstands what is really valuable in life, and show how it causes libertarianism to generate counterintuitive public policy recommendations. (shrink)

This paper explores the fundamental question of what ‘responsibility’ means to different sets of world views adopted implicitly by business students. The exploration adopts the stakeholder theory and three subsets of the Friedman mentality to explain how individuals may value sustainability initiatives. Subsequently, it explores whether it is better to flow with the dominant economic-driven world view as prescribed by the business school or to challenge it in order to cultivate business students with sustainability-driven values. The conclusion highlights implications for (...) business and management education, as well as the role of entrepreneurship to promote sustainability values. (shrink)

This paper explores the fundamental question of what ‘responsibility’ means to different sets of world views adopted implicitly by business students. The exploration adopts the stakeholder theory and three subsets of the Friedman mentality to explain how individuals may value sustainability initiatives. Subsequently, it explores whether it is better to flow with the dominant economic‐driven world view as prescribed by the business school or to challenge it in order to cultivate business students with sustainability‐driven values. The conclusion highlights implications for (...) business and management education, as well as the role of entrepreneurship to promote sustainability values. (shrink)

Abstract:In this article we first review the development of the concept of global business citizenship and show how the libertarian political philosophy of free-market capitalism must give way to a communitarian view in order for the voluntaristic, local notion of “corporate citizenship” to take root. We then distinguish the concept of global business citizenship from “corporate citizenship” by showing how the former concept requires a transition from communitarian thinking to a position of universal human rights. In addition, we link global (...) business citizenship to global business strategy and to three analytical levels of ethical norms. Finally, we trace a process whereby global businesses can implement fundamental norms and learn to accommodate to legitimate cultural differences. (shrink)

In the past few years, environmental activists and some academic studies of environmental political issues have portrayed environmental protection as a new social consensus. This view has some, though limited, capacity for explaining the controversial character of many environmental protection issues and the frequent losses that environmental activists experience in political struggles. In an effort to clarify this seeming conundrum, the author delineates the core of the societal consensus thesis’ best explanation for the controversial character of many environmental policy decisions. (...) This explanation is contrasted with explanation that draws on conflict among three coherent rival environmental perspectives in contemporary political life. These environmental views are integral, if frequently unrecognized, aspects of familiar general social perspectives distinguished by contrasting principles, values, and practical objectives. A strategy is designed to facilitate responsible environmental protection legislation in light of these three rival perspectives. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary research aims to expose the responsibility of oil corporations operating in conflict-prone countries on the dynamics of the conflict itself and for human rights violations. In particular, the paper assesses the role of the oil industry in the conflict dynamics in Colombia. Based on two separate trips to and interviews in Colombia, the paper argues that oil activities have significantly contributed to exacerbate violence in the oil producing areas and that most oil corporations have inadequately responded to the (...) social risks of operating in wartorn regions. The paper stresses the need for more field-based analysis on the role of the international private sector in Colombia and the effectiveness of corporate responses to mitigate or minimise destabilising effects of business activity. The research analysis is based on a case study of the department of Casanare which highlights the complexity of these issues in relation to the experiences of BPXC. _Published online_: 11 December 2017. (shrink)

In recent years the resource-based view of the firm has made significant headway in explaining differences in interfirm performance. However, this perspective has not considered the social and ethical dimensions of organizational resources. This paper seeks to provide such an integration. Using Kuhn's three stage model of adaptive behavior, the resource worthiness of stakeholder management, business ethics, and issues management are explored. The paper concludes by drawing on prospect theory to understand the reasons for this conceptual lacuna.

This article traces John Rawls’s debt to Frank Knight’s critique of the ‘just deserts’ rationale for laissez-faire in order to defend justice as fairness against some prominent contemporary criticisms, but also to argue that desert can find a place within a Rawlsian theory of justice when desert is grounded in reciprocity. The first lesson Rawls took from Knight was that inheritance of talent and wealth are on a moral par. Knight highlighted the inconsistency of objecting to the inheritance of wealth (...) while taking for granted the legitimacy of unequal reward based on differential productive capacity. Rawls agreed that there was an inconsistency, but claimed that it should be resolved by rejecting both kinds of inequality, except to the extent they benefitted the worst off. The second lesson Rawls learned from Knight was that the size of one’s marginal product depends on supply and demand, which depend on institutional decisions that cannot themselves be made on the basis of the principle of rewarding marginal productivity. The article claims that this argument about background justice overstates its conclusion, because the dependence of contribution on institutional setup is not total. Proposals for an unconditional basic income may therefore have a strike against them, as far as a reciprocity-based conception of desert is concerned. If we follow Knight’s analysis of the competitive system, however, so too does the alternative of leaving determination of income up to the market. (shrink)

Very few scholars discuss the moral basis of the right of persons accused of crimes to be supplied with attorneys if they cannot afford them. More discussion of the topic is needed, in particular because political theorists who prefer a minimal state deny that indigent persons have such a moral right. This article addresses their contentions by developing three arguments for supplying poor persons accused of crimes with defense attorneys. First, doing so will prevent state officials from becoming emboldened in (...) their dealings with the poor, such that they might come to pose a threat to the non-poor. Second, poor persons who believe that the state does not treat them fairly will have reduced incentives to abide by the law, which will, in turn, increase the cost of the minimal state. Third, the better off should show solidarity with the poor in demanding that the minimal state honor all citizens’ rights to life, liberty, and property. Crucial to these arguments is the claim that a right of indigent defense is unlike other welfare rights in that securing it protects other basic moral rights that minimal statists acknowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article provides a normative justification for unions. It discusses three arguments. The argument from consent justifies unions in some circumstances, but if the employer prefers to not bargain with unions, it may provide very little justification. The argument from contestability takes as its starting point the fact that employment contracts are incomplete contracts, where authority takes the place of complete contractual terms. This theory of contracts implies that consent to authority has been given under ignorance, and, therefore, that authority (...) cannot be justified by consent. Contestability is a mechanism that can handle this problem for consent theory. It demands transparency, channels for voice, and a forum where contestations can be evaluated. This idea can be implemented in firms in different ways, but the argument from the separation of powers implies that unions are uniquely suited to implement contestability, since they are organized outside of the employer’s domain of authority. (shrink)

Interest in corporate citizenship has been burgeoning in the academic and managerial realms for decades. While a psychological CC climate has been conceptualized and has received empirical support for its relationship with employee outcomes, the organizational climate perspective of CC has not yet been explored. In the present study, we develop and examine a mediated moderation model that elaborates the underlying psychological process and the contingency of organizational CC climate and its individual outcomes. We follow 539 employees in 26 firms (...) for approximately one year in Taiwan. We find that organizational CC climate is positively related to employees’ organizational identification and that the firm’s high-commitment work system can augment the effect of CC on employees’ OI. In addition, employees’ OI plays a psychological process role in mediating the interactive effect of the firm’s CC and HCWS on employees’ workplace outcomes, including their job satisfaction and turnover intention. The findings shed light on the alignment of CC and human resource functions and argue that the Confucian Asian context may act as a stepping stone for the impact of CC on employees’ attitudes. The study offers valuable implications for both researchers and practitioners. (shrink)

This study investigates how managers in firms that have committed fraud strategically use socially responsible activities in coordination with their fraudulent financial reporting practices. Using propensity score matching to select control firms that have a similar probability of fraud in the pre-fraud benchmark period, we find that the corporate social responsibility performance of fraudulent firms in the fraud-committing period is significantly higher compared with the CSR performance of non-fraudulent control firms during this period, and compared with that during their own (...) pre-fraud benchmark periods. This higher CSR performance by fraudulent firms is achieved by means of investing in both stakeholder and third-party CSR categories and by improving in CSR strengths. Furthermore, the increase in CSR performance is more pronounced for fraudulent firms with a weak governance environment, and for firms located in high-religiosity states. Overall, our findings suggest that fraudulent firms strategically adjust their CSR performance to coordinate with their fraudulent financial activities. (shrink)

Disconcerting findings from nascent sociological research suggest that Western youth are developing subjectivities that reflect neoliberal discursive formations of self-interest, competitiveness, and materialism. However, propositions about: (1) the cognitive-affective mechanisms that explain how youth acquire and reproduce neoliberal ideology, or (2) the dispositions and behaviours that typify a neoliberal subject, remain vague. Therefore, this article provides a novel conceptualization of these two psychosocial facets that can help advance understandings and investigations of the emerging modes and societal consequences of neoliberal subjectification, (...) Specifically, it reviews major theoretical tenets from the respective literatures on neurocognitive development, social cognition, neoliberalism, and neoliberal hegemony. It then synthesizes these tenets within a modified habitus formulation to sketch a testable cognitive-sociological model to explain and explore some of the distinct dispositional values, attitudes, and practices that youth raised in societies with institutionally and culturally prevalent neoliberal norms and discourses potentially may develop and enact. (shrink)

This paper investigates the impact of activism on a large, powerful corporation in Tasmania. Gunns Ltd was a large woodchip processor in Tasmania that fought a long-running battle with environmental activists regarding Gunns’ logging and processing activities. The study focuses on events in 2004–2005, when Gunns applied to build a pulp mill in rural northern Tasmania and began a legal case against activists. The research question is whether there is clear statistical evidence that these events were important, as is widely (...) believed, in the ultimate failure of Gunns in, just 6 years after being the largest and one of the most financially successful Tasmanian companies. We use a mixed methods approach that combines a detailed narrative informed by theory, to examine issues of corporate social responsibility and ethical behaviour, with an econometric time series analysis of the impact of activism on the market value of Gunns. Our analysis supports the contention that the events in 2004–2005 played a significant part in the decline of the long-run market value of Gunns over the subsequent period, through to its failure in 2011. We discuss the underlying causes for Gunns’ failure in terms of agency, stakeholder, legitimacy and leadership theories. Research frequently assesses effects such as those in the Gunns’ case through solely qualitative means. This paper integrates a quantitative analysis into a detailed qualitative narrative and theoretical interpretation of events, to provide additional precision to its findings. It contributes to research in CSR and the impact of activism. (shrink)

Sustainable investment (SI), which integrates social, environmental and ethical issues, has grown from a niche market of individual ethical investors to embrace institutional investors (e.g. pension funds) resulting in £764 billion in assets under management in the UK alone [Eurosif, 2008 : ‘European SRI Study 2008’ (Eurosif, Paris)]. Explaining this growth is complex, involving shifts in personal and collective values, reactions to corporate scandals, scientific and media pronouncements about climate change, Government initiatives, responses from financial markets and the influence of (...) SI innovators in The City of London. The article examines the influence of human agency through interviews with 14 SI champions who have variously been responsible for launching SI funds and changing investment processes and organisational structures in order to enhance SI. Interviewees were asked about their motivations and persuasive strategies, the obstacles they faced and how they overcame them as well as broader implications of SI for financial markets. The following key categories inform the results and the discussion: Values; Conservatism, Antipathy and Incredulity; Optimism and Sympathy from Insiders; The Social and Political Context; The Business Case; Organisational Constraints; Inappropriate forms of Remuneration; Short-termism; The Nature of Capitalism. Three discourses were also identified. The first is the necessity to make a business case for SI; the second is the benefits that SI can bring to the quest of overcoming short-termism; the third is a belief that for SI to have a significant influence, greater government intervention is required. (shrink)

Sustainable investment, which integrates social, environmental and ethical issues, has grown from a niche market of individual ethical investors to embrace institutional investors resulting in £764 billion in assets under management in the UK alone [Eurosif, 2008: ‘European SRI Study 2008’ ]. Explaining this growth is complex, involving shifts in personal and collective values, reactions to corporate scandals, scientific and media pronouncements about climate change, Government initiatives, responses from financial markets and the influence of SI innovators in The City of (...) London. The article examines the influence of human agency through interviews with 14 SI champions who have variously been responsible for launching SI funds and changing investment processes and organisational structures in order to enhance SI. Interviewees were asked about their motivations and persuasive strategies, the obstacles they faced and how they overcame them as well as broader implications of SI for financial markets. The following key categories inform the results and the discussion: Values; Conservatism, Antipathy and Incredulity; Optimism and Sympathy from Insiders; The Social and Political Context; The Business Case; Organisational Constraints; Inappropriate forms of Remuneration; Short-termism; The Nature of Capitalism. Three discourses were also identified. The first is the necessity to make a business case for SI; the second is the benefits that SI can bring to the quest of overcoming short-termism; the third is a belief that for SI to have a significant influence, greater government intervention is required. (shrink)

Today there is a growing wave of demands being placed upon the pharmaceutical industry to contribute to improved access to medicines for poor patients in the developing countries. 1 This article aims to contribute to the development of a systematic approach and broad consensus about shared benchmarks for good corporate practices in this area. A consensus corridor on what constitutes an appropriate portfolio of corporate responsibilities for access to medicines -especially under conditions of 'failing states' and 'market failure' 2 – (...) is not only in the interest of the world's poor, but also of corporations that want to contribute to the solution of one of the most significant social problems of our time. (shrink)