Increasingly, conscientious consumers and green marketers are recognizing that material things, not firms, must be made responsible. Even so, many scholars in ethics, sustainability, and governance ...focus on people and organizations, ignoring the flows of things. In this book, Ryan Burg argues that material things are fundamental features of moral life, serving as both valuable instruments and guides for responsibility. Unless care is taken for these non-living entities, living things cannot be protected. Viewing the global economy as a network of material transfers, Burg argues that to facilitate object care, professionals must act as stewards. By tracing the origins and disposal of workplace objects through this material network, businesses and employees can discover the outcomes for which they are responsible, and managers can align ethics, sustainability and governance with a truly global formulation of responsibility.
We offer the first field experiment showing how job assignments create social ties at work and influence their persistence. Pairs of managers were assigned at random to project teams. We show that ...once those pairs work together and become interdependent, they are more likely to create informal relationships (friendships and advice ties). Interdependence also increases the persistence of the informal ties that existed prior to team assignments; the magnitude of this effect decreases with tie strength. As organizations extend their use of teamwork, they also create and maintain social networks across functional and geographic boundaries. Thus, transitory project teams forge an enduring organizational legacy.
Deliberative Business Ethics Burg, Ryan
Journal of business ethics,
2009/10, Volume:
88, Issue:
Suppl 4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Social norms are an important input for ethical decisions in any business context. However, the cross-cultural discovery of extant social norms presents a special challenge to international ...management because norms may be inscrutable to outsiders. This article considers the contribution of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the analysis of social norms in business ethics. It questions the origins and dynamics of norms from a sociological perspective, and identifies a tension between prescriptive efforts to make norms obligatory and positivist accounts that describe norms as evolving and unstable. In the presence of dynamic and incomplete norms, managers can either deliberate with stakeholders to make norms flexible or codify norms to make them rigid. This essay argues that deliberation is the only reliable method for anticipating emergent norms.
Corporate social responsibility, business ethics and sustainability – often bracketed under responsible management education (RME) – are topics that are increasingly adopted by universities and ...business schools across the globe. However, one region where our knowledge regarding the extent of RME is still limited is Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Bringing together a team of scholars (currently or formerly) based throughout the region, we were able to conduct the largest survey to date of RME practices in the CEE region, covering 13 countries. Our findings suggest that, at a declarative level, RME is very much present at CEE universities and business schools, in particular in terms of teaching. However, a pro-RME rhetoric is not necessarily backed-up with substance; in particular, a lack of financial resources was identified as the major barrier to greater engagement with RME practices. We also observed a gap between commitment to RME in teaching versus in research, which could be a potential source of concern as teaching should be informed by research; otherwise faculty remain dependent on imported teaching materials. We contribute to strengthening the RME agenda in management education by discussing the implications of our findings for individual faculty, business school leaders, governments and international associations of management education.
•We conducted the largest survey of responsible management education in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to date, undertaken by a team of 20 researchers who mostly are (or were at the time of research) based in the region.•RME is very much present at CEE universities and business schools, in particular in terms of teaching, as 77% of our respondents state that their institution has at least one course on an RME topic on offer.•However, the pro-RME rhetoric is not necessarily backed-up with substance; in particular, a lack of financial resources was identified as the major barrier to greater engagement with RME practices.•We also observed a gap between extensive commitment to RME in teaching versus lesser engagement in research, which might leave CEE universities and business schools dependent on imported teaching materials.
Abstract
Business schools, and universities providing business education, from across the globe have increasingly engaged in responsible management education (RME), that is in embedding social, ...environmental and ethical topics in their teaching and research. However, we still do not fully understand the institutional pressures that have led to the adoption of RME, in particular concerning under‐researched regions like Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Hence, we undertook what is to our knowledge the most comprehensive study into the adoption of RME in CEE to date (including 13 countries: Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine). We find that, with regard to RME, isomorphic pressures seem to shape teaching and research in different ways, which suggests that the idea of a holistic approach to RME, promoted by, for example, the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME), needs to be revisited; rather, different trajectories of organizational engagement may emerge for each principle. As a contribution to institutional theory, we discuss how a highly fragmented organizational field—like RME with its multiple dimensions—impacts on notions of actor centrality, where actors achieve centrality with regard to some dimensions of the field but fail to do so for others. In particular, we found that the European Union holds centrality in the area of RME teaching, but not in RME research. Our findings thus suggest that the concept of field centrality needs further clarification.
Using case material from a three-year psychotherapy treatment, this article illustrates the process undergone by a beginning psychotherapist in integrating a fallibilistic sensibility into his ...clinical practice. The theoretical concepts of fallibilism, the hermeneutics of trust, and pathological structures of accommodation are briefly reviewed to provide context and support for the development of this clinician's dedication to fallibilism. Case material then focuses on the historical development of the patient's pathological structures of accommodation and a critical clinical moment that was transformative for the trajectory of the overall treatment. Through this critical clinical moment, the therapist's process of becoming more consciously aware of the utility of fallibilism will be illuminated. This fallibilistic sensibility is then integrated more fully into the therapist's understanding of how this treatment changed both participants. The outcomes of the treatment will be presented, specifically related to the patient's development of a stronger sense of self and an increased capacity to tolerate and integrate experiences of failure into his subjectivity. Ideas related to the repetitive and selfobject dimensions of the transference will also be briefly considered.
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