Guest editorial

Citation

Smith, J. and Robinson, S.J. (2012), "Guest editorial", Journal of Global Responsibility, Vol. 3 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jgr.2012.46603aaa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Global Responsibility, Volume 3, Issue 1

About the Guest Editors

Dr Jonathan Smith, Chartered FCIPD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University, where he leads international postgraduate programmes in Leadership, Management and Human Resource Management (HRM). He designs/facilitates innovative Master’s level courses in Leadership, Strategy, Organizational Change, HRM and Research Method’s. He coaches and supports a large number of leaders and HR professionals in the research, design and implementation of best practice HR initiatives in organisations. His current research, consulting and development interests are focused on organizational, team, and individual transformation through spiritual leadership; sustainable development for businesses and development and training within the police.

Simon J. Robinson is Professor of Applied and Professional Ethics, Leeds Metropolitan University. He has written and researched extensively in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, the nature and dynamics of responsibility, equality, ethics and culture, and ethics and care. His books include: Agape, Moral Meaning and Pastoral Counselling; Their Rights, Advanced Directives; Case Histories in Business Ethics; Values in Higher Education; The Teaching and Practice of Professional Ethics; Employability and Ethics; Engineering, Business and Professional Ethics; Spirituality and Sport; Spirituality, Ethics and Care; Ethics for Living and Working; Ethics and the Alcohol Industry; Leadership Responsibility. He is co-general editor of the Peter Lang book series on International Studies in Applied Ethics.

Introduction

Welcome to this special issue of the Journal of Global Responsibility (JGR). In this we are focusing specifically on what is meant by responsibility. The question of responsibility seems high on the agenda at the moment across the globe, whether that be in the political, business, education or environmental arenas. In Volume 2, Number 2, 2011 of JGR, Ryan and Tilbury did an excellent job of probing this much used term by exploring how responsibility is nurtured and connected to business practice, education and sustainability. In this issue we wish to continue this dialogue and dig still deeper into people’s understanding of what responsibility actually means.

Why and why now?

We wanted to draw together a volume of this journal which focused on the meaning of responsibility because we believe the term is being used more and more – whether that be in directly connected conversations such as American President Barack Obama’s call for a new era of responsibility, talk about global responsibility, corporate social responsibility (CSR), or individual responsibility; or more indirectly in conversations connected to ethics, sustainability, personal development or in the UK the Government’s concept of “The Big Society”. As an example of this, in one of the earliest speeches in which the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron formulated the concept of the Big Society he said that:

[…] the size, scope and role of government in Britain has reached a point where it is now inhibiting, not advancing the progressive aims of reducing poverty, fighting inequality, and increasing general well-being. Indeed there is a worrying paradox that because of its effect on personal and social responsibility, the recent growth of the state has promoted not social solidarity, but selfishness and individualism (Cameron, 2009) […]

and that societal renewal would start with a new focus on:

[…] empowering and enabling individuals, families and communities to take control of their lives so we create avenues through which responsibility and opportunity can develop (Cameron, 2009, emphasis by the authors).

Despite all the talk however we argue that many people and organizations are actually taking very little responsibility. This can be evidenced in many areas including the current Euro Debt Crisis, in the media and News International phone hacking scandal, in the 2008/2009 and current financial crisis and in the environmental and climate change challenges we face. Rayment and Smith (2010) and Sun et al. (2010) identify many other areas which demonstrate the lack of willingness to embrace this responsibility. In this issue articles by Shanks and Kaul and Smith also highlights this.

Many learning points have been identified from these various crisis (Rayment and Smith, 2010; Sun et al., 2010; Barrett, 2011; Ghoshal, 2005, p. 76), but despite this there appears to be little radical change in behaviour, little real development of the underlying worldview, or a real review of the concept of responsibility.

As Talbot (2009, p. 221) highlights, we also believe that “very little progress will be made until the root causes of these various crisis are uncovered and corrected”. The term responsibility originates from the Latin respond and at its most fundamental calls upon each one of us to consider how we choose to respond to a particular stimulus. Responsibility builds from the individual level, and individuals do have choice as to how they respond. Could one of the underpinning reasons for people not taking more responsibility be because they are not really making effective choices through a lack of real comprehension as to what responsibility actually means?

There often seems to be a taken for granted assumption that we all know what it means, that the meaning is straightforward, and we all have a common understanding. We agree with Paul Ricoeur (1995 as cited in Pesqeux’s paper in this issue) however, that the concept of responsibility is especially vague and ill-defined. As we shall see demonstrated throughout this issue, responsibility is something that is difficult to define, and there are many different factors, cultural influences and differing focuses that seem to impact on people’s interpretations. Perhaps because of the assumption that we all know what is meant by responsibility there has been little dialogue to assist in developing a shared understanding, and as a result we are building other explorations concerning global responsibility, ethics or the Big Society on very shaky foundations. We believe though that building a shared understanding can easily be done if it is developed in a particular context and through a shared dialogue between the various stakeholders involved.

In this issue we bring together a diverse range of contributors drawing on different cultural and disciplinary perspectives around the world to provide a rich and broad exploration of the topic. We do this in the hope that it will assist in setting the ground on which these context specific shared dialogues can take place.

The richness of perspective offered in this issue is exemplified in our first paper by Drewell. He has an extensive background as a leader and practitioner in the UK, South Africa and Belgium. His practitioner-based paper demonstrates diverse experience as a thought leader and practitioner working at the interface between business and society, and brings a strong sense of meaning to responsibility. The first quotation given in his paper focuses very much on the connection between thoughts and action, and summarises well the purpose of this special issue. If this can clarify people’s thoughts on what responsibility really means, then it can lead to positive actions. Drewell gives examples from our history of where new narratives have emerged and argues that a new richer and deeper narrative is now emerging strongly because of a growing realization that the foundational beliefs on which the old narrative is based are flawed. As Drewell points out though, when we are thinking from the old narrative perspective then areas we now need to take responsibility for can seem as impossible as the abolition of slavery was to the British Parliament of 1833. Yet accelerating the new narrative can be as simple and profound as each and every one of us simply moving into it.

In the second paper Pesqueux draws on a philosophical perspective including the work of Jonas and Ricoeur to explore responsibility and the first-level questions which flow from this connected to action, liberty, causality, freedom, autonomy, and will. Pesqueux highlights the duality of the concept and suggests responsibility is a balance between two spheres: the legal and the personal. From the legal sphere the most commonly associated word is obligation. Here in these two poles, viewed as complementary by Pesqueux, we see the duality and the delicate balance in responsibility – between the two aspects of legality and morality; obligation, penalty, and free will. Pesqueux also leads us to an examination of pseudo-responsibility, due it is argued because of too great an emphasis on obligation and the resulting alienation of the subject’s will.

Continuing with the philosophical theme the next paper by Widell draws heavily on the work of German philosopher Jonas. As Widell reminds us, the challenge Jonas set up for us was to act in a way that the consequences from that act are not destructive for the future of humanity, and this responsibility challenge is explored well in this paper. Widell also examines the work of the Norwegian philosopher Ofstad (1980) who elaborated the relations between responsibility, action and freedom, and issues of power.

Our next paper by D’Aprile shines a light on responsibility from a socio-psychological perspective. This details research that has been undertaken with 26 entrepreneurs and employees in SMEs in Italy concerning definitions and the psychosocial dimensions of CSR. This brings many important perspectives into the debate, including the relevance and interpretation of responsibility in SMEs. Traditionally the focus of responsibility in business has been on large corporations and multinational organizations but as D’Aprile points out, in Italy SMEs (companies with fewer than 250 employees) account for 99.9 per cent of all enterprises. D’Aprile identifies the link between CSR and organizational culture (also a theme identified by Kaul and Smith in this issue), and values (discussed also by Zsolnai et al., Drewell and D’Aprile in this issue). D’Aprile’s findings reveal that CSR definitions are institutionally mediated by the organizational norms and culture, and these are something that is continuously being negotiated within organizations. This re-enforces the point made earlier in this introduction regarding the context dependency and importance of dialogue with regard to understandings of responsibility.

Staying with the psychological perspective, our next paper by Shanks funnels our focus down to revisit a very specific and well known experiment by Stanley Milgram. The experiment looked at how far people were prepared to abdicate personal responsibility and Shanks re-examines Milgram’s research to draw out specifically how this may assist us in our quest to understand more about the meaning of responsibility. It draws out the influence of authority and three illuminating principles with regards to responsibility.

D’Aprile’s began the exploration of CSR and its links to responsibility, and Franz continues this exploration in our next paper. He begins with two challenging question – what exactly are corporations responsible for, and to whom are corporations responsible? Using both Institutional theory and role-theory Franz discusses his research which analysed people’s perceptions of CSR activities, and discusses some of the managerial implications of his research. He argues also that as people have markedly different conceptions of the role of business, responsibility is subjective and contextual.

In the next article Opdebeeck explores how one can prevent the dark sides of the globalisation process from leading to an ever-greater decay of responsibility. The perspective of a charter of human responsibilities is examined and Opdebeeck argues that this charter is an important elaboration of the concern with institutionalising more responsibility. Opdebeeck asserts that the essential challenge for the global economy lies not so much in the integration and adaptation of the business to the world economy but in adequately determining the principles and rules within the institutions that are required to provide the world’s population with its basic needs in terms of food, housing, energy, health, education, employment and mobility. The central question for further research is, in other words, how one can achieve global wealth, rather than predominantly private wealth, at a global level?

Zsolnai, Junghagen and Tencati’s paper turns our focus next to the role of education and particularly management education and the role of business schools. After highlighting the difficulties and deficiencies of the current contribution of business schools, Zsolnai et al. provides an example of a management education programme that has been doing things differently for a number of years. In this they propose a new profile for future managers. Part of this proposal focuses on the importance of social responsibility and relevance of choice (in being able to choose and provide a sense of direction), and values that are more than about optimizing economic value.

Continuing with the focus on the role of management education, Kaul and Smith then detail some specific research Kaul undertook in one university in the UK. This explores how responsibility was interpreted by a small sample of leaders, academic staff and students there. Kaul and Smith use these findings to draw out important aspects to responsibility, and they offer a model which identifies different levels of responsibility.

The final paper, written by the Guest Editors, seeks to draw together the issues identified in all the previous papers to identify specific aspects which seem key to understanding the meaning of responsibility. We also identify gaps in this eclectic range of papers and in the current research, and highlight a number of areas for further research. We hope this begins to set the ground for a greater shared understanding that will motivate, empower and enable all to adopt a more global responsibility, and move forward with renewed vigour and purpose to address the many urgent global issues we face.

We hope you enjoy this special issue and find it thought provoking and useful. We want to thank all the contributors for their excellent papers and for all their hard work receive your comments and feedback, and are keen to keep the dialogue going. Do please e-mail either or both of the Guest Editors: Jonathan.Smith@anglia.ac.uk; and/or S.J.Robinson@leedsmet.ac.uk

Thank you.

Jonathan Smith and Simon J. RobinsonGuest Editors