Shift the moral position first

Citation

Jones, G. (2012), "Shift the moral position first", Journal of Global Responsibility, Vol. 3 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jgr.2012.46603baa.001

Shift the moral position first

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Global Responsibility, Volume 3, Issue 2

A great deal of literature has emerged around the business case that compels companies to operate in more responsible and consequently more sustainable ways. A great many benefits have been suggested by academics trying to lead business by via the route of the incentives toward better forms of behaviour. Indeed a number of global companies have also engaged in this process of envisaging a better future that would work for business and therefore compel wide spread up take of the new practices. Such speculations have inevitably lead to researchers devising empirical tests to see if such behaviours actually do help the bottom line. As editor, I see a number of submissions that try to perform simple tests that relate CSR and sustainability investment levels to financial outcome metrics such as return on equity and return on investment. In most cases, such analyses are unpublishable because they inevitably produce low levels of correlation suggesting little relationship either way. However, these results are generally produced by analysis which is not sophisticated enough to control for a myriad of intervening and often confounding variables. It might be more productive instead to look at those factors that are enhanced by a wider sense of responsibility and have a more direct influence on the outcomes sought.

Of all the factors that produce prosperity and emanate from enlightened management, the literature is most consistent and positive in three general areas: efficiency gains, reputation and compliance costs. Efficiency gains occur when resource productivity is maximized or resource usage is minimized. This is an easy source of savings and there is a great deal of the proverbial low hanging fruit which can be grabbed through close analysis of the corporate footprint. Of course efficiency gains are easy to replicate and do not naturally confer long term competitive advantage. None the less they are relatively easy for researchers to link to financial returns. Reputation gains can easily be measured and easily linked to the bottom line, and there are strong literatures on consumer behaviour, legitimacy and stakeholder theory which strengthens the framework that researchers can use as a basis to construct investigations. Compliance costs can also be easily measured and become salient as Government’s sense the global mood and move to both tighten the regulation and strengthen the institutions of governance that ensure that regulation has its effect. Leading companies have realized that they must keep one step ahead of regulation and this has been a spur to innovation. Innovation in turn can often have a direct impact on the bottom line which can be measured.

At the same time there is a strong emerging literature that holds boasts of responsibility by organisations to some sort of account. Although there is strong set of enthusiastic messages coming from companies, researchers are inclined to ask what level of effort do we see on closer inspection? We know that the commitment to responsibility often dissipates as one moves the normalizing gaze down the supply chain. In this issue there is an article that finds that efforts at corporate communication of responsibility are more often related to the social pressure on the company than the inherent sense of responsibility of the managers. Another article surveys research into companies’ corporate sustainability in Germany, which many would regard as a world leader with many cases that illustrate the interaction of supportive policy and good corporate practice. Many countries are currently undergoing a strengthening of compliance regimes in Occupational Health and Safety, and in this edition we provide an article which asks whether such regulation – useful though it is – negates any pressure for responsible decision making by reducing the task to one of dull compliance.

Responsibility arises, in part, from a shift in moral position. To move companies past simple compliance and the finite nature of effort that compliance implies, managers must make the shift in moral position first. This is because a moral position cannot be developed from a rational business case. Managers who operate from a rational business case might be doing good while doing well, but they are still operating with a traditional business mindset. The ends have not changed and the means have altered only slightly. As Friedman would have said, the CSR effort must be overstated so that the company can get the maximum PR return from the minimum effort. It is a matter of dark irony that – from within this mindset – this approach can only be ethical when it is disingenuous. A business discipline built on a moral position is likely to evolve further than one built purely in a rational response to incentives. The important question I would like to pose then is not how we incite managers to do what comes naturally, but how do we incite them to change moral position, so that the natural order of things changes in the business heart/mind schema.

There is as yet no definitive answer to this vexing question. However, articles that breakdown simple intellectual boundaries help. In this issue there a couple of intriguing exploratory essays. One builds a more cosmopolitan curriculum, which is useful, but perhaps more interesting is the highly poetic means of expression that the author evokes and which provides meaning beyond that possible in the purely scholarly form. Another such challenging article addresses the popular tendency to place Islam and democracy in separate worldviews. A lot more work in this vein needs to appear in print before we can get to a solution to the question of moral shift.

Grant JonesEditor-in-Chief