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The purpose of this research is to use a collective responsibility theoretical lens to examine the work of three school principals as they focussed on school-wide goal-setting processes to achieve valued student achievement goals. The tensions principals face in creating collective responsibility are examined so that these might be intentionally navigated.

Qualitative case studies of three New Zealand schools include data from interviews with principals, middle leaders and teachers. An inductive and deductive thematic analysis approach was employed.

Principals face four key tensions: (1) whether to promote self or centrally directed and voluntary or mandatory professional learning; (2) how to balance a top-down versus a middle-up process for accountability; (3) ways to integrate both educator and student voice and (4) the complexity of both challenging teachers' beliefs and providing support. These challenges seemed inherent in the work of developing collective responsibility and leaders tended to move along response continuum.

This research highlights the importance of being intentional and transparent with staff members about both the nature of these tensions and their navigation, and opens up further questions in relation to leader, and teacher perceptions of tensions in creating collective responsibility for achieving school-improvement goals.

An understanding of the tensions that need to be navigated can help leaders and other educators to take effective action, scrutinize the reasoning behind decisions, and understand the inherent challenges faced.

Leadership tensions in creating collective responsibility are explored and implications for leadership practice and learning considered.

The purpose of this research is twofold: to test a theory of academic optimism in Taiwan elementary schools and to expand the theory by adding new variables, collective responsibility and enabling school structure, to the model.

Structural equation modeling was used to test, refine, and expand an organizational path model of student achievement first developed in the USA.

The proposed organizational model was supported in Taiwan and was consistent with the initial studies done in the USA. Further, two concepts were added to the model, enabling structure and collective responsibility, both of which had significant indirect effects on student achievement through academic optimism. Moreover, the theoretical foundations (efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis) of the latent construct of academic optimism were confirmed again in this sample of schools in Taiwan.

The findings support an organizational model of student achievement, which has application in both the USA and Taiwan. The original model was supported, refined, and extended. Academic optimism is at the center of the model and explains student achievement for all students. Collective responsibility and enabling school structure both predict academic optimism directly and student achievement indirectly.

This study aims to point out and try to describe the (missing) link between “responsible practises” (e.g. CSR – corporate social responsibility) and social ontology. This critical gap in the literature may conceivably be a stumbling block to responsible business/political/societal action and its theoretical/empirical understanding and effectiveness; therefore, we can legitimately ask ourselves whether a social ontology-focused approach can be considered relevant to this field of study.

As the role of social ontology has presumably been under-explored despite its foundational importance, a set of germane and adjoining themes has been identified, which can be possibly included in future research projects. An overview of relevant literature is provided, and further analysis and desk research can be drawn from the key notions identified.

It is argued that social ontology – especially the underlying debate in terms of shared agency, collective responsibility and collective intentionality – can be an innovative and promising perspective within business ethics studies. Potentially, CSR management and/or similar responsible practices can re-appraised in similar terms.

This study specifically focuses on some selected key aspects related to the ontological status of social collectives (e.g. groups and organisations), trying to recall the main trajectories/directions of the relevant arguments and debates. More empirical research/pilot case studies validating the approach presented here will be required.

Building on the findings of this study, new emergent research methodologies/theoretical tools will make it possible to explore not so much the ways “responsible” practises are defined (indeed, there seems to be a broad consensus about it), but rather how they are socially constructed, implemented and carried out.

This theoretical work can potentially facilitate a comprehensive inter-/multi-/pluri-disciplinary understanding of the novel links explored, namely, between responsibility, social ontology and the underlying longstanding philosophical issues.

The novel thematic approach outlined in this study can challenge and widen the mainstream approaches about CSR management, e.g. stakeholder management and engagement, social accounting and reporting, SRI (socially responsible investment).

In this chapter, I analyze the notion of corporate responsibility from the person-centric perspective. I offer a four-dimensional exposition in terms of which I examine the corporate moral personhood view. These four dimensions are explained and critiqued to arrive at a definition of moral responsibility and status appropriate to corporations. I suggest that a corporation cannot be construed as a person in the sense in which individuals are persons. Since a corporation cannot be an independently existing entity, it cannot have an independent moral personality of its own as individual persons have. Therefore, I argue that a reasonable construal of corporate moral personhood has to exploit a different point of view altogether. With this difference of standpoint, I develop what is called the institutional personhood view. I argue that corporations do acquire a sort of collective institutional moral personality.

This chapter points out and tries to describe the (missing) link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social ontology/ontology of the firm. The author believes that this gap in the literature hinders the progress of CSR theoretical/empirical understanding and effectiveness; therefore, the following question is addressed: is a social theory-focused approach to the ontology of the firm relevant to CSR studies? While currently many disciplines are seeking to clarify CSR theory and practice, the role of social ontology has relatively been under-explored despite its foundational importance.

This chapter provides rationales for identifying a set of interrelated themes to be included in future research projects. A literature review is carried out, and further analysis and desk research can be drawn from the key notions identified.

This viewpoint conceptual chapter suggests that social ontology can be an important subject of inquiry in order to bridge the existing gaps in CSR/Business Ethics studies. A possible conceptual agreement for a realist and social theory-focused approach to CSR is illustrated.

While encouraging more effort and commitment in this emerging and fascinating field, this chapter concentrates on some selected key aspects such as the meaning of corporate moral agency and the ontological status of social collectives (e.g. firms).

This chapter lays the ground for future pilot exploratory research, and could be instructive for the construction of specific research methodologies/theoretical tools seeking to explore not so much the ways CSR is defined (indeed, there seems to be a broad consensus about it) but rather how CSR is socially constructed, implemented and carried out.

This chapter can potentially help grow knowledge about the nexus between CSR, social ontology and the underlying metaphysical issues, thus facilitating a comprehensive inter-/multi-/pluri-disciplinary understanding and giving a contribution to the relevant ongoing scientific and practical debates.

This chapter, while uncovering and exploring the aforementioned novel connections, can enrich the study of CSR with respect to the current mainstream approaches, for example, stakeholder management and engagement, social accounting and reporting, socially responsible investment (SRI).

The Italian government addressed the first wave of its COVID-19 outbreak with a series of social restrictions and calculative practices, all branded with the slogan #istayathome. The hashtag quickly went viral, becoming both a mandate and a mantra and, as the crisis played out, we witnessed the rise of the Italian social movement #istayathome. This study examines how the government's calculative practices led to #istayathome and the constituents that shaped this social movement.

The authors embrace social movement theory and the collective identity perspective to examine #istayathome as a collective action and social movement. Using passive netnography, text mining and interpretative text analysis enhanced by machine learning, the authors analysed just over 350,000 tweets made during the period March to May 2020, each brandishing the hashtag #istayathome.

The #istayathome movement gained traction as a response to the Italian government's call for collective action. Thus, people became an active part of mobilising collective responsibility, enhancing the government's plans. A collective identity on the part of the Italian people sustained the mass mobilisation, driven by cohesion, solidarity and a deep cultural trauma from COVID-19's dramatic effects. Popular culture and Italy's long traditions also helped to form the collective identity of #istayathome. This study found that calculative practices acted as a persuasive technology in forming this collective identity and mobilising people's collective action. Numbers stimulated the cognitive, moral and emotional connections of the social ties shaping collective identity and responsibility. Thus, through collective identity, calculative practices indirectly influenced mass social behaviors and the social movement.

This study offers a novel theoretical perspective and empirical knowledge to explain how government power affects people's culture and everyday life. It unveils the sociological drivers that mobilise collective behaviors and enriches the accounting literature on the effects of calculative practices in managing emergencies. The study contributes to theory by providing an understanding of how calculative practices can influence collective behaviors and can be used to construct informal networks that go beyond the government's traditional formalities.

This chapter addresses one of the most crucial areas for critical thinking: the morality of turbulent markets around the world. All of us are overwhelmed by such turbulent markets. Following Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2004, 2010), we distinguish between nonscalable industries (ordinary professions where income grows linearly, piecemeal or by marginal jumps) and scalable industries (extraordinary risk-prone professions where income grows in a nonlinear fashion, and by exponential jumps and fractures). Nonscalable industries generate tame and predictable markets of goods and services, while scalable industries regularly explode into behemoth virulent markets where rewards are disproportionately large compared to effort, and they are the major causes of turbulent financial markets that rock our world causing ever-widening inequities and inequalities. Part I describes both scalable and nonscalable markets in sufficient detail, including propensity of scalable industries to randomness, and the turbulent markets they create. Part II seeks understanding of moral responsibility of turbulent markets and discusses who should appropriate moral responsibility for turbulent markets and under what conditions. Part III synthesizes various theories of necessary and sufficient conditions for accepting or assigning moral responsibility. We also analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for attribution of moral responsibility such as rationality, intentionality, autonomy or freedom, causality, accountability, and avoidability of various actors as moral agents or as moral persons. By grouping these conditions, we then derive some useful models for assigning moral responsibility to various entities such as individual executives, corporations, or joint bodies. We discuss the challenges and limitations of such models.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) at their foreign subsidiaries hire local employees, whose cultural values may differ from the organisations' home cultures. Such value differences may pose managerial difficulties, making it critical to observe whether working at MNCs changes local employees' cultural values, reducing these differences. This study investigates how and to what extent local employees from a collectivistic culture acculturate their ethics-related values when working at MNCs' foreign subsidiaries. The authors examine (1) whether local employees change their values to become closer to the MNCs' home cultures, and if so, (2) whether the cultural distance between the MNCs' home and host national cultures affect the degree of such adaptation.

Survey data were collected through stratified random sampling from Thai employees of a Japanese-owned MNC (n = 196), a UK-owned MNC (n = 143) and a Thai-owned organisation (n = 137), all operating in Thailand. Hypotheses were developed using Berry's bidimensional acculturation model and were tested using OLS and logistic regression analyses.

The study's findings indicate that MNCs' local employees from collectivistic cultures adopt Berry's integration acculturation strategy and acculturate their ethics-related values – collectivism, ethical relativism, collective responsibility preference and executive pay differentiation tolerance – towards the values prevalent in MNCs' home cultures. Overall, acculturation is greater when cultural distance is greater. New insights are presented in relation to collective responsibility preference and pay differentiation tolerance.

Findings add to current knowledge on acculturation in management by (1) providing new insights into value acculturation (2) utilising Berry's acculturation model to analyse employees' acculturation within an organisation in the context of an emerging economy, outside the more frequently studied topic of mergers and acquisitions, and (3) investigating the impact of cultural distance on the degree of employee acculturation outside the field of expatriate adjustment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how relationships between different actors are being shaped to allow industry to come to acceptable and desirable uses of research and innovation (R&I) that address societal challenges.

Building on existing notions of responsibility proposed in the literature, the paper develops a theoretical account of “networks of responsibility” which capture the interlinked nature of responsibility relationships. The usefulness of the approach is evaluated by exploring two cases of R&I in industry deploying a qualitative research approach that involves interviewing and document analysis. For this, a multinational company from Germany was involved, as well as a small- and medium-sized company from Denmark.

The study surfaced 68 responsibility relationships involving a range of different objects, subjects, authorities and norms. By describing overlaps in objects, subjects and other aspects across relationships, the theoretical model proved adequate in untangling and displaying interrelatedness of responsibilities. Furthermore, the analysis surfaced characteristics of responsible research and innovation (RRI) that are already in place in the R&I processes of two innovative companies, such as anticipation, foresight and stakeholder engagement. Not all aspects of responsibility outlined in the theoretical model could be extracted from the interview data for every responsibility relationship, pointing to the need for further research.

The paper is practically relevant because it supports policy development on an organisational, as well as societal level. Moreover, the networks of responsibility model offer a fine-grained assessment of responsibilities in R&I practice by mapping existing responsibilities which supports translating RRI principles into everyday organisational practices.

RRI sets an ambitious agenda to ensure a more social and ethical R&I. Much work is still needed to bridge the gap between these theoretical and political aspirations and daily R&I practice, especially in non-academic contexts such as industry. By offering a way to understand and untangle the complexity of responsibility relationships, the networks of responsibility model seem to offer a promising approach that can support this endeavour.

The paper offers a novel theoretical approach to understanding and analysing responsibility allocations in R&I in industry. It demonstrates the reliability of this theoretical position empirically. It is practically important because it supports policy development on an organisational as well as societal level.