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Book part
Publication date: 21 July 2022

Karen Foster

This chapter brings the recent sociology of entrepreneurship, sociologies and geographies of responsibility, and critical reflections on place and space together to ask why

Abstract

This chapter brings the recent sociology of entrepreneurship, sociologies and geographies of responsibility, and critical reflections on place and space together to ask why entrepreneurs show leadership in a place, and where they might want to lead it. Drawing on a set of qualitative interviews conducted from 2018 to 2020 with small business operators in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, the chapter explores how interviewees frame their business ideas, decisions, practices and aspirations not (just) in terms of conventional business objectives like profit or market share, but in terms of something I term responsibility to place. Responsibility to place emerges through the interviews as a feeling that one’s business should make a positive impact on place – inclusive of its people, environment, culture, history, and future. This feeling exists in tension with the objectives of Nova Scotia’s entrepreneurial ecosystem managers, as is seen in the discrepancies between interviewees’ narratives and the discourses propagated by the province’s economic development agencies, focused as they are on export-led growth. The findings from this sample indicate that understanding the “geographies of responsibility” (Massey, 2004) in entrepreneurs’ narratives is critical to a fuller appreciation of entrepreneurial Place leadership.

Details

Entrepreneurial Place Leadership: Negotiating the Entrepreneurial Landscape
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-029-0

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Book part
Publication date: 24 July 2020

Santiago González-Gómez

Mexico currently faces serious social scarcities and businesses are under pressure. The alternative lies in improving company performance through education. It is important to…

Abstract

Mexico currently faces serious social scarcities and businesses are under pressure. The alternative lies in improving company performance through education. It is important to educate future entrepreneurs and managers within a corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework and expose them to the stakeholder theory. This chapter argues that educating socially responsible management students is the touchstone strategy for addressing the big challenges that twenty first century organizations face. This chapter first defines the CSR concept, relating it to organizations’ role in fulfilling society’s expectations, demands, and requirements. Second, it sets forth why CSR is a strategic tool for management and a moral obligation for companies. Finally, it argues for the importance of including CSR and the stakeholder theory in the curriculum of all management faculties and programs.

Details

Strategy, Power and CSR: Practices and Challenges in Organizational Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-973-6

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Article
Publication date: 4 May 2012

Simon J. Robinson and Jonathan Smith

The purpose of this final paper in the special issue is to extend the critical conversation that has run through this journal about the meaning and practice of responsibility. It

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this final paper in the special issue is to extend the critical conversation that has run through this journal about the meaning and practice of responsibility. It will draw together material from the other papers, summarise what is meant by responsibility and offer suggestions for further research.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper takes the form of a critical analysis of the concept of responsibility in relation to practice.

Findings

The paper argues for the importance of a holistic view of responsibility focused in individual and organisational practice of the virtues.

Practical implications

The paper argues for increased dialogue between key stakeholders about the practice and development of responsibility, and for developments in pedagogy that will connect all aspects of ideas, values and practice.

Social implications

There is typically a low level of appreciation of what responsibility means. This paper raises this awareness and identifies what responsibility looks like. It emphasises the importance of engraining a responsibility culture in the organisation, and continued dialogue between within, and beyond institutions.

Originality/value

The paper provides a virtue‐based approach that is based in critical dialogue, extending responsibility beyond conventional CSR thinking and providing the basis of what is a form of universal responsibility. This leads to a unique view of responsibility in culture and the curriculum.

Details

Journal of Global Responsibility, vol. 3 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2041-2568

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Article
Publication date: 17 April 2018

Stephen Keith McGrath and Stephen Jonathan Whitty

The purpose of this paper is to remove confusion surrounding the terms responsibility and accountability from the general and project management arenas by creating “refined” (with…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to remove confusion surrounding the terms responsibility and accountability from the general and project management arenas by creating “refined” (with unnecessary elements removed) definitions of these terms.

Design/methodology/approach

A method of deriving refined definitions for a group of terms by ensuring that there is no internal conflict or overlap is adopted and applied to resolve the confusion.

Findings

The confusion between responsibility and accountability can be characterised as a failure to separate the obligation to satisfactorily perform a task (responsibility) from the liability to ensure that it is satisfactorily done (accountability). Furthermore, clarity of application can be achieved if legislative and organisational accountabilities are differentiated and it is recognised that accountability and responsibility transition across organisational levels. A difficulty in applying accountability in RACI tables is also resolved.

Research limitations/implications

Clear definition of responsibility and accountability will facilitate future research endeavours by removing confusion surrounding the terms. Verification of the method used through its success in deriving these “refined” definitions suggests its suitability for application to other contested terms.

Practical implications

Projects and businesses alike can benefit from removal of confusion around the definitions of responsibility and accountability in the academic research they fund and attempt to apply. They can also achieve improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness in undertaking organisation-wide exercises to determine organisational responsibilities and accountabilities as well as in the application of governance models.

Social implications

Refined definitions of responsibility and accountability will facilitate building social and physical systems and infrastructure, benefitting organisations, whether public, charitable or private.

Originality/value

Clarity resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.

Details

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, vol. 11 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8378

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Article
Publication date: 1 July 1977

John S. Evans

A striking feature of Jaques' work is his “no nonsense” attitude to the “manager‐subordinate” relationship. His blunt account of the origins of this relationship seems at first…

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Abstract

A striking feature of Jaques' work is his “no nonsense” attitude to the “manager‐subordinate” relationship. His blunt account of the origins of this relationship seems at first sight to place him in the legalistic “principles of management” camp rather than in the ranks of the subtler “people centred” schools. We shall see before long how misleading such first impressions can be, for Jaques is not making simplistic assumptions about the human psyche. But he certainly sees no point in agonising over the mechanism of association which brings organisations and work‐groups into being when the facts of life are perfectly straightforward and there is no need to be squeamish about them.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 15 no. 7/8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Article
Publication date: 30 August 2021

Ronald Barnett and Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela

This paper aims to propose a thesis about the historical evolution of the relationship of the European University in relation to the idea of social responsibility.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to propose a thesis about the historical evolution of the relationship of the European University in relation to the idea of social responsibility.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is philosophical, conceptual and theoretical and in proffering a bold thesis, has an argumentative character appropriate to that style.

Findings

Three stages can be identified over the past 200 years in the relationship between the university and the matter of social responsibility, being successively tacit, weak and now hybrid. In the present stage, new spaces are opening for the university to transcend social responsibility, moving to a worldly and earthly responsibility. However, this new stage is having to contend against the university in an age of cognitive capitalism. As such, a large but hitherto unnoticed culture war is present, the outcome of which is unclear.

Research limitations/implications

The scholarship informing this paper is wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary (history, social theory, philosophy, critical higher education studies, literature on the idea of the university, comparative higher education, ethics and sociology of knowledge), as it has to be in sustaining the large thesis being contended for, and it has broad hinterlands, which can only lightly be intimated.

Practical implications

The key implication is that the idea of social responsibility is currently being construed too narrowly and that, therefore, universities – in developing their corporate strategies and missions – should be more ambitious and set their responsibility goals against horizons that go well beyond the social realm.

Originality/value

The thesis developed here is original in offering a three-stage theory of a 200-year evolution of the socially responsible European university. A new stage of an Earthly responsibility is glimpsed but it is having to contend with a continuing performative university, so leading to a hidden culture war and such that the future of university social responsibility is in doubt.

Details

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, vol. 23 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1467-6370

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Book part
Publication date: 19 September 2015

Michaël Merrigan

A greater stress on individual responsibility is essential for a more effective protection of human dignity and, ultimately, for securing the future of the idea of human rights…

Abstract

A greater stress on individual responsibility is essential for a more effective protection of human dignity and, ultimately, for securing the future of the idea of human rights. However, this responsibility is an ethical concept and must be distinguished from its moral and legal counterparts. With responsibility comes authority, meaning that individuals have an area of discretion, which must be respected by others and the State, but with regard to which there exists also certain expectations towards the bearer. This idea of an ‘ethical space’ is already familiar to (European) human rights law, where the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ and the related concept of the ‘margin of appreciation’ define the relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and the States party to the European Convention on Human Rights. This relationship resembles, mutatis mutandis, the relationship between the State and the individual. The resulting inter-personal ethical diversity, which inevitably entails a certain level of ethical conflict, is thus both a logical consequence of individual responsibility, as well as an essential feature of a democratic society, which is based on the principle of human dignity.

Details

Business, Ethics and Peace
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-878-6

Book part
Publication date: 4 March 2024

Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar

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…

Abstract

Executive Summary

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.

Details

A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-312-1

Book part
Publication date: 27 November 2020

I. I. Okwuosa

This paper explores environmental accountability and downward accountability role of nongovernmental organisations (henceforth NGOs) under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR…

Abstract

This paper explores environmental accountability and downward accountability role of nongovernmental organisations (henceforth NGOs) under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in the food and beverage industry of Nigeria. The paper relies on empirical data gathered from qualitative interviews of three stakeholders – accountants, Corporate Social Responsibility Officers (CSROs), CEOs and NGO CSROs. It employed theoretical conceptualisation of environmental accountability and NGO's downward accountability. Analysis shows that despite the existence of attributes of environmental accountability such as sense of responsibility on the part of corporations and citizens' rights to demand for and enforce accountability, passivity of citizens' right caused by vulnerability prevails. The finding also shows that downward accountability roles of NGOs in the industry have been framed as that of enhancing activities in the value chain. Part of this is RecyclePay project that funds education for the poor. Thus NGOs' downward (environmental) accountability in Nigeria has potential to promote environmental well-being, beneficiary's economic empowerment and education for the poor, thereby simultaneously addressing vulnerability. It shows that vulnerability may induce a different conceptualisation of environmental accountability than that of a normal democratic setting where the citizens are deemed to have right to demand and enforce (environmental) accountability. This paper contributes to our understanding of (environmental) accountability and downward accountability role of NGOs within an emerging market context.

Details

Environmentalism and NGO Accountability
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-002-8

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Article
Publication date: 1 December 2001

Geoffrey P. Lantos

Reviews the development of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept and its four components: economic, legal, ethical and altruistic duties. Discusses different…

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Abstract

Reviews the development of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept and its four components: economic, legal, ethical and altruistic duties. Discusses different perspectives on the proper role of business in society, from profit making to community service provider. Suggests that much of the confusion and controversy over CSR stem from a failure to distinguish among ethical, altruistic and strategic forms of CSR. On the basis of a thorough examination of the arguments for and against altruistic CSR, concurs with Milton Friedman that altruistic CSR is not a legitimate role of business. Proposes that ethical CSR, grounded in the concept of ethical duties and responsibilities, is mandatory. Concludes that strategic CSR is good for business and society. Advises that marketing take a lead role in strategic CSR activities. Notes difficulties in CSR practice and offers suggestions for marketers in planning for strategic CSR and for academic researchers in further clarifying the boundaries of strategic CSR.

Details

Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 18 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0736-3761

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