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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.

The purpose of this study is to examine and interpret the characteristics of social responsibility in general, and business responsibility in particular, that were evident during a period in European history that was plagued by widespread social problems and change. Based on that interpretation, the authors explore the lessons those characteristics may have for social responsibility in a contemporary world that is facing similar conditions.

The paper presents a qualitative analysis of the proceedings of the Bienfaisance Congress held in Frankfurt in 1857, where societal leaders from different nations met to answer the question, who has responsibility for whom, and for what? The authors use grounded theory, as it is operationalized in what is known as the “Gioia template,” to conduct a structured analysis of this particular text, and to in turn produce a theoretical interpretation of how that question was answered.

The interpretation from this study is that congress participants articulated certain established dimensions of responsibility (individual, organizational, national), as well as one new dimension (international), and did so by differentiating boundaries of responsibility; in turn, the authors suggest that these dimensions and boundaries work together to form a nested system of responsibilities.

There is limited empirical evidence available that documents the variety of responsibility-based initiatives that were being conducted during the 19th century. An analysis of the congress proceedings allows us to gain a better understanding of how the 19th-century world, particularly the upper echelons of European society, approached the question of under what conditions actors in different domains have responsibility for another. While the implications are limited by the analysis of the proceedings of one congress that was attended by elites, they do provide a snapshot of how Europe sought to articulate a system of bounded responsibilities during a time of widespread social problems and change.

Although the nested system of responsibilities framework that emerged from the grounded theory analysis is not applicable to all situations, it should sensitize policymakers and business leaders to the need to address social problems in a systemic way.

The authors both present a systems-based framework for understanding how responsibility is differentiated among actors (individual, organizational, state and international) and demonstrate how a theoretical interpretation of historical documents can be accomplished through the use of grounded theory, as operationalized through the Gioia template.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to understand consumer reactions to security breaches and the best approach for companies to minimize the reputational damage that is done.

The authors assessed trust in a company following a data breach as well as perceptions of individual and corporate responsibility for data security and also measured individual personality.

The authors found that individuals held companies more responsible for protecting private data and held companies even more responsible following a data breach. Further, perception of responsibility for a data breach significantly affected individuals’ response to a company’s attempt to rebuild trust. Finally, participant personality impacted perceptions of responsibility and trust in a company after a data breach.

Companies are held more responsible for protecting private data than are individuals. Thus, violation of this expectation insofar as a data breach may result in a psychological contract breach which explains reductions in trust in a company which has experienced a data breach. Further, the effect of company’s responses to a data breach depends on individuals’ perception of responsibility and personality. Thus, the best course of action following a data breach may vary across customers.

Companies should consider differences in customer perceptions when responding to a data breach.

Individuals differ in how responsible they feel a company is for data security. Further, those differences impact reactions to data breach responses from companies.

This paper explored personality as it impacts perceptions of corporate responsibility in data security. Further, the authors explore the role of perception of responsibility to determine the role of psychological contract breach in reduced trust after data breach.

The purpose of this article is to improve our understanding of the nature of social responsibility in actual practices and, specifically, the influence of individuals on these processes.

An abductive approach is applied (Alvesson and Sköldberg 1994), i.e. theory is developed by moving between theory and four empirical cases. The stories highlight the importance of the individual and closeness to local stakeholders and the presence of overlapping rationales.

The individuals’ simultaneous roles – as owners, managers and community members – influence how they are held or see themselves as accountable and how they account for the firms’ engagement in the community. The activities are conducted in the name of the firm but originate from private as well as business-oriented concerns. Our conclusions encourage an extension of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) construct to approach it as an entangled phenomenon resulting from the firm and the individual embeddedness in internal and external cultures.

This study brings the individual managers and owner-managers into focus and how their interplay with the surrounding context can create additional dimensions of accountability, which impact on the decisions taken in regard to CSR. A micro-perspective is applied. Corporate community responsibility, particularly in smaller and rural communities, contributes to recognize and understand how individuals influence and are influenced by CSR.

This study aims to explore the role of sustainable fashion knowledge in shaping individual sustainable responsibility within the dynamic landscape of the fashion industry from a novel perspective, by exploring the intricate interplay between sustainable fashion knowledge, emotional and spiritual sustainable capacities.

A quantitative study was used, and a causal model with partial least squares structural equation modeling was developed. A total of 211 valid responses were obtained, and data were analysed to confirm the proposed hypotheses.

The findings confirm the positive impact of sustainable fashion knowledge on individual sustainable responsibility, mediated by both spiritual and emotional sustainable capacities. This study underscores the significance of individuals in influencing societal norms, prompting fashion companies to adopt sustainable practices.

The proposed conceptual framework integrates insights from the emotional and spiritual knowledge dynamics. This study uncovers the pathways through which individuals contribute to a more sustainable society.

The study not only advances the understanding of sustainable fashion practices but also provides actionable insights for policymakers, businesses and individuals seeking to foster a culture of sustainability in the fashion ecosystem.

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.

The successful identification and management of environmental risks remains one of the most important challenges facing mankind. The global nature of environmental risks makes the assumption and practice of environmental responsibility difficult. This paper aims to examine the nature of this difficulty, arguing that although environmental responsibility remains global, it is situated and practiced at the local level.

Using a case study methodology, the paper examines three family dairy farms in Belsize, New South Wales, Australia. Repeated interviews with adult members of the farming families explored their perspectives of the past, present and future of the farm, eliciting rich narratives about relationships between farm, environment, community and individual, and the role that responsibility plays in negotiating these relationships.

Environmental responsibility is established as multi‐faceted, and negotiated between social actors as one of myriad other, competing responsibilities. Responsibility is positioned as a critical factor in the generation and maintenance of social relationships, but one which is often mobilized as a mechanism of governance. The paper argues that this can result in tension for some social actors.

This paper positions responsibility generally, and environmental responsibility in particular, as situated on the junction between local and global networks. This occurs as a result of the intrusion of the global into the local, and the corresponding need for individuals to act on the global stage through the medium of their local contexts. In managing the changes in behavior and identity necessary to do this successfully, responsibility is identified as one means of establishing social identity and group members, and a way of defining specific social roles.

Previous studies have empirically examined the positive outcomes organizations can achieve by engaging in environmentally responsible actions, but the underlying mechanism of the reasons why publics engage in supportive behaviors for those organizations has not been examined in light of theoretical foundations. To fill this gap, this paper builds on a foundation of norm activation theory to explore the effect of publics' awareness of environmental consequences on perceived environmental responsibility of organizations and organizational norm, which can have an impact on publics' supportive behavior toward environmentally responsible organizations. The potential relationships between social media use for environmental information and other variables are also explored.

Drawing on norm activation theory, an online survey was conducted among 288 adults in the United States. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Findings indicate the impact of individuals' awareness of environmental consequences on their ascription of responsibility to organizations, which influences organizational norm and supportive behavior intention toward organizations.

This study is one of the first attempts to explore the underlying mechanism of publics' support for environmentally responsible organizations.