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Ethics is fundamentally a science of social and collective responsibility. Ethics concerns human behavior as responsible or accountable. Because of the nature of social interaction, certain members of the society will bear greater authority, and hence, greater individual and social responsibility than others. In our world, personal responsibility and social responsibility are hardly separable. Personal responsibility becomes responsibility for the world because the person and the world are inseparable. In this chapter, we use the term responsibility from a legal, ethical, moral, and spiritual (LEMS) standpoint as some promise, commitment, obligation, sanctioned by self, morals, law, or society, to do good, and if harm results, to repair harm done on another. Hence, responsibility from a moral perspective is trustworthiness and dependability of the agent in some enterprise. Its inverse is exoneration – the extent to which one is excused from commitment and repairing the harm done to others by one’s actions. We apply the theories and constructs of executive responsibility to two contemporary cases: (1) India’s Super Rich in 2014 and (2) the Fall and Rise of Starbucks. After exploring the basic notion of responsibility, we present a discussion on the nature and obligation of corporate responsibility into three parts: Part I: Classical Understanding and Discussion on Corporate Responsibility; Part II: Contemporary Understanding and Discussion on Corporate Responsibility, and Part III: A synthesis of classical and contemporary views of responsibility and their applications to corporate executive responsibility.

Presents the thoughts on decision processes of Chester I. Barnard, one of the century’s greatest management theorists. Includes his classic article, “Mind in everyday affairs”; his unpublished book, “The Significance of Decisive Behaviour in Social Action”; his correspondence with Herbert Simon, and significant comments found in his personal papers.

The purpose of this paper is to justify, elaborate and elucidate the concepts of action, experience and reflection, and how they are intertwined when discussing contemporary entrepreneurship education. These concepts have been given a meaning in entrepreneurship education, but have not been discussed in-depth, and by that have been abridged in meaning and purpose, and mostly been treated in isolation from each other.

The paper is conceptual and takes its starting point in the historical development of the field and discusses the concepts, from philosophical roots and their application, in entrepreneurship education.

Neither of the discussed concepts are enough to generate learning one by one, as they are intertwined within the learning process that aims to generate knowledge. From this perspective, an understanding of how these concepts work, both individually and in synergy, is of importance for entrepreneurship education.

The discussion presented in this paper may be a starting point for future empirical studies on entrepreneurial learning, by developing the meaning of action, reflections and experience, or by trying to conceptualize them.

The study indicates that entrepreneurship education should not concentrate only on one dimension of the entrepreneurial learning process, as for example, on actions, but should try to combine all of its discussed elements.

By exploring the origins and developments around the concepts, the paper brings a deepened understanding of what the field considers as important when learning entrepreneurship. By decomposing and mutually referring the concepts, the authors contribute to the call of strengthening the theoretical and philosophical understanding in entrepreneurship education.

There is growing political interest in new forms of precarious self‐employment located in a “grey area” between employment and self‐employment. A wide range of concepts has been used to debate this issue, and this paper aims to clarify these debates through the concept of involuntary self‐employment.

The paper reviews the empirical, conceptual and legal‐policy approaches to involuntary self‐employment via three country case studies in Finland, Germany and the UK. A range of relevant domestic academic literature, articles in the media, selected key expert interviews, and policy and legal documents are employed.

Conceptual clarity regarding involuntary self‐employment is achieved through a discussion of two aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristics of involuntariness from a motives‐based perspective, and the legal/economic perspectives and policy issues. The motives‐based analysis argues that involuntariness as such does not seem to have severe implications on the individuals' well being, given that the individual earns a satisfactory livelihood from her or his business activities. The discussion of the characteristics of and regulation related to working arrangements in the “grey area” between employment and self‐employment, where the self‐employed individual is strongly dependent on the principal, shows that it is very difficult to regulate quasi self‐employment without harming “voluntary” forms of enterprise and inter‐firm cooperation at the same time.

The key contribution of the paper is to facilitate a foundation for subsequent empirical research and policy development.

To identify environmental and physiological factors that may interact to bring about accidental discharges of firearms; and to make suggestions regarding the training of police officers with the aim of reducing such incidents.

A pistol was fitted with sensors to register the pressure exerted on both the hand‐stock and the trigger of the weapon. Participants then performed 13 different tasks, each of which required the use of different limbs while holding the prepared weapon.

Results suggest that motor activity in different limbs can lead to a significant increase in grip force exerted on a firearm, and that the amount of force exerted on the weapon is dependent on the intensity and type of movement and the limb involved in the movement. For movements of the contralateral arm a tendency for higher forces to be exerted on a weapon during pulling than during pushing movements was found, whereas the force with which the movement was performed did not seem to have any influence. In contrast, for movements involving the legs, findings indicate that increasingly more forceful leg‐movements lead to a progressively higher risk of unintentionally discharging a firearm due to unintended muscle activity, whereas the type of movement does not seem to influence the amount of force produced in the hand carrying the weapon. Generally, the use of the lower limbs appears to offer a greater danger for involuntary discharges resulting from unintended muscle activity than movements involving the contralateral arm.

Results point towards evidence‐based methods for training police officers that may reduce the danger of involuntary discharges of a firearm in a real life situation.

This paper provides the first empirical research to identify which movements of the human body are more or less likely to induce unintended muscle activity in the hand carrying a firearm which may evoke involuntary discharges.

The purpose of this paper is to open up new lines of research into the engagement of corporations during humanitarian crises. The paper provides an introduction to core concepts in the delivery of humanitarian assistance, as well as a comprehensive overview of when, why, how, and to what effect corporations engage in humanitarian action.

Building on extant literature and policy reports, the paper synthesizes concepts and insights to map the interdisciplinary field of research on corporate engagement in humanitarian action.

The paper systematically reviews and describes different dimensions of corporate engagement for delivering humanitarian action and explains key complications that inspire new research questions. In particular, the paper highlights challenges associated with getting corporations to engage in humanitarian action; challenges associated with ensuring effective corporate engagement; and challenges associated with ensuring ethical engagement.

By raising new questions about corporate engagement in humanitarian action, this paper develops an original and positive research agenda for international business, management research, and related fields.

The first Principia Mathematica (1686) by Sir Isaac Newton with reference to natural philosophy and his system of the world has largely contributed to the first revolution in scientific thinking in modern times. It has created the conceptual basis of modern science in the classical tradition by providing the tools of analysis and the technique of reasoning in terms of stability—from—within or, as we would say today, the model of stable equilibrium conditions.

Imprisonment is associated with far-reaching restrictions of personal autonomy, which critically depends on the sense of agency (SoA), i.e. the experience of control over one’s own actions and the consequences of these actions. Lack of personal choice and coercion to engage in specific actions disrupt the neurocognitive basis of SoA, which can have a profound impact on social behaviour, self-reliance and well-being. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to address the relationship between autonomy, choice restrictions and SoA in prisoners and the ability to reenter society after release.

This conceptual paper integrates existing empirical evidence from research on the role of personal autonomy and lack of freedom in prison and recent research using neurocognitive methods to study the processes underlying the effects of choice restrictions and coercion on SoA.

Building on prior empirical observations, the authors suggest that investigating how and when imprisonment undermines SoA through the restriction of personal choice can provide valuable insights into prisoners’ challenges in regulating and organizing their behavior and to accommodate the rules of society.

This conceptual paper offers directions for future research to further our understanding of autonomy restrictions on SoA in prison and its downstream consequences for societal reintegration.