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1 – 10 of 22Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar
In this chapter, we introduce the history of critical thinking briefly, starting from Socrates to contemporary contributions. Based on this history, we derive several modules for…
Abstract
Executive Summary
In this chapter, we introduce the history of critical thinking briefly, starting from Socrates to contemporary contributions. Based on this history, we derive several modules for training in critical thinking via practical exercises in critical thinking. Three classic critical thinking models are introduced: Socratic questioning method, Cartesian doubting method, and Baconian empirical method. We discuss their potential for critical thinking as foundational methods. The material in this chapter is distributed in three parts. In Part I, we provide a brief history of critical thinking. In Part II, we design models of critical thinking based on its classic history. In Part III, we list some models of critical thinking based on its history, from the Renaissance period to the current times. In the last section, we also discuss critical thinking in the context of business ethics, by delineating its normative domain, assessing its characteristics, and reviewing its processes.
Academic work on responsible leadership has emphasised two aspects: the value orientation of leaders, and the scope of interests they consider in their leadership – the range of…
Abstract
Academic work on responsible leadership has emphasised two aspects: the value orientation of leaders, and the scope of interests they consider in their leadership – the range of stakeholders, current and future, human and non-human. I address these via two questions that are equally important but different in scale: one is about the motives for individual action and the other about the coordination of multiple organisations. Possible answers are considered in the context of leadership development: the developmental pathways, and the structure of leader and leadership development programmes, that are most likely to promote responsible leadership.
On the question of moral motivation (drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur) I suggest four influential factors: witnessing the suffering of others, admonitions of “masters of justice”, welfare of loved ones, and networks within which to discuss these matters. These I summarise as “the echo of conscience”.
On the question of coordinated change at a systemic level, I review several approaches commonly found in leadership development programmes, interpret these as emerging from four “logics” and consider the implications for responsible leader development. The four logics are: systems are so complex that entrepreneurial innovation is a primary mode of responsible leadership; specific issues might be resolved by bringing “the system in the room”; sector-specific organising to change the rules of the game towards greater social responsibility; identifying “positive tipping points” and seeking triggers for change.
I conclude with a meditation on idealism in responsible leadership.
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Alexandra Krämer and Peter Winkler
The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to…
Abstract
Purpose
The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.
Design/methodology/approach
Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.
Findings
Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.
Originality/value
This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.
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Waris Ali, Jeffrey Wilson, Amr Elalfy and Hina Ismail
This study aims to examine the impact of firm-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) governance characteristics on the extent, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the impact of firm-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) governance characteristics on the extent, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting of Pakistani listed enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used content analysis of corporate annual reports and stand-alone CSR reports available on corporate websites in 2021 to identify CSR-related governance features and to calculate CSR reporting scores. Multivariate regression is used to test relationships. In addition, the analysis tested the moderating role of profitability in these relationships.
Findings
Firm-level CSR governance characteristics contribute to the extent, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting in a developing country. Further, results confirm that profitability moderates the relationship between CSR governance and the extent and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting.
Research limitations/implications
This study employed cross-sectional data and focused on a single developing country. Future studies might include a cross-national sample and longitudinal data to demonstrate the broader relevance of these findings. The outcomes of this study are restricted to CSR disclosures based on CSR reports and annual reports. Future research may examine additional corporate communication channels, such as websites and social media platforms.
Practical implications
This research validates the important role of CSR governance mechanisms as a driver of comprehensive CSR reporting. Business leaders and policymakers can facilitate improved corporate reporting by requiring companies to implement CSR-related governance mechanisms.
Originality/value
This is the first study to test the influence of firm-level CSR governance mechanisms in promoting the quantity, quality and comprehensiveness of CSR reporting in a developing country.
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Jannik Kretschmer and Peter Winkler
The debate on digitalization in the public relations (PR) literature has fragmented considerably over the past decade because of its focus on upcoming media-technological…
Abstract
Purpose
The debate on digitalization in the public relations (PR) literature has fragmented considerably over the past decade because of its focus on upcoming media-technological innovations, required professional skills and management concepts. Yet the field has difficulties in developing an integrative perspective on the implications of digitalization as a broader socio-technological transformation with a balanced consideration of prospects and risks.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper proposes an integrative perspective that focuses more on the enduring imaginaries of how digitalization can transform society for better or worse. It traces the historical roots of five imaginaries of digitalization, which have already emerged over the past century yet have experienced a significant revival and popularization in the current debate. Based on these five imaginaries, the authors performed a narrative literature review of the digitalization debate in 10 leading PR journals from 2010 to 2022.
Findings
The five imaginaries allow for a systematization of the fragmented digitalization debate in the field, reconstructing recurrent narratives, prospects and risks.
Originality/value
The originality of this contribution lies in its reconstructive approach, tracing societal imaginaries of digitalization and their impact on the current disciplinary debate. This approach provides context for a balanced assessment of and engagement with upcoming, increasingly fragmented digital advancements in PR research and practice.
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Nurlan Orazalin, Cemil Kuzey, Ali Uyar and Abdullah S. Karaman
This study tests whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance is a predictor of the financial sector's financial stability (FS), with the moderation of a…
Abstract
Purpose
This study tests whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance is a predictor of the financial sector's financial stability (FS), with the moderation of a sustainability committee.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample covers financial sector firms included in the Thomson Reuters Eikon database. The analyses are based on 8,840 firm-year observations for the years between 2002 and 2019 and the country-firm-year fixed-effects (FE) regression analysis is executed.
Findings
The results reveal that CSR initiatives contribute to the financial sector's FS as a whole and the sector's three individual sub-sectors. This proven significant association holds for all sub-sectors, namely insurance, banking, and investment banking. Moreover, the moderation analysis reveals the prominent role of a sustainability committee in bridging CSR performance (CSRP) with FS.
Research limitations/implications
The findings highlight that meeting societies' expectations pays back in the form of greater FS in the financial sector.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that CSR engagement helps the financial sector firms manage their risks and alleviates exposure to insolvency. This is because CSR performance promotes firms' accountability and transparency toward stakeholders. The results help motivate managers to pursue CSR goals more seriously to ensure FS. The moderation analysis implies that sustainability committees develop policies and practices to integrate the non-financial and financial goals of the firm.
Originality/value
Although prior studies have examined the link between CSR and financial performance (FP) in the financial sector, those studies have largely ignored FS in terms of risk-adjusted performance. Besides, prior studies have exclusively focused on the banking sector, but the authors concentrate on the banking, insurance, and investment banking sectors.
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Maria Aluchna, Maria Roszkowska-Menkes and Bogumił Kamiński
Non-financial reporting (NFR) is viewed as a major step towards organisational transparency and accountability. While the number of non-financial reports published every year has…
Abstract
Purpose
Non-financial reporting (NFR) is viewed as a major step towards organisational transparency and accountability. While the number of non-financial reports published every year has been growing exponentially over the last two decades, their quality and effectiveness in managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance have been questioned. Addressing these concerns, several jurisdictions, including EU Member States, introduced mandatory NFR regimes. However, the evidence on whether such regulation truly translates into enhanced ESG performance remains scarce. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of the EU’s Directive 2014/95/EU (Non-financial Reporting Directive, NFRD) on the ESG scores of Polish companies.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon institutional and strategic perspectives on legitimacy theory, the authors test the relationship between the introduction of the NFRD and the ESG scores derived from the Refinitiv database, using a sample of all those companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange whose disclosure allows for measuring ESG performance (yielding 171 firm-year observations from 43 companies).
Findings
This study’s findings show an improvement of ESG performance following the introduction of the NFRD. The difference-in-differences approach indicates that the improvement is larger for companies that are subject to the legislation when it comes to overall ESG performance, particularly for environmental and social performance. Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no significant effect is found for performance in the governance dimension.
Originality/value
This study investigates the role of transnational mandatory reporting regulation in the first years of its enactment. The evidence offers insights into the effects of disclosure legislation in the context of an underdeveloped institutional environment.
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The ongoing anthropological transformation urges the rethinking of education, underlining the inadequacy of our schools and universities in dealing with hypercomplexity, that is…
Abstract
The ongoing anthropological transformation urges the rethinking of education, underlining the inadequacy of our schools and universities in dealing with hypercomplexity, that is, with the global extension of all political, social, and cultural processes and with their indeterminacy, interdependence, and interconnection. The idea that educational processes are questions of a purely technical/technological nature, solely a problem of skills and know-how, is the “great mistake” of the hypertechnological society, based on the illusion of being able to measure and quantify everything, to eliminate error and unpredictability, and to achieve total control and rationality. It is necessary to rethink education radically because the extraordinary scientific discoveries and the dynamics of the new technologies have completely overturned the complex interaction between biological and cultural evolution, doing away with the borders between the natural and the artificial. Emergence and emergency themselves are structural features of complex systems (living, social, and human systems), rendered hypercomplex through today’s acceleration and virality, regarding not only education and socialization but also the representations and perceptions of all systemic processes. The merging of fields of knowledge and an epistemology of error become essential for the analysis and interpretation of this hypercomplexity and the unpredictability that distinguishes it.
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Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. That is, without critically inquiring into the knowledge of life, which is well-being and valuable, life is not worth…
Abstract
Executive Summary
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. That is, without critically inquiring into the knowledge of life, which is well-being and valuable, life is not worth living. Critical thinking questions existing theories and their unexamined and obsessive assumptions and generalizations, constraints, and the so-called “best” practices of the prevailing system of management and tries to replace them with more valid assumptions and generalizations that uphold the dignity, uniqueness, and inalienable rights of every individual and the community. In our diverse and pluralistic cultural environment, the promise of a truly generative dialogue among occidental (western) and oriental (eastern) cultures and civilizations holds great hope for the future. Critical thinking can facilitate this dialogue such that all of us have a meaningful place in this universe. In this chapter, we explore introductory working definitions of critical thinking so that we can early enough understand its demanding domains, moral calls, and ramifications in its current critical applications. Specifically, in Part I, we examine the structured layers of our thinking and reasoning to dismantle them progressively, and in Part II, in support of our claims, we explore complexity and chaos theories as a new resource for critical thinking.