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The chapter presents the implementation of ethics education via challenge-based learning (CBL) in three European settings. At TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands), a mandatory first-year User, Society, and Enterprise course on the ethics and history of technology offers a CBL alternative on ethics and data analytics in collaboration with internal student and research teams. The University of Lübeck (Germany) initiated the project CREATE – Challenge-based Learning for Robotics Students by Engaging Start-Ups in Technology Ethics, which enables 60 students in Robotics and Autonomous Systems to integrate ethical and societal considerations into technological development processes, in cooperation with start-ups from a local accelerator. In Spain, CBI-Fusion Point brings together 40 students from business and law (ESADE), engineering and technology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), and design (IED Barcelona Design University) for an innovation course focused on the application of CERN-developed technologies to real-world problems. The chapter documents the process of setting up three CBL courses that engage students with grand societal topics which require the integration of ethical concerns from the design stage of technological development. The authors also reflect on the challenges of teaching ethics via CBL and the lessons they learned by delivering experiential learning activities rooted in real-life challenges and contexts marked by high epistemic uncertainty. The contribution reflects the transition to remote teaching and presents strategies employed to enhance online communication and collaboration. The chapter thus provides guidance for instructors interested in teaching ethics via CBL and recommends further lines for action and research.

The chapter aims to explore the corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy domain at EU decision-making level, aiming to understand the nature of the participation shaping the CSR policy agenda co-design.

Building on a conceptual framework of participation, the chapter highlights the literature and policy views around the importance of EU CSR policy and how EU envisage the framework of the CSR policy co-design. By highlighting conceptual dimensions of the participatory governance, different levels of participation that shape the policy are evidenced. In particular, a case analysis emphasising the predominant role of the consultation approach in the decision-making process of the CSR policy is undertaken.

The findings shed light on the shift from the traditional passive participation in EU CSR policy decision making, based on purely communications towards consultation and multi-stakeholders participation. From the multi-stakeholder perspective, the EU Multi-Stakeholder Forum’s strategic relevance is observed, however, with no clear mechanisms to enforce its aims. Although the CSR policy is a core priority on the policy agenda, its voluntary approach justifies its early stages of implementation and fragmented use.

The research is qualitative, based on literature review and policy view. Further research directions could enrich the chapter.

The research contributes to the theoretical discussion around participation in a supranational context. Our insights shed light on the levels of participation and CSR policy goals and call for a critical debate on the EU policy co-design processes. Furthermore, through the lens of a case analysis, it sheds light on how EU CSR forum fits in with the current EU structure and its ‘principle of subsidiarity’, which states that decisions must be taken close to its citizens.

Governance initiatives based on rankings are predicated on the possibility of making companies compete for the achievement of social goals by means of public comparisons of performance. The public of such performance – the ranker and various stakeholders in whose name the ranker speaks – thus fulfills the role of a “third party” whose favor is sought by competitors in what Simmel analyzed as “pure” or “indirect” competition. Yet little is known about how rankers seek to produce or entice such favor in order to enact competition. Through the case of the Access to Medicine Index, we examine the process of selective foregrounding, enticing and orchestration of different stakeholders through the gearing of the ranking’s information infrastructure aimed at optimizing the type and intensity of the competitive pressure exercised on the ranked. We illustrate how the ranker segments the public into different third parties, some well-identified stakeholders alongside a more anonymous audience. We find that stakeholders perceived as wielding legitimate power in the eyes of companies (such as investors) are actively equipped with the tools to witness competition, whereas stakeholders seen as powerful but involved in an agonistic relation with the companies (such as radical Non-Governmental Organizations) are discretely groomed at a distance, while those stakeholders with no perceived power over companies tend to remain unequipped. Whilst the gaze of stakeholders as third parties is differentiated along the lines of a hierarchy of observations, the voice of stakeholders as representatives of different interests is equalized and unified so as to adhere to an ideal of consensus. We reflect on how the needs of competition and those of stakeholder representation come to intersect in the particular governance space of access to medicine. Competition, far from being the automatic consequence of rankings, emerges as a contrived and laborious enactment requiring painstaking attention to publics and their selective equipment as third parties. Understanding the modes of such enactment is thus crucial for appreciating rankings’ governance outcomes.

This chapter examines the association between corporate governance and environmental performance. The purpose of governance mechanisms is to build trust by ensuring that corporate responsibilities, including environmental responsibilities, are met. We obtain corporate governance data from the Investor Responsibility Research Center, Inc’s (IRRC’s) governance and director database and additional corporate governance and environmental performance data from Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini’s (KLD’s) database. Our analyses document a significant positive association between corporate governance and environmental performance. Moreover, we find that corporate governance is positively related to environmental strengths, and negatively related to environmental concerns. Our findings contribute to and extend our understanding of the relationship between governance and performance and have important implications for policy makers, managers, investors, and others.

Complexity theorists propose that organizations are made up of complex responsive processes in which people create and recreate organizational forms through dynamic micro-level interactions. Social constructionists add that conversations are the means by which these interactions occur. Our analysis illustrates how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) engaged a wide range of stakeholders in a successful dialogue process to recreate a new system for monitoring nuclear reactors. The success was due, in large part, to the conversational qualities tacitly and explicitly agreed to by those involved in the process which included a spirit of freedom, inclusion, inquiry, spontaneity, and possibility. Using a grounded theory building process, we show how these qualities produced transformative change by increasing levels of interconnectivity, shared identity, and collective capacity among participants. These findings provide the beginnings of a model for understanding continuous and transformative change and demonstrate the value of engaging the “whole system” in sustained dialogue, even in complex, highly regulated environments.

Bidding, planning, design, and management are principles of successful conference execution. In this chapter, an appreciation of context and the specification of concrete guidelines are shared on how to make a conference a success. Micro examples inform the perspectives on how to apply event domain literature in the management of an academic association conference. Practical viewpoints, including strategic planning guidelines, operational documents, and event design philosophies shed light on professional conference management. Key success factors and challenges related to its design provide a yardstick on how to execute a conference. Key summary issues and special tips for success are also highlighted.

Both guidance to transport planning practitioners and scientific literature advocate the adoption of in-depth and inclusive participation and consultation methods when developing new transport plans and measures. The motivations for this normative stance are however unclear, other than general statements that public participation is inherently a good thing, and that new forms of transport planning must be different from what has gone before. However, these documents cite little or no evidence to demonstrate that more participatory transport planning has produced ‘better’ decisions or outcomes. It is also important to note that the legitimacy conferred on governments from adopting this form of participation and consultation is only one of several forms of legitimacy. The purpose of this chapter is thus to attempt to assess whether more participatory approaches to transport planning do indeed lead to ‘better’ decisions and outcomes. It does this by developing, based on the literature, a number of criteria by which to judge the decisions made and outcomes delivered. It then reviews the experience of consultation and participation in a non-random sample of four pairs of transport plans or measures, and evaluates the experience in each against the criteria developed. It finds little evidence that more in-depth and inclusive participation processes that follow the normative stance found in practitioner guidance and the literature lead to better outcomes, and some evidence that such processes may in some cases compromise legitimacy by slowing and changing measure implementation.

Participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) have been increasingly employed for decision-making in planning, environmental conservation, zoning, and development. This research explores the use of PGIS and its significant role for environmental zoning plans (EZP). PGIS methodology intends to incorporate local knowledge, increase data access, multiple realities, and bottom-up decision-making in EZP in a very sensitive water body in Southern Sri Lanka.

This research presents the lessons learned from a case study of Madu Ganga estuary in Galle District, Sri Lanka. Madu Ganga is an extraordinarily stretch of water body (an estuary) with abundant natural resources and beauty. In recent years, Madu Ganga has faced serious environmental threats due to increase in human activities leading to overexploitation of natural resources. To protect and manage this valuable environment, a team of geographers from the Center for Environmental Studies, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka was invited by the Coastal Resource Management Project to undertake the zoning study. Various participatory methods including PGIS applications were adopted and affected communities were also involved in developing a zoning plan. The study illustrates that the use of PGIS approach is effective in incorporating local people into environmental planning, and it also supports affected people to be actively involved in development activities in their own communities.

This study compares the World Bank 2020 Education Strategy to research conducted a few years ago analyzing the effectiveness of the Bolivian Popular Participation law (1994) through policy study conducted from 2000 to 2004, including fieldwork in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2002. The policy research focused on Popular Participation and successive policy initiatives that modified or impacted public services, particularly public education. The fieldwork in Cochabamba focused on civil society and government interactions regarding public education. In studying the governance structures put in place by the Popular Participation law, particularly decentralizing authority and resources to the municipal level and creating mechanisms for civil society participation in governance, parallels to proposed Bank practices for the 2020 Education Strategy can been seen, as well as potential pitfalls. We cannot exam the World Bank 2020 Education Strategy development process in a vacuum – history, environment, and culture must be taken into account, as must the influence of particular stakeholder groups and established norms of behavior at the World Bank. The implementation of Popular Participation was problematic at best, and the response to features of Popular Participation that parallel the 2020 Education Strategy – in particular, the operating principles enumerated on pp. 7–8 of the 2020 Education Strategy Concept Note – have important implications for the proposed Bank strategy.