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Advances in Big Data, artificial Intelligence and data-driven innovation bring enormous benefits for the overall society and for different sectors. By contrast, their misuse can lead to data workflows bypassing the intent of privacy and data protection law, as well as of ethical mandates. It may be referred to as the ‘creep factor’ of Big Data, and needs to be tackled right away, especially considering that we are moving towards the ‘datafication’ of society, where devices to capture, collect, store and process data are becoming ever-cheaper and faster, whilst the computational power is continuously increasing. If using Big Data in truly anonymisable ways, within an ethically sound and societally focussed framework, is capable of acting as an enabler of sustainable development, using Big Data outside such a framework poses a number of threats, potential hurdles and multiple ethical challenges. Some examples are the impact on privacy caused by new surveillance tools and data gathering techniques, including also group privacy, high-tech profiling, automated decision making and discriminatory practices. In our society, everything can be given a score and critical life changing opportunities are increasingly determined by such scoring systems, often obtained through secret predictive algorithms applied to data to determine who has value. It is therefore essential to guarantee the fairness and accurateness of such scoring systems and that the decisions relying upon them are realised in a legal and ethical manner, avoiding the risk of stigmatisation capable of affecting individuals’ opportunities. Likewise, it is necessary to prevent the so-called ‘social cooling’. This represents the long-term negative side effects of the data-driven innovation, in particular of such scoring systems and of the reputation economy. It is reflected in terms, for instance, of self-censorship, risk-aversion and lack of exercise of free speech generated by increasingly intrusive Big Data practices lacking an ethical foundation. Another key ethics dimension pertains to human-data interaction in Internet of Things (IoT) environments, which is increasing the volume of data collected, the speed of the process and the variety of data sources. It is urgent to further investigate aspects like the ‘ownership’ of data and other hurdles, especially considering that the regulatory landscape is developing at a much slower pace than IoT and the evolution of Big Data technologies. These are only some examples of the issues and consequences that Big Data raise, which require adequate measures in response to the ‘data trust deficit’, moving not towards the prohibition of the collection of data but rather towards the identification and prohibition of their misuse and unfair behaviours and treatments, once government and companies have such data. At the same time, the debate should further investigate ‘data altruism’, deepening how the increasing amounts of data in our society can be concretely used for public good and the best implementation modalities.

This focal chapter deals with the understanding of important ethical theories used in executive moral reasoning such as teleology, deontology, distributive justice and corrective justice, virtue ethics versus ethics of trust, from the perspectives of intrinsic versus instrumental good, moral worth versus moral obligation, and moral conscience versus moral justification. Ethical and moral reasoning will power executives to identify, explore, and resolve corporate moral dilemma, especially in the wake of emerging gray market areas where good and evil, right or wrong, just or unjust, and truth and falsehood cannot be easily distinguished. We focus on developing corporate skills of awareness of ethical values and moral imperatives in current otherwise highly commoditized and turbulent human, market, and corporate situations. The challenges of morality are multifaceted and diverse. Professionals usually have self-discipline and self-regulation abilities, ego strength, and social skills. Morality in the professions is not concerned with the issues of rudimentary socialization; rather, the issues involve deciding between conflicting values, where each value represents something good in itself. There are problems in both knowing what is right, good, true, and just on the one hand, and on the other hand, in doing what is right and avoiding wrong, doing good and avoiding evil, and being fair and just while avoiding being unfair and unjust. Several contemporary cases will illustrate the challenging dimensions of ethical and moral reasoning, moral judgment and moral justification embedded in executive decision processes, and corporate growth and profitability ventures.

Every human being is spiritual and has spirituality, whether it is existential and subconscious or reflective and explicitly conscious. The existential subconscious level of spirituality informs and empowers our conscious decisions, choices, and actions. In this sense, spirituality is the continuous line of action that fashions our personal and collective human and cosmic identity. Despite our native spirituality that unites and harmonizes humanity, we also experience the fallen nature of the human heart and the resulting brokenness of human relations as the major cause of crises in our lives, families, corporations and nations, and now the life-threatening ecosystems that form our common planetary home. Hitherto, we have falsely presumed that the earth and the universe are for the use of mankind – an anthropocentric concept of ecology and sustainability. Hence, we are on the verge of destroying the planet. We need planetary ethics and cosmic spirituality to change our mind-set – from anthropocentricism to cosmocentricism and from being the conqueror of nature to being a caring partner of nature. This is the essence of corporate cosmic spirituality. Human spirituality in general and corporate executive spirituality in particular seem to be the best way to understand and offer a way out of the personal, communal, and planetary disorders of our age. This concluding note of this book is a summons to all corporate executives to rise to the call of cosmic spirituality.

This chapter looks at the discursive dimension of the working environment in research and higher education organizations; more specifically at neoliberal managerial discourse and at how it participates in shaping the way researchers, teachers and support staff perceive themselves and their experiences. It is based on a multiple case study and combines an intersectional and a socio-clinical approach. The empirical data is constituted by in-depth interviews with women conducted in Ireland and Chile, and includes some observations made in France. A thematic analysis of individual narratives of self-ascribed experiences of being bullied enables to look behind the veil drawn by managerial discourse, thus providing insights into power vectors and power domains contributing to workplace violence. It also shows that workplace bullying may reinforce identification to undervalued social categories. This contribution argues that neoliberal managerial discourse, by encouraging social representations of “neutral” individuals at work, or else celebrating their “diversity,” conceals power relations rooting on different social categories. This process influences one’s perception of one’s experience and its verbalization. At the same time, feeling assigned to one or more of undervalued social category can raise the perception of being bullied or discriminated against. While research has shown that only a minority of incidents of bullying and discrimination are reported within organizations, this contribution suggests that acknowledging the multiplicity and superposition of categories and their influence in shaping power relations could help secure a more collective and caring approach, and thus foster a safer work culture and atmosphere in research organizations.

Divestitures and other forms of organizational separation are not commonly associated with continuity and ongoing collaboration in inter-organizational relationships. Instead, separation is often equated with terminating relationships and gaining independence. Here, the authors argue that achieving separation does not require terminating relationships and that ongoing collaboration between separating entities may actually contribute to successful separation. The authors base this argument on the assertion that the objective of organizational separation is to achieve organizational autonomy for all entities involved and that separating entities can enable each other’s development of autonomy while remaining interdependent. The authors also discuss how collaborative separation may contribute to a range of benefits, as well as why it may nevertheless fail to emerge in practice. In this respect, the authors consider the relevance of ethical perspectives and emotional dynamics related to feelings of (dis)respect, (dis)trust, pride and shame. The authors conclude by discussing activities that may contribute to, and undermine, effective collaborative separation.

The case of Africa is important in understanding the growth of research management as a profession. Africa has rapidly increased its research output in recent years, and its institutions are increasingly in demand as research partners. Yet research management structures have developed from a very low base, and need not be confined by past practice. Through the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA), it has been represented since the origins of International Networks of Research Management Societies (INORMS). Several external donors have sought to help build research management structures on the continent, and the success (or otherwise) of these initiatives can tell us much about the potential for common research management structures globally.

This chapter does not provide a comprehensive account of progress over the past two decades, or a complete list of relevant initiatives. Rather, it reflects on whether international assistance and collaboration have made a meaningful contribution to the progress that has been made, and its strengths and limitations. It considers how far growth would have happened regardless of funder intervention, or indeed whether international partners have inhibited progress by prioritising their own norms and priorities. It asks uncomfortable questions for funders about the way in which they plan and evaluate their work.

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (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 “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 the individual person and the community. Better outcomes result from asking the right questions than from having the right answers. In the diverse, pluralist cultural environment of today, the promise of a truly generative dialog among Occidental (Western) and Oriental (Eastern) cultures and civilizations holds great hope for the future. Critical thinking (CT) is an “inclusive” thinking system that can facilitate this dialog such that all of us have a meaningful space and place in this universe. After defining CT and arguing its importance for executives, this chapter introduces CT in two parts: Part 1: Various Approaches to Critical Thinking; Part 2: Major Theories of Critical Thinking. Several contemporary business cases will be invoked to illustrate the need, nature, and scope of corporate CT.

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.

Rights and duties are involved in every area of business and markets, and society and governments. Most often, rights and duties involve serious ethical and moral issues of conflict. A good theory of the ethics of rights and duties, obligations, and responsibilities will empower us to understand the impact of our actions on various stakeholders. Additionally, a deep understanding of rights and duties could help us to analyze better the impact of our executive actions on various stakeholders and, in particular, to fathom the damaging effects of rights and duties violated by the man-made current financial crisis when seen from an ethical and moral point of view. Our coverage on the ethics of corporate rights and duties will comprise of two parts: Part 1: The Nature of Corporate Business Rights and Duties, and Part 2: Respecting Corporate Rights and Duties. The chapter will feature Newcomb Wellesley Hohfeld’s framework of legal interests such as claims, privileges, power, and immunity and its various applications to contemporary market and corporate executive situations. We illustrate the theory of rights and duties using several cases from the current turbulent markets.