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Reinventing Responsible Management Education Under New Capitalism
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Plain English Summary
This study distinguishes between the different influences of Buddhist entrepreneurs in a region both on charitable behaviors and on the establishment of businesses in less-developed regions. Using nationwide surveys of founders of private enterprises in the Chinese context, multilevel analyses support a mediating view and have several implications. This research proposes that Buddhist values like the Four Immeasurables underline the positive effect of Buddhist entrepreneurs in a region on charitable behaviors, and that Buddhism can bring the essence of entrepreneurship, such as social capital, political connections, and legitimacy, to entrepreneurs and stimulate them, through an isomorphic effect, to engage in establishing businesses in less-developed regions. Furthermore, we highlight that the influence of Buddhist entrepreneurs in a region on establishing businesses in less-developed regions is weakened when they commit limited resources to prosocial behaviors like charity. In relation to policy, our study shows that Buddhist values and practices deeply influence social entrepreneurship, and it highlights the social function of Buddhist entrepreneurs in a transitional economy such as that of China.
Purpose
Approaches to solving sustainability problems require a specific problem-solving mode, encompassing the complexity, fuzziness and interdisciplinary nature of the problem. This paper aims to promote a complex systems’ view of addressing sustainability problems, in particular through the tool of network science, and provides an outline of an interdisciplinary training workshop.
Design/methodology/approach
The topic of the workshop is the analysis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a political action plan. The authors are interested in the synergies and trade-offs between the goals, which are investigated through the structure of the underlying network. The authors use a teaching approach aligned with sustainable education and transformative learning.
Findings
Methodologies from network science are experienced as valuable tools to familiarise students with complexity and to handle the proposed case study.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work which uses network terminology and approaches to teach sustainability problems. This work highlights the potential of network science in sustainability education and contributes to accessible material.
Drawing upon earlier studies of reforms and institutional changes in higher education, the purpose of this paper is to trace how the understanding of accountability has changed over the past twenty years and how it is understood to have impacted on higher education institutions. We do so by reviewing more than 350 papers and by asking three questions: Who answers to whom? For what are they answering? And how to assess those accountability arrangements? With these three questions as guides, our results indicate that higher education institutions have been undergoing processes of what we term accountabilization. These results contribute to the scholarship on higher education governance by conceptualizing the processes of accountabilization.
The paper explores conceptual approaches to business ethics from the Japanese tradition and their potential to enhance our global approach to social and environmental sustainability, including discussion of a framework for understanding the embeddedness of the business in society. As globalization and economic and sociopolitical challenges proliferate, the nature of the connections between the USA and Asia is more important than ever. Following an expressed “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia and the current nebulous alliances, we hope to raise the profile of Japan’s potential to shape the conception and practice of business in society. We explore attempts to offer a universal business ethic, intended as guidance for businesses globally, and examine contributions of Japanese thought to these frameworks. Considering the traditional approaches of sanpoyoshi, or tri-directional (buyer, seller, and societal) welfare in business transactions, kyosei, which can mean “living and working together for the common good”, and mottainai, or “grateful and sustainable consumption,” the research explores the relationships between the private sector, government, and civil society. Further, we examine the related notion of moralogy, which has been described as a virtue-based stakeholder approach to business. We suggest that these concepts merit promoting the conception of the “homo socio-economicus” model to replace the prevailing “homo economicus” model that threatens what sound business should be. Through interviews with Japanese scholars and practitioners and exploration of Japanese cultural traditions, we present an overview of these approaches. With this perspective, we cite the case of the Tōhoku earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster as one illustrative example. We hope that this understanding of the embeddedness of business in society based on Japanese traditions and experience can contribute to a global conception of the role of business in society, relevant to the USA as well. Our goals are to contribute to existing discussions of Japanese business ethics and relevance to a global perspective, and to inspire ongoing exploration of applications of these ideas in teaching and scholarship.
Little is known regarding how and to what extent the emerging concept of creating shared value (CSV) can be integrated into unique Asian market dynamics. In this paper, we conduct a comparative content analysis of 240 sustainability reports on Japan, Korea, and China, spanning the period of 2012–2105. We find that CSV in Asia is a discrepant phenomenon with little theoretical and empirical support. Each country has a disorderly approach toward CSV mainly because of unique cultural and institutional contexts. More substantively, in Korea, CSV—although in decline—is seen as a popular alternative to philanthropy, while the Japanese remain cautious. In China, there is little interest in CSV. Thus, there is a possibility of CSV disappearing altogether because of scant theoretical and empirical support. To address this gap, we propose a “CSV–SDGs Collaborative Model of East Asia” (where SDGs refer to sustainable development goals). This model could contribute to early-stage CSV–SDGs collaboration for sustainable development in Asia.
This article investigates responses of the international and domestic (South Korean) publics to one of the most hotly debated corporate scandals in recent years: Korean Air's so-called nut rage incident. By analyzing both international and domestic media coverage of the occurrence, we reveal contrasting interpretations between the two. Whereas the South Korean public tends to generate intense debates addressing a lack of ethics in Korean Air's public communication following the incident, international public criticism is dominated by questions regarding South Korea's chronic chaebol system and its negative image in relation to South Korea's unique institutional context. Korean Air's incongruent notice of the employee as a key stakeholder is also discussed in the international media. Our research findings indicate how, rather than focusing on legal responsibility, the normative attitude of businesses toward stakeholder pressures is crucial as a means of escaping legitimacy-threatening events. The results of this study demonstrate how public responses to a single incident are diverse in global society and offer new insights regarding the importance of ethics in management leadership and public communication after a crisis incident.
The importance of ethical decision-making in international business has never been more apparent than in recent years. However, discussion concerning its teaching to future global talents who will be at this stage soon is scant and under-developed. Adapting Rest’s (1986) four-component model, the study attempts to sketch a broad outline of ethical decision-making by university students when they face an ethical dilemma. The imaginary story, which the author intentionally designs to analyze ethical decision-making through covering real-world ethical issues in an international market, is used as the main methodological tool. Participants acknowledge ‘ideal’ ethical decisions according to their own discretion, but their ‘actual’ decision is different due to the intention (motivation) of individuals as to whether they make ethical decisions. This study demonstrates significant gaps in teaching business ethics and suggests a shift of the teaching focus from enlightenment of moral awareness/judgment to stimulating and motivating to initiate ethical decisions and actions.
Values theory posits that individuals have values and they are formed by upbringing and life’s experiences and influence an individuals’ cognitive processes, decisions, and behavior. Emerging onto the business scene is a new population group, the Millennials. This research seeks to explore Millennials’ values from the viewpoint of their personal value orientation (PVO). Managerial PVO from the 1980s and 2010s are used as comparative populations. The Millennials’ PVO is generally consistent with managerial PVO from past research. They tend toward a Personal, rather than Social, and Competence, rather than Moral, value orientation. Yet, some subtle differences emerged. Millennials are more self-focused and less other-focused than managers from the 1980s or 2010s. They emphasize competency skills more than today’s managers but less than the managers of the 1980s and place more worth on moral values than managers of the 1980s but less than today’s managers.
Growth in CSR-washing claims in recent decades has been dramatic in numerous academic and activist contexts. The discourse, however, has been fragmented, and still lacks an integrated framework of the conditions necessary for successful CSR-washing. Theorizing successful CSR-washing as the joint occurrence of five conditions, this paper undertakes a literature review of the empirical evidence for and against each condition. The literature review finds that many of the conditions are highly contingent, rendering CSR-washing as a complex and fragile outcome. This finding runs counter to the dominant perception in the general public, among activists, and among a vocal contingent of academics that successful CSR-washing is rampant.
Whether moral conceptions are universal or culture-specific is controversial in moral psychology. One option is to refrain from imposing theoretical constraints and to ask laypeople from different cultures how they conceptualize morality. Our article adopts this approach by examining laypeople’s associations of moral character in individualistic- and collectivistic-oriented cultures. Using correspondence analysis we found that the concept of moral character yielded widely shared associations with justice and welfare concerns. Yet, there were also clear cultural differences with individualistic-oriented samples associating more frequently rights-based features and collectivistic-oriented samples more frequently associating duty-based attributes. When matching freelisted trait categories with Schwartz’s value types, moral value hierarchies were similar across cultures and correlated significantly with explicit moral value ratings. We conclude that imposing constraints through an expert-designed category system can narrow the scope of inquiry to common moral aspects related to problem-solving, promotion of prosocial actions and control of antisocial behaviour.
We present an institutional comparison of 13 major Asian business systems—China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam—with one another and five major Western economies—France, Germany, Sweden, the UK and the USA. We find five major types of business systems in Asia: (post-)socialist, advanced city, emerging Southeast Asian, advanced Northeast Asian and Japanese. With the exception of Japan, all Asian forms of capitalism are fundamentally distinct from Western types of capitalism. We conclude that the Varieties of Capitalism (VOC) dichotomy is not applicable to Asia; that none of the existing major frameworks capture all Asian types of capitalism; and that Asian business systems (except Japan) cannot be understood through categories identified in the West. Our analysis further suggests a need for the field to invest in further research on social capital, culture, informality and multiplexity.
This study identifies unique corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions and develops a framework to analyze different levels of institutional dynamics in understanding CSR in China. Based on multiple case studies of 16 firms, the article examines the CSR philosophy and approach in China’s emerging market. The findings suggest that Chinese CSR understanding is largely grounded in the context of ethical and discretionary actions. This focus is mainly attributed to the dominant role of ethical leadership, governmental dependency, and cultural traditions in Chinese CSR. Moreover, the weakness or the absence of conducive social normative environment and positive peer pressure, and misalignment between CSR and organizational design further contribute to a lack of systemic and institutionalized approach to CSR in China. Our study implies that CSR is still evolving at a preliminary stage in China, and institutional infrastructure and cultural ethics are exerting abiding influence on CSR approach in the emerging economies. The article also suggests the implications for practice and policy making.
We use convergent elements of major ethical theories to create a typology of corporate stakeholder cultures—the aspects of organizational culture consisting of the beliefs, values, and practices that have evolved for solving problems and otherwise managing stakeholder relationships. We describe five stakeholder cultures—agency, corporate egoist, instrumentalist, moralist, and altruist—and explain how these cultures lie on a continuum, ranging from individually self-interested (agency culture) to fully other-regarding (altruist culture). We demonstrate the utility of our framework by showing how it can refine stakeholder salience theory.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer an interdisciplinary review of the existing research on ethical behavior – informed by philosophical theories, social sciences, and applied business research – and identifies the merits and limitations of the extant theories, including the applicability of prescriptive frameworks and models to business practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Following the review, the paper advances a descriptive model of ethical decision‐making criteria that elucidates how individual, organizational, and environmental variables interact to influence attitude formation across critical components of an ethical issue.
Findings
The model advanced expands upon other existing frameworks and provides a comprehensive and simultaneous assessment of the interplay between individual‐level variables (e.g. demographic variables, position in the organisation), the structure and climate of the organisation in which the decisions are made, and the social and political features of the business environment.
Practical implications
The proposed model can be used as a training tool and it holds several advantages over the extant alternatives, namely versatility (it is adaptable to the specific organizational context in which respondents are required to conceptualize the dilemma and generate courses of action), and scope (the model allows for the simultaneous assessment of a myriad of cross‐level variables).
Originality/value
The paper offers a comprehensive decision‐making model that can be used to examine ethical decisions in business settings, to investigate potential differences in decision‐making accuracy and ethical reasoning between groups and individuals, and to examine the impact of changing ethical climates in organizational strategy.
Discussion on Asia and Asian values is conspicuously absent from existing research in global capitalist society. In order to foster critical debates on ‘Asianism Retold’, we explore how Asian traditional value has been integrated into the contemporary business system. By examining Japan’s traditional values—Sanpo-yoshi, this article explores the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Asian values. The case study also shows how the management strategy of Japanese companies applies Sanpo-yoshi to demonstrate typical CSR in certain ways and influence people’s views on responsible and ethical business. Implications of this research for both researchers and practitioners are discussed in the conclusion.
Skepticism toward CSR is increasing. Management research on CSR tends to focus on positive outcomes from the practice of CSR, such as enhanced financial performance and best practice business cases. Less attention is devoted to why CSR is under siege. This paper argues that CSR is intimately connected with the way that capitalism is practiced, and that poor CSR outcomes are often the result of five “shortcomings” of contemporary capitalism: runaway self‐interest, quarterly focus, elite orientation, volume orientation, and one‐pattern capitalism. To evidence this, I employ a two‐stage approach: a “diagnostic” stage that investigates current challenges facing capitalism and how they affect CSR, and a “clinical” stage that identifies potential solutions based on a qualitative data set collected in Asian business contexts. The proposed solutions suggest ways that researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can conceptualize, design, and implement CSR programs that better fulfill CSR’s promise to business and society. Based on these results, I conclude with ideas on how CSR research can be strengthened by exploring the under‐researched linkages among CSR, modern capitalism, and global institutional contexts.
Could international financial capital impose shareholder sovereignty on Japan, the ultimate bastion of stakeholder capitalism? As the Japanese economy descended from boom to bust in the early 1990s, government and industry leaders called for a decisive move toward US-style shareholder capitalism, and increasing foreign share ownership exerted strong pressure to adapt corporate governance practices to Anglo-American norms. In practice, however, the government gave firms more options for restructuring but did not make them more beholden to shareholders. Firms on their part favored superficial adjustments to prop up share prices rather than fundamental changes, because they sought to preserve the strengths of their traditional business models. This article explains how marketplace developments, domestic political dynamics, and corporate strategies combined to produce the distinctive pattern of Japanese corporate governance reforms since the 1990s. It concludes with an assessment of the consequences of these reforms for managers, workers, shareholders, and the general public.
Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in polluting industries for the period of 2008-2010, we empirically investigate whether and how Buddhism, China's most influential religion, affects corporate environmental responsibility (CER). In this study, we measure Buddhist variables as the number of Buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around Chinese listed firms' registered addresses. In addition, we hand-collect corporate environmental disclosure scores based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines. Using hand-collected Buddhism data and corporate environmental disclosure scores, we provide strong and robust evidence that Buddhism is significantly positively associated with CER. This finding is consistent with the following view: Buddhism can serve as social norms to evoke the consciousness of social responsibility, and thereof strengthen CER. Our findings also reveal that the positive association between Buddhism and CER is attenuated for firms with higher law enforcement index. The results are robust to various measures of Buddhism and a variety of sensitivity tests.
The intellectual debates on wise entrepreneurship behavior such as decision making tend to focus on the relationship between economic rationality and morality, while overlooking the important role affect plays. To fill in this gap, this paper proposes a theoretical framework based on the Confucian concepts of ren (love and compassion) and yi (righteousness or rightness) and studies their practical manifestation in qing (positive emotions) and li
1 (rationality) for decision making. Drawing from 32 in-depth interviews and 52 vignettes with Chinese SME entrepreneurs, this study has found that qing (emotions) plays an essential role in decision making. Chinese entrepreneurs had to deal with the dilemma relating to qing (positive emotions) and li
1 (rationality) holistically to reach a balanced outcome in their everyday business practices. As a major contribution, this study extends the study of Confucian ethics by highlighting ren-yi as an important perspective for understanding Chinese entrepreneurial decision making and also for promoting the affective dimensions for entrepreneurial ethical decision making in general.
This paper investigates the effects of Buddhist ethics on consumers’ materialism, that is, the propensity to attach a fundamental role to possessions. The literature shows that religion and religiosity influence various attitudes and behaviors of consumers, including their ethical beliefs and ethical decisions. However, most studies focus on general religiosity rather than on the specific doctrinal ethical tenets of religions. The current research focuses on Buddhism and argues that it can tame materialism directly, similar to other religions, and through the specific Buddhist ethical doctrines of the Four Immeasurables: compassion, loving kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity. The empirical results show the following: (1) Buddhism reduces materialism directly and through some of the Four Immeasurables, and (2) despite the doctrine of non-existence of the self, positive emotions toward the self are still present, and the self absorbs the effects of Buddhist ethics on materialism. The latter finding suggests a “resistance of the self” that is coherent with the idea of a consumer who leverages the self to go beyond it.
Employee trust for the general manager is proposed as an internal organizational characteristic that provides a competitive advantage for the firm. This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust for a business unit's general manager and organizational performance. Trust was found to be significantly related to sales, profits and employee turnover in the restaurant industry. Managers who were either more or less trusted differed significantly in perceptions of their ability, benevolence and integrity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The irresponsible and insensitive behavior of business leaders worldwide shows that business is an underprofessionalized occupation today. Unless future international managers demonstrate that they serve the common good in their daily practice, the legitimacy and moral standing of the business profession remain questionable. The paper presents a new manager profile developed by professors of CEMS - Global Alliance for Management Education.
“Confucianism⋯ is a universal ethic in which the rules and imperatives of behavior hold for all individuals.” (Peter F. Drucker,
Forbes, 1981). Peter Drucker is credited as the founder of modern American management. In his distinguished career he has written
widely and authoritatively on the subject and to a large extent his work possesses a distinctive ethical tone. This paper
will argue that Confucian ethics underlie much of Drucker's writing. Both Drucker and Confucius view power as the central
ethical issue in human relations. They emphasize authority, leadership, legitimacy, hierarchy, interdependence and individual
ethical responsibility in their analysis of human affairs. Drucker views the development of large-scale formal organizations
and the concomitant rise of the managerial class as the most significant developments of the 20th century, which makes the
management of interdependent roles and relationships a central ethical challenge. Confucius, and the early Confucians, understood
human relationships as based upon hierarchy, interdependence and personal ethics. The paper will analyze Drucker's work in
light of the early Confucian Classics (The Analects, The Mencius, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean). Drucker, himself, considers The End of Economic Man (1939), The Future of Industrial Man (1942), Concept of the Corporation (1983), and The Essential Drucker (2001) as his most important and influential works. The paper will analyze these along with other works by Drucker as appropriate.
Kant is gaining popularity in business ethics because the categorical imperative rules out actions such as deceptive advertising and exploitative working conditions, both of which treat people merely as means to an end. However, those who apply Kant in this way often hold businesses themselves morally accountable, and this conception of collective responsibility contradicts the kind of moral agency that underlies Kant’s ethics. A business has neither inclinations nor the capacity to reason, so it lacks the conditions necessary for constraint by the moral law. Instead, corporate policies ought to be understood as analogous to legal constraints. They may encourage or discourage certain actions, but they cannot determine a person’s maxim – which for Kant is the focus of moral judgment. Because there is no collective intention apart from any intentions of the individual agents who act as members of the corporation, an organization itself has no moral obligations. This poses a dilemma: either apply the categorical imperative to the actions of particular businesspeople and surrender the notion of collective responsibility, or apply a different moral theory to the actions of businesses themselves. Given the diffusion of responsibility in a bureaucracy, the explanatory usefulness of collective responsibility may force business ethicists to abandon Kant’s moral philosophy.
Educating integrated catalysts: Transforming business schools toward ethics and sustainability