Bidhan L. Parmar’s research while affiliated with University of Virginia and other places

Scant research has examined the effects of an organization’s stakeholder orientation on the cognition and attitudes of employees. Our study focuses on how one aspect of an organization’s objective, its stakeholder orientation, affects employee job satisfaction. Through seven studies utilizing different samples and measures, we theorize and demonstrate that employees with a higher perceived stakeholder orientation experience enhanced job satisfaction. We provide correlational field data and causal experimental evidence to show that increased employee perspective-taking is one potential mediator of this effect. These results contribute to our understanding of job satisfaction and perspective-taking by showing how employee orientation toward other stakeholders affects their attitude toward their job and social cognition. We also expand the focus of stakeholder orientation beyond normative philosophy and toward understanding its effects on the cognitions and attitudes of organizational members to provide a basis for examining the behavioral implications of different stakeholder orientations.

This essay opens with a description of how advances in information technology have changed our lives, specifically in the case of data and tracking consumer behavior online. Then, the authors suggest that society must begin to have conversations concerning ethics and values in the technological world, especially with the emergence of machine-driven decisions. The essay closes by establishing the importance of how ethics affects algorithms and how these algorithms affect our ethics.

We begin this chapter by outlining the problems that stakeholder theory was originally conceptualized to solve and the “basic mechanics” that we believe underlie the development of the theory during the last 30 years. We turn in the next sections to the arguments of Milton Friedman, Michael Jensen, Michael Porter, and Oliver Williamson, often cited as opponents of stakeholder theory, and suggest that all are compatible with the main ideas of stakeholder theory. We highlight what we also take to be key differences between stakeholder theory and these largely economic approaches to business. We suggest that while these approaches are compatible with stakeholder theory, it makes more sense to return to the very roots of capitalism, the theory of entrepreneurship. We suggest how stakeholder theory needs to be seen as a theory about how business actually does and can work. We make an explicit tie to the theory of entrepreneurship and outline the basics of the stakeholder mindset.

The paper considers two main cases of how the creative arts can inform a greater appreciation of human dignity. The first case explores a form of theater, Commedia dell’Arte, that has deep roots in Italian culture. The second recounts a set of theater exercises done with very minimal direction or self-direction in executive education and MBA courses at the Darden School, University of Virginia, in the United States. In both cases, we highlight how the creative arts can be important for promoting human dignity in organizations, and how they can lead to a more authentic conversation about values, ethics, and meaning.

This chapter sketches the tenets of the old narrative of businesses (a focus on profits) more precisely, and highlights some of the partial suggestions for reform. Then, the authors turn to a set of principles in what has come to be called “stakeholder theory,” and suggest that these stakeholder principles are more useful in understanding how businesses need to operate in the twenty-first century. Finally, the paper also outlines some principles of “Responsible Capitalism.”

The purpose of this chapter is to give an introductory account of the main tenets of a philosophical approach called “pragmatism”. The authors provide a brief historical view of the development of pragmatism as well as a description of some central pragmatist ideas. The chapter also establishes why these ideas are important for business ethicists even if they may not all agree on the same concepts.

This paper outlines the history of debates about corporate purpose, calls out some myths that persist in the way that people think about corporate purpose, and introduces a view of business called “managing for stakeholders” that has become increasingly beneficial. Furthermore, the authors argue that to manage sustainable businesses, leaders need to pay careful attention to how stakeholder relationships are managed and how value gets created. This way, managers can ensure that all core stakeholders are receiving value for their efforts and choose to continue to support the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a way of teaching business ethics using the creative arts, especially literature and theater. By drawing on these disciplines for both method and texts, we can more easily make the connection to business as a fully human activity, concerned with how meaning is created. Students are encouraged to understand story-telling and narrative and how these tools lend insight into the daily life of businesspeople. The paper describes two main courses, Business Ethics Through Literature and Leadership, Ethics and Theater, and the rationale for each. We begin by suggesting three main leverage points that the courses engender. We then rely on the words of students who have taken the courses for insights into what they learned. We then critically assess some of the principles that have informed course design over time. We conclude by suggesting that paying attention to the creative arts gives rise to a rather different approach to business ethics, one grounded in the pragmatist tradition in philosophy.

This essay discusses the concept of “creative destruction” within different business industries, specifically the example of Uber’s string of controversies that led to a mass exodus of senior executives. The authors reveal that there is a creative upside to cheating as demonstrated by the research done by Francesca Gino and Scott Wiltermuth. Furthermore, Freeman and Bidhan recommend that companies should make an effort to understand which rules are worth breaking and why. Lastly, the authors emphasize that there is more to business than narrow outcomes defined as shareholder value.

Workers can be fired from jobs, citizens sent to jail, and adolescents more likely to experience depression, all because of algorithms. Algorithms have considerable impacts on our lives. To increase user satisfaction and trust, the most common proposal from academics and developers is to increase the transparency of algorithmic design. While there is a large body of literature on algorithmic transparency, the impact of unethical data collection practices is less well understood. Currently, there is limited research on the factors that affect users’ trust in data collection practices and algorithmic transparency. In this research, we explore the relative impact of both factors as they relate to important outcome measures such as user’s trust, comfort level, and moral acceptability. We conducted two pilot studies to learn what real users consider to be ethical and unethical data collection practices, as well as high and low transparency for algorithms. We then used these findings in a 2 × 2 design to examine how transparency and the acceptability of data collection practices impact users’ acceptance, comfort, and trust in algorithms. Our results suggest that the singular emphasis on algorithmic transparency may be misplaced. Given the difference in their impact to increase acceptance, trust, and user satisfaction, a more effective strategy would be to also understand and abide by users’ views of ethical data collection practices.