期刊名称：Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies
印刷版ISSN：1239-2685
电子版ISSN：1239-2685
出版年度：2011
卷号：16
期号：02
页码：4-5
出版社：Business and Organization Ethics Network
摘要：The concepts of Corporate Responsibility (CR) and Global Responsibility (GR) are reshaping the ways we think about business and society as well as about their relations. From global governance initiatives such as the UN Global Compact to local efforts of greening offices, actions are taken in many areas to mobilize organizations and individuals through the notion of responsibility in order to work towards a more sustainable world. There is no doubt that CR has become globally influential as a real world phenomenon. Much of the groundwork aiming at popularizing CR/GR has been prescriptive, focusing on ‘selling’ Responsibility as a powerful principle that should be adopted by all institutional actors and should lead the actions of managers and employees. Most academic literature in management tends to focus on the powerful positive changes that CR has been contributing – or may contribute – to through a very dominant focus on ‘win-win’ solutions. We consider, however, that it is important to not just celebrate the potential power of responsibility to make a positive difference, but also to problematize power issues that relate to the CR phenomenon. Recognizing the problematic aspects of CR, in particular those related to power imbalances and power effects in the relations between business and society, may be a first step towards limiting the risks of ‘win-lose’ situations that currently tend to be overlooked in CR management literature.
The papers in this special issue of EJBO were originally presented at the first CR3 conference, held at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki on April 8-9 2011. The CR3 conference has resulted from cooperation between three business schools who have been among the first to adopt the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (UNPRME): Audencia Nantes School of Management (France), Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki (Finland) and ISAE/FGV in Curitiba (Brazil). These schools work together on issues related to CR since 2008. The overall theme of the 2011 conference was ‘the power of responsibility’ – and this is also the theme of this special issue.
Taken together, the selected articles clearly articulate two main concerns relating to power imbalances in relations between business and society: 1) the rising power of corporations, and 2) the rise of neo-liberalism and libertarian thinking. Several recent developments in academic CR literature are explicitly problematized in relation to these two concerns. In particular, the highly influential articulations of ‘Extended Corporate Citizenship’ (Matten and Crane 2005) and ‘Political CSR’ (Scherer and Palazzo 2007) are critically discussed and argued to potentially be more in line with neo-liberalism than with the more egalitarian liberal and democratic values they are supposed to promote.
