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Journal of Business Ethics Education

Volume 12, 2015
Teaching Business Ethics and Stakeholder Theory

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Displaying: 1-7 of 7 documents


1. Journal of Business Ethics Education: Volume > 12
Maria Bonnafous-Boucher, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff Teaching Business Ethics and Stakeholder Theory
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2. Journal of Business Ethics Education: Volume > 12
Karin Buhmann Introducing Legal Method When Teaching Stakeholder Theory: Enhancing the Understanding of Stakeholder Expectations in Relation to Human Rights and CSR Reporting
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Governments are particularly salient stakeholders for business ethics. They act on societal needs and social expectations, and have the political and legal powers to restrict or expand the economic freedoms of business as well as the legitimacy and often urgency to do so. We draw on two examples: the Business & Human Rights regime from a UN Global Compact perspective; and mandatory CSR reporting. Supplying integrated teaching notes and generalising on the examples, we explain how legal method may help students of business ethics, organisation and management – future managers – in their analysis of governments as stakeholders and their interests that drive expectations on firms. With a focus on analysis for responding adequately to stakeholder concerns,this article contributes to the emerging literature recognising the relevance of public regulation for CSR. More specifically, we contribute to the business ethics literature by explaining how legal method complements stakeholder theory for organisational practice.
3. Journal of Business Ethics Education: Volume > 12
Magnus Frostenson Teaching Issues-Driven Stakeholder Theory
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Teaching stakeholder theory may be difficult because of the constant calls for real-life relevance and application. The article argues that one way of overcoming the difficulty is to focus more on stakeholder issues than on stakeholders as actors. In education, materiality analyses, like the ones often present in sustainability reports, are probably a better way of approaching stakeholder theory than actor-centered approaches that end up in the identification of foreseeable groups ofstakeholders. Focusing on specific stakeholder issues also gives better possibilities to identify relationships and dependencies between stakeholders, which is of high relevance to managerial decision-making.
4. Journal of Business Ethics Education: Volume > 12
Kristian Alm Chains of Trust or Control? A Stakeholder Dilemma
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This paper discusses trust between stakeholders, with special emphasis on a new theory from the social sciences and ends up by focusing on a multidimensional dilemma between trust and control. Harald Grimen (1945-2011), an influential philosopher, social scientist and ethicist in Norway, defined trust as a communicative action between a trust-giver and a trust-receiver, characterized by the giver taking few precautions. This first part of his theory provides the basis for a specified interpretation of trust as a collective undertaking among stakeholders in modern organizations, such as financial companies, constituting chains of trust. The phenomenon of cooperation is fundamental in such chains. Grimen’s theoretical focus on trust as a single action, and on the chain of cooperation as several interconnected actions, represents a corrective to the psychological and individualistic profile of mainstream research on trust (Rousseau et al. 1998) and converges toward principal-agent theories. The paper uses Grimen’s theory to work out a hypothesis about a chain of trust between stakeholders in the financial industry, promoting a multi-efficient cooperation between them. The multi-efficiency of chains of trust is also discussed in connection with the risk of violating different ethical norms. The risk brings to focus the corresponding need for chains of control as a means to reduce the risk of violations of norms. But the chain of control has not only this advantage, but also a disadvantage. The inefficiency of chains of control is a severe hindrance to the efficiency of the chain of trust, even if it reduces the risk of violation of norms. The paper ends by underscoring a multidimensional dilemma typical for cooperation between stakeholders in modern organizations, i.e. the fundamental dilemma between the advantages and disadvantages of both chains of trust and chains of control.
5. Journal of Business Ethics Education: Volume > 12
Kristian Høyer Toft Teaching Business Ethics to Critical Students—Adopting the Stance of Political CSR
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This paper provides ways of responding to critical students when teaching business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). A common premise of teaching pedagogy is to approach students from their “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky 1978). To get an understanding of students’ critical prior conceptions, the ideal type of the “liberal communist” (Žižek 2008) is invoked as suggestive of how students might think about business ethics and CSR. Two pedagogical approaches are suggested to address students’ a priori scepticism of business ethics and CSR. First, a framework of political views on CSR is presented. Second, approaching CSR by means of “problem based learning” is discussed. Finally, the paper reflects on the role of the business ethics teacher in light of tendencies towards commodification of education in the global economy.
6. Journal of Business Ethics Education: Volume > 12
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff An Interactive Method for Teaching Business Ethics, Stakeholder Management and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
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This paper presents a theoretical and practical approach to teaching business ethics, stakeholder management and CSR within the framework of the thematic seminar on business ethics and corporate social responsibility at Roskilde University. Within our programs in English of business studies and Economics and Business Administration the author of this article is responsible for this seminar that integrates issues of CSR and the ethics of innovation into the teaching ofcorporate social responsibility, stakeholder management and business ethics. This research oriented seminar provides a unique possibility for teaching CSR with an integration of methodological, theoretical and practical dimensions of business ethics (Rendtorff 2009). The idea is that the thematic seminar represents a tutor supported frame for extended studies of business ethics, stakeholder management and the social aspects of business and entrepreneurship. Each student shall present a paper on the basis of a collection of articles on the topic of ethics and social dimension of business. Moreover, it is required that the student is discussant of two other papers during the course. In addition, students shall prepare interactive participation in discussion of each paper. The sessions begin with a short introduction to the topic by the professor, then student presentations, after this discussant remarks, and finally general discussion followed by an evaluative assessment by the professor. During the seminar the student shall present both theory and case discussion so that we find a close interaction between theory and practice in the presentation. In the following, the paper elaborates on this development, in particular in the relation between theory presentation and case studies.
7. Journal of Business Ethics Education: Volume > 12
Maxim A. Storchevoy A Model for Identifying and Teaching Moral Issues in Stakeholder Relations
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The paper demonstrates how a typology of moral issues may be used to systematically analyze and discuss ethical problems in stakeholder relations. The suggested typology is based mostly on economic theory and represents a universal and comprehensive matrix of moral issues in business. We analyze its compatibility with other stakeholder management models and demonstrate how it may be applied as a tool for identifying relevant ethical issues in relations with any stakeholder, or to build instruments for measuring corporate social performance. In the conclusion we discuss other ways of application and future directions of research.