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278Xenophon’s Philosophy of ManagementIn C. Neesham & S. Segal (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Management, . 2019.In this chapter, we explore Xenophon’s philosophy of management and identify nine dimensions of business management, as well as the competencies that good management requires. The scientific contribution of this chapter does not only consist in the fact that this is the first publications in which Xenophon’s philosophy of management is systematically analyzed. Historical analysis can also help to question the self-evidence of our contemporary conceptualization of management. Xenophon’s philosoph…Read more
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240Food Vendor Beware! On Ordinary Morality and Unhealthy MarketingFood Ethics 5 (1): 1-21. 2019.Food and beverage firms are frequently criticised for their impact on the spread of non-communicable diseases like obesity and diabetes type 2. In this article we explore under what conditions the sales and marketing of unhealthy food and beverage products is irresponsible. Starting from the notion of ordinary morality we argue that firms have a duty to respect people’s autonomy and adhere to the principle of non-maleficence in both market and non-market environments. We show how these considera…Read more
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252Innovation as Ethos : Moving Beyond CSR and Practical Wisdom in Innovation EthicsIn C. Neesham & S. Segal (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Management, . 2018.In this chapter, I philosophically reflect on the management of corporate responsibility in the case of innovation. I first set the scene by contrasting responsibility in corporate social responsibility and innovation ethics, and arguing that classical conceptualizations of backward and forward looking responsibility are inappropriate in the case of innovation. Next, I introduce the concept of responsible innovation as a lens to understand the management of corporate responsibility in the case o…Read more
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332Technology in the Age of Innovation: Responsible Innovation as a New Subdomain Within the Philosophy of TechnologyPhilosophy and Technology 34 (2). 2019.Praised as a panacea for resolving all societal issues, and self-evidently presupposed as technological innovation, the concept of innovation has become the emblem of our age. This is especially reflected in the context of the European Union, where it is considered to play a central role in both strengthening the economy and confronting the current environmental crisis. The pressing question is how technological innovation can be steered into the right direction. To this end, recent frameworks o…Read more
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261Toward a Value-Sensitive Absorptive Capacity Framework: Navigating Intervalue and Intravalue Conflicts to Answer the Societal Call for HealthBusiness and Society 60 (6): 1349-1386. 2021.The majority of studies on absorptive capacity (AC) underscore the importance of absorbing technological knowledge from other firms to create economic value. However, to preserve moral legitimacy and create social value, firms must also discern and adapt to (shifts in) societal values. A comparative case study of eight firms in the food industry reveals how organizations prioritize and operationalize the societal value health in product innovation while navigating inter- and intravalue conflicts…Read more
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132The morendo of the AnthropoceneFoundations of Science 27 (2): 411-415. 2022.This essay engages with Bernard Stiegler’s discussion with Martin Heidegger in The ordeal of Truth, published in Foundations of Science 2020. It appreciates Stiegler’s progressive reading of Heidegger’s work but critically reflects on several elements in his work. A first element is the methodological aspect of Heidegger’s being historical thinking, which is missed by Stiegler and confirms the indifference towards philosophical method that can be found in the work of many contemporary philosophe…Read more
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23"This book provides new interpretations of Heidegger's philosophical method in light of 20th-century postmodernism and 21st-century speculative realism. In doing so, it raises important questions about philosophical method in the age of global warming and climate change. Vincent Blok addresses topics that have yet to be extensively discussed in Heidegger scholarship, including Heidegger's method of questioning, the religious character of Heidegger's philosophical method and Heidegger's conceptua…Read more
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145Towards an ontology of innovation : On the New, the Political-Economic Dimension and the Intrinsic Risks involved in Innovation ProcessesIn Routledge Handbook of philosophy of Engineering, Routledge. 2020.Because the techno-economic paradigm of contemporary conceptualizations of innovation is often taken for granted in the literature, this chapter opens up this self-evident notion. First, the chapter consults the work of Joseph Schumpeter, who can be seen as the founding father of the current conceptualization of innovation as technological and commercial. Second, we open up the concept by reflecting on two aspects of Schumpeter’s conceptualization of innovation, namely its destructive and its co…Read more
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615Responsible management of innovation in businessIn Oliver Laasch, Roy Suddaby, R. E. Freeman & Dima Jamali (eds.), Research Handbook of Responsible Management, Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 606-623. 2020.This chapter explores the concept and practice of responsible management of innovation. Responsible innovation is a key response to the grand challenges faced by society, helping to develop innovations with society in mind, and limit any unintended consequences. Responsible managers with influence over innovations need knowledge and understanding of how responsible innovation applies to their roles and how as individuals they can manage innovation responsibly. While the application of responsibl…Read more
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222A Processual Approach To Friction in Quadruple Helix CollaborationsScience and Public Policy 47 (6): 876-889. 2021.R&D collaborations between industry, government, civil society, and research ) have recently gained attention from R&D theorists and practitioners. In aiming to come to grips with their complexity, past models have generally taken a stakeholder-analytical approach based on stakeholder types. Yet stakeholder types are difficult to operationalise. We therefore argue that a processual model is more suited for studying the interaction in QHCs because it eschews matters of titles and identities. We d…Read more
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182What Is Innovation?Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 25 (1): 72-96. 2021.In this article, I reflect on the nature of innovation to lay the groundwork for a philosophy of innovation. First, I contrast the contemporary techno-economic paradigm of innovation with the work of Joseph Schumpeter. It becomes clear that Schumpeter’s work provides good reasons to question the techno-economic paradigm of innovation. Second, I contrast ‘innovation’ with ‘technology’ and identify five differences between the two concepts. Third, I reflect on the process-outcome dimension and the…Read more
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146Ecological Management: a Research Agenda: Guest EditorialPhilosophy of Management 20 (1): 1-4. 2021.This editorial sketches the relevancy and urgency of philosophical reflection on issues in ecological management. It subsequently provides a research agenda for future research on ecological management in the field of philosophy of management. Finally, it introduces the three articles that are part of this special issue.
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230An Agonistic Approach to Technological ConflictPhilosophy and Technology 34 (4): 717-737. 2020.Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion …Read more
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391Towards a Philosophy of a Bio-Based Economy: A Levinassian Perspective on the Relations Between Economic and Ecological SystemsEnvironmental Values 30 (2): 169-192. 2021.This paper investigates the fundamental idea at stake in current bioeconomies such as Europe's Bio-Based Economy (BBE). We argue that basing an economy upon ecology is an ambivalent effort, causing confusion and inconsistencies, and that the dominant framing of the damaged biosphere as a market-failure in bioeconomies such as the BBE is problematic. To counter this dominant narrative, we present alternative conceptualisations of bio-economies and indicate which concepts are overlooked. We highli…Read more
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242Social labs as an inclusive methodology to implement and study social change: the case of responsible research and innovationJournal of Responsible Innovation. forthcoming.The embedding and promotion of social change is faced with aparadoxical challenge. In order to mainstream an approach to socialchange such as responsible research and innovation and makeit into a practical reality rather than an abstract ideal, we need tohave conceptual clarity and empirical evidence. But, in order to beable to gather empirical evidence, we have to presuppose that theapproach already exists in practice. This paper proposes a social labmethodology that is suited to deal with this…Read more
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384Injustice in Food-Related Public Health Problems: A Matter of Corporate ResponsibilityBusiness Ethics Quarterly 30 (3): 388-413. 2020.ABSTRACTThe responsibility of the food and beverage industry for noncommunicable diseases is a controversial topic. Public health scholars identify the food and beverage industry as one of the main contributors to the rise of these diseases. We argue that aside from moral duties like not doing harm and respecting consumer autonomy, the food industry also has a responsibility for addressing the structural injustices involved in food-related health problems. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion Youn…Read more
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313Improve Alignment of Research Policy and Societal ValuesScience 369 (6499): 39-41. 2020.Historically, scientific and engineering expertise has been key in shaping research and innovation policies, with benefits presumed to accrue to society more broadly over time. But there is persistent and growing concern about whether and how ethical and societal values are integrated into R&I policies and governance, as we confront public disbelief in science and political suspicion toward evidence-based policy-making. Erosion of such a social contract with science limits the ability of democra…Read more
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8Energetic Ethics. Georges Bataille in the AnthropoceneIn Luca Valera & Juan Carlos Castilla (eds.), Global Changes: Ethics, Politics and Environment in the Contemporary Technological World, Springer Verlag. pp. 171-180. 2019.In this chapter, we develop the claim that today, in light of the distributed catastrophe called the Anthropocene, the question of ethics first and foremost becomes a question of economy and energy. Supplementing existing ethical approaches to the question of economy and energy, we offer what we understand to be a more fundamental economical interpretation of the Anthropocene by way of Georges Bataille’s philosophical thought on economy. We will argue that inasmuch as it results from what has co…Read more
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10Correction to: Food Vendor Beware! On Ordinary Morality and Unhealthy MarketingFood Ethics 5 (1-2): 1-21. 2019.The title of the article in the initial online publication was mixed up with copy editing information. The original article has been corrected.
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242Bridging the Gap between Individual and Corporate Responsible Behaviour: Toward a Performative Concept of Corporate CodesPhilosophy of Management 16 (2): 117-136. 2017.We reflect on the nature of corporate codes of conduct is this article. Based on John Austin’s speech act theory, four characteristics of a performative concept of corporate codes will be introduced: 1) the existential self-performative of the firm identity, 2) which is demanded by and responsive to their stakeholders; 3) Because corporate codes are structurally threatened by the possibility of failure, 4) embracing the code not only consists in actual corporate responsible behaviour in light of…Read more
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290Hybrids and the Boundaries of Moral Considerability or Revisiting the Idea of Non-Instrumental ValuePhilosophy and Technology 34 (2): 223-242. 2019.The transgressive ontological character of hybrids—entities crossing the ontological binarism of naturalness and artificiality, e.g., biomimetic projects—calls for pondering the question of their ethical status, since metaphysical and moral ideas are often inextricably linked. The example of it is the concept of “moral considerability” and related to it the idea of “intrinsic value” understood as a non-instrumentality of a being. Such an approach excludes hybrids from moral considerations due to…Read more
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306What Is (Business) Management? Laying the Ground for a Philosophy of ManagementPhilosophy of Management 19 (2): 173-189. 2020.In this article, we philosophically reflect on the nature of business management. We move beyond the political paradigm of the conceptualization of management in order to lay the ground for a philosophy of business management. First, we open-up the self-evident conceptualization of business management in contemporary management practices by comparing ancient and contemporary definitions of management. Second, we develop a framework with six dimensions of the nature of business management that ca…Read more
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271Hybrids and the Boundaries of Moral Considerability or Revisiting the Idea of Non-Instrumental ValuePhilosophy and Technology 34 (2): 223-242. 2019.The transgressive ontological character of hybrids—entities crossing the ontological binarism of naturalness and artificiality, e.g., biomimetic projects—calls for pondering the question of their ethical status, since metaphysical and moral ideas are often inextricably linked. The example of it is the concept of “moral considerability” and related to it the idea of “intrinsic value” understood as a non-instrumentality of a being. Such an approach excludes hybrids from moral considerations due to…Read more
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240Responsible Innovation for Life: Five Challenges Agriculture Offers for Responsible Innovation in Agriculture and Food, and the Necessity of an Ethics of InnovationJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 32 (5): 673-679. 2019.In this special issue we will investigate, from the perspective of agricultural ethics the potential to develop a Responsible Research and Innovation approach to agriculture, and the limitations to such an enterprise. RRI is an emerging field in the European research and innovation policy context that aims to balance economic, socio-cultural and environmental aspects in innovation processes. Because technological innovations can contribute significantly to the solution of societal challenges lik…Read more
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453Stakeholder Dialogue as Agonistic Deliberation: Exploring the Role of Conflict and Self-Interest in Business-NGO InteractionBusiness Ethics Quarterly 30 (1): 3-30. 2020.ABSTRACT:Many companies engage in dialogue with nongovernmental organizations about societal issues. The question is what a regulative ideal for such dialogues should be. In the literature on corporate social responsibility, the Habermasian notion of communicative action is often presented as a regulative ideal for stakeholder dialogue, implying that actors should aim at consensus and set strategic considerations aside. In this article, we argue that in many cases, communicative action is not a …Read more
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206Politics versus Economics Philosophical Reflections on the Nature of Corporate GovernancePhilosophy of Management 19 (1): 69-87. 2020.In this article, we philosophically reflect on the nature of corporate governance. We raise the question whether control is still a feasible ideal of corporate governance and reflect on the implications of the epistemic insufficiency of economic institutions with regard to grand challenges like of global warming for our conceptualization of corporate governance. We first introduce the concept of corporate governance from the perspective of economics and politics. We then trace the genealogy of t…Read more
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229Seeing Through the Fumes: Technology and Asymmetry in the AnthropoceneHuman Studies 42 (4): 621-646. 2019.This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger’s thought on technology with Georges Bataille’s consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger’s account …Read more
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178Nothing Else MattersResearch in Phenomenology 49 (1): 65-87. 2019.If the world in which we are intentionally involved is threatened by climate change, this raises the question about our place on Earth. In this article, we argue that the ecological crisis we face today draws our attention to the Earth as ontic-ontological condition of our being-in-the-world. Because the Earth is often reflected upon in relation to human existence, living systems or material entities in the philosophical tradition, we argue for an ontological concept of the materiality of the Ea…Read more
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331In this conceptual paper, the traditional conceptualization of sustainable entrepreneurship is challenged because of a fundamental tension between processes involved in sustainable development and processes involved in entrepreneurship: the concept of sustainable business models contains a paradox, because sustainability involves the reduction of information asymmetries, whereas entrepreneurship involves enhanced and secured levels of information asymmetries. We therefore propose a new and integ…Read more
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Wageningen University and ResearchCommunication, Philosophy and Technology (CPT)Associate Professor
Wageningen, GE, Netherlands
Areas of Interest
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