-
33Young’s Social Connection Model and Corporate ResponsibilityPhilosophy of Management 21 (3): 315-336. 2022.Recent structural innovations in global commerce present difficult challenges for legacy understandings of responsibility. The rise of outsourcing, sub-contracting, and mobile app-based platforms have dramatically restructured relationships between and among economic actors. Though not entirely new, the remarkable rise in the prevalence of these “not-quite-arm’s-length” relationships present difficulties for conceptions of responsibility based on interrogating the past for specifiable actions by…Read more
-
18Stakeholder FrictionJournal of Business Ethics 177 (3): 519-531. 2022.A mainstay of stakeholder management is the belief that firms create value when they invest more time, money, and attention to stakeholders than is necessary for the immediate transaction. This tendency to repeat interactions with the same set of stakeholders fosters what we call stakeholder friction. Stakeholder friction is a term for the collection of social, legal, and economic forces leading firms to prioritize and reinvest in current stakeholders. For many stakeholder scholars, such frictio…Read more
-
12Brief Remarks on the Evolutionary MethodThe Ruffin Series of the Society for Business Ethics 4 235-238. 2004.There are explicit claims to Darwinian thinking in numerous fields of study. A common temptation associated with this method across disciplines is to call some attributes “natural” and others “cultural” in origin. But this distinction can be dangerous—particularly when applied to ethics. When employing the Darwinian method, ideas should be evaluated in the same way whether the characteristics are described as natural or as cultural. We should ascertain the moral usefulness of a trait irrespectiv…Read more
-
26A Farewell to Arm’s Length in Value Chain ResponsibilitiesProceedings of the International Association for Business and Society 16 (4): 87-92. 2005.The trend toward increased levels of business interconnectedness in the value chain has clouded the issue of responsibility for business practices. Firms havehistorically denied responsibility for many questionable practices by suggesting that such acts were committed somewhere else in the value chain and that, because they are separated by an arm’s length transaction, they are not responsible. Emerging evidence suggests that in light of the interconnected and networked business environment, the…Read more
-
24Emerging Paradigms of Corporate Social Responsibility, Regulation, and Governance: Introduction to the Thematic SymposiumJournal of Business Ethics 162 (2): 265-268. 2020.
-
6Business Ethics: Pragmatism and PostmodernismIn Robert Frederick (ed.), A companion to business ethics, Blackwell. 1999.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Postmodernism and pragmatism as a response to the Enlightenment The postmodern response in organization studies Postmodern and pragmatist organizational ethics Conclusion.
-
11Ties that Unwind: Dynamism in Integrative Social Contracts Theory1Journal of Business Ethics 68 (3): 283-302. 2006.Social contract theory offers a powerful method and metaphor for the study of organizational ethics. This paper considers the variant of the social contract that has arguably gained the most attention among business ethicists: integrative social contracts theory or ISCT [Donaldson and Dunfee: 1999, Ties That Bind (Harvard Business School Press, Boston)]. A core precept of ISCT – that consent to membership in an organization entails obligations to follow the norms of that organization, subject to…Read more
-
43Ties that Unwind: Dynamism in Integrative Social Contracts Theory1Journal of Business Ethics 68 (3): 283-302. 2006.Social contract theory offers a powerful method and metaphor for the study of organizational ethics. This paper considers the variant of the social contract that has arguably gained the most attention among business ethicists: integrative social contracts theory or ISCT [Donaldson and Dunfee: 1999, Ties That Bind (Harvard Business School Press, Boston)]. A core precept of ISCT - that consent to membership in an organization entails obligations to follow the norms of that organization, subject to…Read more
-
9The Past, History, and Corporate Social ResponsibilityJournal of Business Ethics 166 (2): 203-213. 2020.An emerging body of research recognizes the importance of the past and history for corporate social responsibility scholarship and practice. However, the meanings that scholars and practitioners can ascribe to the past and history differ fundamentally, posing challenges to the integration of history and CSR thinking. This essay reviews diverse approaches and proposes a broad conceptualization of the relationship between the past, history, and CSR. We suggest historical CSR as an umbrella term th…Read more
-
154The environment as a stakeholder? A fairness-based approachJournal of Business Ethics 23 (2). 2000.Stakeholder theory is often unable to distinguish those individuals and groups that are stakeholders from those that are not. This problem of stakeholder identity has recently been addressed by linking stakeholder theory to a Rawlsian principle of fairness. To illustrate, the question of stakeholder status for the non-human environment is discussed. This essay criticizes a past attempt to ascribe stakeholder status to the non-human environment, which utilized a broad definition of the term "stak…Read more
-
225Stakeholder Theory and A Principle of FairnessBusiness Ethics Quarterly 7 (1): 51-66. 1997.Stakeholder theory has become a central issue in the literature on business ethics / business and society. There are, however, a number of problems with stakeholder theory as currently understood. Among these are: 1) the lack of a coherent justificatory framework, 2) the problem of adjudicating between stakeholders, and 3) the problem of stakeholder identification. In this essay, I propose that a possible source of obligations to stakeholders is the principle of fairness (or fair play) as discus…Read more
-
141Stakeholder LegitimacyBusiness Ethics Quarterly 13 (1): 25-41. 2003.Abstract:This paper is a preliminary attempt to better understand the concept of legitimacy in stakeholder theory. The normative component of stakeholder theory plays a central role in the concept of legitimacy. Though the elaboration of legitimacy contained herein applies generally to all “normative cores” this paper relies on Phillips’s principle of stakeholder fairness and therefore begins with a brief description of this work. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of legitimacy …Read more
-
26European and American perspectives on corporate social responsibilityBusiness Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 17 (1): 69-73. 2008.
-
333Stakeholder Theory: A Libertarian DefenseBusiness Ethics Quarterly 12 (3): 331-349. 2002.Abstract:The purpose of this paper is to suggest that at least one strain of what has come to be called “stakeholder theory” has roots that are deeply libertarian. We begin by explicating both “stakeholder theory” and “libertarian arguments.” We show how there are libertarian arguments for both instrumental and normative stakeholder theory, and we construct a version of capitalism, called “stakeholder capitalism,” that builds on these libertarian ideas. We argue throughout that strong notions of…Read more
-
52Private Security Companies and Institutional Legitimacy: Corporate and Stakeholder ResponsibilityBusiness Ethics Quarterly 19 (3): 403-432. 2009.The private provision of security services has attracted a great deal of recent attention, both professional and popular. Much of that attention suggests the questioned moral legitimacy of the private vs. public provision of security. Linking the literature on moral legitimacy and responsibility from new institutional and stakeholder theories, we examine the relationship between moral legitimacy and responsible behavior by both private security companies (PSCs) and their stakeholders. We ask wha…Read more
-
2Splitting the Difference—Patient Preference vs Conservation of ResourcesAMA Journal of Ethics 6 (6): 258-260. 2004.
-
7Ethics and Network OrganizationsBusiness Ethics Quarterly 20 (3): 533-543. 2010.As value chains become longer with increases in outsourcing and subcontracting, the challenges of fixing responsibility become more difficult. Using concepts from the literature on social networks, this paper considers issues of diffusion of responsibility and plausible deniability in such relationships. Specifically, this paper isolates three sources of denial of – or defense against – attributions of responsibility: connection, control and knowledge. It goes on to consider the effects on netwo…Read more
-
36New Directions in Strategic Management and Business EthicsBusiness Ethics Quarterly 20 (3): 401-425. 2010.ABSTRACT:This essay attempts to provide a useful research agenda for researchers in both strategic managementandbusiness ethics. We motivate this agenda by suggesting that the two fields started with similar interests, diverged, and are beginning to converge again. We then identify several streams that hold particular promise for developing our understanding of the relationship between strategy and ethics: stakeholder theory, managerial discretion, behavioral strategy, strategy as practice, and …Read more
-
62New Directions in Strategic Management and Business EthicsBusiness Ethics Quarterly 20 (3): 401-425. 2010.ABSTRACT:This essay attempts to provide a useful research agenda for researchers in both strategic managementandbusiness ethics. We motivate this agenda by suggesting that the two fields started with similar interests, diverged, and are beginning to converge again. We then identify several streams that hold particular promise for developing our understanding of the relationship between strategy and ethics: stakeholder theory, managerial discretion, behavioral strategy, strategy as practice, and …Read more
-
130Ethics and Network OrganizationsBusiness Ethics Quarterly 20 (3): 533-543. 2010.As value chains become longer with increases in outsourcing and subcontracting, the challenges of fixing responsibility become more difficult. Using concepts from the literature on social networks, this paper considers issues of diffusion of responsibility and plausible deniability in such relationships. Specifically, this paper isolates three sources of denial of – or defense against – attributions of responsibility: connection, control and knowledge. It goes on to consider the effects on netwo…Read more