Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly becoming a popular business concept in developed economies. As typical of other business concepts, it is on its way to globalization through practices and structures of the globalized capitalist world order, typified in Multinational Corporations (MNCs). However, CSR often sits uncomfortably in this capitalist world order, as MNCs are often challenged by the global reach of their supply chains and the possible irresponsible practices inherent along these chains. The possibility of irresponsible practices puts global (...) firms under pressure to protect their brands even if it means assuming responsibilities for the practices of their suppliers. Pressure groups understand this burden on firms and try to take advantage of the situation. This article seeks to challenge the often taken-for-granted-assumption that firms should be accountable for the practices of their suppliers by espousing the moral (and sometimes legal) underpinnings of the concept of responsibility. Except where corporate control and or corporate grouping exist, it identifies the use of power as a critical factor to be considered in allocating responsibility in firm-supplier relationship; and suggests that the more powerful in this relationship has a responsibility to exert some moral influence on the weaker party. The article highlights the use of code of conducts, corporate culture, anti-pressure group campaigns, personnel training and value reorientation as possible sources of wielding positive moral influence along supply chains. (shrink)

The extant literature on comparative Corporate Social Responsibility often assumes functioning and enabling institutional arrangements, such as strong government, market and civil society, as a necessary condition for responsible business practices. Setting aside this dominant assumption and drawing insights from a case study of Fidelity Bank, Nigeria, we explore why and how firms still pursue and enact responsible business practices in what could be described as challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts for CSR. Our findings suggest that responsible business practices in (...) such contexts are often anchored on some CSR adaptive mechanisms. These mechanisms uniquely complement themselves and inform CSR strategies. The CSR adaptive mechanisms and strategies, in combination and in complementarity, then act as an institutional buffer, which enables firms to successfully engage in responsible practices irrespective of their weak institutional settings. We leverage this understanding to contribute to CSR in developing economies, often characterised by challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts. The research, policy and practice implications are also discussed. (shrink)

Corporate Social Responsibility amongst Small and Medium Enterprises is often characterised in the literature as unstructured, informal and ad hoc discretionary philanthropic activities. Drawing insights from recent theoretical/analytical frameworks :52–78, 2010), and on empirical data collected from both Nigeria and Tanzania, we found that CSR practices in SMEs are much more nuanced than previously presented. In addition, SMEs undertake their CSR practices to varying degrees in multiple spaces—i.e. the workplace, marketplace, community and the ecological environment. These CSR practices go beyond (...) philanthropy and in some instances involve institutional works aimed at addressing some of the institutional gaps in the environments where these SMEs operate. The paper makes a contribution by drawing attention to the multiple spaces of CSR practices amongst SMEs, and the institutional works they do, which are often taken for granted in the extant literature. We provide a unique perspective—by arguing that what is frequently conceptualised as philanthropic CSR in Africa is ‘institutional works’. (shrink)

The charged debate on the ‘C‐S‐R‐ization’ of organizational practices seems to have produced two opposing and seemingly incompatible explanations for why organizations should engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR): one, the normative rationale based on an appeal to ethics; and the other, the instrumental rationale, based on an appeal to business pragmatism. This paper argues that a missing link in this debate is the failure to recognize that the normative and instrumental approaches to corporate social responsibility are underpinned by substantively, (...) differentiating, relative logics of emotional rationalism on the one hand, and instrumental rationalism on the other. The paper makes a case that for CSR as a management practice to be practicable and actionable within a sustainable business agenda, it will need to be stripped of its current normative undertone and reconstructed in the instrumentally, pragmatic (utlish) language of business. Otherwise, the whole concept of CSR may continue to dwell in the realm of abstract theorizing without yielding many beneficial and practicable outcomes. The paper concludes that such an approach that situates CSR within a pragmatic business lingua, rather than a non‐business lingua, will help in legitimizing CSR as a ‘neutral’ management practice. (shrink)

The charged debate on the ‘C‐S‐R‐ization’ of organizational practices seems to have produced two opposing and seemingly incompatible explanations for why organizations should engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR): one, the normative rationale based on an appeal to ethics; and the other, the instrumental rationale, based on an appeal to business pragmatism. This paper argues that a missing link in this debate is the failure to recognize that the normative and instrumental approaches to corporate social responsibility are underpinned by substantively, (...) differentiating, relative logics of emotional rationalism on the one hand, and instrumental rationalism on the other. The paper makes a case that for CSR as a management practice to be practicable and actionable within a sustainable business agenda, it will need to be stripped of its current normative undertone and reconstructed in the instrumentally, pragmatic (utlish) language of business. Otherwise, the whole concept of CSR may continue to dwell in the realm of abstract theorizing without yielding many beneficial and practicable outcomes. The paper concludes that such an approach that situates CSR within a pragmatic business lingua, rather than a non‐business lingua, will help in legitimizing CSR as a ‘neutral’ management practice. (shrink)

Drawing from the varieties of capitalism theoretical framework, the study explores the home country influences of multinational corporations on their corporate social responsibility practices when they operate outside their national/regional institutional contexts. The study focusses on a particular CSR practice of seven MNCs from three varieties of capitalism – coordinated, mixed and liberal market economies – operating in the oil and gas sector of the Nigerian economy. The study concludes that the corporate codes of conduct of these MNCs operating in (...) Nigeria, to a large extent, reflect the characteristics of their home countries' model of capitalism, respectively, albeit with certain degree of modifications. The home countries' model of capitalism is also found to have implications for the degree of adaptability of these MNCs' CSR practices to the Nigerian institutional context – with the mixed market economy model of capitalism adapting more flexibly than the liberal and coordinated market economies, respectively. The findings of this study will contribute to the emerging literature on the institutional embeddedness of CSR practices in transnational social spaces, understanding of varieties of capitalism, and CSR in developing economies. (shrink)

This research explores the field dynamics that facilitated the emergence of a dominant understanding of business’ role in sustainable development (SD). Based on a study of the U.N. Earth Summits, we examine how actors meet every decade to battle for definitional control of what SD means for business, and what business means for SD. Through a discourse analysis of texts from business, policy, and civil society actors during each Summit, we illustrate how an ensuing discursive struggle shifts the role of (...) business in SD from being largely undefined in 1992, to being considered an SD partner in 2002, and finally to becoming a driver of SD by 2012. We contend that these shifts occurred largely due to two field dynamics: (a) rearranging of field boundaries and (2) forming of a discourse coalition. Accordingly, our study highlights how disparate actors coalesce around a shared-meaning system and collectively shape the role of business role in SD. However, we argue that despite the allure of a unified meaning-making process between once antagonistic actors, business–SD relations are underpinned by politicized interaction where certain actors come to dominate, and, in doing so, marginalize others. (shrink)

Corporate governance is often split between rule-based and principle-based approaches to regulation in different institutional contexts. This split is often informed by the types of institutional configurations, their strengths, and the complementarities within them. This approach to corporate governance regulation is mostly discussed in the context of developed economies and their regulatory demands. However, in developing and weak market economies, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is no such explicit split and the debates on such contexts in the comparative corporate (...) governance literature have been meagre. Nonetheless, there are sparks of good corporate governance practices in the region. Drawing from institutional theory and a case study of a largest economy, we explore the appropriateness or suitability of corporate governance regulatory frameworks in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our findings suggest that Nigeria needs an integrated system that combines elements of both rule-based and principle-based regulation, supported by a multi-stakeholder co-regulation strategy. This paper departs from the mainstream rule-based and principle-based categorisations by forging ahead new perspectives on corporate governance regulation, especially in weak market economies. (shrink)

This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors’ “CEO-speak” about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and projecting, (...) or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change. (shrink)

We propose that corporations should be subject to a legal obligation to identify and internalise their social costs or negative externalities. Our proposal reframes corporate social responsibility as obligated internalisation of social costs, and relies on reflexive governance through mandated hybrid fora. We argue that our approach advances theory, as well as practice and policy, by building on and going beyond prior attempts to address social costs, such as prescriptive government regulation, Coasian bargaining and political CSR.

The link between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and financial performance has continued to generate mixed and inconclusive results. Most studies in this area seem to assume that corporate social and financial performance share the same underpinning logic. Drawing from a qualitative analysis of practitioners' accounts of the challenges of mainstreaming the market for responsible investments, as part of the broader CSR agenda, this article re-examines this taken-for-granted assumption in the extant literature, and reaches the conclusion that CSR, as a complex (...) private governance of externalities, does not easily lend itself to measurability and profitability. In other words, not everything about CSR is measurable and profitable as much as the financial markets would expect. Comparing what is rendered measurable and profitable, on one hand, and what is yet to fully lend itself to measurability and profitability, on the other, is identified as one of the fundamental flaws of this literature. As such, CSR and financial performance will continue to run on competing logics until their different markets are distinctively articulated and/or aligned. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has been largely neglected in the few available studies on corporate governance in sub Saharan Africa. Following the recent challenges posed by the Cadbury Nigeria Plc, this paper examines shareholder activism in an evolving corporate governance institutional context and identifies strategic opportunities associated with shareholders’ empowerment through changes in code of corporate governance and recent developments in information and communications technologies in Nigeria; especially in relation to corporate social responsibility in Nigeria. It is expected that the paper would (...) contribute to the scarce literature on corporate governance and accountability in Africa. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has become a force for good in the extant corporate governance literature. In this article, we present a case study of Nigeria to show how shareholder activism, as a corporate governance mechanism, can constitute a space for unhealthy politics and turbulent politicking, which is a reflection of the country’s brand of politics. As a result, we point out some translational challenges, and suggest more caution, in the diffusion of corporate governance practices across different institutional environments. We contribute to (...) the literature on corporate governance in Africa, whilst creating an understanding of the political embeddedness of shareholder activism in different institutional contexts—i.e. a step closer to a political theorising of shareholder activism. (shrink)

We explore the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on companies’ sustainability strategies and practices. Prior research has identified a number of factors that shape such effects, including crisis severity, resource slack, and prior investments, but their interactions have not been given much attention. We thus collected qualitative data on 25 companies in four African countries, which we analyzed inductively and iteratively through cross-case comparison and with fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. We identify two pathways associated with strengthening responses (“building on strengths” and (...) “governance gap-filling”) and three associated with restricting responses (“hard hit,” “low-road business-as-usual,” and “bunkering down”). Our findings enhance our understanding of organizational responses to crises by attending to configurational effects, by elaborating the role of prior sustainability investments, and by foregrounding the relevance of governance contexts. We describe implications for future research and managers, investors, and sustainability initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact. (shrink)

Business ethics in Africa, as a field of research, practice, and teaching, has grown rapidly over the last two decades or so, covering a wide variety of topical issues, including corporate social responsibility, governance, and social entrepreneurship. Building on this progress, and to further advance the field, this special issue addresses four broad areas that cover important, under-researched or newly emerging phenomena in Africa: culture, ethics and leadership; business, society and institutions; corruption, anti-corruption and governance; and philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and (...) impact investing. In addition to advancing research by addressing some of the imbalances and gaps in the extant literature, this special issue draws attention to indigenous African theories, models and firms. Some challenges facing business ethics, as a field of practice and teaching in Africa, are also highlighted. The paper concludes with a summary of the eight articles in this special issue. (shrink)

In this chapter, we defend an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, we note two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. We then note how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what we call warrant-compatible malfunction. We then formulate our own view: explanationist proper functionalism, which explains the warrant-compatible malfunction cases and helps to (...) block the above objections. We also advance a positive argument for explanationist proper functionalism. (shrink)

According to commonsense, some collections of objects compose wholes, and others do not. However, philosophers have found serious difficulties with attempts to preserve this thesis, and especially with attempts to preserve the existence of just those composite objects recognized by commonsense. In this paper, I defend a classical solution to this problem: "it is the mind that maketh each thing to be one" (Berkeley, Siris, sect. 356). According to this view, which I call 'mereological idealism,' it is when a plurality (...) is united in thought under a concept that a unified whole comes to exist. After explaining the view in more detail, I show how it escapes three standard arguments against commonsense views of composition. (shrink)

Probes the nature of linguistic or symbolic action as it relates to specific novels, plays, and poems.

Alexander Pruss and I have proposed an analysis of omnipotence which makes no use of the problematic terms 'power' and 'ability'. However, this raises an obvious worry: if our analysis is not related to the notion of power, then how can it count as an analysis of omnipotence, the property of being all-powerful, at all? In this paper, I show how omnipotence can be understood as the possession of infinite power (general, universal, or unlimited power) rather than the possession of (...) particular powers. I then argue that the ordinary notions of particular powers or abilities can be understood as applying vague limitations to the notion of infinite power. The vagueness of these limitations is the source of the well-known difficulties in the analysis of ability. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In an age of specialists, Kenneth Burke's writings offend those who are content with a partial view of human motivation. ...

"In this book, Kenneth F. Rogerson explores the first half of Kant's Critique of Judgment, entitled the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.

_A study of the first half of Kant’s Critique of Judgment._.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hegel's Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference Hegel's Justification of His Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference in “Consciousness” “Self‐Consciousness,” Thought, and the Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference Hegel's Interim Critique of the Ego‐Centric Predicament Conclusion References.

In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how ...

This pioneering translation of Plato's Phaedrus, with detailed summary and full philological and exegetical notes taking into consideration all commentaries since Hermias, followed by a painstaking dialogical analysis of the text that shows what we must think at every moment in order to understand the thinking that brings the Greek text to life. In Kenneth Quandt's treatment, Plato's seminal work is allowed to create its own horizon and a new and profoundly unified interpretation emerges: Socrates's conversation with Phaedrus reaches (...) a vision of eros that explains the paradoxes of human nature, explodes the zero-sum game of master and slave, exposes the crabbed fetishism of the written word, and releases the mind to a life of contemplation fixed in a cloudless noon. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Co‐extensiveness of Understanding and Sensibility Identity and Predication Objective Purport and Kant's Transcendental Deduction Proving Mental Content Externalism Transcendentally Notes References.

My purpose in this paper is to present a non-Marxist conception of exploitation. While this analysis of exploitation may share features with a Marxist conception, its acceptability is not dependent upon a prior agreement with that world view.

Histories of communication are still relatively rare birds, but this one is distinctive on several grounds. The two authors are/were undisputed giants in the field. Ken Cmiel, the originator of the book, still unfinished when he suddenly died in 2006, was a cultural historian of communication; his best friend, John Peters, is one of the world leaders in the intellectual history of communication. In completing that unfinished manuscript, Peters has performed astonishing prestidigitation here in creating an effective hybrid: he retains (...) the core of Cmiel's account, while creating a unique book that, courtesy of Peters, brilliantly spins out the solid Cmielian core and its material traces into gorgeous reflections on aspects of how we make our way through a world of images and information. Promiscuous Knowledge constructs a cultural and intellectual history of information, images, and conceptions of knowledge since the 17th century, with an emphasis on the American context since the 19th century. Cmiel/Peters sketch the way in which various containers for information-knowledge, expertise, abridgment, books, digests, encyclopedias, museums, etc.-have variably organized gluts of information, and how these containers have eroded since the 1970s. A parallel throughline traces social attitudes and practices around images and key media for circulating and experiencing them. Cmiel envisioned the largest contour of the book as a contribution to the history of truth and truth-making. His protagonists are pictures and facts, images and information. They enact a process of gradual dismantling, erosion, or collapse of the mass culture system from last century into the present. Promiscuous knowledge has a new face, courtesy of the online universe full of filter bubbles, echo chambers, and fake news. Google offers a single portal to a churning mass of confusion; it lacks a principle of inclusion/inclusivity, it has no way of framing the whole. Peters has shaped what Cmiel started out with into a better Trump-era book than an Obama-era book. And he has retained its core: a brief history of how we left the world of fact for the world of information. (shrink)

“Buddhisms” captures the challenge inherent in the diverse practices and beliefs of this religion. In this book, grounding the analysis in the bodies of practitioners provides a new opportunity for coherence that reaches across vast expanses of time and space.

Focuses on the theory and practice of presidentialism and constitutionalism.

“Imagination may be thought of as a ‘work-around.’ It is a resourceful tactic to ‘undo’ a rule by creating a path around it without necessarily defying it.... Transgression, on the other hand, is rule breaking. There is no pretense of reinterpretation; it is defiance pure and simple. Whether imagination or disobedience is the source, constraints need not constrain, ties need not bind.” So writes Kenneth A. Shepsle in his introduction to Rule Breaking and Political Imagination. Institutions are thought to (...) channel the choices of individual actors. But what about when they do not? Throughout history, leaders and politicians have used imagination and transgression to break with constraints upon their agency. Shepsle ranges from ancient Rome to the United States Senate, and from Lyndon B. Johnson to the British House of Commons. He also explores rule breaking in less formal contexts, such as vigilantism in the Old West and the CIA’s actions in the wake of 9/11. Entertaining and thought-provoking, Rule Breaking and Political Imagination will prompt a reassessment of the nature of institutions and remind us of the critical role of political mavericks. (shrink)

This collection of essays, written between 1975 and 1987, covers topics including the doctrine of analogy, the Trinity, theological realism, the problims of evil and suffering, ecclesiology, and the so-called theistic proofs. The earlier writings relect the author's training as a philosopher in the Anglo-Aamerican analytic tradition. Later essays have a more explicitly theological focus, and they attempt to deal with and move beyond the tradition through hermeneutics, and literary and social theory. This collection thus addresses a wider list of (...) topics than is usual in works of philsophical theology, and is unique in its use of interdisciplinary methods and approaches. (shrink)

Recovering the substantive nature of landscape -- Landscape, place and the state of progress -- Choros, place and the spatialization of landscape -- Are islanders insular? : a personal view -- The case of the missing mask : performance, theater, aetherial space and the practice of landscape//architecture -- Performing on the landscape versus doing landscape : perambulatory practice, sight and the senses of belonging -- Heidegger, Latour and the reification of things : the inversion and spatial enclosure of the substantive (...) landscape the Lake District case -- Transcendent space, reactionary-modernism and the diabolic sublime : Walter Christaller, Edgar Kant, and the landscape origins of modern spatial science and planning -- Geese, elves, and the duplicitous, diabolical landscaped space and wild nature of reactionary modernism : Holgersson, Hägerstrand, and Lorenz. (shrink)

The author observes that Plato's Republic and Job have a common premise, namely the extremely unjust treatment of a just person to prove that the person is just, proceeding with a close comparative commentary on both works.

Introduction -- The classical theories -- Emile Durkheim -- Talcott Parsons and structural functionalism -- Karl Marx and marxism -- Max Weber -- The successors -- Norbert Elias -- Critical theory, the Frankfurt school and Jurgen Habermas -- Herbert Blumer and symbolic interactionism -- Michel Foucault -- Pierre Bourdieu -- The present -- The latest modern age -- Modernisation theory -- Conclusions.

The Struggle for the Soul of Teacher Education is a much-needed exploration of the unprecedented current controversies and debates over teacher education and professionalism. Set within the context of neo-liberal education reforms across the globe, the book explores how the current struggles over teaching and teacher education in the US came about, as well as reflections on where we should head in the future. Zeichner provides specific examples of work that moves teacher education toward greater congruency between ideals and practices, (...) while outlining the basis for a new form of community-based teacher education, where universities and other program providers, local communities, school districts, and teacher unions share responsibility for the preparation of teachers. Ultimately, Zeichner problematizes an uncritical shift to more practice and clinical experience, and discusses the enduring problems of clinical teacher education needed for this shift to be educative. (shrink)

The origination of General Systems Theory is credited to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who, two years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, published a work in 1932 entitled Theorie der Formbildung. Despite, by his own account, an exposure to and familiarity with the positivism of the Vienna circle, von Bertalanffy was dissatisfied with the reductionist and atomistic forms of explanation which this group asserted is characteristic of scientific explanation. He was particularly unhappy with attempts to pattern explanations of (...) biological phenomena after the model of classical Newtonian physics. In this early work, Models Theories of Development, von Bertalanffy maintained both that the main problem for biology is to discover patterns (laws) which are typical of biological systems and that the discovery of such patterns would produce a major change in the way the world is viewed in general. Von Bertalanffy worked out his proposed model for biological explanation in such subsequent books as Theoretische Biologie and Problems of Life and then in his later years in such works as Robots, Man and Minds and Organismic Psychology and Systems Theory, went on to apply his concepts in a cross-disciplinary way to psychology. Again, by his own account, at a somewhat later period, others, for example the economist Kenneth Boulding and the bio-mathematician A. Rapport, had arrived at, for parallel reasons, certain similar ideas relative to their own disciplines. These individuals together with others formed a joint enterprise which was to result in the interdisciplinary systems movement. Von Bertalanffy stressed the multi-dimension possibilities for fruitful research in a large number of conceptual areas, including the humanities, in his final major work, General Systems Theory Foundation, Development and Applications. (shrink)

Craik published only one complete work of any length, this essay on The Nature of Explanation.

The complementary deaths of the thinking subject and of the citizen subject -- Producing a Marxist concept of liberation -- Postpolitical politics and global capitalism -- The exacerbation of uneven development : analysis of the current -- The possibility of a new state I : delinking -- Models of liberation I : the politics of identity -- Models of liberation II : the politics of subjectivity -- Models of liberation III : the politics of the event -- Models of liberation (...) IV : the religious transcendent -- Models of liberation V : nomad politics -- The possibility of a new state II : Heterotopia -- Prospects for the new political subject and liberation. (shrink)