ABSTRACT:Profit maximizers have reasons to agree with stakeholder theorists that managers may need to consider different values simultaneously in decision making. However, it remains unclear how maximizing a single value can be reconciled with simultaneously considering different values. A solution can neither be found in substantive normative philosophical theories, nor in postulating the maximization of profit. Managers make sense of the values in a situation by means of the many thick value concepts of ordinary language. Thick evaluation involves the simultaneous (...) consideration of different values: making sense of a value always involves knowing how to engage with it given the other values in the situation. This also goes for profit: maximization is only one way of engaging with the value of profit, and grasping whether maximization is appropriate involves considering other values. We discuss some consequences of our approach for stakeholder theorists and profit maximizers. (shrink)

Nowadays businesses are often expected to create not just financial, but multiple kinds of value—and they report on this using numbers and narratives. Multiple-value accounting narratives, such as those required by the Integrated Reporting framework, are often met with suspicion: accounting scholars have argued that inconsistencies between narratives and performances show that narratives are used for impression management rather than to accurately report the (ir)responsible behavior of companies. This paper proposes to assess narratives beyond inconsistencies with reported performances. Starting from (...) the idea that performances are delivered in response to the kinds of value in the situation of the company, we argue that narratives and performances should be analyzed together as interrelated elements and considered in relation to the kinds of value in the situation. The paper transforms the common consequentialist view on which value should be “increased,” into the value pluralist view that something being of value can require many different performances such as for example respecting, maximizing, admiring, maintaining, using, and bringing it about. From this perspective, multiple-value accounting narratives logically precede the reporting of performances and should identify the kinds of value in the situation to which the company ought to respond, which performances are required by these kinds of value, and which indicators and targets should be used to report on these performances. A brief analysis of the annual report of Unilever illustrates how such metaethical criteria can help assess and develop multiple-value accounting narratives. (shrink)

Insights into the nondual relationship of organism and environment and their processual nature have resulted in numerous efforts at understanding human behavior and motivation from a holistic and contextual perspective. Meadian social theory, cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), ecological psychology, and some interpretations of complexity theory persist in relating human activity to the wider and more scientifically valid view that a process metaphysics suggests. I would like to articulate a concept from ecological psychology – that of the affordance, and relate (...) it to aspects of phenomenology and neuroscience such that interpretations of the self, cognition, and the brain are understood as similar to interpretations of molar behaviors exhibited in social processes. Experience with meditation as a method of joining normal reflective consciousness with ‘awareness’ is described and suggested as a useful tool in coming to better understand the nondual nature of the body. (shrink)