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Economic Peace as a Counterpoint to the Warfare Economy: Rethinking Individual and Collective Responsibility

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Abstract

The idea of economic peace is a “counterpoint” to a warlike view of the economy. Viewing things in terms of economic peace makes it possible to develop a different economic anthropology. The idea of economic peace is used to think about a fundamental revision of the relationships to self and between actors. It sits at the intersection of peace studies, social and cognitive psychology, institutional conventionalist approaches, postmodernist philosophy and sinology. By employing the inchoate concept of economic peace, this article explores the opportunity to extend and deepen the relationship between individual and collective responsibility. The article describes individual and collective practices or avenues which could be useful when reacting to complex situations.

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Notes

  1. The term “counterpoint”, taken from music, is a metaphor for something that superimposes itself to transform dynamics that are already in operation.

  2. Important works exist on business peace (Forrer et al. 2012; Oetzel et al. 2010) but they are separate from our main argument.

  3. We take up Bessy and Favereau's definition according to which "Institutions, as a set of pre-existing and objective resources of justification, is the milieu where economic agents can find materials to solve their coordination problems and/or their conflicts of reproduction." (2003, p. 119).

  4. Their first manifesto was published in 1989 in the Revue économique (Vol. 40, 2).

  5. In this context, the term “accountable for one’s own actions” is seen from a moral point of view, rather than from that of social goals.

  6. This type of crossbreeding is already found in the literature, particularly in the work of Terestchenko (2005).

  7. This substitution creates a link with Buddhist philosophy in two ways. First, it attaches great importance to “awareness”, which is a key element in meditative practices. In addition, anthropologically, it breaks with the dualism of an approach centred on egoism and altruism in favour of a non-binary view of the human psyche. We are always both unaware and aware of certain aspects of ourselves.

  8. These changes on different levels correlate here with the difference between the “direct voice”–changes inside organisations–and the “indirect voice”—changes outside the organisation–differentiated by Hirschman (Cailleba, 2017, p. 311).

  9. Let us not forget that the etymology of the word “rivalry” is “equality in rank”.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the editor and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable critiques and suggestions.

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  1. Grenoble Ecole de Management, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Fiona Ottaviani & Dominique Steiler

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  1. Fiona Ottaviani
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Correspondence to Fiona Ottaviani.

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Ottaviani, F., Steiler, D. Economic Peace as a Counterpoint to the Warfare Economy: Rethinking Individual and Collective Responsibility. J Bus Ethics 177, 19–29 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04756-w

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