Organisations are increasingly expected to respond to societal and environmental issues within their supply chains. The nuances of this expectation necessitate the consideration of the disparities in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices within supply chains. Drawing on the stakeholder theory, this paper examines the meanings and influences on socially responsible purchasing (SRP) in supply chains. It adopts an interpretivist qualitative methodology, relying on data from semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with practitioners from multi-national and indigenous organisations in Nigeria. Our findings present a (...) useful understanding of SRP based on the specific endogenous-level and exogenous-level influences. In particular, we develop an encompassing scope for SRP's meaning, outlining its key components, clarifying its boundaries and highlighting inconsistencies in its description. Our study provides a fresh understanding of SRP, with attendant contributions to the broad literature on CSR, corporate governance and supply chain management. It also offers insights to managers, purchasers, suppliers, financial analysts and policy-makers in embedding SRP. (shrink)

African nations are many and diverse, each one of them a multicultural home to philosophies that have enriched human communities over the centuries. Yet, the continent's wisdom remains largely undocumented. Of particular importance are those insights that could serve as stimuli to the more responsible and sustainable management of the global economy and the earth's resources. African philosophies about the way to live a flourishing life are predominantly virtue-oriented. However, narratives of African conceptions of virtue are uncommon. This book therefore (...) helps bridge an important gap in literature. Authors writing from South Africa, Ghana, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Côte D'Ivoire and Nigeria share research on indigenous wisdoms on virtue, displaying a marked consensus about the communitarian nature of African virtue ethics traditions and virtues essential for a flourishing life. They also show how indigenous virtue ethics improve corporate practices. This book will be a launchpad for further studies in Afriethics as well as a medium for sharing rich knowledge with the rest of the world.These chapters form a unique record in ethics for researchers, teachers, students and management practitioners of responsible management and African studies. (shrink)

Responsible Management in Africa delivers a rich reservoir of indigenous value-narratives based on a well-balanced philosophical anthropology, enriching global knowledge in the philosophy of management and in business ethics and contributing much-needed insights for leaders around the world to manage enterprise responsibly.

For upwards of 25 years, Yemi D. Prince (also known as Yemi D. Ogunyemi) has systematically devoted himself to the education, research and reason of Creative Writing and from Creative Writing to Creative Thinking and from Creative Thinking to Yoruba narrative, cultural, folk philosophy. On realizing that Creative Thinking has become his area of focus and interest, he succeeds in cultivating big ideas, combining them with his life-long experiences in the Humanities, transforming them into new ways of writing, thinking (...) or reasoning. (Some of his big ideas have led to the publication of booklets such as Yoruba Idealism, We Should All Be Philosophers, The Artist-Philosophers in Yoruba land, Codes of Morality and Pursuit of Wisdom.) Thus his big ideas have helped him separate Yoruba folk philosophy from Yoruba autochthonous religion. With his love for big ideas, born out of Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking, he has been able to put a new face on Yoruba Philosophy. (shrink)

Managers often face moral decision crossroads that demand self-leadership and require an internal locus of control. This article suggests that the concept of a locus of control should be incorporated into business ethics education in Nigeria, keeping in mind environmental characteristics that inhibit internality, and, based on a qualitative study carried out in Eastern Nigeria, that Rotter's scale be adapted to reduce response bias in this environment. Both incorporation of the concept and adaptation of the scale would be useful in (...) enhancing the ethical reasoning capabilities of future business leaders. (shrink)

Extortion is one of the ways that the formal economy leaks. Like bribery, extortion is not adequately documented because perpetrators are unlikely to record it. Like bribery, it raises the cost of business. It is similar to facilitating payments in that neither seeks something to which the payer is not entitled and so they may seem less harmful than outright bribery . Both are however harmful and lead to worse forms of corruption, . This paper explains how extorters operate and (...) proposes a framework of what characterizes every incident.The paper examines 159 victim narratives of experiences of extortion of fifty-five postgraduate students. In a challenging economy where businesses struggle for profitability, a discussion of money leakages is relevant. Understanding how extortion works will make it easier to recommend anti-extortion mechanisms. The extortion cycle proposed depicts the incidence and spread of corruption through self-perpetuation. Adopting the style of Nielsen the paper concludes by suggesting a bidirectional approach to fighting extortion—one aiming at creating a more enabling environment for ethical behaviour and another at forestalling individual unethical behaviour. (shrink)

Yoruba Idealism t questions, debates, and redefines the assumed epistemology in Yoruba Idealism. It is a work in two parts. The first is built around a study of divinity-philosopher Orunmila, the mentalist, the father of Yoruba idealism, and the cultivator of Ifa-Ife Divination. This project, the first of its kind, sheds a new light on the nature of Yoruba culture. The author's central argument is that the Yoruba people are idealists by nature. Combining indigenous knowledge with the wisdom of Orunmila, (...) the author defines Yoruba idealism as the ideal purpose of life, the search for the meaning of life, and a yearning for the best in life. The second part, 'The Mystic Land: Path to Initiation and Idealism,' features Kinedi, a fifteen-year-old boy from Las Palmetto, the capital of Zala, who journeys to the Altar of Light and Idealism in order to be initiated, gain knowledge, and comprehend the value of idealism, in addition to obtaining the key of life. This book is the first of its kind, and an important new addition to the series Africa in the Global Space. (shrink)

Responsibilities towards employees constitute a recognised general subject area in the field of business ethics. Thus, research has been done regarding respecting employees’ rights to fairness in dismissal procedures, to their privacy, to a fair wage, etc. Employee loyalty has also been shown to be very important both in management literature and in legal debate but much less attention has been given to employer loyalty which could be one of the responsibilities of an employer to his or her employee. Rather, (...) some confusion regarding the nature of loyalty has at times led to suggestions that loyalty should be replaced by self-interest. However, scholars who favour this view usually do so in reaction to the one-sidedness of loyalty expectations. This paper proposes that loyalty is a duty that employers also owe their employees, based on the reciprocal nature of certain rights and duties within human relationships and an understanding of psychological contracts. Thus the paper argues that loyalty should be a mutual expectation between the parties rather than unidirectional. In fact, employer loyalty enriches the employers themselves in terms of their human fulfilment, since it is a human virtue, and leads to employee loyalty response, which then impacts the bottom-line.The paper’s content is also important insofar as it could contribute to building ethical duty foundations for employers in developing countries where weak regulatory environments combine with the harshness of the economy to make it an employers’ world and make instances of unfairness towards employees common. (shrink)

Human Quality Treatment (HQT) is a theoretical approach expressing different ways of dealing with employees within an organization and is embedded in humanistic management tenants of dignity, care, and personal development, seeking to produce morally excellent employees. We build on the theoretical exposition and present a measure of HQT-Scale across several studies including cross-culturally to enhance confidence in our results. Our first study generates the 25 items for the HQT-Scale and provides initial support for the items. We then followed up (...) with a large study of managers (n = 363) from Nigeria in study 2, which confirms the theoretical properties of the five dimensions of HQT and highlights a two-factor construct: HQT Ethically Unacceptable and HQT Ethically Acceptable using a 20-item HQT-Scale. Study 3 with a large sample of New Zealand employees (n = 452) again confirms the nature of the construct and provides construct validity tests. Finally, using time-lagged data, study 4 (n = 308) focuses on New Zealand employees and job attitudes and behaviors, and a well-being outcome. That study not only confirms the theoretically implied effects but also shows the HQT Ethically Acceptable factor mediates the detrimental effects of HQT Ethically Unacceptable. Overall, our four studies provide strong support for the HQT-Scale and highlight important understandings of HQT and humanistic management in the workplace. (shrink)

The inspiration for this collective writing project began with a digital conference entitled ‘Knowledge Socialism, COVID-19 and the New Reality of Education’ held at Beijing Normal University. In this conference and through this article, multiple researchers spread across six continents have engaged in the collaborative task of outlining emerging innovations and alternative contingencies towards education, international collaboration, and digital reform in this time of global crisis. Trends associated with digital education, knowledge openness, peer production, and collective intelligence as articulated by (...) Michael A. Peters’ conception of Knowledge Socialism are given careful analysis and exploration. Some of the members of this collective endeavor to identify problems, others, begin to draw boxes around potential solutions. Overall, this article engages with real world challenges and innovations that look beyond dominant neoliberal trends in the knowledge economy to build bridges toward novel possibilities in this era of rapid digital change. (shrink)

In this chapter I problematize Beauvoir's analogical analyses in The Second Sex, arguing that her utilization of the race/gender analogy omits the experiences and oppressions of Black women. Furthermore, taking into account select secondary literature that emphasizes these issues, I argue that several of Beauvoir's white feminist defenders and critics share in common their non‐engagement with Black feminist literature on Beauvoir. Put another way, Black feminists who explicitly take up Beauvoir in their writings have remained largely unacknowledged in the secondary (...) literature on Beauvoir by white feminists. As a corrective to this erasure, I highlight the scholarly contributions of Black feminists including Loraine Hansberry, Chikwenye Ogunyemi, Deborah King, Oyeronke Oyewumi, and bell hooks. (shrink)