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Sub-theme 46: Reassembling Management Ethics and CSR

Convenors:
Bobby Banerjee
University of Western Sydney, Australia
Hervé Corvellec
Lund University, Sweden
Martin Fougère
Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

Call for Papers

 

Developing on the success of EGOS 2011 sub-theme 'Critical Perspectives on Management Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility', this sub-theme aims at bringing together again people who share an interest in critical approaches to management ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The core idea of this sub-theme is not to have more standard, positivist, and affirmative debates but to construct management ethics and CSR critically. The sub-theme is meant to highlight a fundamental weakness of conventional approaches to CSR that has been its fixation with win-win situations and search for empirical evidence. After more than 40 years of research, the links between management ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) remain ambiguous and questionable. Typically sharing similar mainstream concerns for profitability and even sometimes similar critical concerns for social betterment and environmental responsibility, management ethics and CSR research have developed along similar lines of thought, as illustrated by the references they share, but they have not really engaged with one another. We thus aim at encouraging scholars to reconsider the philosophical, theoretical and methodological aspects of the engagement between CSR and management ethics. Such engagement should lead to a critical reassembling of dominant paradigms of CSR and ethics. Management ethics and CSR tend to maintain and reinforce managerial hegemonies, a subservience to corporate interests and markets. The core idea of a stream on 'Reassembling Management Ethics and CSR' is to challenge this hegemony and construct the relationship between management ethics and CSR critically.

Yet, a critique of dominant paradigms is by itself not sufficient. After critically disassembling management ethics and CSR, there is a need to reimagine and reassemble our conceptions of CSR and management ethics directed towards emancipation and positive social change. This involves the creation of novel and critical insights into the role management ethics and CSR play within the framework of managerialism and profitability. The sub-theme focuses on the function management ethics and CSR have in maintaining and enhancing asymmetrical power relations at organizational level. We welcome theoretical and empirical submissions inspired by a diverse range of methodologies, from any multi- and inter-disciplinary perspectives.

 

Submissions should address (but are not limited to) the following or related questions:

  • How do the practice of management ethics and CSR relate to each other: for example, do they support each other, contradict one another, neutralize each other, or protect themselves from one another?
  • How have management ethics and CSR been used, misused, and abused to support the prevailing managerial paradigm (e.g. through an objectification, instrumentalization and operationalization of morale and ethics)?
  • How do management ethics and CSR serve as reinforcing discourses that maintain and underpin asymmetrical power relations at organizational level?
  • How have management ethics and CSR become communicative tools to determine realities for stakeholders?
  • How do management ethics and CSR contribute towards maintaining and reinforcing asymmetrical, exploitative, imperialistic and/or neo-colonial power relations between corporations and their stakeholders from developing countries?
  • How do management ethics and CSR articulate individual and corporate responsibilities?
  • Are there any alternative engagements of ethics and organizational practices particularly worth being emphasized from a critical point of view?
  • How can management ethics and CSR be applied as an emancipatory tool to overcome organisational asymmetries enshrined in managerialism?

 

Participants are encouraged to contact the convenors to discuss possible contributions.

 

Bobby Banerjee Bobby Banerjee is Professor of Management and Associate Dean (Research) at the College of Business, University of Western Sydney. He received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts and has held teaching positions at the University of Massachusetts, University of Wollongong, RMIT University and the University of South Australia. His research interests are in the area of corporate social responsibility, environmental sustainability, postcolonialism, critical management studies and Indigenous ecology. He has published two books and has over 100 publications including articles in highly ranked international journals, chapters in books and conference papers, and is the recipient of 33 research grants.
Hervé Corvellec Hervé Corvellec is a Professor of management at the Department of Service Management, Lund University, Sweden. He received his PhD in management at the Lund University School of Economics and Management and teaches business ethics and responsible management. After having worked on Levinasian ethics and the moral responsibility of project selectors, he is currently working on narrative ethics, environmental ethics, and fair trade cities.
Martin Fougère Martin Fougère is Assistant Professor of Politics and Business at the Department of Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland. He received his PhD from Hanken. His main teaching areas today are on the role of business in international and global governance, the relations between business, government and civil society, and corporate social responsibility. His research interests include corporate social responsibility, critical management studies, critical marketing, governmentality and postcolonialism. He has co-authored one book on marketing discourse and published a number of articles in international journals, chapters in books and conference papers.