Current questions in global responsibility

Citation

Jones, G. (2010), "Current questions in global responsibility", Journal of Global Responsibility, Vol. 1 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jgr.2010.46601baa.001

Current questions in global responsibility

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Global Responsibility, Volume 1, Issue 2

There are a number of questions that are currently teasing the imaginations of scholars who are leading the development of our concept and practice for global responsibility. The aspiration toward a more global sense of responsibility is intuitively appealing, but what does such a sensibility actually look like when expressed in the nature of organisations and the behaviour of people within them? Once we have a clearer view of the answer to this question, then there are further questions for leaders within organisations and leaders within business schools. For those in organisations, how do we engage people in ways that lead to the adoption of such an altered state? In business schools, what kind of curriculum and pedagogies are needed, and more important and more difficult, how do we convince the staid and comfortable faculty to change?

These questions are pursued in various ways by the authors in this issue of the Journal of Global Responsibility. There are two studies of leadership for global responsibility, one focused on leadership practices (Alessia D’Amato, Regina Eckert, John Ireland, Laura Quinn and Ellen Van Velsor) and another (Grant Jones and Robin Kramar) focused on capabilities that can be both enacted individually and collectively.

The business school is an important institutional shaper of both the current generation of leaders and the next generation of globally responsible leaders. So important is the business school that we have decided to develop a special edition next year that will be devoted to the business school’s role in developing the themes of sustainability and responsibility. For now, we present a study of two business schools (Kate Sherren, Libby Robbin, Peter Kanowski and Stephen Dovers) that identifies robust principles that are likely to enhance the chances of success for those seeking to drive curriculum change.

There are three studies, which explore and strengthen the rationale for more developed levels of responsibility. Tommy Jensen and Johan Sandström case an attempt to articulate what it is to be an ethical corporation: they analyse an attempt to develop guidelines for a business that is inherently fraught with ethical difficulty, an arms manufacturer. This work contributes to the more general articulation of the ethic of the global corporation that is occurring in our literature. Busaya Virakul and Gary N. McLean deal with an equally testing case, examining the attitudes of HR managers in Thailand to employees with HIV/AIDS and making a case for business to take a role that is more supportive of the acceptance of victims and the containment of the spread of HIV/AIDS. Greg Davis and Cory Searcy examine sustainability reporting in Canadian companies, but their study has in common with the two aforementioned studies an incitement for business to take on a deeper level of obligation: in particular they demonstrate the need for more rigor in sustainability reports, which would take them beyond mere exercises in legitimation.

For those interested in institutional theory and who share its fundamental belief that “institutions matter” in as much as they either contribute to or resolve problems, there is much to offer in this issue. Bernard Sionneau develops a critical theoretic analysis, which traces the trajectory of libertarian and conservative ideological approaches to global management. He shows that they are:

• •

  not up to the task; and

• •

  thoroughly institutionalised and continuing their unguided course at full steam.

In another article (Adrian Haberberg, Jonathan Gander, Alison Rieple, Juan-Ignalio Martin-Castilla and Clive Helm), you will find an examination of the adoption of CSR, showing why CSR is special as an expression of idealism and may not fare well under a classical institutionalisation process. In a more positivist approach, Matthew C. Mitchell also uses institutional theory this time, to examine the possibilities that multinational corporations can act as a force for good on the environmentally recalcitrant nation states in which they operate, and the alternative direction of causality, that progressive nation states may influence recalcitrant companies. He provides a model and a range of propositions that can be picked up by other researchers who wish to take an empirical approach to these questions.

Brigit Kleymann and Hedley Malloch defy simple categorisation. It is an application of spiritual and organisational principles originally put forward by Saint Benedict to the organisation of work in a contemporary organisation. It is at once theological, critical, normative and phenomenological. You will not need to be “of the church” to get something from this paper. Its implications are both secular and pragmatic. However, its most compelling promise is to reconnect the human being with work by giving work a sacred significance.

Grant JonesEditor-in-Chief