Fertilizing the Ground for Social Change.pdf

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Fertilizing the Ground for Social Change:

Some Promising Ideas into CriticallyApproaching Business Ethics

Ajnesh PrasadAlbert J. Mills

ABSTRACT. In this note, we briefly explain how this

special issue on critical management studies and business

ethics unfolded and discuss its underlying rationale. We

then summarize each of the articles that were accepted for

publication in the special issue. We ultimately hope that

this collection of articles will initiate greater interest in

studying business ethics from critically informed per-

spectives.

KEY WORDS: critical management studies, business

ethics, social change

The idea for this special issue was originally conceived

in August 2008 following the Annual Meeting of the

Academy of Management in Anaheim, CA. Observ-

ing the lack of explicit engagement between business

ethics and critical management studies (CMS), we

sought to use the special issue as a forum for dialogue

and integration of thetwo research stream. At the time

of conception, we were unsure as to whether, or to

what extent, the topic would conjure appeal among

scholars in the field. Indeed, we were aware that the

positivism that had come to define much of the re-

search on business ethics, hitherto, might dissuade

some critically orientated researchers from consider-

ing it as a site upon which CMS objectives can beachieved. Our concern was placated, however, by the

supportive words we received from leading analysts in

the field shortly after the release of the call for papers.

One business ethicist of international repute lauded

thespecial issue as an important topic fortheJournal of

Business Ethics and foresaw it as an avenue to further

develop a link between critical theory and business

ethics. A leading figure from the CMS community

was delighted to see [us] take the initiative on the

subject and hoped that it would produce a landmark

issue. We can only hope that these comments will

come to fruition with this publication. At the close of

the submission deadline, we were very pleasantlysurprised by the interest that the special issue had

generated. Indeed, given the number of high-quality

submissions we received for consideration into the

special issue we had to, quite regrettably, reject many

papers that were otherwise worthy of publication. In

the end, we include seven papers in this special issue

that, we believe, individually and collectively, stand to

make important contributions to the field.

The articles included in this special issue offer an

inchoate foundation for the study of business ethics

from CMS traditions. United by a commitment to

CMS scholarship broadly defined the authors of

these articles, which include both seasoned and

junior academics, represent a wide gamut of philo-

sophical perspectives and discuss a myriad of topics

germane to contemporary debates on ethics that are

occurring within the field of management and

organization studies. As is clearly evident from

reading these papers, the authors move well beyond

the scope of descriptive criticisms of organizational

phenomena and identify tangible trajectories for

positive social change. We are particularly enthusi-

astic about the fact that the collection of articles,when taken together, contributes new insights into

the research, teaching, and practice of business eth-

ics. In this vein, we hold much hope for this special

issue. Perhaps, foremost, these articles will, in one

way or another, catalyze, reinvigorate, or develop

new interest in integrating, or illuminating common

ground between, CMS and business ethics dis-

courses. In this final note, we briefly summarize the

articles included in this special issue.

Journal of Business Ethics (2010) 94:223225 Springer 2011

DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-0760-x


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Summary of contributions

We commence this special issue with our own

paper, which provides initial thoughts on the

intersection between CMS and business ethics. Inthe paper, we use Fournier and Greys prominent

article published over a decade ago, complemented

by the works of other seminal figures in the field, to

summarize the major pillars of the CMS paradigm.

This analysis is primarily aimed at demonstrating

how CMS is demarcated from traditional man-

agement research. We then suggest several directions

for future work on business ethics that, we believe,

would be particularly amenable to critique from

CMS perspectives. This paper should be read as a

rather broad thematic adhesive for the six excellentarticles that follow.

Richard Marens paper delves into the failure of

business ethics in the American academic context.

He asserts that business ethics scholars have largely

failed to ask the questions they ought to have asked

questions that, among other things, vividly bring to

bear the social consequences of corporations actions

and the decisions of their unscrupulous executives.

Marens provides an insightful discussion, rooted in

philosophical foundations, that offers some expla-

nation for this oversight. He demonstrates the

necessity of positing the informative ideas of con-sequentialists into our engagements with business

ethics. Marens concludes, perhaps most astutely, by

proffering business ethicists with a simple but still

provocative piece of advice: [T]o stop avoiding

inconvenient topics.

Sheleden Simolas paper begins to take seriously

Marens words. Simola presents a novel examination

of anti-corporate anger using an ethic of care an

idea developed mainly in feminist theory as a

conceptual framing. Rather than stringently reading

anti-corporate anger as an irrational dysfunctionthat is problematic to organizations, Simola instead

interprets such expressions as a form of care-based

moral agency and, ultimately, as a response to

unethical corporate actions that pose substantial

harm to various marginalized members of society.

She returns to the case of Love Canal in an endeavor

to show how anti-corporate anger is functional for

grassroots organizing and for, subsequent, political

action. In this purview, the concept of anger be-

comes far more nuanced than how it is traditionally

defined within the organization studies literature;

that is, under certain conditions, it can be under-

stood as a resistance mechanism against unethical

corporate actions rather than it remaining within its

conventional parameters that render it as an emo-tional response that is wholly antithetical to ratio-

nality.

William Foster and Elden Wiebe also prudently

(re)appraise an integral concept in the extant orga-

nizational literature. Their focus, however, is on the

notion of praxis as it has been specifically deployed

within CMS scholarship. While recognizing the

contributions made by the corpus of CMS literature

in terms of identifying and critiquing oppressive

organizational structures, they remain skeptical as to

whether CMS has sufficiently addressed the idea ofpraxis. Indeed, they are concerned over the dis-

juncture between theory and practice as it appears to

manifest in much of CMS research. They claim that

realizing praxis is central to the CMS mandate

inasmuch as it serves as a necessary precursor for the

emancipation of socially disenfranchised constituents

an assumed beneficiary of our critically orientated

scholarship. Given this shortcoming, Foster and

Wiebe offer several remedies eloquently integrat-

ing discourses of community engagement and social

citizenship to underscore how we might achieve

praxis in our future scholarly endeavors. For them, a(re)contextualization of praxis will be a fruitful move

toward achieving CMS ethical potential.

Dennis Kopf, David Boje, and Ivonne Torres use

dialogical ethics to account for some of the unforeseen

consequences of the fields epistemological emphasis

on Kantian and utilitarian ethics. Drawing on exam-

ples of sweatshop labor and environmental degrada-

tion, they contend that the epistemological fixation of

business ethicists to these ethical paradigms run the

risk of misappropriation and misapplication, which

can, in the end, engender monumental global injus-tices. Akin to Foster and Wiebe, they do not limit

their analysis simply to the level of critique; namely,

they present two succinct avenues for redress. First,

they suggest that business ethics paradigms that

philosophically emerge from Kantian and utilitarian

ethics ought to be balanced by ontological commit-

ments to answerability and value ethics. Second, they

charge teachers of business ethics with the important

responsibility of imparting phronesis into their

students the capability, developed over time, to

224 Ajnesh Prasad and Albert J. Mills


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consider what modes of action are necessary to deliver

change and to enhance the quality of life. Taking

these suggestions together, they show how we, as

scholars and practitioners, might begin to curtail the

unintended pejorative outcomes that the dominanceof certain ethical paradigms has, at least in part, cre-

ated.

Extending an important theme raised by Kopf,

Boje, and Torres, the final two articles center on

pedagogical concerns. Steve Gold provides astute

commentary on the philosophy of Richard Rorty

and considers its potential implications for the

teaching of business ethics. Resisting the Platonic

approach to business ethics education, which he

deems to have much pedagogical currency today,

Gold invokes Rortys philosophy, as an archetypefor a post-foundational alternative. Namely, Gold

asks us to consider how we, as educators of students

in business ethics classes, might teach the subject

working from a Rortian-inflected moral imagina-

tion. Taking his analytical departure from this

theoretical position, Gold contends that, when

studying questions of business ethics, we ought to

displace obtuse ideas of right and wrong with a

more diligent focus on expanding a students moral

perspective. Citing Gramsci and Friere, he further

draws on the notion of critical pedagogy to illumi-

nate how business ethics classrooms can be envi-ronments of transformative action; socio-political

sites, marked by trust and mutual respect, in which

students and teachers engage in dialectical exchanges

over issues pertaining to business ethics.

The last article, offered by Todd Bridgman,

revisits the case method approach to business ethics

education from a CMS standpoint. For Bridgman,

much like Gold, the traditional case method focuses

its analytical gaze on moral dilemmas and the lack of

moral integrity of managers. This is problematic

insofar as it neglects to holistically account for the

broader environment in which moral dilemmas arise

and (un)ethical decisions are made. Taking a per-

spective that is explicitly grounded in CMS tradi-

tions, Bridgman advocates for employing case

method as a means to conceptualize the dark sideof organizational phenomena a topic that has been

acquiring greater purchase with the Dark Side Case

Writing Competition sponsored by the CMS divi-

sion of the Academy of Management. Bridgman

contends, using a cogent example from New Zea-

land, that by positing the dark side into the case

method, we can begin to reveal to our students how

organizational environments of unethical behavior

are systemically enacted among and within different

institutional actors, and how such environments are

dispositional reflections of the political economy ofglobal capitalism.

Acknowledgments

We thank, Alex Michalos, editor-in-chief of the Journal

of Business Ethics, for being supportive of this special is-

sue topic from its very conception. We would also like

to express our sincerest gratitude to the many reviewers

who provided thoughtful and timely assessments of the

papers submitted for publication consideration.

Ajnesh Prasad

Australian School of Business,

University of New South Wales,

Sydney, NSW, Australia

E-mail: [email protected]

Albert J. Mills

Sobey School of Business,

St. Marys University,

Halifax, NS, Canada

E-mail: [email protected]

225Fertilizing the Ground for Social Change

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