Organisations increasingly use digital nudges to influence their workforces’ behaviour without coercion or incentives. This can expose employees to arbitrary domination by infringing on their autonomy through manipulation and indoctrination. Nudges might furthermore give rise to the phenomenon of “organised immaturity.” Adopting a balanced approach between overly optimistic and dystopian standpoints, I propose a framework for determining the moral permissibility of digital nudging in the workplace. In this regard, I argue that not only should organisations provide pre-discursive justification of nudges but they should also ensure that employees can challenge their implementation whenever necessary through legitimation procedures. Building on Rainer Forst’s concept of the right to justification, this article offers a way to combine contract- and deliberation-based theories for addressing questions in business ethics. I further introduce the concept of meta-autonomy as a capacity that employees can acquire to counter threats of arbitrary domination and to mitigate organised immaturity.
{"title":"The Moral Permissibility of Digital Nudging in the Workplace: Reconciling Justification and Legitimation","authors":"Rebecca C. Ruehle","doi":"10.1017/beq.2023.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2023.4","url":null,"abstract":"Organisations increasingly use digital nudges to influence their workforces’ behaviour without coercion or incentives. This can expose employees to arbitrary domination by infringing on their autonomy through manipulation and indoctrination. Nudges might furthermore give rise to the phenomenon of “organised immaturity.” Adopting a balanced approach between overly optimistic and dystopian standpoints, I propose a framework for determining the moral permissibility of digital nudging in the workplace. In this regard, I argue that not only should organisations provide pre-discursive justification of nudges but they should also ensure that employees can challenge their implementation whenever necessary through legitimation procedures. Building on Rainer Forst’s concept of the right to justification, this article offers a way to combine contract- and deliberation-based theories for addressing questions in business ethics. I further introduce the concept of meta-autonomy as a capacity that employees can acquire to counter threats of arbitrary domination and to mitigate organised immaturity.","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":"33 1","pages":"502 - 531"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41573246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The business case constitutes an important instrumental motive for corporate social responsibility (CSR), but its relationship with other moral and relational motives remains controversial. In this article, we examine the articulation of motives for CSR among different stakeholders in Germany historically. On the basis of reports of German business associations, state agencies, unions, and nongovernmental organizations from 1970 to 2014, we show how the business case came to be a dominant motive for CSR by acting as a coalition magnet: the vocabulary was used strategically by key policy entrepreneurs, while being ambiguous for flexible interpretations by different stakeholders, and thereby growing in attractiveness. As a resulting discourse coalition emerged among business, state, and civil society actors, the moral and relational motives for CSR became increasingly marginalized. The article offers a new approach to studying motives and contributes to understanding the complementary or competing nature of different motives for CSR.
{"title":"Vocabularies of Motive for Corporate Social Responsibility: The Emergence of the Business Case in Germany, 1970–2014","authors":"Nora Lohmeyer, Gregory Jackson","doi":"10.1017/beq.2022.45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2022.45","url":null,"abstract":"The business case constitutes an important instrumental motive for corporate social responsibility (CSR), but its relationship with other moral and relational motives remains controversial. In this article, we examine the articulation of motives for CSR among different stakeholders in Germany historically. On the basis of reports of German business associations, state agencies, unions, and nongovernmental organizations from 1970 to 2014, we show how the business case came to be a dominant motive for CSR by acting as a coalition magnet: the vocabulary was used strategically by key policy entrepreneurs, while being ambiguous for flexible interpretations by different stakeholders, and thereby growing in attractiveness. As a resulting discourse coalition emerged among business, state, and civil society actors, the moral and relational motives for CSR became increasingly marginalized. The article offers a new approach to studying motives and contributes to understanding the complementary or competing nature of different motives for CSR.","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47598882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many business transactions and employment contracts are wrongfully exploitative despite being consensual and beneficial to both parties, compared with a nontransaction baseline. This form of exploitation can present governments with a dilemma. Legally permitting exploitation may send the message that the public condones it. In some economic conditions, coercively enforced antiexploitation law may harm the people it is intended to help. Under these conditions, a way out of the dilemma is to enact laws with provisions that lack coercive enforcement. Noncoercive law would convey the state’s condemnation of wrongful exploitation without risking the harmful effects of coercively enforced law. It would also give firms and their agents a way of explaining nonexploitative pricing decisions to investors, and it may help give precise content to the moral duty to set prices and wages fairly. Governments should thus consider noncoercive law a viable component of their responses to exploitation.
{"title":"Exploitation and the Desirability of Unenforced Law","authors":"R. Hughes","doi":"10.1017/beq.2023.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2023.3","url":null,"abstract":"Many business transactions and employment contracts are wrongfully exploitative despite being consensual and beneficial to both parties, compared with a nontransaction baseline. This form of exploitation can present governments with a dilemma. Legally permitting exploitation may send the message that the public condones it. In some economic conditions, coercively enforced antiexploitation law may harm the people it is intended to help. Under these conditions, a way out of the dilemma is to enact laws with provisions that lack coercive enforcement. Noncoercive law would convey the state’s condemnation of wrongful exploitation without risking the harmful effects of coercively enforced law. It would also give firms and their agents a way of explaining nonexploitative pricing decisions to investors, and it may help give precise content to the moral duty to set prices and wages fairly. Governments should thus consider noncoercive law a viable component of their responses to exploitation.","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45223437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Achinto Roy, A. Newman, Heather Round, S. Bhattacharya
We review and synthesize over two decades of research on ethical culture in organizations, examining eighty-nine relevant scholarly works. Our article discusses the conceptualization of ethical culture in a cross-disciplinary space and its critical role in ethical decision-making. With a view to advancing future research, we analyze the antecedents, outcomes, and mediator and moderator roles of ethical culture. To do so, we identify measures and theories used in past studies and make recommendations. We propose, inter alia, the use of validated measures, application of a wider range of theories, adoption of longitudinal studies, and study of group-level data in organizations. We explore research possibilities in new and emergent forms of organizations, ways of organizing work, and technology in ethical decision-making, such as the role of artificial intelligence. We also recommend the study of a broad range of leadership styles and their influence in shaping ethical cultures in organizations.
{"title":"Ethical Culture in Organizations: A Review and Agenda for Future Research","authors":"Achinto Roy, A. Newman, Heather Round, S. Bhattacharya","doi":"10.1017/beq.2022.44","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2022.44","url":null,"abstract":"We review and synthesize over two decades of research on ethical culture in organizations, examining eighty-nine relevant scholarly works. Our article discusses the conceptualization of ethical culture in a cross-disciplinary space and its critical role in ethical decision-making. With a view to advancing future research, we analyze the antecedents, outcomes, and mediator and moderator roles of ethical culture. To do so, we identify measures and theories used in past studies and make recommendations. We propose, inter alia, the use of validated measures, application of a wider range of theories, adoption of longitudinal studies, and study of group-level data in organizations. We explore research possibilities in new and emergent forms of organizations, ways of organizing work, and technology in ethical decision-making, such as the role of artificial intelligence. We also recommend the study of a broad range of leadership styles and their influence in shaping ethical cultures in organizations.","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57042082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I n Work as a Calling, Garrett W. Potts suggests that our language about work— specifically our academic discourse around workplace callings—is problematically individualistic. It prioritizes personal fulfillment over the common good. It stresses subjective meaning making at the expense of moral traditions. Such language, Potts argues, has unwelcome consequences, including anxiety in constructing one’s meaning, depression from not experiencing fulfillment in it, and burnout from the related and never-ending pursuit of measurable gains. Obsessed with selfactualization, today’s language of calling limits and even harms our moral world. Potts’s diagnosis draws not fromWittgenstein (though a gesture toward language games would not hurt) but rather from Robert Bellah’sHabits of the Heart (1985), a seminal text in the sociology of American life. Potts’s antidote builds on Bellah’s constructive response—i.e., Bellah’s nonindividualist notion of calling—by adding philosophical heft from Alasdair MacIntyre, one of Bellah’s more notable interlocutors. Given this genealogy, Potts describes callings in a community-focused manner: they are not individualistically construed. Instead, they draw on “civic” and “biblical tradition[s]” (49) to advance “good work,” “the good of individual lives,” and “the common good of communities” (147). To understand callings in this way, Potts suggests, is to embrace the traditionand community-based languages of American life. This helps people transform intomorally exemplary practitioners and enables them to flourish “in their quest for the good life more broadly” (68, internal quotations removed). Those looking for a history of American individualism will not find it in Potts’s monograph. (In chapter 2, there ismention, but no discussion, ofMartin Luther, John
{"title":"Work as a Calling: From Meaningful Work to Good Work, by Garrett W. Potts. New York: Routledge, 2022. 164 pp.","authors":"Edward A. David","doi":"10.1017/beq.2023.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2023.6","url":null,"abstract":"I n Work as a Calling, Garrett W. Potts suggests that our language about work— specifically our academic discourse around workplace callings—is problematically individualistic. It prioritizes personal fulfillment over the common good. It stresses subjective meaning making at the expense of moral traditions. Such language, Potts argues, has unwelcome consequences, including anxiety in constructing one’s meaning, depression from not experiencing fulfillment in it, and burnout from the related and never-ending pursuit of measurable gains. Obsessed with selfactualization, today’s language of calling limits and even harms our moral world. Potts’s diagnosis draws not fromWittgenstein (though a gesture toward language games would not hurt) but rather from Robert Bellah’sHabits of the Heart (1985), a seminal text in the sociology of American life. Potts’s antidote builds on Bellah’s constructive response—i.e., Bellah’s nonindividualist notion of calling—by adding philosophical heft from Alasdair MacIntyre, one of Bellah’s more notable interlocutors. Given this genealogy, Potts describes callings in a community-focused manner: they are not individualistically construed. Instead, they draw on “civic” and “biblical tradition[s]” (49) to advance “good work,” “the good of individual lives,” and “the common good of communities” (147). To understand callings in this way, Potts suggests, is to embrace the traditionand community-based languages of American life. This helps people transform intomorally exemplary practitioners and enables them to flourish “in their quest for the good life more broadly” (68, internal quotations removed). Those looking for a history of American individualism will not find it in Potts’s monograph. (In chapter 2, there ismention, but no discussion, ofMartin Luther, John","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":"33 1","pages":"394 - 397"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44395506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Distributive Politics of Environmental Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean, by Isabella Alcañiz and Ricardo A. Gutiérrez. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 76 pp.","authors":"Susana C. Esper","doi":"10.1017/beq.2023.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2023.5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":"33 1","pages":"398 - 400"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44709638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"BEQ volume 33 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"F. D. Hond, Bradley R. Agle, Laura Albareda","doi":"10.1017/beq.2023.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2023.9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":"f1 - f5"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47622760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Consider the following: the neighbourhood where you live is derided in the public debate. Newspapers write about violent incidents occurring in the area, its grey architecture, and the tight living conditions of many of your neighbours. They ignore writing about the neighbourhood’s varied and rich cultural traditions, the ambitious youth, and the active associational life. The negative image of your neighbourhood builds on selected facts. And although you do not recognise your neighbourhood in the dominant image of it, although you know there is more talent and capacity in the neighbourhood than what the general gaze seems to acknowledge, you see that decisions concerning the area are based on that limited, and limiting, knowledge—limited because it excludes residents’ knowledge of their place; limiting because, through the decisions dominant actors make concerning the neighbourhood, dominant knowledge shapes the lives and future of the people living in it. The limited gaze so limits residents’ life possibilities that, for fear of dismissive reactions, you do not include your home address in your CV, nor do you say where you live at party introductions. This is what sociologist Loïc Wacquant (2007) calls “territorial stigmatisation”: the tainted collective and dominant representation fastened on a particular place. Territorial stigma not only conveys negative stories of a place and its residents; it often also has adverse consequences on the social and economic possibilities of the people looked upon through the stigmatising gaze. AsWacquant puts it, “whether or not these areas are in fact dilapidated and dangerous, and their population composed essentially of poor people, minorities and foreigners, matters little in the end: the prejudicial belief that they are suffices to set off socially noxious consequences” (68). Acknowledging the effects of a place’s general image on the social dynamics of the place highlights three dimensions of space: first, physical space, the geographical area describable through directional vectors and cartographic coordinates; second, symbolic space, the images and stories associated to a given geography and those who inhabit it and the general representation in the public debate of a place and its residents; and third, social space, the status or social position inscribed in sites and reproduced through stories. As the spatial turn in the social sciences has shown, the
{"title":"Participatory Urban Art and Workplace Democracy: A Conversational Teaser","authors":"E. Barinaga","doi":"10.1017/beq.2023.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2023.8","url":null,"abstract":"Consider the following: the neighbourhood where you live is derided in the public debate. Newspapers write about violent incidents occurring in the area, its grey architecture, and the tight living conditions of many of your neighbours. They ignore writing about the neighbourhood’s varied and rich cultural traditions, the ambitious youth, and the active associational life. The negative image of your neighbourhood builds on selected facts. And although you do not recognise your neighbourhood in the dominant image of it, although you know there is more talent and capacity in the neighbourhood than what the general gaze seems to acknowledge, you see that decisions concerning the area are based on that limited, and limiting, knowledge—limited because it excludes residents’ knowledge of their place; limiting because, through the decisions dominant actors make concerning the neighbourhood, dominant knowledge shapes the lives and future of the people living in it. The limited gaze so limits residents’ life possibilities that, for fear of dismissive reactions, you do not include your home address in your CV, nor do you say where you live at party introductions. This is what sociologist Loïc Wacquant (2007) calls “territorial stigmatisation”: the tainted collective and dominant representation fastened on a particular place. Territorial stigma not only conveys negative stories of a place and its residents; it often also has adverse consequences on the social and economic possibilities of the people looked upon through the stigmatising gaze. AsWacquant puts it, “whether or not these areas are in fact dilapidated and dangerous, and their population composed essentially of poor people, minorities and foreigners, matters little in the end: the prejudicial belief that they are suffices to set off socially noxious consequences” (68). Acknowledging the effects of a place’s general image on the social dynamics of the place highlights three dimensions of space: first, physical space, the geographical area describable through directional vectors and cartographic coordinates; second, symbolic space, the images and stories associated to a given geography and those who inhabit it and the general representation in the public debate of a place and its residents; and third, social space, the status or social position inscribed in sites and reproduced through stories. As the spatial turn in the social sciences has shown, the","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":"33 1","pages":"401 - 407"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43439358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Digital technologies induce organised immaturity by generating toxic sociotechnical conditions that lead us to delegate autonomous, individual, and responsible thoughts and actions to external technological systems. Aiming to move beyond a diagnostic critical reading of the toxicity of digitalisation, we bring Bernard Stiegler’s pharmacological analysis of technology into dialogue with the ethics of care to speculatively explore how the socially engaged arts—a type of artistic practice emphasising audience co-production and processual collective responses to social challenges—play a care-giving role that helps counter technology-induced organised immaturity. We outline and illustrate two modes by which the socially engaged arts play this role: 1) disorganising immaturity through artivism, most notably anti-surveillance art, that imparts savoir vivre, that is, shared knowledge and meaning to counter the toxic side of technologies while enabling the imagination of alternative worlds in which humans coexist harmoniously with digital technologies, and 2) organising maturity through arts-based hacking that imparts savoir faire, that is, hands-on knowledge for experimental creation and practical enactment of better technological worlds.
{"title":"A Pharmacological Perspective on Technology-Induced Organised Immaturity: The Care-giving Role of the Arts","authors":"Ana Alacovska, P. Booth, Christian Fieseler","doi":"10.1017/beq.2022.39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2022.39","url":null,"abstract":"Digital technologies induce organised immaturity by generating toxic sociotechnical conditions that lead us to delegate autonomous, individual, and responsible thoughts and actions to external technological systems. Aiming to move beyond a diagnostic critical reading of the toxicity of digitalisation, we bring Bernard Stiegler’s pharmacological analysis of technology into dialogue with the ethics of care to speculatively explore how the socially engaged arts—a type of artistic practice emphasising audience co-production and processual collective responses to social challenges—play a care-giving role that helps counter technology-induced organised immaturity. We outline and illustrate two modes by which the socially engaged arts play this role: 1) disorganising immaturity through artivism, most notably anti-surveillance art, that imparts savoir vivre, that is, shared knowledge and meaning to counter the toxic side of technologies while enabling the imagination of alternative worlds in which humans coexist harmoniously with digital technologies, and 2) organising maturity through arts-based hacking that imparts savoir faire, that is, hands-on knowledge for experimental creation and practical enactment of better technological worlds.","PeriodicalId":48031,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics Quarterly","volume":"34 1","pages":"565 - 595"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57041809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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