Does management education create responsible managers? Viewpont

The integration of sustainability and responsibility into management education is a widely discussed issue in the literature and in practice. As a result of a lifelong experience of teaching sustainability, environmental management and further related courses at university level, the authors aim to give their viewpoint about Responsible Management Education (RME). The concept of RME relies on the basis of several similar categories, used in today’s higher education but is aimed to mean more than just another slogan for the same content. Three issues are discussed in the paper. (Q1) Should we limit the focus of management education on the classical business targets like profit and growth, as well as the preconditions to achieve those targets – or should we establish a different philosophical background for business thinking and teaching: the Responsible Management? (Q2) Should the concept of Responsible Management be integrated in the classical business courses or should it be a specific, independent course? (Q3) How to combine teaching methods to reach the ultimate goal of creating responsible managers via management education? The literature review is aimed to give a profound background to the relevance and development of the term Responsible Management Education, followed by the explanation of sceptical and positive arguments regarding the introduction of the concept into the existing course structure. The authors also elaborate a potential methodology for teaching Responsible Management

How to Teach a Complex Discipline in a Changing Learning Environment: The Example of Sustainability

In the “electronic age” our teaching profession is faced with new challenges. Normally, educators tend to spend a significant amount of time updating the content of what they teach. They spend less time changing their methods of teaching. Today, this no longer works. A lot of content is delivered through Google and similar partners and what is now critical is that we make the necessary changes in our teaching methods to reflect this and to have some impact on our audiences. Based on more than forty years of teaching experience we feel qualified to underline the importance of the form and the method of teaching. Traditional teaching methods require that more time is spent transmitting the target information than would be spent if Google or relevant videos were used instead. Some forms of interaction can be substituted by some e-learning technologies as well. The only benefit of using traditional methods, if any, is the benefit to the students from the personal charisma and creativity of professors. It is certain that the right style of teaching can create a special atmosphere in the classroom. In this paper we would like to highlight our experiences. We take as our example – not to be too general – the concrete courses on Sustainability and CSR (Corporate social responsibility) that we have taught. These topics tend to divide both students and teachers. There are a lot of questions and data about these issues but few clear and definite answers. Science is habitually late in delivering answers to such fuzzy questions, which creates a lot of freedom regarding the taught content and requirements of the methods applied. In the first part of our paper we summarize five basic approaches to teaching. Then, using the example of Sustainability, we introduce step by step why and how complexity should be structured and then simplified. The third section concerns the concrete question of how to structure sustainability. The fourth describes how facts can be substantiated with analysis. The authors believe that parables can sometimes lead to deeper understanding than reliance on conventional methodological approaches. We are use famous parables and strategic grids to put across a simple message to students: you have to develop your own ideas about sustainability. We all are responsible for doing this — there is no given framework! We have tried to learn as much as possible from our colleagues and peers from all over the world. We would now like to offer something back, although we know that the methods described here are very personal to us. We hope that some of you can benefit from our experiences. Please share yours with us

The Importance of Personality Psychology in the Study of Prosocial Consumer Attitudes – Implications for Research in the Field of Socially Responsible Marketing

Theoretical background: This article is based, regarding the theoretical foundations, on selected issues of behavioral economy and economic psychology, which question the classical assumptions of the homo oeconomicus concept and the standard approach to studying the consumers’ attitudes and behaviors. Purpose of the article: The system of individual and socially shared consumer values undergoes evolutionary changes in the modern, turbulent socio-economic reality. The thesis has been put forward that in the post-pandemic realities, because of the re-evaluation of given values, psychological factors play an increasingly important role in shaping pro-social consumer attitudes, and the consumer’s personality largely determines favorable attitudes towards socially responsible marketing initiatives. The article is conceptual in nature. It provides a theoretical background for the authors’ planned empirical research. The main objective of this paper is to define the new research areas for socially responsible marketing, in which personality psychology could play a significant role in identifying consumers’ pro-social attitudes. Research methods: Given the need for an interdisciplinary approach to studying consumers’ pro-social attitudes, a review was conducted of the literature on the subject concerning the behavioral economy and economic psychology, with a special emphasis on the issue of personality. Main findings: The literature studies and observation of the socio-economic reality aimed at identifying new direction of empirical research in socially responsible marketing. Four main research areas were proposed to which the appropriate marketing types were assigned: post-COVID reality (social marketing and cause-related marketing); healthcare (social marketing); the reality of war (social marketing and cause-related marketing; ecology – green marketing). The empirical studies based on personality psychology in the areas indicated above could refer to the concept of goal-oriented behavior psychology and the Five Factor Model

Death and Digi-memorials: Perimortem and Postmortem Memory Sharing through Transitional Social Networking

Impending death and the event of passing can leave one in a state beyond bereavement, leading to a penchant for rationalizing the entire process. Increasingly people turn to social media not only as a community of mourners who come together to share their grief, but also to create chronicles of hope for the deceased’s life-before-death through acts of sharing emotional narratives, prayers of faith, as well as relational visuals awaiting the passing away. These digital networking communities have displayed the power to hold onto the fleeting. Social media possess an inherent quality of conceptual permanence that make them transitional public conduits for talking about the possibility of miracles to halt imminent death, fluidly followed by discussions of the transience of life. This essay critically evaluates extant literature on peri- and postmortem research with a focus on how the transitional narrative of sustaining hope and shared grieving is said to have been created on social network sites. We argue that digital acts of sharing prayers and intimate memories during the transitional phase (the period connecting the before and after mortem phases of a loved one) as done within social networking sites such as Facebook, conflates and complicates our accepted notions of social presence by reinforcing the digital enactment of what people do in offline grieving spaces

Papers, Please and the systemic approach to engaging ethical expertise in videogames

Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope (2013), explores the story of a customs inspector in the fictional political regime of Arstotzka. In this paper we explore the stories, systems and moral themes of Papers, Please in order to illustrate the systemic approach to designing videogames for moral engagement. Next, drawing on the Four Component model of ethical expertise from moral psychology, we contrast this systemic approach with the more common scripted approach. We conclude by demonstrating the different strengths and weaknesses that these two approaches have when it comes to designing videogames that engage the different aspects of a player’s moral expertise

The collapse of cooperation: The endogeneity of institutional break-up and its asymmetry with emergence

Decline and break-up of institutionalized cooperation, at all levels, has occurred frequently. Some of its concomitants, such as international migration, have become topical in the globalized world. Aspects of the phenomenon have also become known as failing states. However, the focus in most social sciences has been on institutional emergence and persistence, not collapse. We develop an endogenous explanation of collapsing institutions. Collapse may be an implication of the very economic success of institutionalized cooperation and of increasing system complexity, when cognitive conditions for effective collective decision-making do not proportionately evolve. Moreover, we show that collapse is not a simple logical reverse of emergence. Rather, institutions break up at different factor constellations than the ones prevailing at emergence. We approach endogenous institutional break-up and its asymmetry from various paradigmatic and disciplinary perspectives, employing psychology, anthropology, network analysis, and institutional economics. These perspectives cover individuals, groups, interaction-arenas, populations, and social networks

Things that grew while I looked at the ground

Broadly speaking, I am interested in the role of fine arts in translating the complexities of natural systems. This particular body of work explores the relationship between printmaking and soil science—just one of the many possible relationships between arts and sciences—with a focus on salt marsh soil systems. Generating public interest soil systems and other hidden ecological systems can be difficult due to the opaqueness of language and concepts surrounding these systems and a perceived distance (physically or conceptually) from the general public. Printmaking—with its inherent multiplicity, mediation, and readability—offers opportunities for making the seeming abstraction of soils evocative and relatable. The prints, artist books and installations presented here reflect on ten months of artistic and scientific experiences at Jacob’s Point, a salt marsh in Warren, Rhode Island. The vastly different scales—immersive installation and intimate bookwork—offer viewer experiences that are both expansive and intimate. My hope is that this work encompasses the physical experience of place, and evokes the power of an environment to inspire play, care, community and generosity