Corporate Social Responsibility in Caribbean Community: Lessons from Trinidad and Tobago

This paper seeks to examine the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Caribbean Community and gives special attention to Trinidad and Tobago where the corporate sector is considered one of the most developed in the region. It asserts that philanthropy is the dominant approach to CSR and the capacity of the region’s corporate sector limits the impact of CSR as a strategy for achieving sustainable development. The paper also identifies the lack of resources and competing priorities as leading challenges to companies fully embracing and investing in sustainable CSR initiatives. Embedding CSR issues into the strategy and operations of companies is considered to be the most effective approach in addressing the challenges associated with CSR practice in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider region. There is also a need for government to become more proactive in delivering a credible and incentive-appealing national strategy on CSR and for board of directors to champion these initiatives.

Virtuousness and the Common Good as a Conceptual Framework for Harmonizing the Goals of the Individual, Organizations, and the Economy

21 páginasDespite the expansion of the regulatory state, we continue to witness widespread unethical practices across society. This paper addresses these challenges of ethical failure, misalignment, and dissonance by developing a conceptual framework that provides an explicit basis for understanding virtuousness and the common good directed toward the goal of eudaimonia or human flourishing. While much of the literature on virtuousness has focused on the organization, this paper uses a more comprehensive understanding that also incorporates the agent and the economy examined through their relational order. The common good provides direction for guiding behavior of all the various stakeholders and the context for understanding virtuousness, while it is through virtuousness that the common good is effectively realized. Virtuousness and the common good are therefore in effect ‘two sides of the same coin.’ This paper develops a virtuousness–common good conceptual framework which explores the basis for harmonizing the goals of the individual, organization, and the economy

Knowledge Workers and Virtues in Peter Drucker’s Management Theory

9 páginasThe fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis and frequent disregard for labor, environmental, and social standards have instilled new vigor into the study of ethics and virtues. In the contemporary knowledge society, the issue of which virtues the modern day workforce needs to possess is of crucial significance. This study specifies the virtues laid out in the management theory of Peter Drucker (1909-2005), focusing upon the conceptual category of the knowledge worker as the primary unit of the contemporary information and innovation-based knowledge society. The idea and role of intellectual virtues are not yet fully developed in the literature, especially as those identified in this article are the source of critical and creative thinking. This intervention, therefore, identifies prudence, effectiveness, excellence, integrity, and truthfulness as the knowledge worker’s intellectual virtues, whereas practical wisdom, responsibility, cooperation, and courage are seen to constitute the knowledge worker’s moral character

Knowledge Workers and Virtues in Peter Drucker’s Management Theory

The fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis and frequent disregard for labor, environmental, and social standards have instilled new vigor into the study of ethics and virtues. In the contemporary knowledge society, the issue of which virtues the modern day workforce needs to possess is of crucial significance. This study specifies the virtues laid out in the management theory of Peter Drucker (1909-2005), focusing upon the conceptual category of the knowledge worker as the primary unit of the contemporary information and innovation-based knowledge society. The idea and role of intellectual virtues are not yet fully developed in the literature, especially as those identified in this article are the source of critical and creative thinking. This intervention, therefore, identifies prudence, effectiveness, excellence, integrity, and truthfulness as the knowledge worker’s intellectual virtues, whereas practical wisdom, responsibility, cooperation, and courage are seen to constitute the knowledge worker’s moral character

Striking a Balance Between Rules and Principles-based Approaches for Effective Governance: A Risks-based Approach

Several recent studies and initiatives have emphasized the importance of a strong ethical organizational DNA (ODNA) to create and promote an effective corporate governance culture of trust, integrity and intellectual honesty. This paper highlights the drawbacks of an excessively heavy reliance on rules-based approaches that increase the cost of doing business, overshadow essential elements of good corporate governance, create a culture of dependency, and can result in legal absolutism. The paper makes the case that the way forward for effective corporate governance is to strike an optimal balance between rules-based and principles-based approaches. The recent corporate scandals have demonstrated that the ethical ODNA is critical to the driving force and basis of legal and regulatory requirements. Effective governance means adhering to ethical principles, not merely complying with rules, and is a crucial guardian of a firm’s reputation and integrity. It is through an effective corporate governance program (that is, one that optimally captures and integrates the appropriate aspects of rules-based and principles-based approaches, and identifies and assesses the related risks) that an organization can reconfigure its ODNA for improved performance. Focusing on the ethical ODNA as the basis of new governance measures provides an opportunity to develop a competitive advantage as it represents a potential source of differentiation, strengthens the relationship with all stakeholders of the organization by building a culture of trust and integrity, and re-instills investor confidence. This paper employs dialectical reasoning that links the ODNA through principles-driven rules in developing a risks-based approach. A comparison from a risk assessment perspective between rules-based and principles-based approaches is presented. Although there have been few applications employing dialectical reasoning in business research, this methodology can be extremely useful in isolating ethical issues and integrating them into the business process. The risks-based approach captures the benefits of both rules-based and principles-based approaches, and incorporates trust-based principles suchâ\x90£as solidarity, subsidiarity and covenantal relationships. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006effective corporate governance, organizational DNA, ethics, rules-based, principles-based, risks-based, trust-based, solidarity, subsidiarity, dialectical reasoning, compliance,