Responsible Management Education

The ebook will be Open Access and made available on publication. Written by many of the key influencers at the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), the book focuses on advancing sustainable development into education, research and partnerships at higher education institutions and, specifically, at business schools, with the purpose of educating responsible leaders for today and tomorrow. The book serves as a concrete source of inspiration for universities and other stakeholders in higher education on structures, processes and content for how to advance responsible management education and sustainable development. It articulates the importance of key themes connected with climate change, gender equality, anti-corruption, business for peace, anti-poverty and other topics that are related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The book emphasizes the significance of local–global interaction, drawing on local action at management schools in combination with global knowledge exchange across the PRME community. In addition, the book clearly demonstrates the background, key milestones and successful achievements of PRME as a global movement by management schools in collaboration with a broader community of higher education professionals. It exemplifies action in various local geographies in PRME Chapters, PRME Working Groups and the PRME Champions work to advance responsible management education. The authors of the book are all globally experienced deans, professors, educators, executives and students with a global outlook, who are united to advance responsible management education locally and globally. The book will be invaluable reading for university leaders, educators, business school deans and students wanting to understand and embed responsible management education approaches across their institutions and curricula

Responsible Management Education

The ebook will be Open Access and made available on publication. Written by many of the key influencers at the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), the book focuses on advancing sustainable development into education, research and partnerships at higher education institutions and, specifically, at business schools, with the purpose of educating responsible leaders for today and tomorrow. The book serves as a concrete source of inspiration for universities and other stakeholders in higher education on structures, processes and content for how to advance responsible management education and sustainable development. It articulates the importance of key themes connected with climate change, gender equality, anti-corruption, business for peace, anti-poverty and other topics that are related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The book emphasizes the significance of local–global interaction, drawing on local action at management schools in combination with global knowledge exchange across the PRME community. In addition, the book clearly demonstrates the background, key milestones and successful achievements of PRME as a global movement by management schools in collaboration with a broader community of higher education professionals. It exemplifies action in various local geographies in PRME Chapters, PRME Working Groups and the PRME Champions work to advance responsible management education. The authors of the book are all globally experienced deans, professors, educators, executives and students with a global outlook, who are united to advance responsible management education locally and globally. The book will be invaluable reading for university leaders, educators, business school deans and students wanting to understand and embed responsible management education approaches across their institutions and curricula

Helpful Hypocrisy? Investigating 'Double-Talk' and Irony in CSR Marketing Communications

Conventional definitions of corporate hypocrisy focus on decoupling talk and action; incidences where an organisation’s ‘talk’ does not to match its ‘walk’. In the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR), marketing communications are often aspirational and hence prone to accusations of hypocrisy. Is hypocrisy, however, always undesirable? This case-informed conceptual paper draws upon the Diesel ‘Global Warming Ready’ campaign to investigate how humour – specifically irony – elevates conventional understandings of hypocrisy towards what we term ‘helpful hypocrisy’; a concept that mobilises audiences to critically reflect on complex ambiguities of CSR in non-moralizing ways. In doing so, we distinguish between idealised ‘single-talk’ and extended ‘double-talk’. We develop an analytical model to help analyse the layers of double-talk in the context of ironic CSR marketing communications, and we construct a conceptual model that explains the role of double-talk and irony. Based on our research, we propose an agenda for future research

The polyphony of values and the value of polyphony

While human communication is inherently symbolic and thus potentially vague, ambiguous and polyphonic, there is a growing emphasis on certainty, accuracy and consistency in everything contemporary organizations say and do. Organizational messages about corporate values, in particular, are expected to accurately and unambiguously depict the organizational sender “behind” the words. Current communication principles, in other words, seek to reduce or eliminate the polyphonic potential of symbolic communication. In this paper we challenge this trend, arguing that the polyphony of corporate values is valuable because it facilitates change by inviting alternative interpretations and stimulating participation and critique. Lack of accuracy in organizational messages – including inconsistencies between what organizations say and what they do – may be an important driver of organizational and social change, because such differences have potential to raise expectations and apply pressure on organizational actors to improve their practices

A Longitudinal Study of Corporate and Organisational Identity Dynamics

Research on identity has raised attention to the importance for managers to align corporate and organisational identity, and to express those identity features that are central, distinct and enduring to strengthen corporate image and reputation among a variety of stakeholders. Drawing from an extensive data collection from two longitudinal studies in the same organisation, Oticon A/S, this study challenges the advantage of an enduring corporate identity by exploring how the dynamics between an organisation’s corporate identity and its organisational identity unfolded over time. Following a grounded theoretical approach, a process model is developed to show how the strong corporate identity fluctuated from being productive for the alignment of organisational identity and member identification to being counterproductive during a period of ten years. The paper discusses the implications of endurance of a strong corporate identity, and contrary to prior research we suggest that a strong corporate identity may result in member disidentification. We also suggest that a strong enduring corporate identity may impede organisational development, because top management will disappoint external and internal audiences if a corporate identity change is suggested. The paper concludes by encouraging more longitudinal research to advance knowledge about the complex dynamics of interplay between corporate and organisational identity

Advantages of strategic ambiguity

In this paper we analyze the construction of corporate social responsibility in the business press as an act of strategic ambiguity. While corporate social responsibility (CSR) generally evokes positive associations in public opinion, this paper demonstrates that these associations are based on a broadly encompassing and ambiguous definition of CSR. Our empirical data shows how the business press in its discourse on CSR provides no clarity on the definition of CSR in terms of a coherent motive, a dominant stakeholder or a consistent issue, but rather maintains ambiguity and imprecision about the meaning and content of CSR. While ambiguity and imprecision may be seen as an act of uncertainty in a passing stage when a new phenomenon emerges and develops, our longitudinal data demonstrates how ambiguity is preserved during a ten year period in four different daily newspapers. Ambiguity is systematically maintained in the business press. We refer to this process as strategic ambiguity. The paper discusses the potential value and limitations of framing CSR in a state of strategic ambiguity in the context of the concurrent rethinking of the role of business in modern welfare societies

Saving the world? how CSR practitioners live their calling by constructing different types of purpose in three occupational stages

Much attention in the meaningful work literature has been devoted to calling as an orientation toward work characterized by a strong sense of purpose and a prosocial motivation beyond self-gain. Nonetheless, debate remains as to whether individuals change or maintain their calling, and especially whether they live their calling differently in different occupational stages. In this article, we respond to this conundrum through an analysis of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) occupation—substantiated by interviews with 57 CSR practitioners from Swedish international companies who are living their calling. We demonstrate that social/commercial tensions affect these CSR practitioners, fueled by a divide between their social aspirations and the commercial goals, and prompt them to respond in a way that impacts how they construct the purpose of their work. Subsequently, we induce three stages of the CSR occupation—early-, mid- and late-stage—and conceptualize three types of purpose in each stage—activistic, win–win and corporate purpose. By uncovering how and why CSR practitioners respond to social/commercial tensions and construct different types of purpose in each stage of the CSR occupation, we show that individuals can live the same calling in multiple ways. Hence, our article advances the meaningful work literature as well as studies of micro-CSR.Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra) Vetensskabsrådet (project no 2019-03122) Handelsbanken Forskningsstiftelser – Project no P19-0099) European Institute of Japanese Studies, Stockholm School of Economics Mistra Centre for Sustainble Markets, Stockholm School of Economics Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University Centre for Social and Sustainable Innovation, Gustavson School of Business (CSSI receives funding from Newmont Goldcorp Inc.)

The Legitimacy of Data Partnerships for Sustainable Development

This paper examines the legitimacy attached to different types of multi-stakeholder data partnerships occurring in the context of sustainable development. We develop a framework to assess the democratic legitimacy of two types of data partnerships: open data partnerships (where data and insights are mainly freely available) and closed data partnerships (where data and insights are mainly shared within a network of organizations). Our framework specifies criteria for assessing the legitimacy of relevant partnerships with regard to their input legitimacy as well as their output legitimacy. We demonstrate which particular characteristics of open and closed partnerships can be expected to influence an analysis of their input and output legitimacy