Understanding the human in stakeholder theory: a phenomenological approach to affect-based learning

Despite being one of the most used theories by scholars and practitioners alike, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to how Stakeholder Theory is taught, or to the conception of the human it assumes. In this paper, we address this gap by drawing on the affective phenomenological perspective of Michel Henry, for whom ethics, praxis and even life itself are rooted in affective subjectivity. We argue that bringing back the Latin notion of affectus (as a noun and as a verb) is central to learning about stakeholders by strengthening our understanding of the human-both theoretically and affectively-as it operates within Stakeholder Theory, thereby addressing its anthropological, relational and normative shortcomings. We provide a practical illustration of what this means for learning by reflecting on the affective components of an executive development course on values-driven leadership. We show how the multi-level 'ME-WE-WORLD' framework of this course retrieves the relational normative force that redefines the human from an affective, phenomenological perspective, and enriches the discussion of stakeholders in the classroom. We end by discussing some avenues for future research on how to teach Stakeholder Theory in a more affective and effective way

This time from Africa: developing a relational approach to values-driven leadership

The importance of relationality in ethical leadership has been the focus of recent attention in business ethics scholarship. However, this relational component has not been sufficiently theorized from different philosophical perspectives, allowing specific Western philosophical conceptions to dominate the leadership development literature. This paper offers a theoretical analysis of the relational ontology that informs various conceptualizations of selfhood from both African and Western philosophical traditions and unpacks its implications for values-driven leadership. We aim to broaden Western conceptions of leadership development by drawing on twentieth century European philosophy’s insights on relationality, but more importantly, to show how African philosophical traditions precede this literature in its insistence on a relational ontology of the self. To illustrate our theoretical argument, we reflect on an executive education course called values-driven leadership into action, which ran in South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt in 2016, 2017, and 2018. We highlight an African-inspired employment of relationality through its use of the ME-WE-WORLD framework, articulating its theoretical assumptions with embodied experiential learning