This article explores the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate reputation using qualitative research approach. Specifically, the relationship between CSR and corporate reputation is examined from the viewpoint of value theory. This paper brings up for discussion the various value priorities lying in the background of CSR actions. The aim is to form categories of value priorities around CSR and reputation, based on qualitative research approach. The main concepts in this paper – CSR, reputation and value – are (...) also defined. This paper further discusses the theory of value structure and content, which identifies certain principal values among different cultures. The data consist of eight interviews with employees of a newspaper company. The results suggest that value priorities play an influential role in CSR actions, influencing to the essence of certain reputation stories in the corporate context. (shrink)

Fringe stakeholders with limited resources, such as grassroots organizations (GROs), are often ignored in business and society literature. We develop a conceptual framework and a set of propositions detailing how GROs strategically gain legitimacy and influence over time. We argue that GROs encounter specific paradoxes over the emergence, development, and resolution of an issue, and they address these paradoxes using cognitive, moral, and pragmatic legitimacy strategies. While cognitive and moral strategies tend to be used consistently, the flexible and paradoxical use (...) of pragmatic strategies has important consequences, both for GROs’ legitimacy and for their potential influence over powerful organizations associated with them. We enrich our framework with the help of two illustrative cases and discuss the implications of the framework for GROs’ legitimacy strategies in business and society literature. (shrink)

In this article, we analyse the discursive construction of business–society relations in Finnish businesses’ social and environmental responsibility reports. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, we examine how these discursive constructions maintain and reproduce various interests and societal conditions as a precondition of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our study contributes to the recent discussion on discursive struggles in business–society relations and the role various interests play in this struggle. We find that not only are power asymmetries between actors veiled through the (...) universalization of interests, but reporting can also be seen as a communicative action that provides a right to define the role of societal actors for the achievement of CSR. We suggest that the discursive struggle over whose interests dominate, and how they dominate, shapes the role of social and environmental reporting as a social practice. (shrink)

During the last decade, any questionable or illegal behaviour on the part of businesses has received considerable attention in the media. Using a critical discursive perspective, we here investigate how the media constructs one type of questionable business as illegitimate. Our data draw upon articles dealing with cartels and cartel agreements in Finnish business media covering the five year period 2002-2007. Our contributions are following: We add to the current literature on CSR and national businesses, suggesting that regardless of globalization (...) sociocultural history plays an important role in constructing the illegitimacy of business practices. We therefore emphasize the importance of media as an arena where social actors construct the social contract between business and society. We further contribute to studies on questionable business by reconstructing a discursive framework used to construct cartels and cartel agreements. (shrink)

Although stakeholder salience theory has received a great deal of scholarly attention in the business ethics and management literature, the theory has been criticized for overemphasizing rationality in managerial perceptions. We argue that it is important to better understand what socially constructed emotions signal in business relations, and we posit the role of envy as a discursive resource used to signal and construct the asymmetrical power relations between small business owner–managers and their stakeholders. Our study is based on a qualitative (...) study on discursive accounts elicited from 33 interviews with small business owner–managers in Finland. Our study makes two primary contributions. First, we suggest that socially and culturally constructed emotions have significance in stakeholder salience analyses. Second, we suggest that socially and culturally constructed emotions provide a fruitful context in which to understand the limitations of owner–managers’ personal and moral autonomy. (shrink)

During the past decade, any questionable and illegal behavior of businesses has received significant attention in the media. Thus, taking a critical discursive approach, we investigate how the media constructs any questionable business as illegitimate. Our data draws upon articles dealing with cartels and cartel agreements in Finnish business media covering a five year period 2002-2007. Based on our findings, we suggest that regardless of the globalized business world, socio-cultural history plays an important role in constructing the illegitimacy of business (...) practices. (shrink)

This paper advances stakeholder salience theory from the viewpoint of small businesses. It is argued that the stakeholder salience process for small businesses is influenced by their local embeddedness, captured by the idea of social proximity, and characterised by multiple relationships that the owner-manager and stakeholders share beyond the business context. It is further stated that the ethics of care is a valuable ethical lens through which to understand social proximity in small businesses. The contribution of the study conceptualises how (...) the perceived social proximity between local stakeholders and small business owner-managers influences managerial considerations of the legitimacy, power and urgency of stakeholders and their claims. Specifically, the paradoxical nature of close relationships in the salience process is acknowledged and discussed. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 1117-1135, October 2022.

Corporate responsibility has often been criticised as a decoupled organisational phenomenon: a publicly espoused rule that is not followed in daily organisational practices. We argue that a crucial reason for this criticism arises from the dominant in-house assumption of CR literature, which mitigates tensions and contradictions in organisational life by claiming that integrated rules result in coupled practices. We aim to provide new insights by problematising this in-house assumption and by examining how members of two organisations discursively make sense of (...) CR, as a daily rule-bound practice, via three strategies: integration, differentiation and fragmentation. We elaborate the contemporary literature on CR as a daily organisational practice by examining the significance of discursive sensemaking for organisational rules for further development and learning regarding CR. We then discuss the significance of our results for understanding CR as a coupled/decoupled phenomenon. (shrink)

This article examines touch and its significance from an affect studies perspective. Touch makes our bodies more-than-one in a very concrete way, yet in body and affect research it has largely remained a philosophical abstraction, with few empirical explorations. Our theoretical deliberations are based on empirical material consisting of ‘touch biographies’ written by people of various backgrounds in the 2010s in Finland. The biographies are embodied-affective data, and our analysis of them offers a novel perspective on the ways touch forms (...) a part of affective relations and communal history. Touch works in and between bodies through affects in social bonds. Moreover, the exploration of touch biographies demonstrates that people draw upon different affective repertoires, and their experiences concerning touch are highly variable. The touch biographies highlight diverse and multi-temporal ways of attuning to, registering and recognising the social as it happens. Furthermore, our discussion opens up a new perspective on the study of affective privilege and inequality. (shrink)

This article aims to demonstrate that the concept of the ‘dialogical self’ is an identity theory that provides useful tools for studying intersectionality. In terms of the dialogical self, the formation of identity is a process of orchestrating voices within the self that speak from different I-positions. Such voices are embedded in field-specific repertoires of practices, characters, discourses and power relations specific to the various groups to which individuals simultaneously belong. By telling one's life-story, the individual intones these voices and (...) combines them in new ways, thus reshaping them as they use them. The article applies the theoretical concept of the dialogical self to the analysis of the life-story of a relatively well-known female Dutch politician of Moroccan background whose explanation of why she wears a headscarf allows her to combine the religious and political voices in her story with her more hesitant female voice. The words, images and self-evaluations used in her self-narratives demonstrate the ways in which her religious, ethnic and gender identifications are formed and are in dialogue. (shrink)

Mothers with prenatal substance use disorder often show broad deficits in their reflective functioning, implying severe risk for the relationship with their baby. Two different types of prenatal maternal RF may be important for parenting: adult attachment-focused-RF, regarding parent's own childhood experiences, and parenting-focused RF regarding their own current process of becoming a parent. However, their inter-relations and potentially different roles for parenting intervention outcomes are not clear. This study examined the associations between mothers' prenatal AAI-RF and pre- and post-natal (...) PRF, and their role in mother-infant interaction and substance use as treatment outcomes. The participants were 57 treatment-enrolled pregnant mothers with SUD and 50 low-risk comparison mothers. AAI-RF was measured with the Adult Attachment Interview. For a subsample of 30 mothers with SUD, PRF was measured with Pregnancy Interview, and with Parent Development Interview at 4 months. Mother-infant interaction was measured with Emotional Availability Scales at 4 and 12 months, and maternal substance use by post-natal substance relapses. Prenatal AAI-RF and pre- and post-natal PRF were highly associated with each other. Only higher prenatal PRF predicted better mother-infant interaction quality at 4 months and less substance use during the child's first year. Interestingly, prenatal PRF and AAI-RF predicted opposite changes in mother-infant interaction: lower prenatal PRF, but higher AAI-RF predicting more positive change. AAI-RF was especially associated with a change in maternal intrusiveness and hostility, indicating that it represents a more general regulatory tendency. Further studies are needed in larger and lower-risk samples. Our results suggest, however, that AAI-RF and PRF are partially distinct and should be uniquely targeted in perinatal interventions. (shrink)

Relationship and sex counseling are pivotal components of the “therapeutization of society,” which has been identified and widely examined as a key transformation of 21st-century modern Western societies. The particular understandings of gender and sexuality that circulate in those practices contribute to the wider everyday conceptions of intimate life and are thus important to investigate from a feminist perspective. Combining insights from studies on therapeutic cultures, research on intimate relationships, scholarship on postfeminism, and affect theory, this article taps into the (...) often ambivalent ways in which gender equality and sexual rights are articulated in relationship and sex counseling practices. My data are derived from an ethnographic investigation of relationship enhancement events in Finland. Equality was widely supported at these events, but there was no consensus regarding what desirable equality actually looked like. My analysis identifies several contradictory patterns in the data. First, there are statements to the effect that equality has “gone too far.” Second, many experts express tokenized critiques yet remain invested in depoliticizing views. Third, there are acts of resistance that embrace diversity and expand everyday understandings of gender and sexuality. I argue that these patterns constitute a postfeminist sensibility, thus complicating the belief that Nordic countries are exceptionally supportive of equality. (shrink)

As a worldwide social movement, skepticism aims to promote science and critical thinking. However, by analyzing texts published in the magazine of the Finnish skepticism movement between 1988 and 2017, we find that the movement carries out its mission in a way that maintains and produces gendered hierarchies. We identify six forms of gendered boundary-work in the data: science as masculine, questioning women, complementary and alternative medicine as feminine, debating the status of gender studies, gender within the skepticism movement, and (...) supporting equality. Gender is an important aspect of the boundary-work undertaken by the movement to establish boundaries between science and nonscience. The forms of gendered boundary-work contribute to the idea of “true” science as a masculine and male-dominated domain, excluding women from both science and the skepticism movement. Even when the exclusions are subtle, hidden, or humorous, they nevertheless produce gendered inequalities by excluding women, belittling women’s knowledge production, or granting women-only dismissive recognition. Indeed, our analysis indicates that there is a need to look deeply into science-based social movements: exclusive structural tactics are part and parcel of such movements’ mundane activities, as our examples from Skepsis ry’s popular magazine demonstrate. (shrink)

Social sensitivity is a crucial aspect of interpersonal relationships, as it is intrinsic to the understanding of other selves as subjects situated in a social world. In revitalizing such a concept in the philosophical literature, this article examines the relation between habit, attention, and critical self‐awareness that lies at the core of social sensitivity. On the one hand, I reconsider the so‐called “passivity” of habit and tackle the role of attention as the power of varying point of view. On the (...) other hand, I contrast Husserl's view of attentiveness with Murdoch's account of loving attention, arguing that social sensitivity centers on a type of striving that is closer to Husserl's methodology than Murdoch's approach to moral perfectionism. (shrink)

The Mīmāṃsā school of Indian philosophy has for its main purpose the interpretation of injunctions that are found in a set of sacred texts, the Vedas. In their works, Mīmāṃsā authors provide some of the most detailed and systematic examinations available anywhere of statements with a deontic force; however, their considerations have generally not been registered outside of Indological scholarship. In the present article we analyze the Mīmāṃsā theory of Vedic injunctions from a logical and philosophical point of view. The (...) theory at issue can be regarded as a system of reasoning based on certain fundamental principles, such as the distinction between strong and weak duties, and on a taxonomy of ritual actions. We start by reconstructing the conceptual framework of the theory and then move to a formalization of its core aspects. Our contribution represents a new perspective to study Mīmāṃsā and outlines its relevance, in general, for deontic reasoning. (shrink)

Although we can observe noticeable progress in gender diversity on corporate boards, these boards remain far from gender balanced. Our paper builds on social identity theory to examine the impact of corporate elites—men and women who sit on multiple corporate boards—on board diversity. We extend the main argument of social identity theory concerning favouritism based on homophily by suggesting that boards with men with multiple appointments are unwilling to include female board members to protect the monopoly value generated by their (...) elite status. The empirical analysis, based on DAX 30 firms in the period of 2010–2015, shows that the presence of multi-board men is negatively associated with women’s participation, while the presence of multi-board women and other women on management boards is positively related to gender diversity on boards. Furthermore, robustness tests support and confirm our conclusion that multi-board men have a significant association with board diversity, even with small size. Additionally, we find a significant effect arising from pressure related to the introduction of gender quotas in Germany, effective in 2016, indicating the effectiveness of gender quota policies for board gender diversity. (shrink)

Most moral theorists agree that it is one thing to believe that someone has slighted you and another to resent her for the insult; one thing to believe that someone did you a favor and another to feel gratitude toward her for her kindness. While all of these ways of responding to another's conduct are forms of moral appraisal, the reactive attitudes are said to 'go beyond' beliefs in some way. We think this claim is adequately explained only when we (...) take seriously the fact that reactive attitudes are emotions. In this paper, we appeal to insights of the emotions literature to highlight one key way in which reactive attitudes go beyond beliefs: beliefs about a person and her morally significant conduct merely ascribe to the person the property of having performed a morally significant action, while reactive attitudes are ways of experiencing that person as having performed a morally significant action. We then suggest that appreciating this is a crucial first step toward understanding why reactive emotions play roles in our practices around responsibility that beliefs do not. (shrink)

Can one have an aesthetically valuable experience of fiction that takes an immoral perspective? Some have argued that one can. However, some important objections have been raised against this idea. Two objections are: that the immorality involved is confined to fictional reality, and that the aesthetic value of immoral fiction is dictated by a pluralistic attitude that not everyone accepts. My aim is to respond to these challenges and to argue, on the basis of two examples, that even an unlimited (...) immoral perspective can enhance a widespread aesthetic value. (shrink)

The article offers an overview of the deontic theory developed by the philosophical school of Mīmāṃsā, which is, and has been since the last centuries BCE, the main source of normative concepts in Sanskrit thought. Thus, the Mīmāṃsā deontics is interesting for any historian of philosophy and constitutes a thought-provoking occasion to rethink deontic concepts, taking advantage of centuries of systematic reflections on these topics. Some comparison with notions currently used in Euro-American normative theories and metaethical principles is offered in (...) order to show possible points of contact and deep divergences. In more detail, after an introduction explaining the methodology and aims of our work, we discuss how Mīmāṃsā authors distinguished and defined some fundamental deontic concepts, such as different types of prescriptions and prohibitions. We then discuss how Mīmāṃsā authors approached the problem of conflicts among commands without jeopardising the validity of the normative text issuing them. In the second part of the article we introduce our formal apparatus, which is construed around the main taxonomic and conceptual distinctions used in the first part. Our formal rendering captures the most important features of the Mīmāṃsā theory and can thus serve as a concise and rigorous presentation of it for scholars working in deontic logic. (shrink)

With the exception of James Ostrow’s 1990 study, social sensitivity has received scarce attention in philosophy, whilst it has become an important area of research in social and clinical psychology, where it is commonly known as interpersonal sensitivity. The latter is usually understood as a form of social skill to appropriately recognise and decode the appearance and behaviour of others. However, this view suffers from conceptual limitations in that it tends to reduce social sensitivity to standardised skilful behaviour. Drawing on (...) Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, I disambiguate social sensitivity from social skills, arguing that the former builds on the receptivity of habit to beliefs and cognitive dissonance. In this revised sense, social sensitivity informs processes of attitude change that challenge ingrained dispositions and potentially defy social codes and expectations. (shrink)

Details goverment, private, and international response to the policy recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

The article examines the case of springtime bird hunting in Åland from a moral point of view. In Åland springtime hunting has been a cultural practice for centuries but is now under investigation due to the EU Directive on the protection of birds. The main question of the article is whether restrictions on bird hunting have a sound basis. We approach this question by analysing three principles: The animal rights principle states that if hunting is not necessary for survival, it (...) cannot be morally justified. Therefore hunting merely to engage in a cultural custom is morally suspect. In the light of the species conservation principle the hunting is questionable due to the fact that it seems to have a diminishing effect on the species populations. The formal principle of justice makes up a more difficult question since the special position of the minorities in regard to the use of natural resources is generally recognised so that they have the right to maintain their cultural practices. We claim, however, that even though cultural practices have substantial value and can be the object of special rights, they should be coherent with other principles. The springtime bird hunt in Åland does not accord with the relevant moral principles and for this reason we conclude that the basis for its continuation is weak. (shrink)

Most philosophers who had the opportunity to meet Paolo Casalegno (1952-2009) have been impressed by his sharp acumen, his passion for discussing philosophy and his human and intellectual generosity. I had the chance more than others to appreciate his qualities and benefit from them: we worked in the same university in Milan for many years and we had many occasions to discuss philosophy and other non-philosophical topics. I owe a debt of gratitude to him and, together with Paolo’s friends and (...) colleagues, I look for opportunities to remember his work and to continue to discuss it. One of them is the conference 'Good Points. Paolo Casalegno’s criticisms of some analytic philosophers' held in Milan in April 2011; the present special issue of dialectica collects the contributions on Paolo’s work presented on this occasion together with the reviews of two books published posthumously. (shrink)

The Mīmā ṃ sā school of Indian philosophy elaborated complex ways of interpreting the prescriptive portions of the Vedic sacred texts. The present article is the result of the collaboration of a group of scholars of logic, computer science, European philosophy and Indian philosophy and aims at the individuation and analysis of the deontic system which is applied but never explicitly discussed in Mīmā ṃ sā texts. The article outlines the basic distinction between three sorts of principles —hermeneutic, linguistic and (...) deontic. It proposes a mathematical formalization of the deontic principles and uses it to discuss a well-known example of seemingly conflicting statements, namely the prescription to undertake the malefic Śyena sacrifice and the prohibition to perform any harm. (shrink)

The critical examination of current hypotheses is one of the key ways in which scientific fields develop and grow. Therefore, any critique, including Haidle and Schlaudt’s article, “Where Does Cumulative Culture Begin? A Plea for a Sociologically Informed Perspective,” represents a welcome addition to the literature. However, critiques must also be evaluated. In their article, Haidle and Schlaudt review some approaches to culture and cumulative culture in both human and nonhuman primates. H&S discuss the “zone of latent solutions” hypothesis as (...) applied to nonhuman primates and stone-toolmaking premodern hominins. Here, we will evaluate whether H&S’s critique addresses its target. (shrink)

Empathy has become a common point of debate in moral psychology. Recent developments in psychiatry, neurosciences and social psychology have led to the revival of sentimentalism, and the ‘empathy thesis’ has suggested that affective empathy, in particular, is a necessary criterion of moral agency. The case of psychopaths – individuals incapable of affective empathy and moral agency, yet capable of rationality – has been utilised in support of this case. Critics, however, have been vocal. They have asserted that the case (...) of autism proves the empathy thesis wrong; that psychopathy centres on rational rather than empathic limitations; that empathy is not relevant to many common normative behaviours; and that rationality is required when empathy fails. The present paper analyses these four criticisms. It will be claimed that they each face severe difficulties, and that moral agency ought to be approached via a multi-tier model, with affective empathy as a baseline. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 725-739, June 2022.

Veṅkaṭanātha Veṅkaṭanātha was an Indian polymath who wrote philosophical as well as religious and poetical works in several languages, including Sanskrit, Maṇipravāḷa—a Sanskritised form of literary Tamil—and Tamil. He is traditionally dated to 1269-1370, but as explained by Neevel “the lifespans of … Continue reading Veṅkaṭanātha →.

Empathy is a term used increasingly both in moral theory and animal ethics. Yet, its precise meaning is often left unexplored. The book aims to tackle this by clarifying the different and even contradictory ways in which “empathy” can be defined.

In this paper, I shall investigate Edith Stein’s account of empathic subjectivity in light of the “affective turn” that characterises the current literature on Stein’s phenomenology. I shall argue that Stein develops an original approach to empathy that is not restricted to the model of “direct access” to others. I shall claim that, for Stein, empathy is an attitude that shares significant similarities with retention and imagining-how. More precisely, I shall show that the significance of empathy lies in striving to (...) respond appropriately to the other through the constitution of types or examples that involve features inherent in personality and values. (shrink)