ABSTRACT:The profound influence of Thomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee’s integrative social contracts theory on the field of business ethics has been challenged by Andreas Scherer and Guido Palazzo’s Habermasian approach, which has achieved prominence of late with articles that expressly question the defensibility of ISCT’s hypernorms. This article builds on recent efforts by Donaldson and Scherer to bridge their accounts by providing discursive foundations to the hypernorms at the heart of the ISCT framework. Extending prior literature, we propose an ISCT* (...) framework designed to retain ISCT’s practical virtue of managerial guidance while answering the demands of Scherer and Palazzo’s discursive account. By subscribing to a suitable portfolio of discursively justified hypernorms, we argue, companies unlock the valuable moral guidance of ISCT*, which says to treat these hypernorms as unequivocal outer bounds to the pursuit of business and as a starting point to tailor local norms through discursive stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

While evolutionary thinking is increasingly becoming popular in fields of investigation outside the biological sciences, it remains unclear how helpful it is there and whether it actually yields good explanations of the phenomena under study. Here we examine the ontology of a recent approach to applying evolutionary thinking outside biology, the generalized Darwinism approach proposed by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen. We examine the ontology of populations in biology and in GD, and argue that biological evolutionary theory sets ontological criteria (...) that GD fails to meet. We suggest two options to revise the population concept in GD: reformulating the concept in terms of inheritance and reproduction such that it comes to pick out individuals similar to evolving populations, or trying to build an adequate population concept on a principle of differential retention instead of differential reproduction. 1 Introduction2 Generalized Darwinism2.1 What is generalized Darwinism?2.2 Darwinian principles3 The Ontology of Generalized Darwinism: What Are Populations?3.1 The population concept of generalized Darwinism3.2 The population concept in evolutionary theory4 Locating Evolving Systems in Generalized Darwinism5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Organizational ecology is commonly seen as a Darwinian research program that seeks to explain the diversity of organizational structures, properties and behaviors as the product of selection in past social environments in a similar manner as evolutionary biology seeks to explain the forms, properties and behaviors of organisms as consequences of selection in past natural environments. We argue that this explanatory strategy does not succeed because organizational ecology theory lacks an evolutionary mechanism that could be identified as the principal cause (...) of organizational diversity. The “evolution” of organizational populations by means of selection, which organizational ecologists put forward as the mechanism responsible for the extant diversity of organizational forms, is not evolution in any proper sense, because organizational populations do not have what it takes to participate in evolutionary processes. This implies that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program and that it cannot explain organizational diversity. (shrink)

In a recent article we argued that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program. John Lemos criticized our argumentation on various counts. Here we reply to some of Lemos’s criticisms.

Economics and social sciences in general have a long tradition of using theories, models, concepts, and so forth borrowed from the natural sciences to describe and explain the properties and behaviours of economic and social entities. However, unwarranted application of theoretical elements from the natural sciences in the economic/social domain can have adverse consequences for organisations, their employees and society in general. Focusing on biology and organisation studies, we discuss the general problems that may arise when theoretical elements from natural (...) science are applied in the economic/social domain. We examine one particular case, the organisational ecology research programme, and we argue that organisational ecology rests on the metaphorical, rather than literal, use of the notion of evolution. We conclude by showing how the use of the evolutionary metaphor in organisation theory can have adverse consequences for both managerial practice and society in general. (shrink)

Building on literature in political CSR and corporate political activity (CPA) as well as responsible innovation and responsible lobbying, we introduce a framework to assess the legitimacy status of corporate political activity. We focus on the fact that companies frequently face sharp regulatory backlash after penetrating markets with their innovations. In response to regulatory backlash, big tech companies often employ an arsenal of corporate political activities to (re-)shape national and local regulatory environments, which raises the important questions about the legitimacy (...) of CPA tactics that we address. To develop and apply this framework, we briefly survey and then assess Uber’s corporate political activities in its 2015 New York City political campaign. (shrink)

Creating Shared Value ist ein prominenter strategischer Ansatz, welcher Unternehmen unterstützen soll, gesellschaftliche und ökologische Themen zu adressieren und gleichzeitig Profite zu generieren. In diesem Beitrag wird der CSV-Ansatz zunächst vorgestellt und anschließend kritisch diskutiert. Darauf aufbauend wird eine Weiterentwicklung von CSV unter dem Namen CSV+ skizziert.

Organized immaturity, the reduction of individual capacities for public use of reason constrained by sociotechnological systems, constitutes a significant pushback against the project of Enlightenment. Forms of immaturity have long been a concern for philosophers and social theorists, such as Kant, Arendt, Fromm, Marcuse, and Foucault. Recently, Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism” describes how advancements in digital technologies lead to new, increasingly sophisticated forms of organized immaturity in democratic societies. We discuss how sociotechnological systems initially designed to meet human needs (...) can inhibit the multidimensional development of individuals as mature citizens. To counteract these trends, we suggest two mechanisms: disorganizing immaturity as a way to safeguard individuals’ and collectives’ negative freedoms (freedoms from), and organizing maturity as a way to strengthen positive freedoms (freedoms to). Finally, we provide an outlook on the five further articles that constitute the Business Ethics Quarterly Special Issue “Sociotechnological Conditions of Organized Immaturity in the Twenty-First Century.”. (shrink)

Pharmaceutical companies developed Covid-19 vaccines in record time. However, it soon became apparent that global access to the vaccines was inequitable. Through a qualitative inquiry as the pandemic unfolded (to mid-2021), we provide an in-depth analysis of why companies engaged with the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX), identifying the internal (to the company) and external factors that facilitated or impeded engagement. While all producers of the World Health Organization (WHO)-approved vaccines engaged with COVAX, our analysis highlights the differential levels (...) of COVAX engagement and identifies contractual obligations, opportunities and company strategy, and reputational pressures as key explanatory factors. We discuss our empirical findings relative to the literature on political corporate social responsibility (PCSR). Accordingly, we question whether pharmaceutical companies lived up to their responsibilities as corporate citizens and conclude that they failed to fulfill the implied responsibility of combating inequitable vaccine distribution. We conclude with implications of our research for practice, in relation to the challenges of global access to Covid-19 vaccines and for access to medicines more generally. (shrink)