In this article, the authors investigate the applicability and usefulness of three alternative perspectives on corporate issues management: issue life cycle theory, legitimacy theory, and stakeholder theory. Each perspective makes certain as- sumptions about the nature of issues management activities and certain general predictions about corporate social responsiveness. The authors test the relative applicability of the three theories through a case study of the issues management activities of four large forestry companies in Finland and Canada. The authors conclude that all (...) three perspectives have value but differ in the level of analysis and time frame to which they apply. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the emergence of a new form of organization – community enterprise – provides an alternative mechanism for corporations to behave in socially responsible ways. Community enterprises are distinguished from other third sector organisations by their generation of income through trading, rather than philanthropy and/or government subsidy, to finance their social goals. They also include democratic governance structures which allow members of the community or constituency they serve to participate in the management of the organisation. (...) Partnerships between corporations and community enterprises therefore raise the possibility of corporations moving beyond philanthropic donations toward a more sustainable form of intervention involving long-term commitments to communities. At the same time they change substantively the nature of any collaboration by allowing relationships to proceed on the basis of mutual advantage, thereby broadening their appeal and scope. In doing so, partnerships build capacity and enfranchise communities in a way that avoids the paternalism that has traditionally characterised relationships between corporations and voluntary sector organisations. Power relations are transformed because partners are seen as sources of valuable assets, knowledge and expertise, rather than recipients of patronage or charity. (shrink)

This paper examines the different mechanisms used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Nigeria seeking to make long-term social investments by meeting the critical challenge of improving water provision. Community enterprise – an increasingly common form of social enterprise, which pursues charitable objectives through business activities – may be the most effective mechanism for building local capacity in a sustainable and accountable way. Traditionally, social investments by MNCs have involved either donations to a charity, which then assumes responsibility for delivering social (...) outcomes, or direct management of social investment in-house. These approaches have been criticized, however, for their limited contribution to local capacity building, their focus on short-term outcomes, and the restricted role that they afford to communities. Partnering with community enterprise, provided there is sufficient local capacity to support it, is the most effective mode of governance through which MNCs can manage social investments in developing countries. (shrink)

Business ethics is an eclectic blend of intellectual traditions that seeks to examine the question of "what should I do in my businessrelationships." This paper attempts to widen this discussion by proposing an alternative view of the nature of ethical behaviour: ethical behaviour as a situated social accomplishment. From an ethnomethodological perspective, norms and rules have the status of interpretive aids whieh are used to negotiate an acceptable meaning for a situation; norms and rules are constituted by, and in part (...) constitute, the situations in which they occur. While most work in business ethics has tended to reify ethical practices, this paper stresses the contingent and situational nature of ethical decision making. In addition to presenting an ethnomethodological perspective, this paper discusses the methodological ramifications of this perspeetive through an examination of three ethnographic studies of situated rule usage. (shrink)

Business ethics is an eclectic blend of intellectual traditions that seeks to examine the question of "what should I do in my businessrelationships." This paper attempts to widen this discussion by proposing an alternative view of the nature of ethical behaviour: ethical behaviour as a situated social accomplishment. From an ethnomethodological perspective, norms and rules have the status of interpretive aids whieh are used to negotiate an acceptable meaning for a situation; norms and rules are constituted by, and in part (...) constitute, the situations in which they occur. While most work in business ethics has tended to reify ethical practices, this paper stresses the contingent and situational nature of ethical decision making. In addition to presenting an ethnomethodological perspective, this paper discusses the methodological ramifications of this perspeetive through an examination of three ethnographic studies of situated rule usage. (shrink)

Inasmuch as Buddhism’s professed goal is the elimination of all attachment to the material world, a pre-occupation with that materiality would immediately strike the disinterested observer as strange, if not improper. Indeed, the monastic tradition eschews engagement with what we colloquially refer to as artistic endeavour, as it detracts from the discipline required to attain the ultimate goal of “snuffing out” the flame that perpetuates suffering (LaFleur 2003, Introduction). Yet, the path to liberation is trodden in the material world, and (...) its manifestations, perceived and processed through the physical senses, are necessary instruments and tools to that end. Cognition of the nature of actions and their fruits can only be achieved by engaging with their manifestations and permutations, using the techniques and disciplines that have been developed in the course of Buddhism’s history. However, the monastic tradition forms but a small part of the Buddhist tradition and the contributions to this volume are concerned in the main with artefacts that circulated outside the cloisters. They present a fascinating purview of how Buddhist ideas and practices circulated in pre-modern Japanese society, showing core beliefs about the Buddhist cosmos and how people from non-monastic walks of life (mainly in the spheres of politics and the aristocracy) availed themselves of that understanding of the world they lived in. (shrink)

Research on bilingualism has grown exponentially in recent years. However, the comprehension of speech in noise, given the ubiquity of both bilingualism and noisy environments, has seen only limited focus. Electroencephalogram studies in monolinguals show an increase in alpha power when listening to speech in noise, which, in the theoretical context where alpha power indexes attentional control, is thought to reflect an increase in attentional demands. In the current study, English/French bilinguals with similar second language proficiency and who varied in (...) terms of age of L2 acquisition from 0 to 15 years completed a speech perception in noise task. Participants were required to identify the final word of high and low semantically constrained auditory sentences such as “Stir your coffee with a spoon” vs. “Bob could have known about the spoon” in both of their languages and in both noise and quiet during electrophysiological recording. We examined the effects of language, AoA, semantic constraint, and listening condition on participants’ induced alpha power during speech comprehension. Our results show an increase in alpha power when participants were listening in their L2, suggesting that listening in an L2 requires additional attentional control compared to the first language, particularly early in processing during word identification. Additionally, despite similar proficiency across participants, our results suggest that under difficult processing demands, AoA modulates the amount of attention required to process the second language. (shrink)

Business ethics is the study of ethics as it applies to a particular sphere of human activity. As such, business ethics presupposes a difference between an individual's experience within a business organization and his or her experience outside the organization. But how do we examine this difference? How do we discuss an individual's experience of everyday reality? What processes create and sustain this reality, and how does one's version of reality affect what is, and what is not, ethical? This paper (...) outlines an approach to these questions based on theory from the sociology of knowledge, an approach which makes some progress towards making business ethics more existential. The sociology of knowledge, and particularly the social constructionist perspective, is concerned with how an institution creates knowledge and how this knowledge affects the cognitive processes of the individuals who make up the institution. The dialectic nature of the interdependent processes which shape both the individual and the organization are important in understanding how business ethics, as one kind of social knowledge, are enacted. Examining these processes leads to several interesting hypotheses about the nature of both the study and practice of business ethics. XXXOnly individuals have a sense of responsibility. — Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

Tracing the Itinerant Path. Jish? Nuns of Medieval Japan, by Caitilin J. Griffiths. Hawai’i University Press, 2016. 214pp. Hb. £68.95. ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-5936-7.