Corporate Social Responsibilityand Virtue Ethics

in Workforce Education and Development

Chris Provis

School of Management, University of South AustraliaDeputy Director, Ethics Centre of South Australia

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Aim: to relate three things

corporatesocial

responsibility

virtueethics

workforce education and development

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Corporate Social Responsibility

• corporations have responsibilities beyond returns to shareholders

• responsibilities to other stakeholders– consumers, employees, suppliers, etc

• this seems clear (despite some theorists)– if I buy something, I have responsibility to think of its

effects on other people

– if I buy a share in a company, I have responsibility to think of its effects on other people

– and so, the company has responsibilities beyond financial returns to me and other shareholders

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Corporate Social Responsibility:An Issue

• corporations have responsibilities

• … but what does that imply for the individuals in the corporations?

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‘The Many Hands Problem’

• corporate actions result from acts by many individuals

e.g. environmental pollution may involve- production manager

- design engineer

- purchasing officers (equipment, materials)

- accountants

- many others

• CSR implies some obligations for individuals• But what, specifically?

Dennis Thompson, 1980, about officials

in government

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Individuals in Organisations

• different challenges than in everyday life• in everyday life, individuals often

– decide on their own actions

– accept responsibility for the nature of the action

– accept responsibility for the outcome of the action

• in organisations, individuals work together to decide on actions

So, how do individuals’ acts achieve CSR?

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Solution A: Conform to Rules

• organisation has rules for individuals

• designed to lead to overall CSR– e.g. standards on types of raw materials, rules for waste

disposal, systems for health and safety, HR procedures

• classical bureaucracy, analysed by Weber

solution A is a rule-based approach

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• use key performance indicators (KPIs)

• first, set organisation goals– by reference to agreed indicators (e.g. GRI)

• then, align individual targets with those goals– e.g. plant manager targets include low emissions

– or HR manager targets include good survey responses

Solution B: Outcome Measures

solution B is an outcome-oriented approach

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Analogies with Ethical Decision-Making

1. a rule-based approach is like Kantian deontology in ethical decision-making

– what makes acts right or wrong is whether they follow certain rules

– e.g. ‘do not steal’, ‘tell no lies’

Immanuel Kant

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Analogies with Ethical Decision-Making (ctd)

2. an outcome-oriented approach is like consequentialism in ethical decision-making

– what makes acts right or wrong is whether they have the best consequences

– pleasure or happiness, perhaps,or ‘utility’ …

Jeremy BenthamJ.S. Mill Peter Singer

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managing individual action to achieve CSR

general approaches toethical decision-making

Solution A: Conform to Rules

Solution B: Outcome Measures

Approach 1: Kantian deontology

Approach 2: consequentialism

I will suggest thatthese have some difficulties

… and then that these haveanalogous difficulties

The analogies

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Ethical Decision-Making: Difficulties

1. Rule-based approach

• ‘rule-worship’

• sometimes seems wrongto follow a rule blindly

- for example, it seems right to lie to a murderer who is pursuing a victim, even though it breaks the rule ‘do not lie’

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rule-worship inflexibility

for Solution A: Conform to Rules

e.g. individuals may say ‘It’s not my job’

Managing individual action to achieve CSR:

analogous difficulties

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‘It’s Not My Job’

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e.g. rules about ways to help disabled people

may be good

but may not suit people with other forms of disability

rule-worship inflexibility

for Solution A: Conform to Rules

Managing individual action to achieve CSR:

analogous difficulties

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Ethical Decision-Making: Difficulties (ctd)

2. Outcome-oriented approach

• sometimes, things seem wrong regardless of consequences

– my act may not make any difference, where many people are involved

– but it might still be wrong- for example, to pad tax returns or

take bribes even if ‘everyone does it’

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e.g. performance evaluation:

- problem separating individual outcomes from group outcomes

- either individuals demoralised oroutcomes not linked to corporate outcomes

outcomes resultfrom many people

‘many hands problem’

for Solution B: Outcome Measures

Managing individual action to achieve CSR:

analogous difficulties (ctd.)

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– what is right or wrong iswhat a virtuous person would do

Another Approach to Ethical Decisions

1. rule-oriented

2. outcome-oriented

3. virtue ethics

good characterhaving good judgment

– much developing literaturee.g.MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981)

Solomon, Ethics and Excellence (1992)Koehn, ‘A Role for Virtue Ethics in the Analysis of Business Practice’,

Business Ethics Quarterly (1995)

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Virtue Ethics and Ethical Decision-making

Key Feature of virtue ethics

• ethical decision-making is not step-by-step calculation

– neither step-by-step application of rules– nor measuring and calculating outcomes

• ethical decision-making is pattern recognition– it uses ‘prototypes’ and ‘exemplars’– typical examples compared with present case

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Pattern-based Reasoning in Ethics

Examples:

• legal reasoning– considering past cases

• Confucius: stories, sayings

• Jesus: parables

all about patterns of resemblance

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Implication for CSR

managing individual action to achieve CSR may need to get individuals to recognise patterns

• not just to follow rules

• not just achieve specified, measurable outcomes

guidelines and principles

may be useful

but these are not rules

KPIs may be usefulbut only for assistancein making comparisons

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Pattern recognition and CSR

For corporations to show social responsibility

• individuals have to make the right decisions

• therefore, individuals have to understand what CSR requires, and see how their own acts affect it

– e.g. understand sustainability, environmental impacts,human resource principles, types of

disability, etc

– as well as how their actions fit into the whole

• a task for workforce education and development

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Can Virtue Be Taught?

• Ryle, Plato• virtue does not seem just like knowledge that we

learn from lectures and memorisation• more like a skill, to be learned through practice• and an inclination, to do the right thing

two requirements:

1. models from senior people

2. education and development

implications forcurriculum developmentand teaching methods• experiential learning• case studies• discussion

Gilbert Ryle Plato

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Conclusion

‘To ensure a sustainable future, it is necessary that TVET also ensures that all workers are able to play appropriate roles, both in the workplace and the wider community, in contributing to social, economic and environmental sustainability.’

(UNESCO, Orienting Technical and Vocational Education and Training for Sustainable Development: A Discussion Paper, 2006)

this requires development of virtue

including ability to see patterns and understand principles