Humanizing Business: What Humanities Can Say to Business (Issues in Business Ethics, 53) 3030722031, 9783030722036

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Issues in Business Ethics 53

Michel Dion R. Edward Freeman Sergiy D. Dmytriyev   Editors

Humanizing Business What Humanities Can Say to Business

Issues in Business Ethics Volume 53 Series Editors Mollie Painter, Nottingham Trent University Business School, Nottingham, UK Frank den Hond, Department of Management & Organization Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland Editorial Board Members George Enderle, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, USA Horst Steinmann, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany Lu Xiaohe, Shanghai, China Daryl Koehn, DePaul University, Chicago, USA Hiro Umezu, Faculty of Business and Commerce, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan Andreas Scherer, University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland Campbell Jones, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

The Issues in Business Ethics series aims to showcase the work of scholars who critically assess the state of contemporary business ethics theory and practice. Business ethics as a field of research and practice is constantly evolving, and as such, this series covers a wide range of values-driven initiatives in organizations, including ethics and compliance, governance, CSR, and sustainable development. We also welcome critical interrogations of the concepts, activities and role-players that are part of such values-driven activities in organizations. The series publishes both monographs and edited volumes. Books in the series address theoretical issues or empirical case studies by means of rigorous philosophical analyses and/or normative evaluation. The series wants to be an outlet for authors who bring the wealth of literature within the humanities and social sciences to bear on contemporary issues in the global business ethics realm. The series especially welcomes work that addresses the interrelations between the agent, organization and society, thus exploiting the differences and connections between the micro, meso and macro levels of moral analysis.The series aims to establish and further the conversation between scholars, experts and practitioners who do not typically have the benefit of each other’s company. As such, it welcomes contributions from various philosophical paradigms, and from a wide array of scholars who are active within in the international business context. Its audience includes scholars and practitioners, as well as senior students, and its subject matter will be relevant to various sectors that have an interest and stake in international business ethics. Authors from all continents are welcome to submit proposals, though the series does seek to encourage a global discourse of a critical and normative nature. The series insists on rigor from a scholarly perspective, but authors are encouraged to write in a style that is accessible to a broad audience and to seek out a subject matter of practical relevance.

Michel Dion  •  R. Edward Freeman Sergiy D. Dmytriyev Editors

Humanizing Business What Humanities Can Say to Business

Editors Michel Dion École de Gestion Université de Sherbrooke Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

R. Edward Freeman Darden School of Business University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA, USA

Sergiy D. Dmytriyev College of Business James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA, USA

ISSN 0925-6733     ISSN 2215-1680 (electronic) Issues in Business Ethics ISBN 978-3-030-72203-6    ISBN 978-3-030-72204-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

Chapter 37 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see licence information in the chapter.

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

An Introductory Essay to the Book on Humanizing Business

Business has been considered by many as an area free of needless sentimentalities, unnecessary romanticism, and other human qualities. Business is thought to be a place people go to make money, while all other “irrational” stuff should be left outside. People can have human feelings, aspirations, and beliefs outside their work, during their free time: letting their emotions go in art galleries, showing their excitement and enthusiasm in evening conversations with friends, or simply being human in the full sense of the word when their work is over. However, once people are at work, they must do business and, prior to entering their workplace in many companies and even whole industries, individuals are expected to strip themselves of their human features hiding them somewhere deep inside. This volume attempts to say the opposite. It strives to humanize business. It aims to show that it is not people who have to suppress their human feelings, aspirations, and beliefs when they are in business, but it is business itself that needs to be redefined by human norms of human beings. What this means is that companies should care about their stakeholders  – let them be themselves, be human at any time, including at work – as well as care for the ecosystems and society at large. Over the last centuries, there have been many instances of attempts to humanize management, all over the world. As a modern idea, we can look to “humanizing” companies such as Robert Owen during the Scottish Enlightenment. In other countries we find a number of companies founded on humanist principles, often called “Utopian Idealists,” such as Oneida and Hershey’s in the USA. Marx’s idea of a proletarian revolution can be seen as an attempt to have a more humanistic version of the corporation. The “Human Relations” movement led by management thinkers such as Elton Mayo, Fritz Roethelsberger, and Mary Follett were instrumental in the post-World War I era to having companies pay more attention to their employees’ well-being. Even Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management was originally framed as a way to take better care of the workers. The quality movement led by Edwards Demming that took place largely in Japan, a very different society, was again aimed to give workers more input into their jobs, and to make these jobs more meaningful. For a more complete history of the variety of moves to institute humanistic management see Pirson (2017) and Dierksmeier (2016). v

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When it comes to the ideas presented in this volume, we as editors have not provided any definition of “humanizing business.” Instead, we have let contributors define business humanization themselves, from their own perspective. This has been our editorial choice because business humanization can embrace much more than the editors would have defined. Besides, to be honest, we do not know what it really means to “humanize business.” We can observe a collective desire to humanize business, although the notion of humanization is not crystal clear. The desire to humanize business presupposes that “business as usual” produces dehumanization, at different degrees and in various contexts and cultures. We can also observe that the desire to humanize is not always developed consciously. Rather, it is enacted intuitively at the back of our mind, somewhere deep inside us. Observing dehumanizing processes generally invokes an inner shock, as though our own concept of “human being” would have been strongly shaken. The processes of humanizing business are often grounded in various concepts of “human being” as well as notions of community life and representations of nature. Such conceptions vary largely in accordance with philosophical, theological/spiritual, artistic, and managerial perspectives one embraces with regard to an organizational life. There are several major currents of thought on humanizing business. One of them is humanistic management which rejects the way corporations sometimes treat people as mere means to achieving organizational goals. Instead, it considers human beings as having the most valuable intrinsic worth on their own. A humanistic approach to business sees organizations as caring about human needs and motivations, respecting human dignity, and helping people pursue their self-realization. Another current of thought, challenging the traditional approach to business, originates from stakeholder theory that emphasizes the need for dia-logos, that is, the relational interconnectedness between various organizational and social stakeholders’ words and deeds. Stakeholder interconnectedness, based on mutual understanding and respect, unveils that something crucial is at stake – humanizing business. Stakeholder theory contests a conventional shareholder primacy paradigm and argues that companies must treat their stakeholders – employees, customers, communities, shareholders, and suppliers – with fairness, dignity, and respect. From a stakeholder theory perspective, business humanization can counterbalance detrimental effects of technocracy and short-termism in stakeholder relationships. Other currents of thought – such as corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability, and corporate citizenship  – strive to humanize business by stressing the link between corporate operations and the surrounding society, as well as the global ecosystem. Despite all the efforts undertaken by business ethicists and some conscious practitioners, business is still viewed by many as an area that is very different from the rest of human life. The standalone position of business, focused on financial gains and often free of true human features, has not yet been shaken because, so far, the main criticism of business has been originating from within business-related domains (for instance, business ethics, industrial sociology and psychology), while the humanities (including philosophy, religion, literature, art, anthropology, and

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history) have not yet been given a chance to be loud enough. Thus, humanizing business has become spatio-temporally demanded. Humanizing processes, which are strengthened by the humanities, open a way to a new business world: more humane, respectful, open-minded, peaceful, and … more interesting. Indeed, as many chapters in this volume point out, the humanities make business more interesting by extending its focus from financial gains to other important parts of human life. Humanizing business does not mean pursuing utopian objectives. Rather, it requires us to remain pragmatic and realistic towards possible changes in the organizational culture and life. Employees, managers, and directors can find an efficient way to strengthen humanizing processes in their own organization. Furthermore, it is not only a matter of individual choice, but also an issue of organizational vision and values that are interdependent with all sorts of co-dependency networks at the organizational, industry, institutional, and societal levels. At the first sight, the diverse content of the book may seem to the reader as kaleidoscopic in nature since many authors have explored the issue of business-­ humanizing processes from various perspectives and disciplines. However, upon a more thorough look, one can discern two organizing structures that categorize the book’s material well. The first one has been developed by the editors ex ante – when the editors offered the authors the opportunity to join the project and share their thoughts on humanizing business. The resulting 46 chapters have been grouped into four parts. In particular, Part I of the book covers philosophy, theology, and spirituality. Part II deals with literature and creative arts. Part III provides ideas for humanizing business from a historical, management, and organization studies perspectives. Though management may often be treated as part of social sciences rather than humanities, there are many management scholars who see a place for management in the humanities since it studies different aspects of human society. Finally, Part IV covers cultural and geographical perspectives on humanizing business, reflecting societal specifics across continents. Though the volume is quite large and represents a vast scope of perspectives on humanizing business, it could not cover all possible views on the topic. For instance, some philosophical schools of thought, such as analytical philosophy (e.g., Wittgenstein), social contract philosophy (e.g., Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), poststructuralism (e.g., Foucault), and postmodernism (e.g., Habermas), as well as some views from organization studies (e.g., conscious capitalism) and religions and spiritualities (e.g., various churches of Protestantism; Sikhism; Shintoism), are not explicitly presented in the book. We would like to caution the reader from thinking that ideas mentioned in one part of the book are completely distinct and independent from the ideas mentioned in another part of the volume. To our surprise, when going through the chapters, we noticed that there are several perspectives that are interwoven across all topics in the four parts of the book, from philosophical/theological to literature/creative arts to historical/management and to cultural/geographical. These interwoven perspectives identify the nature of humanizing business in their own, meaningful way and make up another potential way to organize the book content. The second organizing

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structure became evident ex post – once all the authors completed their works. Let us have a look at each of these interwoven perspectives deeper. First, humanizing business is about developing the moral character of organizational members. Confucian virtues imply that hierarchical authority needs ethical legitimacy (Chap. 19, Tae Wan Kim). Aristotelian virtues are based on human rationality and sociability (Chap. 2, Edwin Hartman). Practical wisdom requires practical knowledge as the source of ethics (Chap. 10, Joanne Ciulla). It is closely linked to collaboration and the active search for harmony among stakeholders (Chap. 25, Laura Dunham). In our highly technological societies, we are challenged to define the moral status of nonhuman beings, and even of robots (Chap. 40, John Hooker and Tae Wan Kim). Our moral judgment capacities call for philosophical basis. A Ricœurian approach would balance Aristotle’s quest for happiness and Kantian moral imperatives: “We learn from Ricœur that the Aristotelian vision of the good and the Kantian moral norm need to be realized in common values of community, in organizations, institutions, and businesses” (Chap. 9, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff). The narrative quest of organizational members could mirror their way to deploy practical wisdom in a daily life. A MacIntyrean perspective would focus on the organizational members’ narrative quest: “Every individual could be described as being engaged in a narrative quest. The quest element implies that individuals are always searching, trying to discover what their purpose(s) are in life, and seeking to achieve those purposes as part of achieving eudaimonia (…) individuals make sense of their lives through their individual and inter-locking communal narratives – and hence the narrative element of the narrative quest” (Chap. 3, Geoff Moore). Narratives can allow organizational members to develop moral imagination about sustainability issues (Chap. 38, Laura Corazza, Alessio Antonini, John Dumay, and Maurizio Cisi). Organizational metaphors can strengthen business and stakeholder relationships, while promoting a better world to live in (Chap. 35, Elizabet Garriga). We could even use storytelling techniques to unveil the particularities of the stakeholder approach of business (Chap. 30, Paul Wagner). Throughout our whole life, we tell stories: “Understanding narrative through literary analysis, and building narrative as a writer, actor, or director, requires that we develop sensibilities and capabilities that are in some ways the reverse of those we seek to develop in other parts of the business school” (Chap. 26, Edward Freeman, Laura Dunham, Gregory Fairchild, and Bidhan Parmar). Secondly, humanizing business lies in the necessity to respect human dignity and freedom. The concepts of human dignity and freedom are connected, even though there may be many different conceptions of their role in ethics around the world and in time as well as across cultural, political, and religious/spiritual systems. Some authors (Chaps. 1, 6, and 20) emphasized such a connectedness much more than others (Chaps. 5, 11, 16, 17, and 34) who considered human dignity as the most important concept. Though our goal here is not to give a comprehensive analysis of human dignity and other foundational ideas of ethics, we are happy to present many insightful perspectives that shed a bright light on the topic. In particular, the inherent dignity of human beings and the interconnectedness between all dimensions of existence are the foundations of the Hindu principle of “non-harming,” and Hindu

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ethics requires organizational members to take ethical responsibilities upon themselves (Chap. 17, Anantanand Rambachan). Buddhism emphasizes that gender equality in the workplace must be actualized in daily organizational life (Chap. 16, Otto Chang and Chi Sheh). “Kant’s moral and political philosophy is based on the dignity of human beings as free and moral persons” (Chap. 1, Norman Bowie). Human dignity is also at the midst of utilitarian philosophies. “For Mill, utilitarianism calls us to treat everyone with fairness, dignity, and respect, and through proper nurturing of our sentiments, our desires will be to seek the good of others” (Chap. 5, Andrew Gustafson). The respect for human dignity can never be separated from existential freedom, since the meaning of human person is strictly connected to the exercise of individual freedom. In a Sartrian context, morality depends on the interdependence between our freedom and the freedom of others (Chap. 6, William McBride). Such interconnectedness inevitably makes human rights issues arise. “Human rights are more than mere expectations: human rights are based on inherent human dignity and demand performance of obligations on the part of duty bearers” (Chap. 11, Surya Deva). Respecting human dignity and freedom requires accepting mutual recognition as means to co-create the world we would like to live in (Chap. 20, Paul Savage). Being free is having the courage to be oneself and the courage to fight the will-to-truth (Chap. 23, Michel Dion). It also requires enhancing and respecting human dignity in all organizational processes (Chap. 34, Michael Pirson). Thirdly, humanizing business helps organizational members deepen the meaning of their values system and manage their emotions, when engaged in stakeholder relationships. Many values and emotions could be involved in such internalization processes: trust, justice, empathy, humility, benevolence, kindness, altruism, and others. The interplay between imagination and emotions is particularly relevant for stakeholder relationships (Chap. 29, Elizabet Garriga) and for cross-cultural contexts (Chap. 21, Pierre Robert Cloet, Alain-Max Guénette, Marie-Anne Mirabeau Paquiry, Philippe Pierre, and Michel Sauquet). Organizational life can give birth to painful experiences. Compassion and the sense of humaneness can then make organizational life much less unbearable. The sense of humaneness is very important for developing harmonious relationships in the organization. Understanding the concrete impact of Levinas’ notion of the “face of the Other” as a potential source of organizational ethics can be helpful (Chap. 7, Dag G.  Aasland). Humaneness implies the applicability of goodness, empathy, humility, and justice to the organizational life. Such values could even be more generally involved in moral education (Chap. 39, Jared Harris; Chap. 45, Joseph DesJardins). Empathy is especially important in organizational life, when organizational members are confronted to painful situations. In such cases, an empathetic imagining of stakeholder interests and motivations can be advantageously developed (Chap. 22, Shady Cosgrove). Literary and artistic works can widen the scope of moral imagination in the organizational setting. Poetry reading can foster “confidence, team working ability and trust” between organizational members (Chap. 24, Clare Morgan). Music can strengthen close relationships in the organizational life (Chap. 27, Adrian Keevil). Humanizing processes favor the concreteness of justice, liberty, kindness, and empathy in the organizational life (Chap. 28, Daryl Koehn). They promote mutual

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understanding and peaceful relationships in the organization. “Kindness is like the biblical prescription of loving the stranger” (Chap. 13, Moses Pava). Social justice could be the ultimate purpose of humanizing business. It is the case when social justice and its related values, such as love of benevolence, are the true foundations of ethics (Chap. 12, Domènec Melé; Chap. 14, George Gotsis and Ioannis Katselidis). Organizational justice, altruism, and mutual trust can become very important issues in stakeholder relationships (Chap. 36, Jeffrey Harrison, Andrew Wicks, and Maximilian Palmié). However, we must be aware that stakeholder trust takes place in the context of multiple stakeholder values (Chap. 37, Sybille Sachs and Johanna Kujala). The harmonization of multiple stakeholder values remains a deep challenge for all stakeholders. Some could argue that social justice is interconnected with mutual respect/trust and universal compassion (Chap. 15, Rafik Beekun). Humanizing business could make organizational members recover the meaning and scope of basic values and attitudes, such as fairness, trust, and transparency (Chap. 43, Damiano Cortese and Chiara Civera). Fourthly, humanizing business requires interpreting the complexity of organizational realities. Complexity implies to view organizational events/phenomena in their global context. Criticizing historical traditions is an efficient way to better understand our present situation, since such traditions are deeply rooted in the course of history. Sometimes, historical traditions still influence corporate decisions and strategies. For instance, patriarchy is still on the road. A feminist ethics of relational care fights any form of exploitation and domination, while acknowledging the ontological interconnectedness between all human beings (Chap. 4, Marianna Fotaki). We need to deconstruct male and female archetypes (Chap. 8, Keith Moser). Fighting historical structural inequalities and promoting social justice in developing countries are also crucial issues (Chap. 46, Simone Barakat and José Guilherme de Campos). We can observe how historical traditions about dehumanized commerce influence the way people now do business (Chap. 31, Patricia Werhane and Allison Elias). Hopefully, some new organizational orientations and designs could open the way to rehumanize business. Perhaps, the past and present experiences of social entrepreneurship could be challenging in this respect (Chap. 32, Álvaro Moreno; Chap. 44, Anastasiya Luzgina). A holistic approach could unveil the interconnectedness between various values/attitudes, such as humility and altruism, and flexibility (Chap. 18, Yanxia Zhao). Systems thinking and humanism can be concretely interrelated (Chap. 42, Robert Strand). A holistic approach of the complex environment of organizations could certainly allow organizational members to acknowledge the interconnected components of their organizational life (Chap. 41, Ann T. Jordan) and take all stakeholders interests and motivations into account. Finally, even though business operates in the environment characterized by high uncertainty, there is no need to be afraid of it as many companies are today. Humanities provide not only a useful skillset for business (e.g., critical thinking, moral compass, etc.) but, more importantly, humanities can enable business to appreciate all the ambiguity and complexity in the world (Chap. 33, Santiago Meija and A.-J. Aronstein). Of course, these four perspectives on humanizing business are not exhaustive. Humanizing business does not require to focus solely on them. Each approach is as

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much important as the others. Each one could largely contribute to humanizing business in the long-term. Each one could be interpreted in different ways, depending on historical, social, cultural, political, economic, and religious/spiritual conditioning factors. Each approach of humanizing processes could vary from one organization to another, from one country to another, or from one period to another. One purpose of the book is about understanding to what extent humanities have contributed to humanizing business in the last centuries. Another, more important purpose, is about how humanities may contribute to humanizing business in the here-and-now world, which is complex and pluralistic. The main contribution of the book lies in widening the scope of reflection about humanizing business. Philosophy, religion, fiction, poetry, theater, creative arts, music, painting, filmmaking, anthropology, history, culture, and, of course, organization studies could have different, yet complementary and synergetic, perspectives on humanizing processes in business. Humanities enhance an interdisciplinary dialogue, making the possibility of humanizing business more feasible and more appealing. You just need to turn over the page and start reading the book. École de Gestion, Université de Sherbrooke Sherbrooke, QC, USA [email protected] College of Business, James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA, USA [email protected]  Darden School of Business, University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA, USA [email protected] 

Michel Dion

Sergiy D. Dmytriyev

R. Edward Freeman

References Dierksmeier, Claus. 2016. Reframing Economic Ethics: The Philosophical Foundations of Humanistic Management. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pirson, Michael. 2017. Humanistic Management: Protecting Dignity and Promoting Well-Being. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Contents

Part I Philosophical and Theological Perspectives on Humanizing Business 1 A Kantian Perspective on Humanizing Business����������������������������������    3 Norman E. Bowie 2 An Aristotelian Conception of Humanistic Business����������������������������   17 Edwin M. Hartman 3 A MacIntyrean Virtue Ethics Perspective on Humanizing Business�������������������������������������������������������������������������   33 Geoff Moore 4 Humanizing Business by Developing a Feminist Ethics of Embodied Relational Care������������������������������������������������������������������   43 Marianna Fotaki 5 Business for the Greater Good: A Utilitarian Perspective on Humanizing Business�������������������������������������������������������������������������   57 Andrew B. Gustafson 6 Humanizing Business – A Sartrean Perspective������������������������������������   67 William L. McBride 7 Re-humanizing Business: Some Lessons from Levinas and Their Implications����������������������������������������������������������������������������   75 Dag Gjerløw Aasland 8 The Philosophy of Jean Baudrillard: A Counter-Hegemonic Tool for Deconstructing Male and Female Archetypes in (Post-) Modern Consumer Republics? ��������������������������������������������������������������   87 Keith Moser

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9 Paul Ricœur: A Hermeneutic Perspective on Humanizing Business�������������������������������������������������������������������������   97 Jacob Dahl Rendtorff 10 The Use of Casuistry to Humanize Business ����������������������������������������  115 Joanne B. Ciulla 11 Human Rights and Humanizing Business ��������������������������������������������  129 Surya Deva 12 Christian-Catholic Humanism for Humanizing Business��������������������  145 Domènec Melé 13 The Possibility of Kindness in Business: Re-visiting the Case of Malden Mills from a Jewish Ethics Perspective�������������������������������  157 Moses L. Pava 14 An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Humanizing Business: The Case of Greek Orthodoxy����������������������������������������������������������������  173 George Gotsis and Ioannis Katselidis 15 An Islamic Perspective of Humanizing Business����������������������������������  195 Rafik Beekun 16 A Buddhist Perspective on Humanizing Business��������������������������������  207 Otto Chang and Chi Sheh 17 A Hindu Perspective on Humanizing Business ������������������������������������  221 Anantanand Rambachan 18 A Daoism Perspective on Humanizing Business ����������������������������������  231 Yanxia Zhao 19 Humanizing Business Through Confucian Meritocracy����������������������  247 Tae Wan Kim Part II Literature and Creative Arts Perspectives on Humanizing Business 20 A Novel Perspective on Humanizing Business��������������������������������������  263 Paul D. Savage 21 Fiction and Cross-Cultural Understanding������������������������������������������  273 Pierre Robert Cloet, Alain Max Guénette, Marie-Anne Mirabeau Paquiry, Philippe Pierre, and Michel Sauquet 22 Stakeholder Theory and Narrative: Writing to Better Business Decisions����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  293 Shady Cosgrove

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23 How Could Henrik Ibsen’s Plays Contribute to Humanizing Business and Nurturing the Development of Ethical Leadership?����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  309 Michel Dion 24 Poetry and Business: Thinking Beyond the Facts ��������������������������������  331 Clare Morgan 25 A Theater Perspective on Humanizing Business����������������������������������  343 Laura Dunham 26 Leveraging the Creative Arts in Business Ethics Teaching������������������  355 R. Edward Freeman, Laura Dunham, Gregory Fairchild, and Bidhan L. Parmar 27 Humanizing Business: A Music Perspective������������������������������������������  371 Adrian Keevil 28 The Humanizing Potential of Paintings and Their Relevance to Business Practice����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  387 Daryl Koehn 29 Unfolding Business and Stakeholder Relationships: The Heuristic Drawing Process Tool������������������������������������������������������  403 Elisabet Garriga 30 Creating a Documentary About Corporations: A Filmmaker’s Perspective ��������������������������������������������������������������������  427 Paul Wagner Part III Historical, Management, and Organization Studies Perspectives on Humanizing Business 31 Using (and Misusing) Historical Texts to Humanize Commerce: Evidence from Smith, Marx, and Spencer������������������������  439 Patricia H. Werhane and Allison L. Elias 32 A Historical Perspective on Entrepreneurship and Business Humanization: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present��������������  461 Álvaro J. Moreno 33 Why We Need Humanities in Business: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Ambiguity������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  473 Santiago Mejia and A-J Aronstein 34 The Role of Humanistic Management in Humanizing Business ��������  489 Michael A. Pirson

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35 The Role of Champion Metaphors in Humanizing Business and Stakeholder Relationships ��������������������������������������������������������������  503 Elisabet Garriga 36 Stakeholders Are Human: The Micro-­foundations of Stakeholder Theory and an Application to the Value Distribution Problem ����������  529 Jeffrey S. Harrison, Andrew C. Wicks, and Maximilian Palmié 37 Stakeholder Engagement in Humanizing Business������������������������������  559 Sybille Sachs and Johanna Kujala 38 Sustainability Reporting and Interactive Storytelling: A Genre Approach for Humanising Business����������������������������������������  573 Laura Corazza, Alessio Antonini, John Dumay, and Maurizio Cisi 39 Strategy Lessons from Shakespeare? Humanities and the Soul of Business������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  591 Jared D. Harris 40 Humanizing Business in the Age of Artificial Intelligence ������������������  601 John Hooker and Tae Wan Kim Part IV Cultural and Geographical Perspectives on Humanizing Business 41 An Anthropological Perspective on Humanizing Business������������������  617 Ann T. Jordan 42 A Nordic Perspective on Humanizing Business������������������������������������  633 Robert Strand 43 A Western European Perspective on Humanizing Business: Forging New Identities, Recovering Human Values, Limiting Growth������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  651 Damiano Cortese and Chiara Civera 44 An Eastern European and Baltic Perspective on Humanizing Business: The Role of State, Social Entrepreneurship, and For-Profit Enterprises����������������������������������������������������������������������  669 Anastasiya Luzgina 45 A North American Perspective: Humanizing Business Through Liberal Education��������������������������������������������������������������������  685 Joseph DesJardins 46 A Latin American Perspective on Humanizing Business ��������������������  699 Simone R. Barakat and José Guilherme F. de Campos

About the Editors

Michel  Dion  is Full Professor and Chairholder of the CIBC Research Chair on Financial Integrity, École de gestion, Université de Sherbrooke (Québec, Canada). He is also Head of the Department of Management and Human Resources Management. His main fields of research include: business ethics; financial crime; management, spirituality, literature, and organization. His works appear in Business Ethics: A European Review, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, the International Journal of Organizational Analysis, and the International Journal of Social Economics. He has published many articles on corporate moral discourse and social responsibility, corruption, and ethical leadership in the Humanistic Management Journal, International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Business Ethics: A European Review, Social Responsibility Journal, and the International Journal of Social Economics.  His most recent books are: Worldviews, Ethics, and Organizational Life (Springer, 2022); Éthique de l’entreprise. Questionnement philosophique (Yvon Blais, 2019); Financial Crime and Existential Philosophy (Springer, 2014). With David Weisstub and Jean-Loup Richet, he was co-editor of Financial Crimes: Psychological, Technological, and Ethical Issues (Springer, 2016). Sergiy D. Dmytriyev  is Assistant Professor of Management at James Management University. His research interests connect Strategic Management and Social Issues through the exploration of stakeholder management and supererogation (going beyond duty) in organizations. His latest books are Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility with Patricia H.  Werhane and R.  Edward Freeman, Cambridge University Press in 2017; and The Moral Imagination of Patricia Werhane: A Festschrift, with R. Edward Freeman and Andrew C. Wicks, Springer in 2018. He has also co-authored articles on different aspects of stakeholder theory published in Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, and Symphonia. Emerging Issues in Management.  Dmytriyev teaches strategic management and management consulting. He received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Prior to

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joining academia, Dmytriyev worked for Procter & Gamble, Bain & Company, and Monsanto. He resides with his wife and three children in Harrisonburg, Virginia. R.  Edward  Freeman  is University Professor, Elis and Signe Olsson Professor, Academic Director of the Institute for Business in Society, and Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center for Applier Ethics at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is best known for his award-winning book, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman, 1984; and reprinted by Cambridge University Press in 2010). His latest books are The Power of And with Kirsten Martin and Bidhan Parmar, Columbia University Press in 2020; The Cambridge Handbook of Stakeholder Theory with Jeffrey Harrison, Jay Barney and Robert Phillips, Cambridge University Press in 2019; Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility with Patricia Werhane and Sergiy Dmytriyev, Cambridge University Press in 2017, and Bridging the Values Gap with Ellen Auster, Berrett-­ Koehler Publishers in 2015. He has received six honorary doctorates (Doctor Honoris Causa) from: Radboud University in the Netherlands; Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain; the Hanken School of Economics, and Tampere University in Finland; Sherbrooke University in Canada; and Leuphana University in Germany, for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics. Freeman has been Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Ethics, one of the leading journals in business ethics. He is the author of more than 300 publications in a wide variety of academic and practitioner outlets. At its 2010 annual meeting, the Society for Business Ethics presented Freeman with its “Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship Award” for his stakeholder theory work, to which there has currently been more than 100,000 citations. The Academy of Management awarded Freeman the 2018 Award for Distinguished Scholarly Contributions to Management recognizing his influential lifetime career achievements. He is a lifelong student of philosophy, martial arts and the blues. Freeman is a founding member of Red Goat Records (redgoatrecords.com) bringing the joy of original soul and rhythm and blues music into the twenty-first century. He is also a principal in Stakeholder Media LLC sponsor of The Stakeholder Podcast where he is the host.

Part I

Philosophical and Theological Perspectives on Humanizing Business

Chapter 1

A Kantian Perspective on Humanizing Business Norman E. Bowie

The Dark Side Even in China and Russia, there is a form of market economy and businesses throughout the world are urged to be competitive (efficient). This competitive market economy has brought untold benefits primarily through an ever increasing standard of living that provides goods and services that were unimaginable a generation, to say nothing of 100 years, ago. Yet the market economy and the competitive businesses embedded therein have a lousy reputation. The business world is seen as amoral at best and immoral at worst. Some describe the business world as a dog eat dog world. Others describe it as inhumane. This view is not new; it goes back, surprisingly, to Adam Smith himself. We are all familiar with Adam Smith’s description of the efficiencies created by the division of labor in a pin factory. Less familiar is Smith’s description of the inhumanity of a late eighteenth century factory organized on the principle of the division of labor. The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are, perhaps, always the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging … His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, N. E. Bowie (*) University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_1

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in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society, this is the state into which the laboring poor, that is the great body of people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.1 As industrialization progressed in the nineteenth century, exposes of the dehumanization of business appeared in the press, in novels, and in art. These descriptions of dehumanization were called muckraking and the journals that published them the yellow press. Prominent muckrakers included Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair whose account of life in the meat-packing industry (The Jungle) was particularly graphic. Business also has a long history of labor strife. The violent strikes of the past are gone but so is the power of labor unions and with that loss of power, protecting workers from inhumane conditions is diminished. Recently a number of articles have been particularly critical of labor conditions in Amazon shipping facilities.2 Of all the tech firms Facebook has been the most criticized both for invasion of privacy and for its seeming inability to eliminate “fake news” or other objectionable content. And labor is not the only stakeholder that is often treated in a dehumanizing way. The consumer is often treated that way as well. Consumers are subject to manipulative advertising, dishonest advertising and dangerous products. Consumers complaints here go back decades from Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at any Speed, to Vance Packards, the Hidden Persuaders. Sometimes as with Wells Fargo there is outright fraud.3 Rather than continue a litany of examples of dehumanization, perhaps it is time to ask, “What has gone wrong.” In the mid-twentieth century Albert Carr pointed out that business operated under a different ethic- an ethic different from that found from the pulpit and in society at large. The golden rule for all its value as an ideal for society is simply not feasible as a guide for business. A good part of the time the businessman is trying to do to others as he hopes others will not do unto him.4 Carr compares the ethics of business to the ethics of poker. Poker’s own brand of ethics is different from the ethical ideals of civilized human relationships. The game calls for distrust of the other fellow. It ignores the claim of friendship. Cunning deception and concealment of one’s strength and intentions, not kindness and open heartedness, are vital in poker. No one thinks any worse of

1  Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations 1776. Book 5 Chapter 1 part III, Article 2 “Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Education of Youth.” 2  Isobel Asher Hamilton, “Amazon got a hostile welcome from a New York labor union, which savaged its working conditions as ‘deadly and dehumanizing’” Business Insider November 29, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-conditions-savaged-by-­­ rwdsu-2018-11. Downloaded July 20, 2019. 3  For example see Annalyn, Kurtz, 2018. “Wells Fargo is Paying $575 Million to Settle False Account Claims”, CNN Business https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/28/business/wells-fargo-­ settlement/index.html 4  Albert Carr, “Is Business is Bluffing Ethical”, Harvard Business Review, 46 (1968), 146.

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poker on that account. And no one should think any worse of the game of business because its standards of right and wrong differ from the prevailing traditions of morality in our society.5 Others have argued that business must be dehumanizing since it operates on the profit motive and every action is based on how profits will be affected. Economists have focused on the value of efficiency to the point where efficiency becomes an end itself. Thus the dominant narrative about business is that it is a rough and tumble institution driven by a heartless emphasis on efficiency and profit. If business is to be a humanizing force in society the traditional narrative about business must change. Kant’s moral philosophy provides a foundation for that change.

Kant’s Humanizing Moral Philosophy Our first step is to provide a justification for Kant’s moral philosophy and then point out how Kant’s philosophy fits well with morality of ordinary folk or with the implicit morality of the general population. The next step is to provide some examples of humanizing business practices that are profitable and meet the demands of Kantian morality. The essay concludes with a look at a futuristic scenario where robots replace humans in many business interactions. How can business be “humanized” in the age of robotics?

 he Kantian Narrative: Business as a Moral Community T Grounded in the Dignity of Business Stakeholders Kant’s moral and political philosophy is based the dignity of human beings as free and moral persons. As free and moral agents, human beings have a dignity that is beyond price and that each human being has a duty to treat other human beings as an end and never as a means merely. The foundation of Kant’s moral philosophy is freedom. To account for human experience, especially moral experience, we must consider ourselves to be free. Humans must act as if they were free, even if freedom cannot be proved. Human freedom is not simply being free from coercion. Human freedom is necessary if we are to act on laws of our own making. Reasoning involves acting on laws or principles and thus freedom is necessary for rationality. Kant’s philosophy has been mischaracterized as a brand of rationalism. In reality Kant’s philosophy is a philosophy of freedom.

 Ibid., 148.

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The freedom to follow laws of our own making rather than simply responding to desires and other internal forces is what gives human beings dignity. Each of us recognizes this freedom and feels himself or herself worthy of dignity. However, that recognition of our own dignity brings with it the requirement that we recognize the dignity of all other human beings. As a point of logic, if I am entitled to be treated with dignity just because I am a human being, then I must treat other human beings with dignity as well. Treating people with dignity means that one cannot simply use another person simply as a means to your own personal ends. The public recognizes that simply using people is unethical even if most people have never heard of Kant. Kant’s logic shows that treating people with respect is a universal law for human interaction. Kant put it this way. “Always act so that you treat the humanity of a person, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.”6 Business relationships are not exempt from the respect for persons principle. In a business relationship a person cannot simply be a means for someone else to make a profit. This demand is inconsistent with the current business narrative that morally permits managers to use people to their own ends, but it is not inconsistent with the economic narrative that economic transactions are the epitome of free actions where each party believes that it gains from the transaction. At least in theory no one is “used” in that transaction. R Edward Freeman and his colleagues have emphasized that business is a set of relationships among stakeholders and that the purpose of business is to provide value for all the stakeholders. This stakeholder view of business is consistent with Kant’s respect for persons principle since the business relationship is supposed to provide value for all the relevant stakeholders. The tone of that narrative is very different from the traditional narrative which says that in a publicly held corporation, the purpose of business is to maximize profits for stockholders. That narrative seems to allow using other stakeholders simply as a means to stockholder profits.7 A Kantian sees the corporation as a moral community since the stakeholders are human beings. A Kantian has an answer to the perennial question, How should the corporation be governed? Kant’s answer is found in his Kingdom of Ends principle. Loosely put Kant maintained that in a cooperative enterprise you should act as if the enterprise consisted of a ideal kingdom of ends in which each member was both a subject and sovereign with respect to the rules that govern the enterprise. Each individual is sovereign with respect to the rules that govern the enterprise because each member has voluntarily approved or endorsed them and each individual is subject

 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785 L.W. Beck Trans. (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 46. 7  Defenders of the traditional narrative have argued that the other stakeholders have agreed to be used as a means for increased stockholder wealth. However, Kant’s respect for persons principle does not allow using oneself simply as a means to the end of another. But the other stakeholders do gain, it might be argued and thus are not used simply as a means. Whether such an argument succeeds depends on whether the firm as a nexus of contracts is really a viable description of business reality. 6

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to the rules because the voluntary approval or endorsement of the governing rules and principles implies acceptance. To accept the rules of an organization and then not follow them violates the other fundamental principle of Kant’s moral philosophy; the universality principle. That principle stipulates, “Act only on that maxim8 by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”9 A word of explanation is in order. What Kant’s universality principle requires is that for a person to act rationally he or she must act consistently. A universal principle can be publicly advocated since it is reasonable that every rational person accept it. It requires that if a person in a set of circumstances C and facing situation S decides on action A, then any other person in similar circumstances C and facing a similar situation S can also take action A. Thus you cannot will a maxim to be universal when you will to be an exception to it. For if you did that then everyone else could will that he or she be an exception and the notion of a law in that instance would make no sense. In this way Kant can show that lying and stealing are wrong. The liar can only succeed if others do not lie and universalized stealing would undermine the private property system upon which stealing depends. To generalize you cannot accept the laws for conducting a cooperative enterprise and then make an exception of yourself. That is the height of inconsistency and immorality. Members of a cooperative enterprise must accept these universal maxims and thus such a cooperative enterprise constitutes an ideal kingdom of ends-a moral community of rational stakeholders. In a cooperative enterprise that is voluntarily accepted, the rules governing that organization should be transparent, publicly advocated and universally accepted. So in summary, from a Kantian perspective a humanized business is a business that has as its starting point the dignity of the stakeholders of that business as a core value. To achieve dignity, the business must be seen as a moral community of stakeholders who are governed by rules that are publicly advocated and are universally acceptable to all. Furthermore, no stakeholder can be used simply as a means to provide value for another stakeholder. Kant’s moral philosophy is not an easy read but it is entirely consistent with ordinary morality as accepted –although not always practiced- virtually everywhere. The requirement that you act on maxims that can be made into a universal law is similar to the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you will have them do unto you” or in a more modern expression, “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” If parents give children moral instruction, something like the Golden Rule or Kant’s universality requirement is at the center. Kant’s respect for the humanity in a person principle, also receives universal endorsement. People demand respect as a right. This moral demand is so serious that showing disrespect for someone is often an invitation to violence. Respect for each person is also a foundation for a doctrine of human rights. And finally the notion of a rule governed cooperative organization or enterprise requires that each member not make an exception of oneself. Making an

 “Maxim” is a technical term for the principle on which an action is based.  Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 38.

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exception of oneself is often recognized as unethical and unfair. Demands not to be treated unfairly are common throughout the world. So Kantian morality, although hard to understand as written, is not at odds with morality as ordinarily perceived and practiced. Business would be humanized if it were governed by the central tenets of Kant’s moral philosophy. At the most abstract level, what prevents the humanization of business is a narrative like that of Carr that sees business as separated from the other institutions in a society and that sees the institution of business as subject to a less stringent morality than the morality of Kant and, by extension, of ordinary morality. At least Carr admits that there are some moral principles inherent in business practice even if they are not the principles of ordinary morality. Some theorists are guilty of a more radical separation where the business decision is totally separate from moral questions regarding that decision. As R Edward Freeman has noted, such a practice is guilty of a separation thesis that treats a business decision as one thing and an ethical decision as another.10 Those who are under the spell of the separation thesis will seek first what is profitable and then, if at all, ask if it is ethical. But Freeman is correct in arguing that the business aspect and the ethical aspect are intertwined and must be considered together. A Kantian would agree. So long as we are discussing human beings and human relationships, we are involved in ethical decision making if only by default. By insisting that we look at business and business relationships in a new way, a Kantian approach provides a narrative that fits well with stakeholder theory and, indeed, may provide a moral foundation for adopting a stakeholder theory of management. But that does not exhaust contributions the Kantian approach makes to humanizing business. The next section considers both specific humanizing business practices that Kantian ethics justifies and other non-humanizing business practices that run afoul of Kantian morality.

Humanizing Business Practices Employment at Will An emphasis on the importance of freedom and dignity leads immediately to the human relations realm. Business would be more humane if employment at will were not permitted. The doctrine of employment at will says that in the absence of a contract or specific legislative protection, a person may be fired for any reason-good reason, bad reason or no reason at all. In order to get the job many potential employees are required to sign a statement specifying that they are at will employees. Firing

 R Edward Freeman, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Andrew C Wicks, Bidhan L Parmar, Simone de Cole, Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 220–24 For those interested in this topic, there is an extensive literature on this topic.

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someone without a reason or firing someone for a bad reason does not treat the humanity of a person with respect. It is simply a raw exercise of power. At will firings do not show respect and undermine the dignity to which all human beings are entitled. To make matters worse, often when a person is fired in this way, he or she is given only a limited time to collect personal belongings, is required to immediately surrender keys, computer codes or passwords, and anything that conceivably might belong to the company and then is unceremoniously ushered out the door. This behavior on the part of management violates the dignity and respect to which employees are entitled. Such management behavior is disrespectful even when the employee is let go for a good reason such as economic necessity. Economic necessity may require a reduction in staff. But that does not justify cruel treatment for those who are let go. The pain of job loss is bad enough; superfluous additions to the pain by an insensitive and undignified separation are cruel and dehumanizing.

Participative Management The critique of employment at will leads one to ask how should employees be treated if they are to be treated humanely. One obvious answer is that their autonomy should be respected and to do that the employees must have a say in how the corporation is run and decisions affecting them are made. Employees must be participants in the management process rather than be mere recipients of orders that they are expected to carry out. Management scholars have provided many techniques that allow for participative management. One that is especially consistent with Kantian philosophy is open book management. Open book management is a technique developed by Jack Stack at the Springfield Remanufacturing Company and made popular in his book The Great Game of Business. Under open book management employees are given all the financial information about the company. They also participate in a profit sharing plan where what they make is in large part determined by the profit of the company. With complete information and the proper incentives, employees behave responsibly without the necessity of supervisors. How does open book management do what it does? The simplest answer is this. People get a chance to act, to take responsibility, rather than just doing their job. …No supervisor or department head can anticipate or handle all …situations. A company that hired enough managers to do so would go broke from the overhead, Open book management gets people on the job doing things right. And it teaches them to make smart decisions…because they can see the impact of their decision on the relevant numbers.11

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 John Case, Open Book Management (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1995) 45,46.

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Notice the way that open book management respects the humanity and thus the dignity of the employees. They are treated as responsible adults. When given the proper information including financial information, they make rational decisions without being ordered by supervisors to do so. Since their compensation depends on their behavior, they take a greater interest in their work. All of this gives them a sense of importance and their work becomes more meaningful. Work itself has a dignity rather than seen as drudgery.

The Humanizing Leader It is often said that ethics starts at the top. So does the responsibility for humanizing the workplace. Humanizing the work place requires a different philosophy from the traditional “me boss, you worker” viewpoint still found in many businesses today. Some might argue that changes in the traditional viewpoint have already occurred in some of the major corporations, but there are still many CEO’s who still think that a tough management approach is the way to get things done. Moreover, the traditional approach is still extremely common in small and medium size companies. But if humanization of business requires some form of participative management such as open book management, one cannot lead that kind of business with the old philosophy. In earlier work I have proposed a Kantian theory of leadership that seeks to make every one in the organization a leader.12 In that way the dignity of all persons within the business organization is enhanced. My inspiration for this Kantian view was the Harvard Business School case ABB’s Relay Business.13 The case unfolds as follows: the CEO Percy Barnivik is the main character yet he appears only briefly in the case; after page 2 Barnivik is not mentioned again. Where did he go? Actually in a sense he is always there. Barnivik has given his executive vice president Goran Lindahl the responsibility for decentralization and for communicating the principles of decentralization throughout the organization. Individual accountability was a core principle of that philosophy. To implement this strategy Lindahl delegated a number of tasks including a dispute on the allocation of export markets. He gave responsibility for resolving that dispute to Ulf Gundemark who was ABB’s business head for the worldwide relay business. The specifics of the dispute involved shortening the company’s lines to its customers and minimizing the non-value work in the system. Gundemark gave the task of resolving the dispute to four marketing managers. After extended discussion, the marketing managers reported that they could not make a decision. Normally in such a case the “boss” of the marketing managers would make the decision. But Gundemark would not decide the matter. He insisted that the marketing managers make it. After more  Norman E Bowie, “A Kantian Theory of Leadership,” Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 21 (2000) 185–93. 13  This account is taken from my Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective 2nd Edition, 2017 Cambridge University Press pp. 99–100. 12

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extended meetings over several days, they reported back a three to one decision. But Gundemark wanted a unanimous decision and he sent them back until three days later he got one. This process might seem inefficient but in the end a decision was reached that was acceptable to all. This is consistent with the Kant’s point that in an ideal organization, decisions should be acceptable to all. In that sense each person in the organization would be subject and sovereign with respect to the decision. Of course I recognize that all decisions within a business cannot be unanimous. But the rules and procedures that provide for the governance and management of the corporation should have the buy-in of all the corporate stakeholders. This buy-in can be accomplished through stakeholder representation. The key point here is that a business should be organized so that the autonomy of all the stakeholders be honored. It takes a Kantian type of leader to make that happen. There are many additional examples that would suggest how a business could be humanized but limitations of space prevent further discussion here. In a business school setting, the various social science disciplines could and sometimes do provide the management techniques to humanize the workplace. The business philosopher’s task is to provide a ethical vision of what a humanized business would be. I have long believed that Immanuel Kant’s philosophy when properly understood and applied can provide such a vision. It is the task of the social scientists in the business school to provide the details on how that vision can be realized.

What Will the Future Bring? Most commentators who look into the near future see seismic changes in how business will interact with stakeholders. Yet so far discussions of the impact of all this technological advance on the humanity of persons and thus on our sense of respect and dignity are limited. A recent exception is the critical examination of the impact of social media on human relationships. First, there has been a general loss of privacy. A loss of privacy amounts to a loss of a fundamental aspect of autonomy and thus a loss of dignity. Joseph Kupfer develops a comprehensive Kantian argument for privacy.14 Kupfer starts with the assumption that autonomy is a basic value. He then shows that the development of a self-concept is a necessary condition for autonomy. He then cites studies to show the importance of privacy in the development of a self-concept. People in controlled environments such as prisons, hospitals, and military establishments can lose their sense of control and have their development as autonomous beings delayed or even reversed. Institutions that deny privacy hinder the development of individual autonomy and thus are inhumane.

 Joseph Kupfer, “Privacy, Autonomy, and Self-Concept.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 24 (1987) pp. 81–7.

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Kupfer also points out that privacy is necessary for autonomy in another way. Having privacy is a way of distinguishing our relationships with friends, casual acquaintances and the general public. Absent privacy and the distinction is obliterated along with a substantial piece of autonomy. Privacy allows us to have different kinds of human relationships. Once again we see that undermining privacy undermines individual freedom to differentiate among our relationships and thus is inhumane.15 Technology advances continue to exacerbate privacy concerns. Facial recognition techniques present a special threat. Already China is using facial recognition to track citizens and to rate them on their civic consciousness through a system of “social credit scores.16 Citizens who rank low are punished. Punishments include loss of ability to fly, use public transportation, or access certain benefits like a mortgage. Kantians consider this loss of autonomy inhumane. Another dehumanizing feature of the information age is the disinformation and extreme verbal abuse-cyber-bullying and mass shaming that occur. This abuse of social media is a violation of Kantian ethics because lying is a violation of the universality imperative (discussed earlier) and verbal abuse and other forms of disrespect is a violation of the respect for persons imperative. Persons at the receiving end of Facebook posts, Tweets, and other forms of social media communication are persons; they are not machines. This disrespectful conduct is aided by the fact that people can remain anonymous and thus private (privacy can have its downside as well). In anonymous communication the ordinary restraints on conduct are removed­or nearly so. There is nothing new here, except to say that arguably communication through social media has increased dehumanized communication among human beings. And we must not forget that social media are extremely profitable businesses and thus a Kantian can say that social media are dehumanizing businesses. Thus it is no wonder that Facebook and other media companies are struggling both to increase privacy and simultaneously to ban disrespectful conduct and violators of its proper conduct policies from its platforms. But protecting privacy and punishing improper conduct violators are goals in tension. It is no surprise that they are difficult goals to achieve but achieving the right balance is an important humanizing business project in the immediate future.

 I take this discussion of Kupfer from my Management Ethics with Patricia H Werhane, (2005) Blackwell Publishers. 16  Charlie Campbell/Chengdu, “How China is Using “Social Credit Scores” to Reward and Punish its Citizens”, Time, https://time.com/collection/davos-2019/5502592/china-social-credit-score/. Downloaded July 21, 2019. 15

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Robots Technology will eliminate much of the human factor in business interactions. Customers will have less and less interaction with live people. Self check-outs are already common in grocery stores and in large retail outlets like Target and Walmart while interaction with the biggest sales outlet of them all, Amazon, is strictly an online operation. There is speculation that in a few years drones will deliver a piping hot Starbucks coffee to your home. A Kantian interaction based on treating the dignity in the humanity of a person as an end is not possible with a machine. A machine is not a Kantian agent and the Kantian agent who may have created the machine is not present in the interaction. An interaction with an Amazon employee is virtually impossible. Does the lack of human interaction in a business transaction mean that the interaction is not humane? To create a humane business culture business people and other professional must at least consider this question. Few may mourn the passing of human interactions in the purchasing and delivery of consumer products. Far more concern exists about the robots who will take over so many human tasks- even to the flipping of hamburgers. In some cases an actual robotic is not needed; computers buttressed by artificial intelligence (AI) will do the trick. Driverless cars and trucks are already in the experimental stage as we all know. The impact of an impersonal technology on job availability is a serious item of concern. Estimates are that robots and other advances in technology will replace 47% of current jobs and that in this case the new technologies will not create nearly enough jobs to be offsetting. We could be looking at an unemployment rate of between 25 and 35 per cent.17 Dehumanization brought about by robots and other advances in technology has not received the attention leveled on dehumanization on social media. Suppose that a large percentage of the population could no longer hold jobs or pursue an occupation. Suppose further that society addresses this situation by providing not only a minimum standard of living but a decent standard of living to those unable to work. (I admit that this latter assumption is unlikely.) The problem does not end there. Work has been one of the cornerstones of human dignity. Will those receiving a decent standard of living without working for it, feel a loss of dignity? Although provision of a decent standard of living without work might solve the economic problem, will the absence of a workplace be dehumanizing? A Kantian- along with lots of non Kantians-would think so. Kant believes that work is necessary for the development of self-hood. Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness of all our human powers. Occupation gives us this awareness. … Without occupation man cannot live happily. If he earns his bread he eats it with greater pleasure than if it is doled out to

 “Why the Coming Jobs Crisis is Bigger Than You Think,” Knowledge at Wharton, December 6, 2016. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-the-coming-jobs-crisis-is-bigger-thanyou-think/

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him….Man feels more contented after heavy work than when he has done no work; for by work he a has set his powers in motion.18 Kant’s view on this matter is widely shared more than 200 years later. Clearly, a world where as much as 35% of the population is unemployed presents a challenge to a humanized work place. What should be done with respect to the rest? First, the interactions with business are not simply employee/employer. We are all customers. And even if as customers we deal with robots and other machines, we will still have advertisements and advertisements should be truthful and respectful of our humanity. Second, persons not employed might be encouraged or even required to do volunteer work as a means to justify their guaranteed minimum standard of living. This is not utopian Many retired people add meaning to their lives when they volunteer. Perhaps the new age will bring a flourishing of civic organizations supported and sustained by volunteers who no longer need to work for a living. Third, those no longer forced to work, especially those in low skill less dignified jobs, could be offered adult educational opportunities. The humanities or liberal arts have lost their status as institutions of higher education have emphasized science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Even at the many of the most elite institutions, fields like philosophy, literature, and history have been derided as providing no means for earning a living. But in a world where 35% of the population does not need to earn a living, time spent on the liberal arts would not be considered a waste. Rather study of the liberal arts would enable people to discover the various insights over the ages of what it means to be a human being. Optimistically the age where many do not have to work may result in a re-appreciation and indeed a flourishing of the liberal arts. And I should add here the fine arts as well. That so many artists find it impossible to earn a living is a tragedy. Despite “blockbuster” museum shows, symphony orchestras and opera companies are in trouble, the realities of the digital age have diminished the income of musicians and art galleries are closing all across the United States despite the attempt of various cities to use artists to rejuvenate blighted areas lost to deindustrialization. The middle class seems to have neither the money nor the inclination to purchase art and beautify their homes. Ugly is dehumanizing: Beauty is humanizing. It is hard to envisage a future where making a living is less important and for some not important at all. I have made a few suggestions about how such a world might still be humanized. However, there certainly are dystopian alternatives to my optimistic possibility. It shall be the task of future generations to see that there is an opportunity for all citizens to lead productive lives with dignity even if they are not engaged in work for pay. Such a society would be a humane one.

 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics. 1775 I. Infield, Trans. (Indianapolis, IN, Hacket Publishing Company, 1930) 160–61.

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References Bowie, Norman E. 2000. A Kantian theory of leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal 21: 185–193. Bowie, Norman E. with Patricia H Werhane, 2005. Management Ethics. Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Bowie, Norman E. 2017. Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carr, Albert. 1968. Is bluffing ethical. Harvard Business Review 46 (January/February). Case, John. 1995. Open Book Management. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Campbell/Chengdu, Charlie. 2019. How China is Using “Social Credit Scores” to Reward and Punish its Citizens. Time. https://time.com/collection/davos-­2019/5502592/china-­social-­ credit-­score/. Accessed 21 July 2019. Freeman, R. Edward, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Andrew C. Wicks, Bidhan L. Parmar, and Simone de Cole. 2010. Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamilton, Isobel Asher. 2018. Amazon got a hostile welcome from a New York labor union, which savaged its working conditions as ‘deadly and dehumanizing’. Business Insider November 29, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-­warehouse-­conditions-­savaged-­by-­ rwdsu-­2018-­11. Accessed 20 July 2019. Kant, Immanuel. 1930. Lectures on Ethics, 1775 (Trans. I. Infield), Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company. ———. 1990 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785 (Trans L.W.  Beck), New  York: Macmillan. Knowledge at Wharton. 2016. Why the Coming Jobs Crisis is Bigger Than You Think, December 6, 2016. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-­the-­coming-­jobs-­crisis-­is-­bigger-­than-­ you-­think/. Accessed 20 July 2019. Kupfer, Joseph. 1987. Privacy, autonomy, and self-concept. American Philosophical Quarterly 24: 81–87. Kurtz, Annalyn. 2018. Wells Fargo is Paying $575 Million to Settle False Account Claims. CNN Business Updated 2:03 PM ET, Fri December 28, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/28/ business/wells-­fargo-­settlement/index.html. Smith, Adam. 1937. The Wealth of Nations, 1776. New York: Modern Library Giant. Norman E. Bowie is Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. He is past president of the Society for Business Ethics and former Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association. His primary research interest in business ethics is the application of Kant’s moral philosophy to ethical issues in business. His most recent book is Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective 2nd edition published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. A festschrift Kantian Business Ethics was devoted to his work. In 2009 The Society for Business Ethics honored him with an award for scholarly achievement. His co-edited text Ethical Theory and Business (Cambridge University Press 2020) with Denis Arnold and Tom Beauchamp is in its 10th edition.  

Chapter 2

An Aristotelian Conception of Humanistic Business Edwin M. Hartman

Introduction Aristotelian virtue ethics is in some ways the most humanistic of all the approaches to ethics. To begin with, Aristotle holds that what matters is the ethical person more than ethical principles governing actions, though there is overlap. It is true that if you are an ethical or virtuous person you may do something unethical, but that is necessarily unusual. An unethical person may perform an ethical act, but that may happen because there will be a reward for it or a punishment for not doing it, or it may just be an accident. Having a certain virtue goes deep. It is not just a matter of being disposed to act (say) courageously. A truly courageous person enjoys acting courageously, or at least takes some satisfaction in doing so. Aristotle claims that enjoying doing good actions indicates good character, and bad bad (NE II 3 1104b5-13). If you are courageous, you want to be courageous. You want to be the sort of person who, when the challenge comes, willingly rather than reluctantly charges the machine gun nest or expresses disagreement with the boss. So having a certain virtue involves having certain second-order desires — desires, that is, to have certain desires. It seems clear that whether you are a virtuous person is an empirical issue to some degree, a matter on which a psychologist might have something to say. (See the essays in Dienhart et al. 2001.) A virtue involves the ability to frame situations and your options correctly (NE III 5 1114a32-b3 and VII 3 1147a18-35). You will know that a certain situation requires courage, or benevolence, or discretion. You do not act mindlessly or automatically. You avoid both cowardice and recklessness in part by paying intelligent attention to the circumstances of your act, particularly those that relate to the interests of your community. (See NE I 4 112525f., for example, and Koehn 1995.) You E. M. Hartman (*) New York University, New York, NY, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_2

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have developed something like a high skill. At the same time, correct framing will be supported by correct emotions: if you are a person of good character, you will not only feel satisfaction at doing the right thing but also an aversion as you contemplate doing the wrong thing. (See NE I 3 1095a 2-13 and much of the first three chapters of NE II. On the contribution of emotion to understanding, see de Sousa 1987; Klein 1998; Frank 1988; Blasi 1999. We ordinarily explain human behavior by reference to rationality: that is, we offer reasons for actions. If I say that Jones jumped into the water to rescue a struggling child, that counts as an explanation, even if it presupposes no selfish motivation. But if I say that Jones jumped into the water to get his new clothes wet, that does not by itself normally count as an explanation. When we explain human behavior by reference to an intention, we are presupposing that the agent is rational not only in understanding what follows from what, but also in desiring something that is plausibly desirable. Rationality in Aristotle’s sense is not just a matter of drawing valid inferences from premises but also of having good premises. A rational person wants to have or to do the right sort of thing and can work out how to do it. And what is the right sort of thing? A significant part of the answer lies in the other half of the definition of a human being: we are characteristically sociable, with the result that our goals typically involve relations with other people. We naturally enjoy exercising the associative virtues in good communities. Though Aristotle claims that humans are essentially rational creatures, he is aware that humans sometimes act irrationally. A humanistic approach to behavior in business takes account of both features: agents are essentially rational but sometimes irrational. They are often capable of achieving their goals, which they usually but not always have reason to believe are valuable goals, but sometimes they fail. Being virtuous is first of all about leading a fulfilled and happy life, a fully human life. If you are fully human, you are rational in a way characteristic of humans alone, and you are sociable in the sense that you are a happy citizen in a community that supports the rational lives of its participants. And if you are fully sociable, you want to socialize with other participants who are happy citizens too. You are not narrowly selfish: you want well-being for yourself, but your well-being depends greatly on others’ well-being. Humanistic management and organizational theory characteristically try to affect or explain human behavior by viewing their subjects as rational, complex, thinking, feeling, value-driven, sociable, and morally accountable. The subjects’ behavior is caused to a significant degree by unobservable and imprecisely definable internal states. A clearly different approach is a kind of reductionism that tries to explain and affect human behavior by simplifying it in certain ways. These ways, characteristic of natural science, are typically more appropriate to something other than humans: they are precise, straightforwardly factual rather than normative, and amenable to observation and even quantification. They refer to causal claims based on laws of nature, rather than to reasons. (See further Tsoukas and Cummings 1997, and Ghoshal 2005.) I shall discuss two approaches to the explanation of behavior that are alternatives to the humanistic one. There is the science-based approach, which fails to take

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account of rationality, or regards it as a problem. More important for our discussion, there is the economics-based approach, which fails to take account of irrationality and of the complexity of rationality. I shall not argue that most of today’s management theorists are reductionists who need to be persuaded to abandon their methodology. Taylorism has not been in vogue for a long time. Game theory, behavioral economics, and social psychology are alive and well. My primary aim is to describe and evaluate Aristotle’s contribution to what may be an increasingly widely accepted approach. We shall look at what Aristotle means when he discusses rationality and sociability and virtue in general, and try to apply his views to modern organizations. Aristotle and Alasdair MacIntyre (1985) argue in effect that management takes what I call the economics-based approach and that a crude utilitarianism crowds out virtue in organizations. I reject this claim and argue, broadly speaking for the moment, that virtue in an organization can contribute to its profit and growth. I offer Aristotelian arguments for this position that Aristotle rejects. Exactly how to create an organization that is a good community is beyond my pay grade. I just want to argue that Aristotle shows how virtue — in particular, a strong form of friendship — can contribute to effectiveness.

Aristotle on Causes and Reasons Aristotle does not believe that there is only one way to explain human actions. On the contrary, he offers four ways of explaining any thing or state or event. There is the efficient cause — some preceding thing or event that is a sufficient condition of it, the sort of thing we now usually consider the cause. There is the formal cause, what the thing or state or event essentially is. There is the material cause, what constitutes the thing or state or event. There is the final cause, the purpose of the thing or state or event. These kinds of explanation are compatible: all apply in most cases. So Aristotle does not believe that, say, a certain kind of causal explanation precludes an explanation citing intention. One reason for this compatibility is that he does not countenance a deterministic universe that leaves no room for choice. Events at the level of matter do impose some limitations on what happens with substances, including human beings, but do not fully determine them. In any case, he believes that there are events that are just accidental. Aristotle gives credit to his predecessors like Democritus and Anaxagoras for offering plausible accounts of what the world is made of. But in explaining events at the level of matter, these and similar presocratic philosophers give only partial explanations of what substances are and do: they focus on material causes. Scientists are characteristically skeptical about final causes. Botanists discuss the functions of parts of plants, and anatomists discuss the functions of body parts, but they would probably agree that the functions they discuss could in principle be fully explained by reference to underlying efficient causes. Teleological explanations do not predict very well, especially relative to the kind of explanation that refers to

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causal forces that underlie teleology. We might even be tempted to say that the causal kind of explanation tells us what is really going on. Yet there is surely some information in the description of how the stamen and the pistil contribute to the life of the plant. Different problems call for different sorts of explanation. A traffic engineer and a psychotherapist operate effectively at different levels; so we may look to the first for an explanation of why 30% of drivers turn left at a certain intersection, and to the second for an explanation of why Jones did so. For managers the great problem is motivating employees to perform well. On the whole, physics and biology do not address that problem. The traditional argument for determinism involves the claim that there is no autonomous action, there is only what physics says there is. Humans can in theory be described, explained, and predicted in scientific terms: cause and effect, as opposed to intention and action. From this it may seem a short step to the view that human beings are machines, robots to be plugged into outlets overnight and turned on in the morning. But that is not a widespread view because it is not only false but also, even as an analogy, largely useless to most managers.

Some Background: Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Ethics Aristotle places the individual substance, the natural object with essence and accident, at the center of his science, and he puts the individual human being, a substance, at the center of his ethics. A person is essentially a rational and sociable creature. As any substance characteristically develops towards its purpose, typically a state of thriving, a human being naturally develops towards the good life, an end state called eudaimonia, usually translated happiness or flourishing. (The term happiness suggests a subjective state, but we do not ascribe êudaimonia to someone who feels good all the time but lives a stupid or nasty life. See Sison (2015) on happiness in business.) In this state the person achieves arete (excellence or virtue) in being characteristically rational and sociable and acting accordingly. The fully developed, virtuous human being is a good family member, a good friend, and a good citizen. I have suggested that it is a problem about teleological explanation that the substance does not always achieve its end. We offer teleological explanations based on how flowers bloom even if we know they do not always bloom. In natural science an explanation is typically a prediction in reverse, but teleology does not support reliable predictions, so teleological explanations are not usually considered scientific. Teleology is a problem in the explanation of behavior as well, for rationality is based in part on teleology. Here Davidson (2001) famously sees a problem. He argues that psychology cannot be a science because explanations of behavior typically presuppose a measure of rationality. And what is rational is not a scientific matter, according to today’s notion of science: rationality is a normative notion. Not only that: intention fails to predict behavior for the same reason not all flowers bloom. Neither humans nor flowers always achieve their ends.

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Thinking of human beings as rational is hard to avoid. I normally think of myself as rational in some way. Unless I am seriously mentally ill or extraordinarily weak, I do not predict my behavior; I intend it with some end in mind. So when I am trying to understand others’ behavior, I will naturally attribute similar events and states to them. In fact if I cannot do that, then I cannot attribute them to myself. But though rationality is essential to human beings, human beings are not always rational. If we are to save rational explanation, we must be able to explain irrational behavior. But how?

The Practical Syllogism and Akrasia Aristotle’s model of deliberation and action is the practical syllogism. The agent begins with a general proposition concerning what is good: for example, it is good to be courageous. Then the agent considers the current situation and judges that it would be courageous to express disagreement with the boss’s statement of intention. So the agent says something like, “Susan, I think that would be a mistake, and let me say why.” There are several ways in which an act can be deliberate and yet fall short of being rational, or therefore virtuous. (Aristotle discusses weakness of the will, akrasia, in NE VII). Jones may operate on first premises that are narrowly selfish or short-sighted. Or he may want to be courageous but cannot do the right thing willingly and cheerfully under pressure. He may want to be the kind of person who confronts the boss willingly, but his first-order desire does not cooperate; instead he looks around for a desirable second premise that takes him off the hook. Thus — and Aristotle emphasizes this possibility — he may incorrectly frame his situation as one calling for caution and discretion: he may think that the applicable first premise is “when the going gets tough, live to fight another day” rather than “be courageous.” To want to have certain desires — that is part of wanting to be a certain sort of person — is to have a second-order desire. In an influential article Frankfurt (1981) argued that free will is a matter of acting on desires that one wants to have. The similarity to Aristotle is clear. Both are in effect claiming, rightly I think, that free will is about rationality rather than freedom from causality. There are some (Pfeffer 1982 and Haidt 2001, 2012 for example) who argue that a certain kind of akrasia is common: you may focus on something you want, perhaps for a reason you are not proud of, and then choose a major premise that seems to justify what you do. You may be acting on a desire you wish you did not have and not even notice it. This is a failure of character: the agent has an ethical obligation to recognize an act for the kind of act it is (NE III 5 1114a32-b3 and VII 3 1147a18-35). Akrasia is an instance of the problem of teleological explanation generally: the substance does not always achieve its end. A related problem is that desires, and beliefs as well, are not only unobservable but not even indirectly observable. The

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phenomenon of akrasia shows that my actions often do not reveal my desires, even to me. I may do action A because A is the sort of action I want to do, or the action that I want to do but wish I did not, or an action that I perform under the misleading or dishonest description B, or an action of a kind that I do not fully realize I am doing. It is an important fact about us that our desires may conflict, and we may not know it until a psychotherapist or Socrates helps us understand.

Behaviorism and Economics To achieve observability and enhance predictability some philosophers, most famously Gilbert Ryle (1949), once embraced behaviorism. Behaviorism reduces desires and beliefs to dispositions to act. I know what you want to do because you do A when you have the chance. I know that you believe that Smith is a liberal senator because you say that she is a liberal senator and you vote for her and contribute to her reelection campaign as you do with other liberals. It allegedly follows that wanting to do A is just a disposition to do A, and believing that Smith is a liberal senator is just a disposition to vote for her and so on. But there is a problem of circularity: in a behaviorist explanation or intervention the observer or manager infers from your behavior what you desire given your beliefs, and what you believe given your desires. So we cannot infer either desire or belief from action unless we can first establish belief or desire; but how? A further problem about behaviorism is that it presupposes that a person’s desires are internally consistent and that there is no akrasia. Standard economic theory deals with the problem of circularity by assuming that humans are homines economici; hence their beliefs are true and they are rational, so that their desires can be inferred from what they do. This oversimple psychology works best where the people in question can usefully be seen as rather crude and self-interested responders to simple stimuli. Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911) saw his workers as people who would perform simple tasks as instructed in order to be paid well; so at least they were intentional agents. The only motivation of Taylor’s worker was to make money, and he did so only through his individual effort, without needing to care about or coordinate with or depend on or compete with any other worker. He was homo economicus. Given the work to be done, Taylor was not wrong in seeing things this way, unless the workers aspired to something more. Even today we may be inclined to believe that the organization functions well when every manager and every employee works according to a well-wrought job description. The organization is a nexus of transactional relationships, we may assume, in accordance with the standard economic model, which works pretty well in some cases. The model is valuable when it facilitates some policies at high levels of abstraction, but that may not be all it does. It may encourage the belief that people are dependably rational, narrowly self-interested, and well informed participants in a highly competitive market. It may lead businesspeople and business students to adopt this conception of humanity and its crude form of utilitarian ethics. To

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mention an example we shall consider later, incentive compensation, which is more effective the more employees are homines economici, is based on the model, and it is often ineffective. Let me repeat that I do not claim that all economists use standard economic models carelessly. Some do, however, and they influence how we think about organizations. In any case they serve as a nice contrast to some of Aristotle’s subtler views. But does Aristotle achieve subtlety at the price of precision?

Looking for Precision Scientists prefer a reductive form of explanation of behavior in part because they want something objective, observable, and exact. Managers want something useful, hence not unduly complicated or vague. We might fairly accuse Aristotle of imprecision in his claims about rationality and sociability. How do we know exactly what is rational, and what counts as the right sort and degree of sociability? The doctrine of the mean is supposed to address these issues, but it does not offer much precision either. Aristotle says that identifying the mean in a particular case requires attending to the pertinent details, but there is no instruction manual on how to bring which details to bear in deciding (NE II 9 1109b19-23). Aristotle is not embarrassed by his imprecision. He famously claims that it is a mark of erudition to demand no more precision than the field of inquiry allows (NE I 3.) Human thought and action do not admit of precise description or explanation for at least two reasons: they are complex, and they are (sometimes) based on rationality, which is in turn based on judgments of value. A utilitarian would respond that a theory based on utilitarian principles would be more precise and more useful than a virtue-based theory. Principle-based ethics seems to have two advantages over virtue ethics. The first is the apparent precision: it lays down rules that clearly state what one ought to do in certain circumstances, somewhat as science states what will happen in certain circumstances. The second apparent advantage is that principle-based ethics primarily judges actions, which are observable, while virtue ethics is about character, including dispositions, emotions, and other psychological entities that are at best only indirectly observable. But principle-based ethics is reductive much as behaviorism is: if it does not cancel out internal states, it relegates them to secondary status. But what is being canceled or relegated is essential to our humanity and so by no means irrelevant to ethics. In any case it is often difficult to judge whether an action confirms to utilitarian principles and whether, even if it does, it is a good act. We cannot evaluate an act without bringing to bear some conception of the good life, which will often include reference to appropriate human purposes and to justice and rights, of which utilitarianism does not give a good account. It is on the good life, eudaimonia, that Aristotle focuses; it is what utilitarianism, including the kind associated with economics, typically oversimplifies. A human being is rational and sociable, and the good life is that of a rational contributing

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citizen in a good community. Aristotle, like MacIntyre, sees business as being at best crudely utilitarian at its core, hence inhospitable to the virtues of his favored sort of community. I think Aristotle is unduly pessimistic. I shall argue that an organization can support ethical growth; then I shall argue that ethical development can contribute to the success of the enterprise. Though a corporation Is not a polis, we may — with some care — usefully apply Aristotelian lessons about ethical development and ethical relationships within communities to corporations and their employees. But first I need to say something about ethical growth in general.

How to Become Virtuous According to Aristotle (throughout NE II and III), ethical development typically begins when a a community or a parent gives a child utilitarian incentives to act correctly, or punishment for not doing so, so that the child consequently develops some good habits, which are predecessors to virtues. (For my own views see Hartman 2006, 2012. See also Paine 1991.) It is a kind of transaction: I obey the rules; you reward me rather than punish me. In due course the child becomes more reliable in acting correctly, gets better at distinguishing correct from incorrect behavior, sees what virtues are salient on what occasions, is able to apply and sometimes tweak principles that typically define the virtues, and understands some of the ways in which acting correctly improves one’s life. In particular the child develops the capacity to recognize a situation as calling for courage or benevolence or some other virtue  — a capacity that is typically missing in weak-willed agents. Most important, through a gradual development of inclinations, emotions, and values, the child comes to enjoy acting correctly. The child acts honestly; the grownup is honest, has the virtue of honesty. There remain utilitarian advantages of honesty, but one lives intrinsically more enjoyably for being honest. One acquires not a rule book but something very much like what Werhane (1999) calls moral imagination. The process is neither quick nor easy, but we are naturally disposed to acquire positive attitudes towards members of our community, such as our families and our fellow citizens. Consider learning to play the piano. As a child you practice because it is required of you, but if you keep at it you will begin to enjoy it, to see that the notes do not entirely determine your performance; perhaps you eventually become a virtuoso. Yogi Berra once asked the sportswriter John Drebinger whether he played the piano. Drebinger replied that he did. Yogi then told Drebinger that the Berras had just bought a piano and asked Drebinger whether he could “come over to the house some day and show us how it works.” (See Hartman 2013, chapter 4.) Along the way there may be some point at which the child is capable of acting honestly against her own immediate inclinations, as when she is asked what happened to the cherry tree and somewhat reluctantly confesses to having misused her new axe, despite the probability of being punished.

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Ethical development is in part a matter of acquiring or cultivating interests. We can therefore affirmatively answer a question that business ethicists and philosophers generally have long discussed: whether being ethical is good for the agent. Raised this way, the question seems to presuppose that one’s interests are fixed and narrowly selfish. Aristotle does not think so; in fact he thinks, not unreasonably, that being virtuous is in large part a matter of having the right interests. I believe that a successful life in an organization with a supportive and stimulating culture can have a transforming effect on one’s interests and one’s character. I claim that becoming a good employee of a good organization can involve a process of ethical education. In particular I focus on Aristotle’s two forms of friendship: a transactional form of friendship and a truer and deeper form. (For Aristotle’s account of friendship, see NE VIII and IX. For commentary see Drake and Schlachter 2008 and Sommers 1997.) Organizational ethical development is, I shall argue, a matter of the evolution of employees and managers from the transactional to the deeper form of friendship.

Eudaimonia in Business I claim, as Aristotle would not, that the Aristotelian conceptions of rationality and of sociability, and particularly of friendship, have some ethical and practical value in a modern organization. A business ought to be somewhat like Aristotle’s notion of a good polis, supportive of human capacities and interests, while at the same time achieving profitability and growth. (See Sison 2015.) John Rawls (1971 and 1993) confined his influential account of justice to political communities, as opposed to such “voluntary associations” as businesses, which Aristotle did not consider poleis in his sense. But I have argued elsewhere (Hartman 1996; 107–111) that Rawls’s account helps us understand Aristotle’s, and that some of the characteristics that make a polis good also characterize a good organization. One of the crucial questions about both states and organizations is this: to what extent may the purposes of the state or organization override the interests and in particular the autonomy of the citizens or employees? The question is sometimes framed as being about the legitimacy of the authority of government or management. If we believe, as most people do, that the purpose of the state is the welfare of its citizens, then the just consent of the governed — voice, as Hirschman (1970) would say — is a necessary condition of the government’s legitimacy. This leaves considerable room for argument about the limits of government, not least because citizens’ personal autonomy is an important moral consideration, which will override the consent of the majority on some issues. What justifies the authority of management in a firm seems to be a simpler matter, at least to the likes of Friedman (1970). If a firm’s overriding purpose is to provide wealth for the stockholders, management must compensate workers sufficiently to give them incentive enough that they stay with the company and do their jobs well. The possibility of their exit

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is their empowering factor. The unsatisfied employee can exit; the unsatisfied manager can threaten the employee with exit. A humanist can and should support organizational effectiveness, including its profitability, but will not support corporate governance that, in Kant’s words, treats people as means only rather than as ends in themselves. Under the best of circumstances, that would be taking a crude form of utilitarianism to an unacceptable extreme. In the remainder of this essay I shall offer a humanist’s way of achieving effectiveness. In particular, I shall argue for not only the right to exit and the right to raise one’s voice, but also for a kind of loyalty based on a kind of friendship. Both governance and management must address a populace with diverse interests. Aristotle holds (see Pol III 9 1280b8-13) that a polis is not just an alliance (summachia) of parties whose interests overlap enough to give them reason to unite in common battle on some matters. He makes a stronger claim: that in a good polis the citizens have similar values and emotions. In this respect Aristotle’s polis differs markedly from Rawls’s liberal democracy, which relies on an “overlapping consensus” of interests and values. Organizations typically have more homogeneous populations than do states, but in some transnational companies, especially, homogeneity has yielded to a degree of diversity. And even if employees have similar values and emotions, there will be situations in which their desires conflict, so that not all cannot be fulfilled. Managers must find productive ways of dealing with those conflicts. Aristotle does not address them much, but I shall suggest a way to do so and show how Aristotle contributes to the solution.

The Organization as a Commons Suppose we think of an organization as a commons, which is somewhere between an alliance and an Aristotelian community. The problem of the commons is this: If you, an individual employee, take the self-serving route of doing as little work as you can get away with, your laziness or neglect may have no significant effect on the organization’s effectiveness or, therefore, on your compensation whether others perform well or not. If your fellow employees do the same, the organization will suffer or even fail, and with it everyone’s compensation. The organization may do well if all employees work hard, but the individual employee will have little incentive for doing so. (See Hardin1968, Hartman 1994, and Ostrom and Ahn 2009.) How does management get apparently self-interested people to work effectively and avoid this tragedy of the commons? One way would in effect make the organization no longer a commons, by offering individuals incentive compensation: each employee is paid according to his or her individual productivity. Research reveals what many experienced managers know: this often does not work well. (See Heath 2009.) Among other problems there is the difficulty of identifying and measuring individual contributions, especially when productivity requires that people interact and cooperate, as is often the case. A similar possible solution would be to monitor

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employees’ work closely to assure that they are doing what they are supposed to do. But that would be expensive and might be seen as oppressive. Incentive compensation and close monitoring are based on the idea that an organization is a nexus of transactions among narrowly self-interested agents. Each employee is motivated by getting a reward for contributing to corporate success. But consider the possibility that an employee might be motivated by loyalty to the corporation. Aristotle suggests that a variety of kinds of thing might motivate a person, and that character is to a great degree a matter of what motivates you. So a sociable creature might be motivated by the well-being of the polis and of his or her fellow-citizens. I claim that this kind of motivation is typically found in what Aristotle considers the stronger of two kinds of friendship. Aristotle offers a weaker kind of friendship that is a matter of exchange between you and your friend: each of you grants some benefit to the other. Your reason for benefiting your friend is that you want a reciprocal benefit from him or her. You are acting on the basis of straightforward self-­ interest. The stronger kind of friendship is based on your taking your friend’s interests to be your own — a friend is another self, Aristotle says — or at least to be a significant reason for your action. If you are friends with your fellow employees, you want your common enterprise to flourish for their sake as well as yours. Insofar as that attitude spreads —insofar as my friendly attitude towards you encourages the same attitude in you, it will help preserve the commons. Friends must trust one another, too, but that is not normally a problem, and in fact is self-fulfilling in some cases. The good employee has something like a virtue: friendship with fellow workers and loyalty to the organization — loyalty being in effect the plural of friendship. A good organization is one that preserves the commons by fostering friendship and loyalty, much as a good polis fosters patriotism. (This is my view, not Aristotle’s, despite what it owes to him.) If you are part of such an organization, it will matter to you whether those other employees and the organization as a whole are better or worse off, and it will probably enhance your productivity. Philia, the word that I have translated “friendship,” can also mean “love.” Aristotle has something like love in mind as he discusses philia and says that a friend is another self, but I am making claims about an attachment that falls short of actual love. Your supervisor is probably not your good buddy, but you wish her well and are pleased when she succeeds, quite apart from how you benefit from her success. You are happy, not jealous, when your co-worker receives compliments. You want to be proud of your organization. These relationships are more than transactional. We can infer that one of the tasks of humanistic management is to create a corporate culture that encourages strong, rather than merely transactional, friendships. It is a matter of moving from a mere alliance towards something more like a polis. This surely requires something other than command-and-control management, and something more than a focus on the long-term wealth of the stockholders.

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Humanistic Corporate Culture How do managers create a culture that encourages team spirit and deep friendships? We might think of acculturating an employee as similar to raising a child. Virtues begin as habits, and over time you come to enjoy acting (for example) justly, and to develop a mature and nuanced sense of what justice requires. At first you are a friend in the weaker sense: you act in the right way to be rewarded, or at least not punished. You follow the rules and begin to see how to apply them. You learn a certain vocabulary: women, not girls; Khalid, not that Arab guy. You learn the rules, including those governing transactions with the organization and other employees, without at first internalizing them: you transact because you are supposed to and because you gain from it. Eventually you come to understand organizational justice and other virtues and the reasons for their being virtues, you develop the skills that enable you to be reliable in acting accordingly, and you begin to enjoy being part of the team. Your partners in transaction become friends. This kind of friendship is not only good for the organization but also one of the greatest benefits of life. If Aristotle is right, human beings are naturally sociable; in particular, being a participating citizen in a community is natural and satisfying. The capacity for this sort of friendship is part of being a sociable creature. It is in fact a part of eudaimonia: your life is better if you have friendships of this kind. There is, of course, no guarantee that a strong culture will be a good one. So, for example, you may be taught never to back off any position, especially if it is part of the corporate position. Your organization may help you develop bravado or stubbornness rather than genuine courage. Vicious communities propagate vice. Think of the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments (1974 and 2007). (See also Trevino et al. 2001 and Darley 1996.) An organization like that might unite its people with an us-­ against-­them tribalism. After all, corporations are supposed to compete. A virtuous organization would not be content with just any old commons-­ preserving culture. Strong friendships and loyalty are at least theoretically possible in an organization united in pursuit of profit and nothing else, but how plausible is that? A clear mission in which employees can take some pride will surely be a better glue than will the determination to maximize the wealth of the employees and the stockholders. Aristotle and MacIntyre are unimpressed with empty utilitarianism, but creating products and services that benefit the community because they are outstanding may be the sort of thing that appeals to people who are capable of deep friendship and loyalty. The attitude might spread to one’s community, which will probably have commons problems of its own. (For more on this topic see Putnam 2000, on “bridging capital.” For a skeptical view see Sandel 2012.) I have used the example of Jackie Robinson (Hartman 2013) to illustrate how the transactional form of friendship may deepen. When Robinson first joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, manager Leo Durocher quelled rising dissent by pointing out that Robinson was an excellent player whose presence would help his teammates financially and that the Dodgers would get rid of anyone who showed reluctance to play with him. Most of the Dodgers complied on pragmatic grounds. Eventually

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they came to see Robinson not only as a great team player but also an aggressive and unselfish leader, and a friend in the deeper sense. The daily routine of playing alongside him and experiencing and sharing his intensity — fueled in part by the abuse he and at times his teammates too absorbed  — took them all beyond just going through the motions. The team was no mere alliance. (See Hartman 2013; 218f.) According to baseball legend, Leo Durocher held the Dodgers together with one fiery speech. The truth is no doubt more complex. I have offered little practical advice for the senior manager who wants to make an organization effective by solving the commons problem. I have offered a view of what the problem may be and the outline of a solution. For some more specific advice on how to address the problem, see Moore (2012).

A Concluding Remark Alasdair MacIntyre and others have agreed with Aristotle that corporate effectiveness, which may have some utilitarian justification, crowds out virtue in business organizations. I have argued that it need not. I do want to emphasize, however, that humanistic management is not only a means to organizational effectiveness. What is more important, it is worth repeating, is that the true friendship on which it is based is among the greatest benefits of human life.

Bibliography Aristotle. 1894. Ethica Nicomachea (Ingram Bywater, ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1907. De Anima (Robert Drew Hicks, ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1924. Metaphysica. Edited with commentary by W. David Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1957. Politica (W. David Ross, ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1962. The Politics of Aristotle (Trans. Ernest Barker). New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd ed (Trans. Terence Irwin). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Blasi, Augusto. 1999. Emotions and moral motivation. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 29: 1–19. Darley, John. 1996. How organizations socialize individuals into evildoing. In Codes of Conduct: Behavioral Research into Business Ethics, ed. David Messick and Anne Tenbrunsel, 13–43. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Davidson, Donald. 2001. Essays on Actions and Events. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. DeSousa, Ronald. 1987. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dienhart, John, Dennis Moberg, and Ronald Duska (eds.). 2001. The Next Phase of Business Ethics, New York: Elsevier Science. Drake, Matthew, and John Schlachter. 2008. A virtue-ethics analysis of supply chain collaboration. Journal of Business Ethics 82: 851–864. Frank, Robert. 1988. Passions within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions. New  York: W. W. Norton & Company.

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Frankfurt, Harry. 1981. Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. In Free Will, ed. Gary Watson, 81–95. New York: Oxford University Press. Friedman, Milton. 1970. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. New York Times Magazine, September 13 (1970): 32–33. Ghoshal, Sumantra. 2005. Bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Academy of Management Learning and Education 4: 75–91. Haidt, Jonathan. 2001. The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review 108: 814–834. ———. 2012. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Books. Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–1248. Hartman, Edwin. 1994. The commons and the moral organization. Business Ethics Quarterly 4: 253–269. ———. 1996. Organizational Ethics and the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. Can we teach character? An Aristotelian answer. Academy of Management Learning and Education 5: 68–81. ———. 2012. Aristotle on character formation. In Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics, ed. Christoph Luetge, vol. 1, 67–88. New York: Springer. ———. 2013. Virtue in Business: Conversations with Aristotle. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Joseph. 2009. The uses and abuses of agency theory. Business Ethics Quarterly 19: 497–528. Hirschman, Albert. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Declines in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Irwin, Terence. 1988. Aristotle’s First Principles. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, Sherwin. 1998. Emotions and practical reasoning: Implications for business ethics. Business and Professional Ethics Journal 1: 3–29. Koehn, Daryl. 1995. A role for virtue ethics in the analysis of business practice. Business Ethics Quarterly 8: 497–513. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1985. After Virtue. 2nd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Milgram, Stanley. 1974. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New  York: Harper and Row. Miller, Fred. 1995. Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics. New  York: Oxford University Press. Moore, G. 2012. The virtue of governance, the governance of virtue. Business Ethics Quarterly 22: 293–318. Ostrom, Elinor, and Teo-Kyeong Ahn. 2009. The meaning of social capital and its link to collective action. In Handbook of Social Capital: The Troika of Sociology, Political Science and Economics, ed. Gert Tinggaard Svendsen and Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen, 17–35. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. Paine, Lynn. 1991. Ethics as character development: Reflections on the objective of ethics education. In Business Ethics: The State of the Art, ed. R. Edward Freeman, 67–86. New York: Oxford University Press. Pfeffer, Jeffrey. 1982. Organizations and Organization Theory. Boston: Pitman. Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sandel, Michael. 2012. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Sison, Alejo. 2015. Happiness and Virtue Ethics in Business: The Ultimate Value Proposition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Sommers, Mary Catherine. 1997. Useful friendships: A foundation for business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 16: 1453–1458. Taylor, Frederick Winslow. 1911. The Principles of Scientific Management. New  York: Harper and Brothers. Trevino, Linda, Kenneth Butterfield, and Donald McCabe. 2001. The ethical context in organizations: Influences on employee attitudes and Behaviors. In The Next Phase of Business Ethics: Integrating Psychology and Ethics, ed. John Dienhart, Dennis Moberg, and Ronald Duska, 301–337. New York: Elsevier Science. Tsoukas, Haridimos, and Stephen Cummings. 1997. Marginalization and recovery: The emergence of Aristotelian themes in organization studies. Organization Studies 18: 655–683. Werhane, Patricia. 1999. Moral Imagination and Management Decision Making. New  York: Oxford University Press. Zimbardo, Philip. 2007. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House. Edwin M. Hartman  taught philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, management and business ethics at Rutgers, and business ethics at NYU. For five years he was a consultant with the strategy unit of Hay Associates. He has authored five books and many articles. He has undergraduate degrees from Haverford College and Balliol College, Oxford University, a Ph.D. from Princeton, and an MBA from Wharton. In 2014 the Society for Business Ethics gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award for Scholarship. He is retired and living in the high desert of southern Arizona with his wife, the historian Mary S. Hartman.

Chapter 3

A MacIntyrean Virtue Ethics Perspective on Humanizing Business Geoff Moore

Introduction Alasdair MacIntyre has been one of the most prolific and influential moral philosophers of the twentieth and early twenty first Centuries, and his work can be characterised as focusing on the promotion and application of a Neo-Aristotelian and Thomistic1 ethic of virtue in contemporary society. His work is read and applied across a wide range of disciplines (see Beadle and Moore 2020) and, indeed, there is a multi-disciplinary Society2 which is inspired by and seeks to promote his ideas. Perhaps surprisingly, given that he is suspicious of modernity in general and the neo-liberal capitalist system in particular, his work has also been widely cited in business ethics (Ferrero and Sison 2014), and is the subject of at least one book which, in line with MacIntyre’s own concerns for philosophy to connect with those he has referred to as “everyday plain persons” (1992, 3–8), might be described as ‘MacIntyre for Managers’ (Moore 2017). There is, in other words, a body of both conceptual and empirical studies much of which seeks to apply MacIntyre’s work positively in an attempt to ‘humanize business’. It is, therefore, entirely appropriate that this volume should contain a chapter which outlines the way in which MacIntyre’s work has been applied to organizations of all types including business organizations, and the way in which business might be (re)humanized as a result. This chapter begins by setting out the core elements of the relevant aspects of MacIntyre’s work as they apply firstly to human flourishing in general. It then considers the locations in which such flourishing might occur, in particular focusing on

 ‘Thomistic’ is used as a shorthand for Thomas Aquinas, a medieval theologian.  The International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry, https://www.macintyreanenquiry.org/

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MacIntyre’s notions of ‘practices’, and the wider networks of giving and receiving which individuals as human beings are part of. The focus then shifts to the organizational implications of this approach in which organizations are understood as practice-institution combinations. Understanding organizations in this way helps to see why organizations in general, and business organizations in particular, may frustrate human flourishing through an overwhelming pursuit of what are called ‘external goods’. But it also helps in seeing how the pursuit of two other kinds of goods—‘internal’ and ‘common’—together with the virtues required for their realization, can lead to human flourishing. A way of thinking of this in practical terms is through what is often referred to as ‘meaningful work’, and the chapter concludes by describing and considering the implications of such work for both individuals and business organizations.

MacIntyre and Human Flourishing As noted in the Introduction, MacIntyre is a proponent of Aristotle, and as such his understanding of human flourishing is that it has something to do with human beings as having and realising some good purpose or function in their lives. For Aristotle the term for this essential purpose or function was eudaimonia, which MacIntyre suggests might be translated, “blessedness, happiness, prosperity. It is the state of being well and doing well, of a man’s being well-favoured himself and in relation to the divine” (2007, 148). These ideas of having an essential nature, purpose or function, and of arriving at some kind of final state or condition as outlined in the preceding quotation, link to the concept of a ‘final end’. As MacIntyre says, “… on Aristotle’s view, human agents, as participants in the form of life that is distinctively human, have a final end … they can only be understood, they can only understand themselves teleologically” (2016, 227). This is to say that human flourishing consists in having a purpose (telos) in life, which implies both a final end, and (since, as MacIntyre acknowledges, this is easier to define by what it is not than what it is—see 2016, 229–31) a number of more proximate ends. And these ends will be achieved through various projects and in various practices that an individual engages in through their lives. In other words, this could be expressed as follows—that an individual engages in a number of significant activities, projects and practices through their life each of which has its own telos and which, in combination and in the ideal, lead to the individual’s achievement of eudaimonia. And this way of formulating a human life and human flourishing leads to the first of a number of ‘definitions’ of virtues which MacIntyre offers: “The virtues are precisely those qualities the possession of which will enable an individual to achieve eudaimonia and the lack of which will frustrate his movement toward that telos.” (2007, 148)

There is, moreover, within this definition, the notion of ‘movement toward’ some end, and this links to another important aspect of MacIntyre’s approach. This is that

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every individual could be described as being engaged in a narrative quest. The quest element implies that individuals are always searching, trying to discover what their purpose(s) are in life, and seeking to achieve those purposes as part of achieving eudaimonia. MacIntyre describes this as follows: “The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is.” (2007, 219)

While this might seem to be somewhat circular, it starts from the premise that individuals do have some, if only partial, understanding of what a good life for them might be. And through the significant activities, projects and practices in which they engage, they discover what more and what else the good life for them might be. Implicit in this is the idea that a human being is a “story-telling animal” (MacIntyre 2007, 216), in other words that individuals make sense of their lives through their individual and inter-locking communal narratives—and hence the narrative element of the narrative quest. This then leads MacIntyre to another ‘definition’ of the virtues: “The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions which will … sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good.” (2007, 219)

The inclusion of ‘inter-locking communal narratives’ above leads on to a further point—that these ideas are very far from an individualist conception of human beings. MacIntyre notes many obligations that individuals have to family, community, profession and nation, and argues that “these constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point” (2007, 220). Associated with this communal sense of the narrative of an individual’s life, another aspect of the virtues is that they enable individuals to ‘fit into’ the various communities of which they are a part. Indeed, it has been argued that virtue ethics, “begins with the community as the ethical base rather than individuals existing in isolation. Within a community, people occupy recognised roles, and these roles in turn include ethical obligations. To fulfil such roles well, people need to develop virtues within themselves” (Horvath 1995, 505). What this also implies is that there is a link between an individual’s telos and the communal sense of telos of their community. One way of speaking of this is in terms of the common good or, as MacIntyre prefers, common goods. Common goods3 are goods which “are only to be enjoyed and achieved … by individuals qua members of various groups or qua participants in various activities” (MacIntyre 2016, 168–9). Thus, taking the example of workplaces (which will be returned to in much greater detail below): “The common goods of those at work together are achieved in producing goods and services that contribute to the life of the community and in becoming excellent at producing them” (ibid., 170).

3  Common goods can be contrasted with the economist’s notion of public goods which are goods generally provided by the state and enjoyed by individuals qua individuals.

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This, then, provides us with the core concepts of MacIntyre’s Neo-Aristotelian approach to human flourishing, comprising ends or purpose (telos), a final end (eudaimonia), a narrative quest towards this state in conjunction with others in community, and the pursuit and realisation of common goods (although there will be more to say about two other kinds of goods—internal and external—below), all enabled by the possession and exercise of the virtues. With these core concepts in place, we are now in a position to enquire about the particular locations in which such flourishing may occur.

 ractices, Internal Goods and Networks of Giving P and Receiving In speaking above of activities and projects related to an individual’s telos, the word ‘practice’ was also used. But within MacIntyre’s conceptual framework this is both a central feature, and is given a specific meaning: “By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity …” (2007, 187)

MacIntyre argues that this definition of a practice provides for a wide range of activities to fall within its scope: “arts, sciences, games, politics in the Aristotelian sense, the making and sustaining of family life, all fall under the concept” (2007, 187–8), and he gives particular examples of practices—football, chess, architecture, farming, physics, chemistry, biology, the work of historians, painting and music (ibid: 187). Indeed, while not everything is a practice (see Moore 2017, 142–6), it could be argued that individuals spend most of their lives operating within various practices. The definition above also helps to reinforce the cooperative and communal nature of human flourishing while extending it by referring to the pursuit of excellence, and by introducing the idea of internal goods. In line with the definition above, MacIntyre later expanded on internal goods specifically in relation to what he called “productive crafts” (which might be considered to be similar to business activities), as follows: “The aim internal to such productive crafts, when they are in good order, is never only to catch fish, or to produce beef or milk, or to build houses. It is to do so in a manner consonant with the excellences of the craft, so that there is not only a good product, but the craftsperson is perfected through and in her or his activity.” (1994, 284)

Internal goods, then, consist of the excellence of the product or service which is the output of the practice, together with the ‘perfection’—which might alternatively be described as the flourishing in that particular context—of the practitioners. This extends the core concepts of human flourishing described above both by introducing practices as the common location in which such flourishing can occur, and by the

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addition of internal goods as those which should be pursued for their own sake because of the contribution to human flourishing which they make. Internal goods, together with common goods, might then be described as proximate goods which contribute to the achievement of an individual’s telos. And, in line with previous instances, this leads MacIntyre to a further ‘definition’ of the virtues: “A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods.” (2007, 191)

Having said all this, and having emphasised the centrality of practices, it is necessary to extend the locations within which human flourishing occurs. Beyond the concept of practices developed in After Virtue, MacIntyre considered wider networks of “relationships of giving and receiving” in his book Dependent Rational Animals (1999, 99). Here he focused on the dependence and vulnerability that also characterise human life, not only at particular periods such as infancy and old age but also more generally. In order to flourish, individuals need support in and through such periods, and this support is provided within the broader networks of giving and receiving of which individuals are a part. As will probably be apparent, this links to the community context which has already been discussed above: “It is then the characteristic human condition to find ourselves occupying some position, and usually a series of positions over time, within some set of ongoing institutionalized relationships, relationships of family and household, of school or apprenticeship into some practice, of local community, and of the larger society … Insofar as they are relationships of … giving and receiving … they are those relationships without which I and others could not become able to achieve and be sustained in achieving our goods. They are constitutive means to the end of our flourishing.” (MacIntyre 1999, 102).

Thus, in addition to practices, it is these wider networks of giving and receiving—and the individual’s location within and engagement with them—which provides an important location for human flourishing. There is an obvious relationship here between these networks of giving and receiving and the achievement of particular common goods, and the common good in general. In addition, however, Bernacchio, in commenting on Dependent Rational Animals, has also noted that the benefits of such networks might “better enable [practitioners] to achieve the internal goods” (2018, 381) of practices. There is therefore an important inter-relationship between practices and these wider networks, and indeed Bernacchio (2018) demonstrates, by drawing on an empirical example in the apparel industry, the way in which such networks can operate in both organizational and inter-organizational contexts, although he notes that: “… cooperation in this context has much more to do with coping with vulnerability related to unforeseen contingencies than achieving the specific excellence characteristic of the production process, illustrating the way in which reasons for action within networks of giving and receiving extend beyond the internal goods of practices, providing a further rationale for the practice of the virtues within and between organizations. Often, the basis of cooperation is expressed in terms of participants’ mutual concern for the wellbeing of other members of their network.” (2018, 387)

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We have, therefore, established two locations in which human flourishing may occur: practices, and broader networks of giving and receiving. And in both cases, we have begun to see the organizational implications of this. Hence, it is time now to consider the organizational context for human flourishing in more detail.

Organizations and Human Flourishing By referring to various specific practices, productive crafts and workplaces, as above, it is clear that MacIntyre himself recognises the organizational applications of the conceptual framework he provides. It has, however, been left to others (see Moore and Beadle 2006; Moore 2017, for example) to work this out in detail. Central to this has been another key feature of MacIntyre’s framework—his conceptualisation of institutions. As with practices, MacIntyre defines institutions in a particular way which is somewhat different from both its common usage, and its usage in the academic field of organization studies. In the latter, institutions are understood to be at the supra-organizational level, providing the ‘rules of the game’ by which organizations and individuals have to operate (see Moore and Grandy 2017 for a discussion). For MacIntyre, however, institutions (see 2007, 194) are concerned with external goods such as money, power, status and, perhaps most generically, success, in contrast with the excellence associated with practices (see Moore 2012). But MacIntyre also asserts that there is an essential relationship between practices and institutions: they form “a single causal order” (2007, 194), such that neither can survive without the other. But that leads to an in-built tension because institutions pursue (indeed, have to pursue) external goods, which are always sources of competition between institutions. And this makes the practice “vulnerable to the competitiveness of the institution” (ibid., 194), and so vulnerable to corruption. It is important to note at this point that external goods are, nonetheless, goods. We need them and, within limits perhaps guided by the virtues of justice and generosity, they are appropriate “objects of human desire” (MacIntyre 2007, 196). In developing this and the intimate relationship between internal and external goods, this relationship has been characterised as “the essential but complex circularity between internal goods and external goods” (Moore 2012, 380, emphasis removed), where one leads to the other and vice-versa, and so on. That said, it is also the case that while internal goods are, as noted, such as to be pursued for their own sake, external goods should be pursued not for their own sake but for the sake of the other goods—internal and common—to which they lead. The key point from all of this, however, is that organizations generically can be characterised as practice-institution combinations (Moore and Beadle, 2006). And this way of characterising them points to two important implications. First, and

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positively, since organizations contain practices,4 there is the opportunity for practitioners, through the possession and exercise of virtues and the pursuit of excellence in achieving the internal goods of product or service, to ‘perfect’ themselves. In other words, work in organizations can contribute to human flourishing, as well as contributing to internal and common goods which further enable other individuals’ and the community’s flourishing. And this is as true in business organizations as in any other kind of organization. Furthermore, this way of characterising organizations also allows for the location of management as a secondary, domain-relative practice—secondary because the primary practice is that at the core of the practice-institution combination such as architecture or farming, and domain-relative because management is always the management of some specific domain or practice, and never just management in the abstract (Beabout 2012). Moreover, this implies that managers, even with their institutional focus, are engaged in the practice of making and sustaining the institution while also nurturing the practice at its core (see Moore 2008), and as such managers qua managers, can also pursue internal goods including their own ‘perfection’ or flourishing. The second implication of this way of characterising organizations, however, is rather more problematic. The institutional part of organizations needs, as noted, to achieve external goods—it, and the practice at its core, cannot survive without these. But should this become the focus, so that the pursuit of external goods comes to dominate, then the organization will no longer be fostering the internal goods that lead to human flourishing. Indeed, MacIntyre has commented more broadly on this, concerned that if external goods came to dominate a society, even the idea of the virtues might disappear (2007, 196). It is probably apparent that business organizations, particularly but by no means exclusively those that are shareholder-owned and subject to the constraints of the financial markets, potentially have a significant problem here. In pursuing, and in some cases being forced to pursue, external goods, potentially to the detriment of the practice at the core and the pursuit of its internal goods and the way in which these can contribute to the common good, it is quite possible that this not only detracts from the pursuit of human flourishing, but actually works against it. Indeed, in some circumstances, organizations can be locations where violence is committed against practitioners (Varman and Al-Amoudi 2016, for example). In other words, under conditions where external goods dominate, human flourishing can be significantly undermined. If that is so, can we then return to the positive implication of MacIntyre’s conceptual framework and formulate an answer to the question, ‘What would it mean to provide work for both practitioners and managers that enables rather than undermines human flourishing?’ It is to this that we now turn.

 As noted above, many though by no means all activities can be characterised as a practice.

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Meaningful Work The concept of meaningful work is entirely consistent with all that has been said to this point about human flourishing in organizations, and indeed connections between meaningful work and MacIntyre’s conceptual framework have been made explicitly (see Beadle and Knight 2012). Clearly, whatever it is that individuals work at is potentially a particularly important practice in their lives, providing meaning and fitting easily with the ideas of being on a narrative quest and pursuing goods and ends. But obviously this will be realised only if the work itself is meaningful. Monotonous and dispiriting work or, as above, work in which violence is done to the practitioner, would not achieve this, and would lead to meaninglessness rather than meaningfulness. Meaningful work is often thought of as having two dimensions: the objective and the subjective (see Yeoman 2014, 244–49). Objectively, the work must be recognizable to others as being worthwhile. This links back to the earlier ideas of the internal goods of practices (the product or service and the ‘perfection’ of the practitioners in the process), making a positive contribution to the common good. Subjectively, the individual who carries out the work should find it meaningful to them, and again this links to the earlier ideas of seeking the excellence of the product or service, and of the individual finding that their own ‘perfection’ or human flourishing is being advanced through the work they do; it is an important part of their narrative quest. Of course, neither of these two dimensions of meaningful work is necessarily easy to assess. While for some occupations—traditionally the ‘vocations’ such as doctors or teachers—it may be relatively straightforward to attribute meaningfulness both objectively and subjectively, for many others this will be less so. This, however, takes us back to the communal nature of individual narrative quests, and the importance of the community in determining the common goods which enable its flourishing. It will be the community which, through its deliberative structures, will help to determine the objective value of different occupations. This, of course, places a considerable responsibility on communities and society more generally, in conjunction with organizations, to seek to agree which occupations do and, just as important, which do not provide meaningful work. Similarly, as individuals possess and exercise the virtues at work, they will come to realise “what more and what else” (MacIntyre 2007, 219, as above) the good life for them consists in, so that they will understand more fully their subjective good in the context of their own narrative quest. But in this task they will be helped if they have particular people to whom they can turn. As MacIntyre puts it: “when we are making choices in which much is at stake, we need to be self-aware and, that is to say, we need to see ourselves and to understand ourselves as honest, perceptive, intelligent, and insightful others see and understand us, with the objectivity that is only possible from a third person standpoint” (2016, 161). As well as imposing demands upon individuals to pursue meaningful work in their own lives as a contribution to their own flourishing, this also raises a question as to whether it is incumbent on those who provide employment—managers and

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organizations, and government in establishing the employment context as well as being a significant employer in its own right—to provide such meaningful work. On this understanding, meaningful work “comprises a good whose just distribution should be an object of common concern” (Beadle and Knight 2012, 445). While space here precludes detailed consideration of this point,5 it is clear that there are normative arguments, based on the approach to human flourishing in organizations outlined above, as to why managers and organizations should provide meaningful work. But there are also instrumental reasons. There is evidence of the negative effects of not providing meaningful work in relation to practitioners’ attitude, behaviour and mental health (Chalofsky 2003), and of positive effects on job performance, organizational citizenship behaviour, customer satisfaction (Michaelson et al. 2014), and organizational commitment and engagement, retention, the effective management of organizational change, and hence in overall organizational performance (Cartwright and Holmes 2006). As such, there may not be so much of a trade-off between the provision of meaningful work and performance as might be thought. Meaningful work is, therefore, the means by which human flourishing in business and other organizations may be achieved.

Conclusion This chapter has offered a Neo-Aristotelian conceptual framework provided by Alasdair MacIntyre which enables an understanding of human flourishing in general. Human flourishing is achieved through seeking ends or purpose (telos); having a final end (eudaimonia); engaging in a narrative quest towards this state in conjunction with others in community; the pursuit and realisation of internal and common goods particularly through engagement in practices and in wider networks of giving and receiving; and all of this is enabled by the possession and exercise of the virtues. External goods have a role to play, but if their pursuit were to become dominant this would likely frustrate the achievement of human flourishing. The chapter then considered the application of this framework to organizations in general, as practice-institution combinations, enabling them to be viewed potentially as locations for human flourishing. This is as true of business organizations as any other, although here the potential for external goods to dominate and frustrate human flourishing may be particularly problematic. Finally, it was argued that the realization of human flourishing in organizations in general and business organizations in particular would likely be best achieved by the pursuit of meaningful work. This imposes a demanding requirement on individuals, managers and organizations, but if realized it would lead to the (re)humanizing of business and other organizations.

 For a fuller discussion of meaningful work in general, see Moore (2017, 85-88, 91-94).

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References Beabout, Greg. 2012. Management as a domain-relative practice that requires and develops practical wisdom. Business Ethics Quarterly 22 (2): 405–432. Beadle, Ron, and Kelvin Knight. 2012. Virtue and meaningful work. Business Ethics Quarterly 22 (2): 433–450. Beadle, Ron, and Geoff Moore. 2020. Learning from MacIntyre. Eugene: Pickwick Publications. Bernacchio, Caleb. 2018. Networks of giving and receiving in an organizational context: Dependent rational animals and MacIntyrean business ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly 28 (4): 377–400. Cartwright, Susan, and Nicola Holmes. 2006. The meaning of work: The challenge of regaining employee engagement and reducing cynicism. Human Resource Management Review 16 (2): 199–208. Chalofsky, Neal. 2003. An emerging construct for meaningful work. Human Resource Development International 6 (1): 69–83. Ferrero, Ignacio, and Alejo Sison. 2014. A quantitative analysis of authors, schools and themes in virtue ethics articles in business ethics and management journals. Business Ethics: A European Review 23 (4): 375–400. Horvath, Charles. 1995. Excellence v. effectiveness: MacIntyre’s critique of business. Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (3): 499–532. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1992. Plain persons and moral philosophy: Rules, virtues and goods. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1): 3–19. ———. 1994. A partial response to my critics. In After MacIntyre, ed. John Horton and Susan Mendus, 283–304. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 1999. Dependent Rational Animals. Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. London: Duckworth. ———. 2007. After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. London: Duckworth. ———. 2016. Ethics in the conflicts of modernity. An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michaelson, Christopher, Michael Pratt, Adam Grant, and Craig Dunn. 2014. Meaningful work: Connecting business ethics and organization studies. Journal of Business Ethics 121 (1): 77–90. Moore, Geoff. 2008. Re-imagining the morality of management: A modern virtue ethics approach. Business Ethics Quarterly 18 (4): 483–511. ———. 2012. Virtue in business: Alliance boots and an empirical exploration of MacIntyre’s conceptual framework. Organization Studies 33 (3): 363–387. ———. 2017. Virtue at Work. Ethics for Individuals, Managers and Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, Geoff, and Ron Beadle. 2006. In search of organizational virtue in business: Agents, goods, practices, institutions and environments. Organization Studies 27 (3): 369–389. Moore, Geoff, and Gina Grandy. 2017. Bringing morality back in: Institutional theory and MacIntyre. Journal of Management Inquiry 26 (2): 146–164. Varman, Rohit, and Ismael Al-Amoudi. 2016. Accumulation through derealisation: How corporate violence remains unchecked. Human Relations 69 (10): 1909–1935. Yeoman, Ruth. 2014. Conceptualising meaningful work as a fundamental human need. Journal of Business Ethics 125 (2): 235–251. Geoff Moore is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing at Durham University Business School, UK.  He is the author of Virtue at Work. Ethics for Individuals, Managers and Organizations (OUP, 2017). His work appears in Organization Studies, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Management Inquiry, Journal of Business Ethics, and Business Ethics: a European Review among others. He is on the editorial boards of Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, and Business Ethics: a European Review.  

Chapter 4

Humanizing Business by Developing a Feminist Ethics of Embodied Relational Care Marianna Fotaki

Introduction This chapter draws on feminist theories, and specifically the idea of feminist ethics, to propose embodied relational care based on interconnectedness, cohabitation and compassion for each other. It reflects the common objective underpinning and connecting various strands of feminist theory which this chapter brings to bear on the work of business. Specifically, the chapter applies the feminist politics of emancipation to develop an ethics of relationality to rethink issues of equality and inclusivity in the business context. Why is such a framework important, and what can it contribute to humanizing business to bring it closer to needs redefined by the human norms of care and inclusivity that apply to human beings, but also to all other forms of life and non-sentient matter? The proposed ethical framework eschews any form of exclusion by virtue of being both contextually (socially, politically and translocally) embedded and materially embodied (Fotaki and Harding 2017 Chap. 5 and 6). Τaking inspiration from feminist thinking, it offers an eclectic proposal concerned with the situatedness of ethics, interdependency and relational care. In arguing that we cannot exist as autonomous and separate individuals, the concept of relational embodied care developed here positions the idea of precarity and vulnerability inspired by Judith Butler’s work at the center of a new organizational ethics. Bracha Ettinger’s psychoanalytic feminist thinking it subsequently draws on, offers a deeper understanding of interconnectedness, cohabitation and compassion as an embodied encounter with the other, which compels us to assume an ethical stance towards the other. This also provides an essential basis for developing a new, non-hegemonic notion of an ethics of relational care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012). It is argued that care, as a political and ontological condition that emerges from this interdependency, is crucial for M. Fotaki (*) Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_4

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understanding and addressing the inequalities that current business practices re(produce) in organizations and society. The concept of care is then suggested as a means to connect productively with each other in organizations and society. To this end, the chapter brings together the perspectives discussed above to demonstrate how political and cultural forces shape individual subjectivities and intersubjective encounters in the context of organizations. While feminist ethics provides an overall framework, the focus is on poststructuralist feminism, which helps unearth and reject the arbitrary binary divide between ‘male’ and ‘female’ on which society and organizations rely, and which they discursively reproduce to justify differential treatment and gender oppression (Fotaki and Harding 2017). Many of these ideas originate in post-structuralist theory, emphasizing the role of language and social discourses in the subject’s formation, and how this is shaped by power flows. The second and related inspiration is drawn from psychoanalysis, which links the discourses of power and social normativity with affective psychic mechanisms and their key role in supporting these discourses. The chapter is organized as follows. After reviewing developments in feminist ethics, the chapter offers a new theoretical framing of relationality derived from poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. Specifically, it discusses Judith Butler’s work (1990, 1993, 1997) to elucidate how the precarity of the human condition places individuals in a vulnerable position and simultaneously opens up possibilities to relate meaningfully with irreducible others (2004, 2009). It also draws on Bracha Ettinger’s (2006) productive engagement with psychoanalysis, philosophy and art, with an affirmative ethics of life at its center, to further develop an ethics based on interdependency, before turning to Puig de la Bellacasa (2012) to outline the non-­ hegemonic notion of care. The chapter concludes by outlining theoretical and practical contributions for organizations and management by discussing the issue of economic inequality in the context of business education and business practice.

Feminist and Feminine Ethics of Care Centered on women’s emancipation, feminism aims to address the multiple inequalities faced by women in society through a better understanding of the causes of discrimination and through political action. Feminists have often rejected dominant ethical approaches for their lack of attention to gender oppression as an important ethical issue, and for their implicit contribution to perpetuating systems of social domination over women by undervaluing women’s moral experiences and insights (Derry 2002). One strand of feminist thinking associated with feminine ethics counteracts these approaches by proposing a woman-centered approach that brings in neglected aspects and perspectives to redefine the notion of ethical care and rethink the issue of social justice (Gilligan 1982; Noddings 1984). The main criticism is of the exclusive focus of classic ethical theories on the morality of rights, and their abstract notion of justice and individual autonomy. Gilligan (1982) specifically argues that women develop a distinctive moral voice by speaking a language of care

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that emphasizes relationships and responsibilities (Fotaki et al. 2020). The embodied ethical caring practiced by women is about concrete ethical acts rather than the abstract ethics of justice constructed by men. The ethics of care therefore claims that impartiality, following rules and using reason to the exclusion of affect are all limited means to make moral decisions in the sphere of interpersonal relations (Keller 2007). This perspective has framed the debate in terms of opposing care and justice perspectives, each with its own emphasis on moral reasoning; however, it is now widely accepted that Gilligan’s distinctive voice exists in everyone and is applicable across the moral reasoning spectrum for all genders (Mussell 2017). Thus, ‘ethics of care and justice do not exclude but complement each other in sophisticated moral reasoning: both capacities can be possessed by the same individual and used when solving moral conflicts’ (Juujärvi et al. 2010, 484). The debate about ethics of care typifies the divergence of essentialist and social constructionist views on differences between the sexes as a basis for the division of labor (Ferguson et al. 2019) and various other forms of differential treatment experienced by women in patriarchal societies. There are also important distinctions in feminine ethics between feminine and feminist accounts, with the latter asking broader social and political questions to contextualize caring (Tronto 1993). For influential political theorist, Joan Tronto (1995), for instance, care is always political as it concerns issues of distribution among the various recipients of different types of care and consideration of the care work involved in producing and providing it. She therefore argues that caring institutions should be built through a political process that considers the needs, contributions and prospects of women, along with many other actors (Tronto, 1995). Although feminists have sometimes clashed over whether they are essentialist or anti-essentialist, feminist ethics is not monolithic (Norlock 2019). In addition to politically-situated feminist ethics, other research categorizations include feminine ethics of care, feminine maternal ethics and lesbian ethics (Tong and Williams 2016; Derry 2002). Analyses of the roots of women’s oppression have also yielded many other normative, political, and indeed non-normative, ethical stances. Feminist ethical theory reflects a wide range of perspectives from broader sociopolitical, philosophical and cultural analyses, including Marxism (Federici 1975, 2004), socialism (Jaggar 1983, 1992), class, work (Ferguson et al. 2019), post-work ethics (Weeks 2011), post-colonialism (Mohanty 2003; hooks 2000), intersectionality (hooks 1984; Crenshaw 1989; Lugones 2014), psychoanalysis and poststructuralism (Fotaki and Harding 2017). This multiplicity reflects the tension between the need to represent the lesser position historically occupied by women in patriarchal societies, and ways of promoting social change by drawing on their unique perspectives. In other words, the question is: how far can the particular be used to make universal claims? Who is allowed to make these claims, and by what virtue are they made? Feminist ethics is concerned with the situated knowledge of speaking from a marginalized position to promote the emancipation of all human and non-sentient beings. For instance, Held (1993) uses a feminine model of the mother figure as the basis for an alternative approach to ethics. Yet her model does not refer to females in a biological sense, nor to women’s natural destiny, nor to the actual lives of real

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women (Sevenhuijsen 2003), but serves as a paradigm for human relationships in general, and as a much-needed replacement for the fictional but ubiquitous rational economic man (Held 1993). This desire to bring forward silenced knowledges and ways of relating can also be found in poststructuralist psychoanalytic feminist thinking, on which this chapter draws for inspiration to develop an ethical frame to humanize business. For instance, the focus on language in the works of Luce Irigaray (1985, 1993) and Hélène Cixous (1976) illustrates how social discourses are inscribed in female subjects’ psyches, enabling their exclusion from the body of knowledge, and the importance of bringing back the unrepresented woman into science, philosophy and the arts. This may also explain the abjection of the maternal body (Kristeva 1982) in organizations and society. At the same time, Julia Kristeva’s (1986) ideas on the preverbal and the role of the maternal in the formation of subjectivity prior to the process of symbolization also rehabilitate the body as a unique source of meaning and signification (Fotaki 2019). Similarly, but working from a different perspective—the feminist epistemological standpoint—Dorothy Smith (1974) and Sandra Harding (1986) have emphasized that knowledge is always rooted in a particular position, and that women are privileged epistemologically by being members of a marginalized and historically oppressed group. This suggests that ‘knowledge committed to thinking from marginalized experiences may be better knowledge, and may help cultivate alternative epistemologies that blur dominant dualisms’ (Hartsock 1983, cited in Puig de la Bellacasa 2012, 208, italics in the original). But it does not suggest that unintended essentialist claims or the creation of a different set of dualisms will always be avoided in this way. Intersectionality, as an open theoretical frame addressing the issue of multiple inequalities (Davis 2008), emerged from the pursuit of expanded understandings of differences and accounts of the experiences of people who were previously spoken for, if considered at all, rather than consulted (Norlock 2019). This also suggests that research on gender and subjectivity more generally must be analyzed in relation not only to ‘sexual difference,’ but also to race, forms of desire, kinship and power, including colonialism, to unearth how historically established relations continue to operate at an intersubjective level (Flax 2004; see also Fotaki and Harding 2017 Chap. 5 for organizational examples). Many feminists do not attribute care to gender. For instance, both Judith Butler and Bracha Ettinger see relationality, and relational care and relating, as universal constituents of human subjectivity. Butler (2004) specifically theorizes that we all depend on others under inevitably precarious conditions, and that fears about our own survivability link us to others whom we do not know. This precarity is both material and symbolic, giving meaning to our individual experiences and transforming us into social beings. Ettinger develops her original ideas by proposing the concept of the matrixial borderspace and ‘trans-subjectivity’, which denote both a symbolic and material entity, implying an absence of separateness of the subject from the other. Lastly, feminist philosopher, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2012) sees care as a way of knowing that is based on ontological rather than moral groundings because care is everything we do. She also expands its remit beyond human agency (Puig de la Bellacasa 2018). Overall, the contested status of care suggests a need to

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develop a more robust feminist ethics of care that includes men as well as women, rather than rejecting care (Tong and Williams 2016). These issues are taken forward next.

Relational Care, Non-hegemonic Care Relationality is a foundational concept in feminist thinking. It is concerned with both an understanding of the self as ‘relational’ in the sense of ‘being socially constituted’, and ‘being relationship-oriented’ in terms of considering relationships in which the person is involved that can be applied particularly to the context of ethics of care (Keller 2007). This chapter considers relationality from a feminist post-­ structuralist and feminist psychoanalytic perspective to explain that the notion of subjectivity is meaningless without consideration of others, because we cannot exist except in relation to others. This implies that subjectivities are mutually constituted and mutually vulnerable. Judith Butler (1990, 1993), whose work is a key inspiration in developing the ethical frame of care, shows how individuals subject themselves to circulating discourses of power and attach themselves passionately to these discourses to avoid abjection. She draws on the key Lacanian idea that individuals’ desire for recognition causes them to re-produce social relations and norms through intra- and interpsychic phenomena, offering an account of how the symbolic order is sustained through the psychic life of power (Butler 1997). Our desire for a socially intelligible identity and recognition by others causes us to embrace social normativity, which becomes affectively inscribed in our psyche. This also allows Butler to elucidate how we all depend on the other under conditions that are inevitably precarious, and how fears about our own survivability link us to others whom we do not know (Butler 2004). Therefore, Butler’s conception of subjectivity is not an idvidualistic one or separated from the other: If I am confounded by you, then you are already of me, and I am nowhere without you. I cannot muster the ‘we’ except by finding the way in which I am tied to ‘you,’ by trying to translate but finding that my own language must break up and yield if I am to know you. You are what I gain through this disorientation and loss. This is how the human comes into being, again and again, as that which we have yet to know (Butler 2004, 49).

According to Butler, this precarity is both material and symbolic, but it is precisely what gives meaning to our individual experiences and transforms us into social beings. It is also essential for our own literal and symbolic survivability: If I seek to preserve your life, it is not only because I seek to preserve my own, but because who ‘I’ am is nothing without your life, and life itself has to be rethought as this complex, passionate, antagonistic, and necessary set of relations to others (Butler 2009, 43).

Precariousness implies an existential condition emerging from the materiality of our bodies: ‘Lives are by definition precarious: they can be expunged at will or by accident; their persistence is in no sense guaranteed. In some sense, this is a feature of all life, and there is no thinking of life which is not precarious.’ Yet it is also

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socially conditioned: ‘Precarity designates the politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence and death’ (Butler 2009, 25). This may explain the unequal distribution of precarity, as evidenced when entire groups of people are treated instrumentally as a means to an end to be disposed of in distant parts of the world and in our own societies. Excluded others are seen as ‘monstrous others’ (Tyler 2013), and as people with no human rights worth protecting. Butler (2009) uses the case of Guantanamo inmates as a prime example to argue that various categories of people are regarded as not having ‘grievable’ lives worth living in the first place. Other examples include the civilian casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, who are labelled as collateral damage rather than as men, women and children, as well as an ever-expanding category of undeserving ‘others,’ such as the new poor, war refugees (more recently from Syria) and migrants in affluent Western societies. In the business world, outsourcing production to subcontractors with a record of poor working conditions, and even human rights violations, makes Butler’s theoretical ideas real and immediate. Underpinning such business practices is an unspoken contention that (other) people’s lives, aspirations and desires are somehow different from our own, and are therefore less valuable. Butler explains this in her examination of human lives (for instance, of Guantanamo inmates who may not even be charged with any crimes) that are seen as non-grievable, because such lives are not worth living (and mourning) in the first place, and because they never counted as lives at all (Butler 2009). However, by  reframing our subjectivities and our own lives as inevitably precarious (Butler 2004) compels us to reconsider ourselves in relation to all lives, and as inextricably interwoven with the lives of unknown others. This simply means that all humans have an inalienable right to liveable lives and protection of their lives, whether or not we are able to identify with them. A counterpoint has been offered to Butler’s ethics of precarity. For instance, Ruti (2017, 98) argues that ‘Basing an ethics on our capacity to identify with the suffering of others rather than, say, on a priori principles of human rights, carries some risks, the first of which is that the failings of identification are so endemic that such an ethics might end up being unacceptably erratic.’ It could be argued that, Butler’s quest for ethical relationships as  a universal frame, which nevertheless emerges from particular experiences, underlies the attention to feminist ethics discussed earlier. Bracha Ettinger, another contemporary feminist philosopher, artist and psychoanalyst, develops the concept of embodied relationality, showing how our subjectivities and social encounters can be rethought. She focuses on the materiality of the body and affect to re-envision coexistence with the unknown and unknowable other, since this, she argues, is our primary condition that we carry within ourselves. She uses the term ‘matrixial borderspace’ for the psychic sphere, which is trans-­ subjective in that it exceeds the notion of the subject as individual and separate. For Ettinger, we always and already (co-)exist in relation to the other because we come to life through cohabitation in the womb. Thus ‘Subjectivity here is a transgressive encounter between “I” (as partial-subject) and uncognized yet intimate “non-I” (as

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partial-subject or partial-object).’ ‘As a mental structure matrixial encounter-event transgresses individual psychic boundaries even if and when its awareness arises in the field of the separate individual subject, and it evades communication even if and when it operates inside intersubjective relational field’ (Ettinger 2005). Ettinger stresses that our subjectivities are continuously co-created through processes involving conscious and unconscious knowledge along with aesthetic experiences. She terms this process of co-creation ‘co-poesies:’ Co-poietic transformational potentiality evolves along aesthetic and ethical unconscious paths: strings and threads, and produces a particular kind of knowledge. Unconscious transmission and reattunement as well as resonant copoietic knowledge don’t depend on verbal communication, intentional organization or inter-subjective relationships (Ettinger 2005).

Also, the womb is restituted at the symbolic and imaginary level, equating it with life giving rather than death, and the common association of the womb with the intrauterine enclosure and the site of Freud’s uncanny. Instead, the matrixial is an all-encompassing parallel to the phallic universe, as another consciousness determining structure (Fotaki and Harding 2017, 51). The matrixial is symbiotic with this universe, because cohabitation and coexistence are central to her ethical proposition. Overall, Ettinger takes Butler’s work further by developing her unique theory of subjectivity to provide a foundation for ethics. This theorization  can  be fruitfully applied to organization and management research, for instance, by focusing on the issue of value (equi)valence and economic inequality, as discussed in the next section. Puig de la Bellacasa, a theorist of approaches to ethical care, suggests that care is somehow unavoidable and must therefore be seen as a non-normative obligation (Puig de la Bellacasa 2010): It is concomitant to life—not something forced upon living beings by a moral order; yet it obliges in that for life to be liveable it needs being fostered. This means that care is somehow unavoidable: although not all relations can be defined as caring, none could subsist without care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012, 198).

Puig de la Bellacasa implicitly acknowledges interdependency, which ‘is not a contract but a condition; even a pre-condition.’ This suggests that the practice of caring requires not only an effective ethical stance, but also work to sustain interdependent worlds, which often means counteracting exploitation and domination. It also suggests that relating has political and practical consequences. These ideas chime with both Butler’s and Ettinger’s work, resisting individualistic thinking as a driver of human action based on the fallacy of the autonomous and disembedded subject. Furthermore, they allow us to move beyond the notion of care for humans towards an ethics of care for all forms of life and non-sentient matter (Puig de la Bellacasa 2018). The next section discusses the business implications of conceiving ethics of care as non-hegemonic, not as an idealized concept but as an ontological, complex acknowledgement of our connectedness with all its concomitant tensions, and the need to build ethics from relational knowledge.

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Relevance of Relational Ethical Care to Business Transfers of these ideas to organization and management scholarship and the business ethics field have been limited, although this may be changing (Fotaki and Harding 2017, Chap. 6). Following Gilligan’s work, most organizational researchers define care as consideration for another person’s needs and interests (Lawrence and Maitlis 2012; Liedtka 1996), while cautioning that this may lead to instrumentalization of care if it is only  employed to improve organizational efficiency. Following their work, many have defined care as a relational practice that aims to address concerns for another person’s needs (see Bowden 2000 in the context of nursing; Sevenhuijsen 2000 in social policy; and Fotaki 2019 in organization theory). It has been argued that the ethics of care could make a valuable contribution to business organizations where relationships are defined primarily in economic and contractual terms (Wicks et al. 1994; Burton and Dunn 1996), and to critical management pedagogy (Gabriel 2009). This might stimulate developments in organization studies literature, for instance, relating care to compassion, which is often seen as being stimulated by a compassionate response to others’ suffering (Frost 2011; Kanov et  al. 2004). Although not synonymous with care, compassion is a moral sentiment, and since the human condition is characterized by interdependency, it often coexists with care, for instance in health settings (Fotaki 2015): ‘Compassion that is a necessary basis for ethical foundation of care might arise from bodily affects and emotions but as an individual pre-moral sentiment on its own it cannot ensure responsive care.’ This chapter discusses how feminist ethics may offer practical guidance to business by discussing economic inequality. The issue of growing economic and social inequalities occupies a central position in current public debates (OCED 2015; Wolf 2014; Wilkinson and Pickett 2010) and has recently attracted the attention of management scholars (Bapuji 2015; Fotaki and Prasad 2015). Inequality is often thought to be an outcome of the political workings of power in the global economy (Phillips 2017). While businesses are both implicated in and affected by proliferating inequalities, until recently, business schools have largely ignored the topic. Fotaki and Prasad (2015) argue that this is an outcome of the absence of sustained critique of dominant business models from a societal perspective, and insufficient examination of how various established organizational practices may contribute to increasing inequalities. These developments lead to numerous social and political problems. For instance, economic inequality tends to undercut the social consensus required to adjust to major shocks, and to prompt investment in order to reduce political and cultural instability, thereby compromising the pace and durability of growth, and undermining progress in the social arenas of health and education (Ostry et al. 2014; Berg et  al. 2012). Furthermore, economic inequality negatively affects the social mobility prospects of those from disadvantaged backgrounds who are less likely to enter higher education, which has been shown to be the single most important predictor of raised incomes (Sutton Trust 2010; Wilkinson and Pickett 2017). More equal societies tend to do better on myriad measures of social health and wealth

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(Stiglitz 2012). In contrast, countries with bigger income differences between rich and poor suffer a heavier burden from a wide range of health and social problems, including physical and mental ill health, lower life expectancy (Marmot et al. 2020, and higher homicide rates (Wilkinson and Pickett 2017). More importantly, Wilkinson and Pickett (2017) have shown how bigger material differences increase social distances between us. As they argue, ‘The material differences between us provide the framework or scaffolding to which all the cultural markers of status and class—from where we live to aesthetic taste and children’s education—attach themselves.’ Feminist ethics such as Butler’s reframing of subjectivity in relational terms has important implications for understanding and rethinking developments in public policy under neoliberalism, which widen and augment economic inequalities. The neoliberal dogma is predicated on and derives support from an entirely fantastic model of an individualistically-minded consumer who is supposed to stand for all human beings everywhere. This abstract construct conceives social human beings as allegedly insatiable, driven almost solely by a need to increase their own benefit, and always fully cognizant of what those benefits are. Butler idea of relational subjectivity allows us to move away from the fallacy of individualistic freedom of choice and utility maximization by showing that it is only through relating to others that we gain a sense of value and significance. She presents us with theoretical frameworks that allow us to consider how we are all inextricably linked to others and to all lives because our own lives are inevitably precarious (Butler 2004). Our shared vulnerability, she proposes, obliges us to assign irreducible value to all human lives. Overall, this restores the notion of life as precarious in its vulnerability, which provides a foundation for care for the unknown other, while making ethical relations possible. Butler’s work also offers ways to incorporate these ideas into public policy. She elucidates how precarious lives depend on society for survival (Butler 2009), urging us to make explicit the role played by governments and businesses in shaping how people understand, treat and relate to one another. Such relational engagement has political implications, in that it takes account of the unpredictability of exposure to the risk of injury, violence and privation that we might all potentially experience under the neoliberal, precarity-inducing capitalist regime. This realization may help us understand the utter failure of consumerist patient choice policy for instance,  which defines caring relationships in terms of individualized market-type exchanges rather than a socially conditioned and dynamic process (Fotaki 2017). The  institutionalized arrangement of economic resources and vulnerabilities this creates ‘are unevenly distributed among different bodies’, as Butler and Athanasiou (2013, 29) explain.  Fotaki and Prasad (2015) draw on Butler’s notions underlying the concept of relationality to contribute substantively to informing the philosophy of business education. Ettinger’s ideas, which was used in this chapter to develop the concept of embodied relationality, demonstrate how our subjectivities and social encounters can be rethought. She focuses on the materiality of the body and affect to re-envision coexistence with the unknown and unknowable other, since this, as she argues, is our primary condition that we carry within ourselves. Her theory of the matrixial

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borderspace, which is all but unknown in management and organizations (the only exception being work by Kenny and Fotaki 2015a, b), suggests that rethinking the notion of compassion, cohabitation and care might oppose exclusion and ‘othering.’ Furthermore, drawing on our shared notion of vulnerability may be useful in reframing the ‘problem’ of the dispossessed, or even the ‘migration issue,’ from an abstract global debate into something that resonates in people’s lives, thus challenging the perception of the refugee as an unrelatable ‘other.’ The framework of care as a way of knowing through relating is something of a ‘labour of love’ (Kittay 1999; Kittay and Feder 2002, cited in Puig de la Bellacasa 2012). Care leads to connectivity, because ‘thinking with care compels us to look at thinking and knowing from the perspective of how our cuts foster relationship, more than how they isolate figures’ (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012, 204). Yet knowledge-­ making based on care, love and attachment is not incompatible with conflict. As Puig de la Bellacasa (2012) argues, ‘A non-idealised vision of practices grounded on committed attachments needs a multi-layered, non-innocent, approach to the meanings of caring. Relationality is all there is, but this does not mean a world without conflict nor dissension.’ It is argued that an absence of love for the (precarious) other in organized forms of life lies at the root of many political and social problems (Fotaki 2017). Examples include the logic of profit maximization in the finance industry and dominant business models, which disregards the lives of ‘others’ by turning them into saleable commodities. In these instances, conspicuous and compulsive consumerism coexist with abject poverty. Changing this presupposes a recognition of the moral equivalence and equal value of all human lives. Joan Tronto’s definition of the practice of caring serves as a good starting point for how to proceed with the obligation of care (Engster 2005) towards all other human beings including the distant others and towards the entire ecosystems of which we are part: On the most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaning web (Tronto 1993, 103).

Within organizations, Tronto’s theorization, implying a need for a redistribution of paid labor and caring tasks between men and women, indicates that care need not be opposed to independence and self-realization as well as a new approach to justice, morality and politics. The proposed notion of an ethics of care with relationality at its center does not contradict autonomy; indeed, developments in feminist thinking consider a relational conception of autonomy, addressing the limitations of the ethics of care discussed above (Meyers 1989). Rather, it provides a basis for a more wholesome ethics that addresses the issue of care work as part of a broader political process (Tronto 2010). Thus, following Tronto, we argue that caring institutions should be built through a political process that considers the needs, contributions and prospects of women and many different actors (Tronto 1995). This has implications for redefining the ethics of care and allowing us to reconsider the place of care in society. For instance,

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David Graeber (2018) argues that most work in late capitalist societies has to do with tending to and maintaining our wellbeing or sustaining the lives of others, making the world a better place. Yet such jobs, often involving heavy emotional and gruelling physical labor, are routinely underpaid and undervalued. Putting resources into the services and activities we care about as a society extends beyond debate about unique female attributes, to political decisions about distributing care as either a commodity or a basis for relating. The feminist ethics of care perspectives show that care is about everyday practices and processes of maintenance and repair that sustain life and make society possible.

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Chapter 5

Business for the Greater Good: A Utilitarian Perspective on Humanizing Business Andrew B. Gustafson

When a gulf between liberal and business education occurs, students get the impression that they are receiving two types of education: one that makes them more human and one that makes them more money. (Michael Naughton 2009, 31)

The Business education and the liberal arts education most of our students receive often seem to be done in remote and separate vacuums, which can lead to a real disconnect for students. While there is certainly a lot of work to be done in helping the humanities to better understand business value and purpose, the goal of this essay is rather to focus on how the humanities might help to humanize business— particularly, how utilitarianism, one of the great British theories, may help to humanize business.

The Apparent Absurdity of Utilitarian Humanizing Some may think it absurd to even entertain the notion that utilitarianism could humanize anything, much less business. This is because typically when business is disparagingly referred to as being ‘utilitarian’ in its concerns, it is construed by critics to be a profit-focused enterprise devoid of concern for human persons, and focused instead on economic utility. This ‘utilitarianism’ is much derided. Utilitarianism with its concern for the greatest happiness for many, has also been widely panned as a theory which neglects the concerns of the individual’s rights (McGee 2008, 67). One might think here of examples in history when atrocities have been done for the sake of the ‘greater good’, for example Hitler’s promotion of the thought that Germans should put the common good before the individual good. Or for example when Trotsky argued for the murder of the Czar’s children stating that A. B. Gustafson (*) Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_5

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A. B. Gustafson A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified, … From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man. (Trotsky 1938, 48)

But even utilitarians themselves have contributed to the notion that utilitarianism is against the individual and in cases inhuman, for example when Bentham said that human rights was ‘nonsense on stilts’ (Schofield 2003, 1) or when Peter Singer the renown contemporary utilitarian has argued that “once we abandon those doctrines about the sanctity of human life… it is the refusal to accept killing that, in some cases, is horrific” (Singer 1993, 175). It also doesn’t help when arguments (by critics or supporters) are made in the name of utilitarianism to defend business behavior which would otherwise be considered untoward and inhumane, like supporting apartheid (Velasquez et al. 1989) or hostile liquidating buyouts (Almeder and Carey 1991, 471). We regularly hear, ‘Its nothing personal, its just business’ as a common refrain made just prior an action which would otherwise be considered unkind or perhaps even unethical, but which is done ‘merely’ for the concerns of business utility (Combe 2016). Frequently, the utilitarian approach to anything frequently intimates an approach without concern for persons, which calculates the value of any action or entity in purely cost-benefit utility terms, and is almost always chastised as being inconsiderate of individuals or the humanity of those involved. Pope John Paul II for example, who was typically quite fond of capitalism, essentially said that utilitarianism is inhumane: Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of "things" and not of "persons," a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used. In the context of a civilization of use, woman can become an object for man, children a hindrance to parents, the family an institution obstructing the freedom of its members. (Pope John Paul 1994)

Utilitarianism, on Pope John Paul II’s view, is simply concerned with production and use value, and considers persons simply as things—the opposite of humanizing. With all of this as a backdrop, one can understand how paradoxical it might sound to consider how utilitarianism might help to humanize anything, much less business which is frequently maligned for its lack of concern for the human element, specifically because it is too ‘utilitarian’ in orientation. Yet, utilitarianism’s concern for the greatest happiness for the most, if properly understood through the lens of John Stuart Mill, is in fact a great source for humanizing business.

A Humanizing Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill We have the classical utilitarians to thank for much genuine progress,…in moral philosophy. …we tend to forget that it was they who did the most to restore the intellectual and cultural fortunes of value-humanism. According to value-humanism, the value of anything

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has to be explained in terms of its potential to contribute to human lives and their quality (Macklem and Garner 2006, 362).

It seems that the best utilitarian to turn to when attempting to discover a utilitarian perspective on humanizing business should be John Stuart Mill.1 Utilitarianism, says Mill, “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill 1998, 2.2.1). Human happiness for the largest number of humans, “not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether” (Mill 1998, 2.9.4). For Mill, this is a ‘utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being” (Mill 1963b, 224) which is why, for example, Mill argues for individual liberty on the basis that societies which protect the rights and dignity of the individual are on the whole happier because they acknowledge the importance of individual freedom and the creative outputs which come from such a society. Mill advocates that society encourage experiments in living to promote diverse ways of being in the world, and self-realization for the individual, because societies which do so will thrive and progress beyond those communities which do not encourage the individual’s development. Mill argues against the view that utilitarianism ‘renders men cold and sympathizing; that it chills their moral feelings towards individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hard consideration of the consequences of actions,…”(Mill 1998, 2.10.4–6). Much to the contrary, Mill advocates developing one’s social sympathies and artistic perceptions, and sees this individual actualization as extremely beneficial to the good of the many/society (Mill 1998, 2.21.6). Mill’s utilitarian envisions an interconnectedness of all in society and the selflessness which arises in such a state when he says, So long as they are co-operating, their ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others, it also leads him to identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our existence. (Mill 1998, 3.10.30-40)

1  Utilitarianism is a mixed bag when it comes to being concerned with humans. Bentham, arguably the founder of utilitarianism and the mentor of John Stuart Mill (along with Mill’s father, James) is infamous for his claim that the concept of human rights was “nonsense on stilts”. For Bentham, the very notion of natural human rights was a nonstarter. It was legitimate to sacrifice the rights of the one for the benefit of the many. While this view values humanity over the individual human, it may be considered a humanism of sorts, but not a typical one. At a basic level Bentham’s utilitarianism seems incompatible with a humanism. More recently, Peter Singer’s very non-human-centered utilitarianism has advocated a utilitarianism which is not concerned with the pain and pleasure of human beings, but rather the pain and pleasure of all sentient beings. On his view, the pain of animals can certainly outweigh the value of the life of humans in certain instances (Singer 1974).

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For Mill, utilitarianism calls us to treat everyone with fairness, dignity, and respect, and through proper nurturing of our sentiments, our desires will be to seek to good of others. Mill develops a distinction between higher and lower pleasures, the higher being pleasures which tend to unify us in sentiment with other people’s interests, such as the use of our intellect, our imagination, our noble feelings and moral sentiments (Mill 1998, 2.4.18). These, Mill suggests, must be nurtured above our lower sentiments which tend to be self serving and small minded in comparison such as our desire to eat, drink, sleep and copulate. Not all utilitarians valued humanities as did John Stuart Mill. He had been raised as a protégé utilitarian under the tutelage of his father James and family friend Jeremy Bentham. But their utilitarianism was devoid of the essential humanizing elements and actual concern for human beings (Anderson 1983, 342–43). As Mill says, “In our scheme for improving human affairs we overlooked human beings” (Elliot 1910, 91) a deficit which was cured in Mill only as he found himself caring for others through reading a story by a French author which brought him to tears. The Benthamite utilitarianism which he was raised on was inadequate for developing concern for others or imagination: From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the cultivation of feeling, naturally resulted among other things an undervaluing of poetry, and of Imagination generally as an element of human nature. It is, or was, part of the popular notion of Benthamites, that they are enemies of poetry: this was partly true of Bentham himself; he used to say that “all poetry is misrepresentation” but, in the sense in which he said it, the same might have been said of all impressive speech, of all representation or inculcation more oratorical in its character than a sum in arithmetic. (Mill 1963a, 115)

At root, Mill saw the problem to be in Bentham’s narrow mindedness, saying of Bentham “Here is a philosopher who is happy within his narrow boundary as no man of indefinite range ever was; …”(Mill, Bentham, 114). Reading literature is what helped Mill go beyond the mechanical calculating utilitarianism of Bentham. In a state of depression, Mill turned to reading literature, and as he recounts in his autobiography, I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel’s “Memoires,” and came to the passage which relates his father’s death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them— would supply the place of all that they had lost. A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. From this moment my being grew lighter. (Mill 1963a, 111)

Mill brought to utilitarianism what it had lacked under Bentham—an appreciation of the importance of feelings and imagination, and the nurturing and educating of ones moral sentiments and social sensibilities. Mill, for example encouraged people to nurture their social sensibilities by exposing themselves to art and poetry which would serve the reasonable ends of strengthening social sentiment, as well as improving the intellectual and imaginative capacities of agents (Gustafson 2005; Gustafson 2009, 821). Nurturing and developing the higher and more socially sensitive desires is essential, for as Mill says,

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Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. (Mill 1998, 2.7.15-25)

When discussing Mill’s utilitarianism with business students, I highlight this quote and point out that frequently occupations of business life and the positions in which they find themselves will not necessarily ‘favourable to keeping’ the higher capacities exercised. Business life, in fact, could become much more nurturing of the nobler feelings and even humanized if it would take some cues from utilitarianism (Gustafson 2013).

Applications of Utilitarianism towards Humanizing Business According to Mill, when our aims are to connect (sympathize) with others, and to bring about good for others– especially that of humanity on a large scale– these will provide “the greatest and surest sources of happiness” (Mill 1963a, ch5). From a utilitarian perspective, business is an entirely human affair and there are so many ways to increase happiness through the practice of business. Within the company among colleagues, in regular interactions with customers and suppliers, and even broader interactions with the industry at large (including competitors) one has the opportunity to nurture the higher capacities, and both receive and bring about more happiness overall. Bad business practices are exactly the ones which do not concern themselves with the greatest happiness overall. Of course businesses must make a profit, and the profit goes to the owners, but on a utilitarian view, a business would be too narrow in its concerns if it failed to take account of the greater happiness concerns when making decisions. But this is becoming a standardly accepted view in business literature: a well run businesses do take a long term interest in their employees, customers, supplier relationships, financial underwriter relationships, and relations to the greater community (Jensen 2002, 235; Freeman et al. 2010, 29). Many workplaces focus on rules and external sanctions or punishments for rule breakers to maintain ethical behavior. Mill acknowledges the importance of having external policies and sanctions to guide people, but he really sees internal sanctions—self-governing desires of the individual—to be the more effective and human way of establishing good behaviors. Given what we have just discussed about the importance of nurturing higher human capacities, corporations with utilitarian aims should pay special attention to the work environment and treatment of its employees by considering the role it plays in educating or undermining the social sentiments of the employees. As Alford and Naughton (2002) have written, “all human work necessarily involves the promotion or distortion of the excellent goods of human development. When we work, we are not only creating added value and other forms of objective output that can be measured, financially or otherwise, but we are also at the same time forming ourselves as human persons.” Insofar as the business

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environment where a person works has an immense impact on the individual (given that that is where they spend a huge portion of their waking time, energy and activity) the business has a huge role to play in sustaining or undermining the nobler feelings in the human beings who work in its employ. This must be taken seriously. Utilitarianism ala Mill humanizes the workplace. The manager who acts as a Utilitarian, with a focus on the many and a clear understanding of the importance of valuing and protecting each individual’s liberty, has a strong basis for caring for and respecting employees as persons in the workplace. Mill himself points out that “when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them” (Mill 1963b, 272, 266). Rather than viewing people (whether employees, customers or suppliers) merely instrumentally with a simple transactional lens of reference, the utilitarian manager will realize that the healthy company will respect each individual as a person and value their uniqueness and particularity.2 Mill was a defender of the uniqueness of each individual: “Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing” (Mill 1963b, Ch3). He goes on to highlight the importance of individuality: “No one’s idea of excellence in conduct is that people should do absolutely nothing but copy one another. No one would assert that people ought not to put into their mode of life, and into the conduct of their concerns, any impress whatever of their own judgment, or of their own individual character.” This gives the utilitarian manager some good direction in how to treat employees. Insofar as the utilitarian encourages ‘experiments in living’ and diversity of thinking, employees would be encouraged to pursue their own indiosyncratic pursuits, not only for the sake of self-realization, but out of an understanding that this robust dynamic in the company’s culture will help keep the company healthy and progressing. This is the sort of management approach pursued by Google’s famous “20% time” which supposedly encouraged workers to use some of their work time to pursue new innovative projects of their own creation (Schrage 2013). There also must be a strong tendency towards mutual respect and an egalitarian valuation of all, for as Mill points out, “Society between equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally.” (Mill 1998, 3.10.15) Mill’s groundbreaking work on the rights of women provide a model of this sort of egalitarian thinking (Harvey and Gustafson 2018). But at the same time, the utilitarian manager realizes the importance of community as well. The individual must be respected (as this is what makes the group stronger) but the individual is also not living in a vacume, but in the midst of a social context. So the utilitarian manager will do what she can to encourage in her employees a concern for others, and collective interest, not only because this will lead to greater overall happiness, but also to the employees own happiness.

2  For an overview of the contrast between transactional and relational strategies in business see Arun Sharma and Kishore Gopalakrishna Pillai, “The impact of transactional and relational strategies in business markets: An Agenda for inquiry” Industrial Marketing Management 32:8623–626.

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The utilitarian inspired manager will also be taking into account the many constituents or stakeholders of the company, since a utilitarian company will actively seek to view the interests of those stakeholders as its own interests. The utilitarian approach seeks to bring about more happiness to all by nurturing a social sensibility which will make it a matter of course for people to be concerned with the interests of others—because their happiness becomes intertwined with the happiness of others. And the goal of bringing about the greatest happiness entails certain sorts of expectations, such as treating employees, customers, communities, shareholders, and suppliers – with fairness, dignity, and respect. Since a utilitarian company will concern itself with the overall happiness, it will strive to humanize business by stressing the link between corporate operations and the surrounding society, as well as the global ecosystem. The utilitarian company sees itself as an actor in society which can bring about happiness in society through its practices and activities. This is not a foreign notion to many historically successful businesses. In the words of Amartya Sen, “If economic sense includes the achievement of a good society in which one lives, then the distributional improvements can be counted in as parts of sensible outcomes even for business. Visionary industrialists and businesspersons have tended to encourage this line of reasoning” (Sen 1993, 52). Obviously through job creation, excellent products or services, support of auxiliary support companies and suppliers, and general contribution to the economy the company brings about a lot of unintentional positive externalities simply by what it does. But insofar as it intentionally seeks to bring about the greatest happiness overall, it will also make decisions which attempt to maximize happiness for employees through good benefits and care, and for customers by treating them with dignity and respect, and providing customer interaction with is not simply transactional but relational. This extends as well to suppliers, with whom it will seek to develop cooperative, not combative relationships. And also to the local community, whose well being it will take to be of course as a matter of concern. This is the sort of thinking embodies in business leaders such as Merck’s CEO Kenneth Frazier who once said “Businesses exist to deliver value to society” (Ignatius 2018). A utilitarian company will have a global concern for how its practices affect others far away, including those who are in the supply chain in distant countries. Unlike companies who do not take any concern or responsibility for the actions of supply chain actors, it will also be concerned about the global environmental impact and effects of the procedures used to manufacture or bring about its product. This could be mining practices, pollution control measures, and even employee treatment by foreign supplier companies. A model along these lines is Walmarts Sustainability Index Program which in theory seeks to track the sustainability practices of its suppliers abroad, including areas such as the raw materials, the manufacturing and distribution processes (Walmart, “Sustainability Index”). A traditional textbook view of business as an enterprise with a narrow single-­ minded focus on financial returns which ignores human concerns and interests is not only not sustainable, it is inhumane and does not lead to the human happiness and fulfillment which we all desire. Practicing business in an inhumane way makes us less human ourselves, and this clearly leads to a loss of happiness because when

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we include concern for others happiness into our own, we actually increase our own capacity for happiness—at least that is a fundamental tenant of Mill’s utilitarianism. Mill’s utilitarianism has direct implications for how the company should consider their employees, and how the corporation might ideally function. A corporation can follow a framework seeing that the many are best served by protecting the rights and dignity of the individual, and where the many are seen to benefit most by allowing experiments in living and promoting diversity and creativity of viewpoints and ways of being in the world and workplace. Insofar as utilitarianism is a perspective which truly considers the relationship of the one to the many, it can be applied both in the intra-sphere within the corporation itself (and how individuals within the corporation are treated as members of the corporation) and it can also be applied at the inter-sphere level between the corporation and other parties, including competitors, suppliers, and other external stakeholders. We can see that this will have significant implications for how the corporation must consider its role as a member of society when it comes to issues of corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability, and other like issues. If we conceive of the workplace as a utilitarian after the fashion of John Stuart Mill, we will see it as a humane place to nurture the moral concerns of people for one another as we practice business. With this management mindset, and attempts made to nurture concern for one another and for society at large, Consequently, the smallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of and nourished by the contagion of sympathy and the influences of education; and a complete web of corroborative association is woven round it, by the powerful agency of the external sanctions. This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilization goes on, is felt to be more and more natural… . In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. (Mill 1998, 3.10.30-57)

If our business practices could follow this utilitarian advice, our businesses would certainly become more humane, and humanizing, enterprises.

Conclusion ‘Utilitarian’ is often used to signify an approach which ignores human sensibilities, and although many utilitarians (like Bentham or Singer) may have difficulties providing a robust basis for human rights and dignity. Despite this, in John Stuart Mill we find a utilitarianism which is thoroughly humanized. For Mill it is essential to nurture people to consider the needs of others as their own, to develop social sentiments and concern through art and poetry, to treat everyone with dignity and respect, and generally to nurture the higher capacities in humans which are noble and sensitive to increase everyone’s capacity to experience happiness and well being.

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When this utilitarianism and its concern for the greatest good for the many is applied to business, the workplace will be one where each person’s human development is encouraged, respect for others and freedom will be paramount, diversity will be supported, and positive community and a healthy company culture will be nurtured. Business will be managed with a concern for its effects on stakeholders outside the company as well, especially customers, suppliers, and the local community, striving to deliver value to society through its activities.

Bibliography Alford, Helen O.P., and Michael Naughton. 2002. Beyond the shareholder model of the firm. In Rethinking the purpose of business., 27–47. Almeder, Robert, and David Carey. 1991. In defense of sharks: Moral issues in hostile liquidating takeovers. Journal of Business Ethics. 10 (7): 471–484. Anderson, Brian. 1983. Mill on Bentham: From ideology to humanised utilitarianism. History of Political Thought 4 (2): 341–356. Combe, Duncan. 2016. ‘Don’t take it personally’ is terrible work advice. Harvard Business Review. March 29th. https://hbr.org/2016/03/dont-­take-­it-­personally-­is-­terrible-­work-­advice Accessed 31 Jan 2020. Elliot, H. 1910. The letters of John Stuart Mill V.1. London. Freeman, Ed, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Andrew C. Wicks, Bidhan L. Parmar, and Simone De Colle. 2010. Stakehold theory: The state of the art. Cambridge University Press. Gustafson, Andrew. 2005. Art and poetry as the basis of moral education: Reflections on John Stuart  Mill’s view, with application to advertising and media arts today. Teaching Ethics 6 (1): 1–14. ———. 2009. Mill’s poet-philosopher, and the instrumental-social importance of poetry for moral sentiments. British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 17 (4): 821–847. ———. 2013. In defense of a utilitarian business ethic. Business and Society Review 118: 3. Harvey, Celeste, and Andrew Gustafson. 2018. Mill’s defense of the rights of women. Gale Researcher Guide. Farmington Hills: Gale Publishing. Ignatius, Adi. 2018. Businesses exist to deliver value to society. Harvard Business Review March–April. https://hbr.org/2018/03/businesses-­exist-­to-­deliver-­value-­to-­society Accessed 31 Jan 2020. Jensen, Michael. 2002. Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (1): 235–256. Macklem, Timothy, and John Garner. 2006. Value, interest, and well-being. Utilitas 18 (4): 362–382. McGee, R.W. 2008. Applying ethics to insider trading. Journal of Business Ethics 77 (2): 205–217. Mill, John Stuart. 1963a. In Autobiography in Collected Works of J.S. Mill V.1, ed. John M. Robson. University of Toronto Press. ———. 1963b. In On Liberty in Collected Works of J.S. Mill V.18, ed. John M. Robson. University of Toronto Press. ———. 1998. Utilitarianism, ed. Roger Crisp. Oxford University Press. Naughton, Michael. 2009. A complex mission: Integration of Catholic social tradition with business education. Journal of Catholic Higher Education 28 (1): 23–44. Pope John Paul II. 1994. Letter to Families (Gratissimam sane). https://w2.vatican.va/content/ john-­paul-­ii/en/letters/1994/documents/hf_jp-­ii_let_02021994_families.html Schofield, Philip. 2003. Jeremy Bentham’s ‘nonsense upon stilts’. Utilitas 15 (1): 1–26.

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Schrage, Michael. 2013. Just how valuable is Google’s ‘20% time’? Harvard Business Review August 20th. https://hbr.org/2013/08/just-­how-­valuable-­is-­googles-­2-­1 Accessed 31 Jan 2020. Sharma, Arun, and Kishore Gopalakrishna Pillai. 2003. The impact of transactional and relational strategies in business markets: An agenda for inquiry. Industrial Marketing Management 32 (8): 624–626. Sen, Amartya. 1993. Does business ethics make economic sense? Business Ethics Quarterly 3 (1): 45–54. Singer, Peter. 1974. All animals are equal. Philosophic Exchange 5 (1): 103–116. ———. 1993. Practical ethics. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Trotsky, Leon. 1938. Their morals and ours. The New International 4 (6): 163–173. Velasquez, M., C.  Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and M.J.  Meyer. 1989. Calculating consequences: The utilitarian approach to ethics. Issues in Ethics 2:1. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ ethics-­resources/ethical-­decision-­making/calculating-­consequences-­the-­utilitarian-­approach/ Accessed 31 Jan 2020. Walmart. Sustainability Index. https://www.walmartsustainabilityhub.com/sustainability-­index Accessed 31 Jan 2020. Andrew B.  Gustafson is Professor of Business Ethics and Society in the Heider College of Business at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. His publications and research focus on utilitarian business ethics, John Stuart Mill, and the relationship of business and faith.  

Chapter 6

Humanizing Business – A Sartrean Perspective William L. McBride

Jean-Paul Sartre, whose existentialism makes much of the importance of “lived experience” as a basis for philosophical thinking, had relatively little experience of the business world throughout his career. The head of the household in which he grew up, his father having died, was his grandfather, who taught German. Sartre felt destined from very early in his life to the vocation of writer, as he tells us in his autobiographical Les Mots, and he achieved such success in that role that, after a short stint as a high school philosophy teacher and brief military activity followed by an equally brief imprisonment at the outset of World War II, he spent the rest of his days writing and engaging in work related to his writing. This work included, inter alia, participating in the production of his plays, lecturing in his ever-­expanding capacity of public intellectual, and editing the journal of which he was one of the founders, Les Temps Modernes. But I have never read any suggestion that Sartre was entrusted with the finances even of that enterprise, a very modest one indeed from a business standpoint. As he wrote while on military duty in a letter to his lifelong companion Simone de Beauvoir, at a time in 1940 just before France’s surrender to Nazi Germany, his provenance from a family of state employees had rendered him hopeless with respect to handling money. He was, as he said, at home neither with the working class nor with the class of employers. Nevertheless, Sartre was an astute analyst of the life of the society in which he lived, certainly including its business and generally economic aspects. He developed an increasing commitment to socialism – the Resistance group that he helped to organize upon his return to Paris from the prisoners’ camp took the name “Socialisme et Liberté” – and his later works, especially his Critique de la raison dialectique, contain some valuable reflections on business practices, in the broadest sense of that term, both in the West and in the Soviet Union in its early years. His lifelong fascination with the contingency of human affairs, which evolved into his W. L. McBride (*) Purdue University, Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_6

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quintessentially existentialist belief in human freedom and opposition to determinism, gives these analyses a distinctively “humanistic” character that sets them apart from rival analyses in ways that I shall attempt to explain. (I mean “humanistic” in the sense intended by the title of the present book, that is, as influenced by approaches taken in the humanities, rather than as referring to an ideology. More about this later.). In the ensuing paragraphs, I shall discuss three of these analyses and will then conclude with a few more general remarks about Sartre and business that will have been anticipated by my introductory observations. One of the more remarkably complex passages in Volume One of Sartre’s Critique concerns the setting of prices in a simple, abstract market. Using a chart to show the range of the prices (highest and lowest and in between) that sellers, on the one side, and buyers, on the other, are prepared to demand/pay, he shows how the point at which the two columns coincide (11,000 in his arbitrary example) comes in fact to be imposed on all the actors in the market, even though it corresponds to the actual sums articulated by a small minority of them. This entire process is replete with “otherness,” a favorite concept in the existentialist tradition, and an excellent (and very basic) illustration of what Sartre calls “seriality”  – human groupings, familiar in many facets of daily life, in which freely-chosen activities (the buyers DO want to buy and the sellers to sell) turn back, as it were, on themselves. However, Sartre’s description here is not intended, as are so many accounts of The Market by economists on both Right and Left, to reduce it to a sheer deterministic mechanism. As he expresses it: They [the sellers] are united by the fact that the juxtaposition of men is not merely that of sardines in a sardine can: these sellers who are performing the same operation are determining a social field; simply because the operation is human and necessarily concerns Others, or, if you prefer, because each one of these [operations], in addressing itself to the indistinct mass of buyers, projects a human future.1

To ascribe supra-human power to “market forces,” as so many writers on economics are inclined to do, in other words, is for Sartre to misunderstand this fundamental feature of business in the modern world. My personal experiences during the summers of my college and early graduate student years, when I worked as a clerk on Wall Street, the first three of those summers in the New  York Stock Exchange, enhance my appreciation of this Sartrean analysis. In Volume One of the Critique, the analysis of “the Market” is immediately preceded by an interesting discussion of mass media, especially the radio industry, as they reach out to a public impotent to respond. (Of course, this refers to a period before today’s electronic mass media existed.) Perhaps even more interesting though along similar lines, however, is an analysis near the end of the same volume that has its experiential basis, as Sartre tells us, in his 1946 trip to the United States. One phenomenon that he encountered at that time was the utilization, by the music industry, of a weekly radio broadcast that featured the “Top Ten hits” of the week.

1  Jean--Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, Tome I, Théorie des ensembles pratiques (2ème edition). Paris: Gallimard, 1985, p. 392. (My transl.)

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Those were the days when phonograph records were bought and sold in great quantities, there being no other easy way of having one’s preferred tunes for oneself or giving them to friends. Sartre was fascinated by the process of manipulation through advertising and sales figures (from the previous week), which he saw as an excellent example of what American sociologists of the period were calling “other-direction”. As he observes: It is no longer a question of rivalries among advertisers: at the national level, a more or less tacit agreement among the different sectors of industry and commerce is achieved in order to profit from rising salaries and push the masses (inert gatherings): (1) to consume more, (2) to adapt their budget not only to their needs and tastes but to the requirements of national production.2

Although this particular phenomenon of the “Top Ten” records has lost out to technological changes, it would be easy to point to many aspects of life today that exhibit the same or a similar combination of other-directedness and manipulation of the masses through advertising; examples abound in the pharmaceutical and beauty industries, for instance. What strikes me as particularly interesting in Sartre’s “Top Ten” example is that economic class divisions play no overt part in it. But for Sartre throughout his later years, questions of class usually did play a major role in his thinking. In fact, such questions always preoccupied him to an extent, as illustrated by one scene in the novel of the late 1930s, Nausea, that established his fame early on. It is the scene in which the novel’s anti-hero, Antoine Roquentin, visits the museum of Bouville, the great port city (fictional counterpart of Le Havre) where he is living, and enters a large room filled with portraits of the Bouville elite of the late Nineteenth Century. Many of them were responsible for Bouville’s commercial and industrial development, and their portraits have been painted with great respect, a kind of adulation. Sartre’s descriptions of them, filled with irony, bring out unmistakably their sense of their personal superiority and of the superiority of their bourgeois class. It is all reminiscent of the age in which big business, such as it existed in France in that era, regarded the exploitation of workers as its privilege. Behind Sartre’s prose, expressed in the words of his fictional character, it is impossible not to detect a strong desire to humanize this class-divided world of the Industrial Revolution as depicted at the height of its middle period. Those who have read this now-classic novel may feel some suspicion of my claim that Sartre’s approach is truly humanistic if they recall another passage in the same work, in which Roquentin dines in a restaurant with an individual only identified as “the Self-Taught Man,” who reveals that he is a humanist and a socialist and declares his love for all human beings. Roquentin is angered by this talk and reflects, inwardly, on the wide variety of humanists of whom he is aware, all of them ultimately hypocritical and fraudulent in his view. While the speaker is a character of fiction and not Sartre himself, one is left with the impression of a strong anti-­ humanist bias on Sartre’s part. But matters are more complicated than that. In fact  Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, Tome I, pp. 734–35. (My transl.)

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Sartre was something of a student of the history of different “humanisms,” especially in France, as illustrated by other texts from throughout his career. For example, in the third and final part of his long essay “The Communists and Peace,” there is an interesting, rather complex discussion of a type of humanism prevalent among skilled industrial workers, beginning in the late Nineteenth Century and continuing into the Twentieth, which he calls “l’humanisme du travail.” It is based on the supposed superior merit of the working-class elite, as opposed to the masses, and ultimately, according to Sartre, serves to mask the gap in privilege between the entire working class, skilled and unskilled alike, and the bourgeoisie. In the wake of the many excesses of the Industrial Revolution, relations between the working and middle classes in France, Sartre suggests, require a different form of humanization. It is just this different form of humanization that is implied in one of Sartre’s best-known essays, originally presented as a lecture shortly after the end of the Second World War, “Existentialism Is a Humanism.” The fact that a very large crowd gathered for the lecture is proof that existentialism had already become something of a vogue. Sartre attempted to refute its detractors among the Communists and Catholic conservatives by arguing that existentialism’s emphasis on human freedom makes it an optimistic philosophy, far from the philosophy of despair that its critics charged it with being. The human being, Sartre insists here, is characterized by a projection toward the future (an idea already discussed in the slightly earlier existentialist work of Martin Heidegger), the openness of possibilities. It is this kind of humanism, and not any of the previously mentioned ideological varieties of it, that Sartre advocates. It could well be considered a useful introduction to the “project” of humanizing business. It is in this same essay that Sartre touches on an important theme common to him and Beauvoir, and connected with his commitment to socialism, to wit, that freedom cannot be fully realized by anyone as long as there exist human beings who are, practically speaking, unfree: my freedom, he says, depends on the freedom of others, and the reverse. (I say “practically speaking” in order to distinguish, as Sartre himself does, this ordinary sense of freedom from the basic freedom that he regards as characteristic of all human beings.) This notion is central to the humanism that Sartre espouses in the essay in question. Now let us consider, more briefly, another Sartrean business analysis of a very different sort. During his earlier years especially, one form of business that played a large role in French, and indeed Western, consciousness and culture was the sports business of professional boxing. At the beginning of the unfinished second volume of his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre devotes many pages to discussing it, using boxing as a metaphor for understanding the nature of world history. (“The Intelligibility of History” is the sub-title of the volume.) He shows an understanding both of the business itself – the function of owners (of the facilities), trainers, and managers, the attraction of making a professional career in this sport especially for individuals from the poorest ranks of society – and of the techniques that make for a successful pugilist. Sartre’s sense of the latter is based on personal experience: he himself was an amateur boxer, and engaged with some of his high school students during his brief period of teaching in Le Havre. What this lengthy analysis reveals

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in terms of the subject of the presemt book, it seems to me, is not that Sartre was the Twentieth Century Marquis of Queensbury, imposing orderly rules on a fundamentally violent sport, but rather that he understood the boxing industry – for it was and still is an industry – as a human undertaking that could be utilized intellectually to shed light on other and larger human undertakings extending as far as history itself. In other words, the boxing business is, for better and worse, a window on humanity as a whole. Rather than engaging in a condemnation of boxing (which in any case would have been absurd, given his own fascination with it), Sartre probes its underlying human rationality. Much of the remainder of what exists as Volume Two of the Critique is devoted to the development of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, when Stalin presided over it as dictator, often acting with great ruthlessness. Undoubtedly the major story of that time and place, from the standpoint of the larger movement of history, was, in an important sense, a “business” story: the transformation of Soviet society into a site of massive industrialization. It must be seen as a case study of de-­humanization – undertaken, of course, in the name of socialism, with a view to realizing “the bright future of mankind.” Some of Sartre’s critics have attacked his account of this transformation for being insufficiently negative concerning the terrible deeds committed under Stalin’s orders. But it should be remembered that his principal aim in this text was to find intelligibility in what happened. So, at the level of daily life in the burgeoning Soviet cities there were rewards for the “hero” workers who achieved great feats of productivity – and the circulation of propaganda that was believed by many. After all, from a purely “business” point of view, the centralization and authoritarianism characteristic of that epoch did achieve results. (Never mind if they became serious impediments to further economic progress a couple of decades later.) This needs to be admitted and explained, which is Sartre’s self-imposed task. The stated goal was socialism, which was thought to require inhumane practices along the way. As Sartre says, more or less at the end of his long analysis, [Socialism] is very simply the mediation between the abstract moment of socialization and the concrete moment of common enjoyment. This means that, in certain concrete historical circumstances, it can be synonymous with hell.3

By the time of writing this, Sartre had concluded, like others who had originally hoped that the Soviet experiment would be successful, that what had originally seemed to be something of a “detour” (déviation) on the road to socialism had become permanent and irreparable. That is all the more reason, then, in my view, to take seriously this case study of industrial dehumanization that he has offered us. While there are scholarly debates about the extent to which the “later Sartre,” that is, the Sartre of the Critique, diverges from the more purely existentialist early Sartre of Being and Nothingness – debates that need not occupy much of our attention here – one especially noteworthy point on which Sartre as dialectician distinguishes himself from both Hegel and Marx as predecessors, a point that reveals his 3  Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, Tome II, L’Intelligibilité de l’Histoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1985, p. 162. (My transl.)

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ongoing existentialist commitment, has to do with the notion of progress in history. The two Nineteenth Century philosophers appear to have been imbued with a basically unquestioning belief in progress. Sartre was not. He often raised doubts about it, and he also had a masterful sense of the radically different interpretations that successive generations give to various aspects of the historical past. He makes it quite clear, from the outset of his Critique, that, while of course for practical reasons he must present his analyses in a definite sequence (from highly abstract to concrete), the stages of the dialectic that he identifies are reversible, an assertion that Hegel especially would have considered heretical. I wish to conclude by offering some general reflections on Sartre and business. As I indicated at the beginning of this essay, Sartre did not, as they say, “have a head for business.” Fortunately, he did not need to: From relatively early years he was successful as a writer and seems to have lived comfortably. He spent many hours in Paris cafés, writing. He lived in different apartments at different times, for some years with his mother, with whom he would play the piano. In short, he was a bourgeois intellectual, as he well knew, with few occasions for seriously experiencing the angoisse with which his early work is so replete -- at least not until the time of the Algerian War, the very intense time of writing the Critique of Dialectical Reason, when bombs were placed in his apartment by die-hard supporters of “Algérie Française”. He tipped lavishly, and seems to have been on good terms with the small businesses in his daily surroundings as well as with most of his colleagues (despite a couple of famous quarrels) and with his publisher, Gallimard. Even though “espèce d’existentialiste!” served for a time as a negative epithet in some circles in France, Sartre can in fact be said to have flourished on the whole, and the existentialist “movement,” if that is what it can be called, along with him. To the extent to which it conjured up a way of life, it emphasized freedom and the contingency of things and, as many have remarked, was well suited to the period of renewal following the horrors of World War II. Those horrors were dehumanizing to the nth degree, and from that perspective existentialism was in the service of “faire l’humain,” the title that has been given to his lecture on ethics presented at the Gramsci Institute in Rome in the 1960s. But of course, as I have been at pains to insist, there were, and still are, many aspects of the world of business and industry that fell far short of this slogan, as was certainly true of that world in its Soviet version as well, and Sartre was deeply aware of this and sought especially in his later years to serve as a very strong critic of these worlds as he found them. Not all existentialist thinkers took this route; Heidegger, for example, although he painted a grim picture of some of the “monstrous” aspects of the “technological framework” that he acknowledged to be our lot in the contemporary world, in fact wrote very little about business as such and believed (see his “Letter on Humanism”) that Sartre’s anthropocentrism was part of the problem rather than a contribution to overcoming the malign forgetfulness of Being. Sartre, while he was very much at home in cafés and restaurants, small businesses par excellence, and with the house that published almost all his writings, Gallimard, apparently had very few personal dealings with large corporations. Nevertheless, I hope to have shown that, despite his lack of major business experience, Sartre

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showed a keen sense, critical but realistic and not vituperative, of details both large (up to the economic system as a whole) and small in the worlds of business and industry in his time and in the recent past – a sense that is prerequisite for any process of greater humanization in the present and future. William L.  McBride is Arthur G.  Hansen Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University and Past President (2003–08) of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) and of the North American Society for Social Philosophy. The co-founder and former codirector of the North American Sartre Society, he is the author of Sartre’s Political Theory, The Philosophy of Marx, and several other books on social and political philosophy and philosophy in Eastern Europe. His numerous other publications include an edited eight-volume collection of articles with the general title of Sartre and Existentialism.  

Chapter 7

Re-humanizing Business: Some Lessons from Levinas and Their Implications Dag Gjerløw Aasland

Introduction There are two possible ways to approach the question of humanizing business: (1) to identify the de-humanizing forces and sources in business, and (2) to identify the humanizing forces and sources. The first of these two ways seems obvious: The de-­ humanizing forces and sources in business stem from the pursuit of individual self-­ interest. The other way, however, to search and identify the humanizing forces and sources, is not that obvious. Thus, it poses a more interesting question: What is humanizing in business activities? This choice of approach is inspired by the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995). After the holocaust of the Second World War, he did not ask, as several of his colleagues did, how such a thing could happen, in the midst of Western culture and in “Kant’s own country”. Instead, he asked why there is not a holocaust all the time. Given man’s propensity to protect himself and his group, what is it that holds us back from going into a “war of all against all”? Thus, a Levinasian approach to what we may observe as a lack of humanity in the business world, would be to ask: Why isn’t it worse? What are the qualities of humanity in business that after all do exist? Why do not people follow their narrow individual interests all the time? In other words: What is the source of ethics in business? Levinas found the answers to these questions in how the individual subject becomes a self. This becoming of a self takes place in the encounter with another person, who may be anyone. I become myself through the way I respond when the face of the other person questions my choices and even my very existence. The self that I from this response become is more whole than the rational “economic man”. It is a person where emotions and reason play together. When what I do and say is D. G. Aasland (*) University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_7

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questioned by the other person, I may feel what is called moral scruples. This discomfort motivates me to respond, in actions and words, but before that to acquire as much available knowledge as possible. This is because my response will define me as a person, and it is existential to me that others will see me as a person with integrity and credibility.

Husserl’s Worry I suppose we all connect the word “truth” to the objectively given world “out there” which exists independently of our subjective conception of it. The intrigue, however, is that our only access to this objectively given world goes through our subjective conception of it. The implications of this challenge led Edmund Husserl to develop his phenomenology. Towards the end of his life, Husserl became increasingly worried about the state of sciences in the Western world, and especially in Europe in the late 1930s, including how his own successors carried further his phenomenology. His concern was that even though a subjective perspective is the only possible in understanding the world, scientists seemed to relate only to this subjective understanding of it, as if an objectively given world does not exist. In his last book, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, published after his death in 1938, he states: … the everyday surrounding world of life is presupposed as existing  – the surrounding world in which all of us (even I who am now philosophizing) consciously have our existence; here are also sciences, as cultural facts in this world, with their scientists and theories. In this world we are objects among objects in the sense of the life-world, namely, as being here and there, in the plain certainty of experience, before anything that is established scientifically, whether in physiology, psychology, or sociology. On the other hand, we are subjects for this world, namely, as ego-subjects experiencing it, contemplating it, valuing it, related to it purposefully …. (Husserl 1970, 104–105)

How is it possible to be both an object in the lifeworld and, at the same time, a subject for this world? Husserl’s answer to this question lies in the second part of the title of his book, in the transcendental phenomenology. He called his phenomenology transcendental because he saw no other possibility than first, before relating to the world as we experience it, we must, by assumption, transcend these experiences and establish the conscious subject. Without conscious subjects, there would be no science (Husserl 1970, 98).1

1  There is a long and deep discussion within the field of philosophy concerning the interpretation of Husserl’s use of the word “transcendental”. Maybe needless to say, the interpretation above is mine.

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 mmanuel Levinas and His Further Development of Husserl’s E Phenomenology Emmanuel Levinas was brought up in a Jewish intellectual home and he developed as a philosopher in France, influenced from, among others, Henri Bergson, and his emphasize on the importance of intuition. To Levinas, it is not, as it was for Husserl, the conscious subject that is given by assumption. The subject is instead established through its response to the other person, who is “already there”, existing before any thinking. The response from the emerging subject is initially not conscious; consciousness starts as a response to a call for responsibility from the physical and present face of the Other. This can be explained as follows. As already mentioned, a Levinasian approach to the question of humanizing business would be to ask for the already existing qualities of humanity in business. Why don’t people follow their narrow individual interests all the time? Levinas’ first main work, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Levinas 1991a; first published in French in 1961), provides an answer to this question. Levinas does not set up a conflict between the pursuit of self-interest or egoistic enjoyment of consumption on the one hand and ethical imperatives or values on the other. Instead, he claims that the one cannot exist without the other. Ethics comes to the subject when the face of another person questions his pursuit of self-interest or enjoyment of consumption. Without self-interest or egoistic enjoyment there would be no ethics. Besides, what he calls ethics does not refer to any immaterial domain of values, ideas or concepts. By welcoming the face presented, physically, by the other person, this face remains commensurate with him who welcomes; it remains terrestrial. This presentation is preeminently nonviolence, for instead of offending my freedom it calls it to responsibility and founds it. (Levinas 1991a, 203).

In his second main work, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas (1991b; first published in French in 1974) goes deeper and behind this encounter with the face of the other person as the source of ethics. Here, it is not only ethics, but the conscious subject itself that emerges as it responds to the other person. From an initial passive and wordless state, the consciousness of being a responsible subject comes into being: “The oneself cannot form itself; it is already formed with absolute passivity. … This passivity is that of an attachment that has already been made, as something irreversibly past, prior to all memory and all recall.” (Levinas 1991b,104)

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Parallel Works in Psychology Contemporary to Levinas, the British psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907–1990) linked his own studies and experiences in the Freudian tradition to recently acquired knowledge in biology, developing a theory of attachment and separation, both physical and emotional, between the infant and its primary caregiver (usually the mother). He found that the existence and behavior of an external caregiver is a decisive cause for the development of the child. What we here call the development of the child includes the emergence of a consciousness of the self and the adaption of language and knowledge (Bowlby 1969).2 As we see, both Levinas and Bowlby provide us with an insight into how the subject starts to exist through the existence of another, external person: to Levinas the Other, to Bowlby the mother. It is interesting to notice that for both these scholars, the face of the other and the mother respectively, plays a crucial role. This is even more emphasized by the psychologist and brain researcher Allan Schore, building his research and works on that of Bowlby (Schore 2001, 303). Any psychoanalyst would probably suggest that in the face of the other person, Levinas recalled the face of his mother, from the time before his own consciousness emerged. Or, as Levinas himself puts it in the above quotation, “prior to all memory and all recall.” However, if we try to reduce the expressions of one thinker into the universe of another, a lot of original insight would get lost. Roger Burggraeve is a Belgian catholic theologian who worked together with Levinas for several years. In a seminal paper (Burggraeve 2008) he elaborates on the inspiration that Levinas received from his friend and mentor Jean Wahl, on the idea that in order to be moved by the face of the other, there will have to be “something” within the self that makes us “movable”: In spite of ourselves we are appealed to by the naked face of the other, literally called to responsibility. Well then, in order to be able to be touched by the fate and the suffering of the other, we must be touchable. So that that which happens would be able to happen, namely the ‘hetero-affection’ by the face, we must assume that we are ‘affectable’ (Burggraeve 2008,16).

In other words, there must be something “inside” the subject, an “other in me”, that, “in spite of myself” (as Levinas frequently put it), makes me able to be affected by the face of the other, and thus disturb the egocentricity of the self. It is interesting to see how Levinas describes from the “inside”, that is, from the subject itself, in the phenomenological tradition, what neurobiology describes from the “outside”, that is, from biological science. From both these two sources, on the one hand psychoanalysis (supplied by neurobiology), where what we could call the humane in humanity is implanted through the interaction with the caregiver in the early time after birth, and on the other hand phenomenology, where the humane in humanity is recalled as a source of ethics in a response to the other person’s

 I will thank my wife Helga Aasland who introduced me to this field.

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Fig. 7.1  The parallel paths of phenomenology and psychoanalysis as presented in this essay

questioning of the subject, we may say that the humane is something that lies beneath the surface of consciousness and rationality. Or, as Levinas puts it: This is the underside of a fabric woven where there is consciousness and which takes place in being. (Levinas 1991b, 103).

Figure 7.1 above illustrates three stages in each of the two parallel paths of development initiated by Husserl and Freud respectively, through the followers who are presented in the above discussion.

Replacing the Transcendence in Husserl’s Phenomenology Earlier in this chapter, we saw why Husserl called his phenomenology transcendental: He found it necessary to pre-assume the existence of the ego-subject who can then relate to the already existing world. With today’s knowledge, we can now reverse this order of the subject and the world in which the subject belongs. Recent knowledge from the development of the brain of the infant shows us that the conscious subject emerges from within the biological body, stimulated by an emotional and physical presence of, and interaction with, its caregivers. It is interesting to note how well the way Levinas and Burggraeve replaced Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology corresponds with this insight: The emergence of the conscious subject is a result of two conditions presupposed to exist  – an external other and a non-­ conscious “other in the self”. Bowlby, in his psychoanalytic tradition, and Levinas in his phenomenology, were both further developers of the works of Freud and Husserl, respectively. The works of Freud and Husserl are both examples of the hubris of human rationality characterizing the entrance to the twentieth century. There was at that time a strong

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belief that our consciousness and its ability to express itself through words satisfying the criteria of rationality and consistency had practically no limits, even when the consciousness studied itself (and even the “unconscious”). Their followers, however, in this essay represented by Levinas and Bowlby, respectively, took down this hubris of consciousness and rationality and confined them by pointing at how the conscious self comes into existence. While Levinas saw a relation where the Other is above and anterior to the self, Bowlby (and later, Schore) pointed at the physical and emotional attachment as a condition, and limitation, for the development of the conscious self. Since the time when Husserl found it necessary to remind his colleagues about the presence of an objectively given reality, independent from the subjective conception of it, we have learned that these two worlds are not separated. The conscious subject, with its ideas and words, knowledge and sciences, emerges from both a biological and a social context in the lifeworld. Both these two contextual conditions are fundamental: The biological condition implies a causal relation going from the body via the unconscious to the conscious subject and further to social interaction. The social condition for the development of the conscious subject implies that social stimuli cause changes in the conscious subject, and further in the neurobiological status of the body. The conscious self is both embodied and embedded in the material world.

 rom Ethics of the Face to Ethics of the Place (and F the Non-­ethics of the Space) We have seen that the humane in humanity exists beneath the surface of the consciousness where we, as ego-subjects, relate to the lifeworld by, as Husserl described it (in the quotation above), “contemplating it, valuing it, and related to it purposefully”, just as we do in business. We have also seen that the humane in humanity breaks this surface in the face-to-face encounter with another person. In real business life, face-to-face encounters happen all the time, but they require physical places, such as work, market or meeting places. Business tends to become inhumane when there is no physical place for it: in big, alienating organizations and in digital space. These spaces are without faces; physical faces need places. The emerging digital economy creates spaces without faces, which may be de-­ humanizing, while economies that contain physical places tends to humanize business. This humanizing of business emerges when the humane is recalled, or, as Levinas put it, is recurred, in the face-to-face encounter. It has always been there, from before any business started. Thus, it is a question of re-humanizing business. Digital communication and transactions pre-require an “I-first”, as the other is not there. In the encounter face to face, the other is already there, and not constructed by the ego-subject. The other recalls the humane in the subject, from beneath consciousness and language. Communicating digitally and over a distance,

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the economy is driven by a pre-required self-interest, as we learn in conventional economic theory. On the real, physical market places and the work places, however, this self-interest is questioned by the disturbing appearance of the face of the other person, confronting the subject by questioning him and thus appealing to the humane that rests within all of us, making economic transactions proceed more smoothly. However, there is another side of the digital economy that may have a humanizing effect on business: There is a growing trend of having remote workplaces in business. Digital technology makes it possible to work from home or from a mobile location. In addition to the possible de-humanizing effect of this trend as mentioned in the previous paragraph, a remote workplace may also imply that instead of facing colleagues at work who are all in the same business, with the self-asserting effect this may have, one may be more physically together with people who are not in the same business, such as family members (especially children) or people in the local community. These people may be more “disturbing” than colleagues in the face-to-­ face encounters questioning the business in which one is involved.

 inding up: Re-humanizing Business Is to Go Back W to the Common Human We have all our roles to play in the game of the global economy, as employees, employers, leaders on any level, and as consumers. Regardless of these roles, however, we are all human beings, and it is due to this last fact that business becomes more humane than it would have been in a virtual game. It is as a human being I meet the other human, who questions how I play my role. The human species shows a broad diversity. As soon as we learn how to think, we go in different directions. What makes us able to think, however, is common to all humans. John Bowlby and Allan Schore found that what is needed is a good and loving caregiver who is wholly present for the child during the first years. The means of communication is the direct interaction and attachment, primarily between the two faces. Through this interaction the child is given the necessary help to learn affect regulation. In this interaction, stories are made, with sounds, movements, songs and words, and thus connecting each moment with the next. In this way, consciousness emerges in the child, by holding to something that is experienced to last over time (Schore 1994, 490–495). The words come with the stories forming the consciousness. And when we have the words, we can think by ourselves. Hence, consciousness was not there from the beginning. But in the pre-conscious stage we experienced a lot that was fundamental to our further development. These experiences must have left some traces within us, in some way or the other. Do these traces at any time come up to the surface of consciousness? When reading Emmanuel Levinas, it is almost unavoidable not to think that it is exactly these traces he tries to put words to, again and again. Levinas claims that there is something in me from the

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time before I became a conscious self, from a past that I cannot remember. It is easy to think that this “something” belongs to what Freud called the unconscious. Levinas, on his side, was more specific and described something that is called forth in the encounter with the face of another person. To Levinas, this is how I become the person I am: through how I respond to the question that is posed, even if tacitly, by the face of the other person, saying “Who are you?”. Maybe my body remembers how another face called forth an emerging consciousness? To Levinas, however, the self does not emerge only once, at an early stage in life. It emerges all the time: “… it is the very fact of finding oneself while losing oneself” (Levinas 1991b, 11). That is, in the interrupting questioning from the Other, I lose myself, just to find myself again in my response to this questioning. Besides being a philosopher, Levinas also brought from his background a Jewish religion. To him, the encounter with the face of the Other is also the moment when the idea of God comes into the human mind. This is discussed in several of the essays in what is considered by many to be his third main work, the essay collection Of God Who Comes to Mind (Levinas 1998a; first published in French in 1986). As humans, we are thinking and verbal beings who continuously make explanations of the world that surrounds us. We try to fit these explanations with what our senses take in and what we experience. If these explanations don’t fit, we will have to adjust them. That is what Bowlby and Schore did before they wrote their books from their research on infants and the development of their brains and on how consciousness emerges. That is also what Levinas did before he wrote down his philosophy about the continuously ongoing emerging of the responsible self, confronted with the face of another person, and before he wrote how the idea of God comes into the human mind. What is interesting is not that these books are written, but that they raised recognition among so many readers as their outreach indicates. We all find our own explanations and languages. Bowlby and Schore found their language and ways of thinking in psychology and brain research. Levinas found his languages and ways of thinking from subjective philosophy and from his own religious background. People from other disciplines and cultures choose their languages and ways of thinking. We all find our own answers. It is a large paradox then, that people group themselves into different and sometimes opposing, even hostile, affiliations in their efforts to understand and explain what is the common human: the origin of the self and our consciousness, and our continuous efforts to get a grip on and put words to that which we can never get a final grip on or put a final word to, because it goes under the radar of our consciousness. There seems to be limits to how our consciousness can explore itself. Some people see other people’s answers as a threat to their own. This threat can be so large and there may be so much at stake that one “loses oneself”, in the sense of cutting off the source of the continuous becoming of the self. For instance, by facing a screen instead of another face. The hope lies in what Levinas describes as “finding oneself while losing oneself”, in responding to the questioning from the face of the other person, physically, in real life. These encounters call forth the common human. And even if this common human is established before any words, there are fortunately still words for it.

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That is what we all experience when we try to communicate with people who may first appear as strangers: in simple, everyday language, and in business on physical market places and work sites.

Example: The Nordic Model The Nordic countries (that is, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) are frequently held up as examples of countries with stable political and economic systems and development, high welfare conditions and employment, and high economic and social equality (Dølvik et al. 2015). The most common ways to explain these outcomes are to point at, on the one hand, a high level of trust, both within the population and towards authorities and social institutions, and, on the other hand, an active cooperation and acceptance of different roles between the employers, the employees’ organizations, and the government; the so-called “tripartite cooperation”. How is this possible to sustain? A striking observation when compared with other Western countries, is the relatively small units and fora, both in economic and political contexts, sufficiently small for the personal representatives of the stakeholders and decision makers to meet regularly, face to face. Top managers and union leaders face each other regularly. The same do professionals and administrators in both private and public enterprises. And it is more the rule than the exception that representatives of the different parts in the tripartite cooperation know each other also on a personal level. Besides the numerous explicitly research reports that are written and narratives that are told about the Nordic model, the ideas of Levinas may add some insights to this phenomenon and its outcomes, going beneath the level of consciousness and rationality.

Levinas Again In approaching a conclusion, I will make some reflections on the Nordic model, mainly based on my own experiences as a university leader (within the context of the Nordic model), in this role also gaining experience from the business world, and with reference to two essays by Levinas: “Ideology and Idealism” (Levinas 1998b), and “Dialogue: Self-Consciousness and Proximity of the Neighbor” (Levinas 1998c). In business, when representatives of the top managers meet the representatives of the employees, one could perhaps think that both parts brought with them their own ideologies and explicitly expressed values, maybe even in the form of ethical values or standards. However, such positions are not dominating. What is given is the institutional framework and established paths of procedures for talks and negotiations, where all parts play their role in discussing the specific issues on the agenda.

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Levinas opens his essay on ideologies and idealism with these words: Ideology usurps the appearance of science, but the statement of its concept ruins the credit of morality. The suspicion of ideology deals morality the hardest blow it could ever receive. This suspicion probably marks the end of an entire human ethics and, in any case, overturns the theory of duty and of values. (Levinas 1998b, 3)

In the following discussion, Levinas claims that when all questions unanswered by science are filled with ideology, or philosophy, including expressed values and ethical rules and guidelines, there is no room left for the real ethics, which emerges unpredictably from the encounter with the face of the other person. Not to fill all holes of the unknown is not to relax on rationality: The interrupting force of ethics does not attest to a simple relaxing of reason, but to placing in question the act of philosophizing, which cannot fall back into philosophy. (Levinas 1998b, 4)

Later in the same essay, Levinas criticizes a common practice in many organizations, sometimes perhaps reached through negotiations between the employers and employees, of declaring ethical values, rules and guidelines, constructed as amendments added to “factual” knowledge in a profession or a field. Ethics does not come to be superimposed upon essence as a second layer in which an ideological gaze incapable of looking the real in the face would take refuge. (Levinas 1998b, 11)

Instead, he reverses the order: Knowledge about the factually given world is created in an ethical setting; it is expressed in the language that we make when we answer the questioning from the face of the other person. In his essay on dialogue, Levinas elaborates on this, suggesting that all thinking and all knowledge requires an “original and foregoing dialogue” with an interlocutor other than oneself. And he proceeds: We may wonder, consequently, whether knowledge itself and all consciousness does not begin in language. Even if dialogue itself ends by knowing itself – as it is attested at least by the pages the philosophers devote to this – it is reflection that discovers it. But reflection, which supposes the suspension of the spontaneity of life, already supposes its being placed in question by the Other [l’Autre], which would not have been possible without a prior dialogue, without the encounter with another [d’autrui]. (Levinas 1998c, 146)

In other words, knowledge begins in language, it is not such that a language is constructed to express an already existing knowledge. The order is: (1) the face, (2) language, and (3) knowledge. But where does ethics come in here? To this question, Levinas, returns to his point from the essay on ideology and idealism: Let us note, first, that the philosophy of dialogue is oriented toward a concept of the ethical that is separated from the tradition that derives the ethical from knowledge and from Reason as the faculty of the universal, and sees in the ethical a layer superimposed on being. Ethics would thus be subordinated either to prudence, or to the universalization of the maxim of action (where it was, to be sure, a question of the respect for the human person, but only as a secondary formulation, and deduced from the categorical imperative), or again to the contemplation of a hierarchy of values constructed like a Platonic world of ideas. Ethics begins in the I-You of the dialogue insofar as the I-You signifies the worth of the other man

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or, still more precisely, insofar as within the immediacy of the relation to the other man alone (and without recourse to some general principle) a meaning such as worth is sketched out. This is a worth attached to man coming out of the value of the You, or of the man who is other; a value attached to the other man. (Levinas 1998c, 150).

So, what relevance does this have for the Nordic model, and, from that, what does it say about the wish to (re-)humanize business? Taking the Nordic model first, what characterizes it is that it is not primarily based on any preset declarations of values, ideas or principles. Neither is it based on any “Theory of the Nordic model”. It is simply based on an established practice and what looks like rather banal procedures for how and when the parts in an organization or a society meet and talk. Not even each of the participants enter their encounters with explicitly preset declaration of values, ideas or principles. When going into the rooms of negotiations, the participants go into a dialogue, starting out with language as it is formed there and then, and ending with new, common knowledge about their common concern, including a knowledge about – and an acknowledgement of – their differences of interests.

Conclusion The humanizing forces and sources in business are found where people meet face to face. Business life, it’s rules, procedures and acceptance of each part pursuing his or her self-interest, is inclined to cover and hide the humanizing desire that lies deep in all human beings. Face-to-face encounters, however, bring these desires up to the surface. This can be observed and experienced in all business transactions where the parts meet physically. In an increasingly digital economy, which we experience daily through various labor-cost-saving innovations in both work and market places, we meet less faces and more screens. This change has by itself a de-humanizing effect. Levinas did not discuss the digital economy explicitly, for obvious reasons. Still, his phenomenology – and now even supported by recent findings in neurobiology – is more relevant now than ever before: Not confronting a real face, physically, in the real lifeworld, increases the risk of not “finding oneself while losing oneself”, which is initiated by the questioning from the face of the another person and followed by the response through which one continuously becomes a responsible self.

References Bowlby, John. 1969. Attachment. London: Random House. Burggraeve, Roger. 2008. Affected by the Face of the Other: The Levinasian Movement from the Exteriority to the Interiority of the Infinite. In Emmanuel Levinas. Prophetic Inspiration

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and Philosophy, ed. I. Kajon, E. Baccarini, F. Brezzi, and J. Hansel, 24–27. Rome: Atti del Convegno internaionale per il Centario delle nascita. maggio 2006. Dølvik, Jon Erik et al. 2015. The Nordic model towards 2030: A new chapter? Oslo: Fafo report 2015:07. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1991a. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 1991b. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 1998a. Of God Who Comes To Mind. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. ———. 1998b. Ideology and Idealism. In Levinas 1998a, 3–14. ———. 1998c. Dialogue: Self-consciousness and Proximity of the Neighbor. In Levinas 1998a, 137–151. Schore, Allan N. 1994. Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ———. 2001. Minds in the Making: Attachment, The Self-organizing Brain, and Developmentally-­ Oriented Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. British Journal of Psychotherapy 17 (3): 299–328. Dag Gjerløw Aasland (b. 1950) went from studies in mathematics and logic to a dr. scient. in agricultural economics. He is professor in economics and former vice rector for research at University of Agder, Norway. His latest academic work has been within ethics, mostly in relation to economy and management and with a special interest in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. This is presented in “The Exteriority of Ethics in Management  – and its Transition into Justice: A Levinasian Approach to Ethics in Business”, Business Ethics: A European Review Vol. 16 no. 3: 220 – 226, 2007, and in Ethics and Economy: After Levinas (2009), freely downloadable from www.mayflybooks.org.  

Chapter 8

The Philosophy of Jean Baudrillard: A Counter-Hegemonic Tool for Deconstructing Male and Female Archetypes in (Post-) Modern Consumer Republics? Keith Moser

Beginning with the publication of his landmark essay The System of Objects in 1968, Baudrillard decries the ubiquitous language of unending consumption that concretizes (post-) modern life. As the historian Lizabeth Cohen maintains in A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, we are fully immersed in a realm of omnipresent signs urging us to consume our way to happiness from birth in Western civilization. According to Baudrillard, we have internalized this “code of consumption” to such an alarming extent that resistance is essentially futile (Norris). For this reason, the idea that the unconventional theories of a maverick thinker who provocatively announced the “murder of the real” and the “death of (all) meaning” could be utilized as a counter-hegemonic tool to undermine the system may initially appear to be somewhat paradoxical (Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime 25; Baudrillard, Seduction 81, my emphasis). Nonetheless, this exploration will demonstrate that Baudrillard’s thought could represent an invaluable point of departure for humanizing the business sector in a neoliberal landscape epitomized by the maximize profit at all costs mentality. Specifically, this Baudrillardian reflection focuses on the idealistic male and female archetypes grounded in hyperreality that are endlessly sold to the masses. In a section of The Consumer Society entitled “The Masculine and the Feminine Models,” Baudrillard posits that the simulated fantasies into which we try to breathe life through the act of consumption are far from innocent forms of escapism. Although the consumerist simulacra that we incessantly devour are often so disconnected from commonplace reality that they should be automatically dismissed, the philosopher underscores the heavy price that society pays for this deluge of (mis-) information. Constantly bombarded with the message “What would my life be like with this or that enhancement?,” both men and women strive to live contrived K. Moser (*) Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_8

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images of the good(s) life that have never existed anywhere with the exception of a digital screen (Frank 2000, 207). For instance, Baudrillard offers the concrete example of many women desperately attempting to make their bodies conform to utopian representations of the female body that have been so badly distorted by CGI software programs that they only bear a vague resemblance to the original image.1 In reference to this unhealthy and unrealistic vision of the feminine ideal disseminated through simulacra, Baudrillard declares, “Beauty no longer knows how to be fat or thin, heavy or slender as it could have been in a traditional definition founded upon the harmony of forms. It only knows how to be thin and slender according to the present logic of signs […] It is actually rather skinny and scrawny in the image of top models, which are the negation of the flesh and the exaltation of fashion” (Baudrillard The Consumer Society 140–141). From the standpoint of business ethics, Baudrillard’s theories about the dominant archetypes dictating how the ideal man and woman are supposed to act and look like force us to reflect upon certain moral boundaries that should not be crossed. In this regard, Baudrillard outlines a useful counter-hegemonic theoretical framework for broaching ethical issues related to corporate responsibility and complicity in the transmission of nefarious images that can sometimes even have deadly consequences. In the context of what Eero Tarasti refers to as “semiotics of resistance,” I will argue along similar lines as other Baudrillard scholars such as Gerry Coulter, Trevor Norris, A. Keith Goshorn, and Douglas Kellner that the radical semiurgy developed by the provocative theorist of hyperreality reflects a rudimentary blueprint for the promotion of a more critical visual literacy that could be used to contest arbitrary male and female archetypes (Kellner 2002, 81). After probing Baudrillard’s description of “toxic” gender stereotypes and erotic archetypes linked to the consumption of a vast array of consumer products, this chapter will highlight the deleterious effects of the reductionistic thinking that unequivocally implies that there is one correct way to be a man or woman. The final section of this essay will push back against Baudrillard’s claim that the “gigantic apparatus of simulation” has rendered any kind of meaningful resistance impossible (Baudrillard The Intelligence of Evil 27). Even if we accept Baudrillard’s main premise that late capitalism has successfully ushered in the most repressive form of social control ever conceived through the skillful imposition of a ubiquitous “web of stray signs,” I will demonstrate that the “crisis of representation” has yet to destroy everything in its path (Baudrillard Seduction 74; Baudrillard Forget Foucault 73). Specifically, there is still a frame of reference and a language of resistance that could be utilized for challenging the aforementioned problematic and dangerous reductionistic logic connected to the process of identity formation. For Baudrillard, the first step to understanding social manipulation through commercial simulacra is to strip away the thick layers of hyperreal artifice that conceal the utter banality of the idealistic images that we consume during every waking

1  I investigate this issue in greater detail in my recent article “Lena Dunham and her simulated (CGI) double: A Baudrillardian interpretation of the Photoshop controversy.”

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moment. In this vein, the philosopher contends that every purchase is a misguided attempt to procure metonymical pieces of a fantasy that has never existed anywhere with the exception of a digital screen. As Baudrillard explains, “You buy the part for the whole. And this metonymical, repetitive discourse of consumable matter, of merchandise, becomes once again, thanks to a large collective metaphor, due to its own excess, the image of the gift, of spectacular, inexhaustible lavishness which is that of the feast” (Baudrillard  The Consumer Society 19).2 Inundating the “consumer citizen”3 (Baudrillard Le système des objets 218) with the message that the so-called good life is allegedly within reach for everyone through the power of the purse strings and the free market economy, “the meanings of objects are created through their collective consumption. For example, an Armani suit in and of itself does not signify much; but when combined with a Mercedes car, Valentino shoes, and a Bvlgari watch, it communicates a particular lifestyle” (Izberk-Bilgin 2010, 305). These empty images of success, happiness, and fulfillment generated for the sole purpose of increasing revenue for a corporation “transcend (human) nature” (Zapperi 2009, 22, my insertion).4 In other words, the barrage of simulacra that we endlessly devour denoting “perfect happiness” are not naturally occurring anywhere (Baudrillard The Intelligence of Evil 145). In a revealing section of his seminal work The Consumer Society entitled “The Masculine and the Feminine Models,” Baudrillard exposes the fantasy-based structure of ideal masculinity and femininity transmitted through hyperreal codes. He avers that the hyperreal vision of what it means to be a perfect man or woman is usually so divorced from reality that it is nothing but a far-fetched caricature. Noting that the dominant male archetype incessantly promulgated by marketers is the disconcerting image of an aggressive, competitive alpha male who strives to dominate and subjugate all of those around him, Baudrillard affirms, “The masculine model is the model of particularity [exigence] and choice […] his aim is to achieve distinction […] The masculine model is, then, a model of competitive or selective virtue. Much more deeply, choice – as a sign of belonging to the elect (he who chooses, who knows how to choose, is chosen, is one of the elect) – is the counterpart in our societies to the rite of challenge and competition in primitive ones: it confers status” (96–97). Heavily influenced by Baudrillard who he cites several times in Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and The Stories We Live By, the ecolinguist Arran Stibbe presents a counter-narrative to this “questionable story of hegemonic masculinity” (121). In his semiotic and ecolinguistic analysis of the content of advertisements targeting the male population in magazines like Men’s Health, Stibbe explains how this reductionistic lens for constructing male identity obfuscates the reality that there are many different types of men. In addition to extreme personality differences, it is absurd to place all men into one homogeneous, catch-all category because we come  All italics are in the original. They are not my own.  For a more comprehensive discussion of the concept of a “consumer citizen,” see Steigerwald. Most researchers employ the expressions “consumer citizen” and “purchaser citizen” interchangeably. 4  All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 2 3

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in many different shapes and sizes. Furthermore, Stibbe persuasively maintains that the image of an ideal man is unattainable for most males who do not have “6-pack abs” or “huge muscles” (119, 120). Indeed, it is a tiny segment of the male population that could ever realize this lofty standard by working out excessively and religiously consuming protein bars, vitamins, and shakes. Regardless of how many metonymical bits of this chimerical vision of masculinity that a given male acquires on a regular basis, this grandiose fantasy will forever elude him, thereby driving him to purchase even more products. Moreover, Stibbe also denounces the pervasive rhetoric of male advertising that perpetuates macho, misogynistic attitudes including the notion that “real men do not cook” (121). Instead of wearing an apron in the kitchen or doing the laundry, commercials depict “real men” eating nails for breakfast, suffering stoically in silence, and showcasing their perfectly chiseled frame. Owing to a growing body of empirical evidence which suggests that these sorts of sexist images are detrimental to the very fabric of society, many advertisements are now censored for gender discrimination in countries like the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Greece, and Norway (Safronova n.p.). A later section of this chapter will more closely examine the detrimental impact of “toxic masculinity” reinforced by much of the marketing industry. As A. Keith Goshorn elucidates, Baudrillard’s thought is a useful counter-­ hegemonic tool for weakening destructive gender discourses because “he engages in a mock parody of the excesses of masculine behavior, just like the early punks, in order to deconstruct and expose its insecurities” (278). Not only does Baudrillard appear to poke fun at unrealistic representations of masculinity that are socially constructed and maintained through an avalanche of simulacra, but he also seems to mock the ludicrous vision of femininity that is sold to the masses as well. In spite of “[t]he abundance of inflammatory remarks toward women in his writings,” Goshorn observes that many of the basic tenets of Baudrillard’s thought are in keeping with contemporary feminist theory (257).5 Similar to how men are expected to conform to the rugged macho ideal outlined above through carefully manufactured images that are often distorted using popular software programs like Photoshop, a woman’s appearance is dictated by a “code of beauty” that rarely occurs in nature (Baudrillard The Consumer Society 26). It is in this context in which Baudrillard’s comments related to “the skinny, emaciated models of Vogue” should be understood (Baudrillard The Consumer Society 142). Like many feminists who explore “the glossy world of print advertising,” Baudrillard “indicates the power of visual images and their promotion of an ideal feminine beauty in the material realm of consumer culture” (Blaire 1994, 21). According to Baudrillard, both the masculine and feminine model sell contrived images reflecting “a seductive sexuality that is not grounded in real sexuality” (Dant 1986,  507). Whereas men are supposed to be muscular, assertive, and courageous, women are expected to be eternally beautiful and radiant. Advertisers within the cosmetic

5  For a more comprehensive discussion of Baudrillard’s complicated relationship with feminism that transcends the pragmatic limitations of this present investigation, see Goshorn.

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industry peddle a litany of beauty products that are theoretically designed to help women achieve this standard. Baudrillard theorizes that the pressure placed on women to live up to this ideal of beauty is so great that the female subject has been reduced to a mere object of consumption. He concludes that “Femininity itself has come to be understood as existing only in and through representation […] Femininity is the perfect simulacrum-the exact copy of something that never really existed in the first place” (Moore 1988, 181). Similar to how most men will never even vaguely resemble the simulated manliness that they internalize on a regular basis, Baudrillard argues that a woman’s “relation to herself is objectivized and fueled by signs, signs which make up the feminine model, which constitutes the real object of consumption” (Baudrillard The Consumer Society 97). He further reiterates, “For women, beauty has become an absolute, religious imperative, being beautiful is no longer an effect of nature or a supplement to moral qualities. It is the basic, imperative quality of those who take the same care of their faces and figures as they do of their souls. It is a sign, at the level of the body that one is a member of the elect” (Baudrillard The Consumer Society 92). Baudrillard is astutely aware that commercial simulacra train both men and women to seek gratification for our amorous desires in a symbolic universe comprised of artificial simulacra denoting ideal masculinity and femininity. As Andrew Root underscores, “so now men judge real women by the sign, by the simulation, and want the simulation more than the real, measuring beauty not by the real, but by the simulation” (240). As evidenced by the stereotypes portrayed in romantic comedies, Root’s interpretation of the crisis of simulation is also applicable to female desire in heterosexual relationships. In simple terms, men and women who are looking for sexual gratification and companionship in the realm of seductive signs are destined to remain in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction trying to discover an archetypical mate that does not exist.6 Before returning to the fundamental question of how the ideas of Baudrillard could be used as a starting point to humanize the business sector by ultimately rejecting his assertion that “we are entering a final phase of this enterprise of simulation” in which resistance is useless, I will briefly highlight the negative impact of toxic masculinity and femininity (Baudrillard The Intelligence of Evil 34). Far from being innocent forms of escapism and reverie, there are actual victims of simulation7 whose lives have been shattered in an attempt to transform male and female consumerist archetypes into reality. Perhaps, the most salient and tragic example of how “the nectar of simulation” encourages men and women to engage in destructive behaviors is the prevalence of eating disorders in Western society (Cline n.p.). In an effort to attain a “weight far below the recommended level for good health,” many 6  In a recent article entitled “Has true romance disappeared in consumer society? A Morinian and Baudrillardian reflection of the acute crisis of simulation,” I suggest that many people are increasingly incapable of discerning between hollow images of romance and the real thing (if it ever existed at all). 7  See also my recent article “A Baudrillardian exploration of two victims of hyper-real, erotic simulations in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s film ‘Don Jon.’”

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young women across the planet are nearly starving themselves to death (Fay and Price 1994, 5). This disquieting phenomenon is the “ascetic practice of dieting,” or “the aggressive drive against the body” to which Baudrillard refers in The Consumer Society (142; 142). Although “[p]eople often claim to ignore advertisements […] the messages are getting through on a subconscious level” (Roeder n.p.). Researchers cite mounting evidence that there is a link between the “skinny, emaciated” female ideal and the increasing frequency of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia (Baudrillard The Consumer Society 142). For instance, “a recent study by researchers at Arizona State University found that women pay more attention to guilt-inducing marketing messages about fatness than they do to the opinions of their friends, even when those friends do not believe that they are obese” (Edwards n.p.). These troubling findings lend credence to Baudrillard’s theories about how gender roles are socially constructed through symbolic exchange. Moreover, this empirical data is a stern reminder that marketers cannot absolve themselves of any moral responsibility for the dire consequences of the hyperreal fictions that they conceive to manipulate potential clients. Given that many consumers no longer “know what is real anymore” due to the proliferation of simulated reality, Baudrillard’s semiotics of resistance is an essential user’s manual for the promotion of more ethical marketing practices that forces businesses to think harder about the values they are instilling through their advertising campaigns (Penaloza and Price 1993, 127). In addition to the concrete examples underscored above, which illustrate the devastating impact of advertising on millions of women around the world, numerous researchers have discovered that hypermasculinity or toxic masculinity is also a serious problem that has been exacerbated by unscrupulous marketing techniques. The term hypermasculinity was first coined by Donald Mosher based upon the results of his 1984 study. The operational definition provided by Mosher includes the following three factors: “callous sexual attitudes toward women, the belief that violence is manly, the experience of danger as exciting” (Krans n.p.). Building upon Mosher’s study, another team of researchers “looked at all of the print advertisements featuring men in a 2007 or 2008 issue of Playboy, Field and Stream, Game Informer, Maxim, Esquire, Wired, Fortune and Golf Digest magazine” (Bahadur n.p.). The results of this empirical investigation replicated Mosher’s findings related to the promulgation of a masculine ideal that is associated with aggressive behaviors such as child abuse and domestic violence (Sieg n.p.). In the “golden age of simulation” in which Baudrillard claims that “the visible allegory of the cinematic form […] has taken over everything-social and political life, the landscape, war, etc.,” we must first ponder whether resistance is still possible (Baudrillard  The Intelligence of Evil 69; 124–125). In recent works like The Intelligence of Evil and The Transparency of Evil, Baudrillard’s answer to this question is pessimistic to the point of being nihilistic. For Baudrillard, the utter “collapse […] of the real” forces us to confront “the void of our own mental screen” (Baudrillard The Transparency of Evil 14; 14). The philosopher declares that we live in a world that has been stripped of all semblance of meaning in which everything is merely a “simulacrum without perspective” (Rubenstein 2008, 74). Leaving

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little room for ambivalence concerning his position, Baudrillard asserts, “we should entertain no illusions about the effectiveness of any kind of rational intervention” (Baudrillard The Transparency of Evil 119–120). However, many theorists take issue with Baudrillard’s arguments revolving around “the invention of an increasingly artificial reality such that there is no longer anything standing over against it or any ideal alternative to it, no longer any mirror or negative” (Baudrillard  The Intelligence of Evil 32; 34). For instance, the late Baudrillard scholar Gerry Coulter maintains that we do not yet dwell in a symbolic universe “from which all reference has disappeared,” owing to the fact that “when we have entered into it fully we will no longer be able to speak of simulation” (2–3). Given that a language of resistance or what I would call a semiotics of resistance still exists, Coulter’s interpretation of the current situation is quite convincing. Furthermore, it is hard to think of a system “from which there is no critical distance from which to oppose” whatsoever (Nechvatal n.p.). Even if we accept Baudrillard’s claim that “What has been termed ‘consumer resistance’ is actually a form of market-sanctioned cultural experimentation through which the market rejuvenates itself,” the recent controversy sparked by the release of the contentious Gilette advertisement “We believe” offers a basis to be cautiously optimistic (Holt 2002,  89). Baudrillard may be correct in his assertion that the hyperreal code is so thoroughly ingrained that it cannot be fundamentally altered. Nonetheless, this “introspective reflection on toxic masculinity” represents an effort to transcend the previously mentioned reductionistic vision of the ideal man that lies at the heart of many social problems (Dreyfuss n.p.). In this advertisement, a major corporation acknowledges their complicity in the transmission of harmful images and pledges to no longer put profits before people. Given that the sales of Gillette razors momentarily spiked, in spite of conservative pundits like Piers Morgan attempting to organize boycotts, it is possible that other multinational entities will eventually follow suit (Dreyfuss n.p.). Instead of reinforcing the mentality “boys will be boys” and ignoring violent patterns of behavior (Tiffany n.p.), Procter & Gamble advocates in favor of a “positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy version of what it means to be a man” (Topping, Lyons, and Weaver n.p.). In response to the wave of criticism from conservative groups, the Procter & Gamble website clarifies their intentions, “It’s time we acknowledge that brands, like ours, play a role in influencing culture […] From today on, we pledge to actively challenge the stereotypes and expectations of what it means to be a man everywhere you see Gillette. In the ads we run, the images we publish to social media, the words we choose, and so much more” (Topping, Lyons, and Weaver n.p.). This official explanation from Procter & Gamble is significant on multiple levels. First of all, a spokesperson from the company candidly admits that this commercial is part of a larger marketing strategy. Realizing that many young men espouse more progressive views about sexuality and gender compared to earlier generations, a company is trying to appeal to this segment of the population in order to increase sales. From the perspective of business ethics, Gilette also recognizes that marketing campaigns can be commercially successful without tearing away at the fabric of society. Echoing the intercultural theories of Michel Serres and Amin Maalouf, who

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laud “the richness of an individual’s identity that cannot be compartmentalized or appropriated in […] a simplistic manner,” Gilette’s new marketing approach perhaps strengthens the capitalist paradigm, but it also promotes a more humane form of late capitalism in the process (Moser 228). In conclusion, Baudrillard’s theories have a lot to offer researchers from numerous disciplines who are committed to humanizing the business sector at the dawn of the financial era. Despite the profound nihilism that is emblematic of his recent essays, in which he insists that all types of resistance have been commodified, the philosopher generates a powerful dystopian vision of male and female archetypes in consumer republics that sheds light on many contemporary social problems. In particular, this reflection has demonstrated that the system is capable of evolving in a more positive direction by promoting more inclusive and less reductionistic forms of identity. Whether or not there is truly “no exit” from the all-encompassing apparatus of simulation is debatable (Kellner 1987,  128). Nevertheless, the alarming proliferation of the hyperreal code does not mean that we should simply wallow in despair and complacency. As opposed to waiting for the system to implode from the inside due to its own excesses, a semiotics of resistance could be used to improve the world in which we live.

References Bahadur, Nina. 2019. “Be a Man: Macho Advertising Promotes Hyper-Masculine Behavior, Study Finds.” Huffington Post, July 5, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ be-­a-­man-­macho-­hypermasculine-­advertising_n_3230402. Baudrillard, Jean. 1998a. Forget Foucault. Translated by Phil Beitchman, Nicole Dufresne, Lee Hildreth and Mark Polizzotti. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). ———. 1968. Le système des objets. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1990. Seduction. Translated by Brian Singer. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ——— 1998b. The Consumer Society. Translated by George Ritzer. London: Sage. ——— 2013. The Intelligence of Evil. Translated by Chris Turner. London: Bloomsbury. ——— 1996. The Perfect Crime. Translated by Chris Turner. New York: Verso. ——— 2009. The Transparency of Evil. Translated by James Benedict. New York: Random House. Blaire, Kristine. 1994. Selling the Self: Women and the Feminine Seduction of Advertising. Women and Language 17 (1): 20–29. Cline, Alex. 2011. “Statues of Commodus-death and simulation in the work of Jean Baudrillard.” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 8, no. 2: n. pag. Cohen, Lizabeth. 2003. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Vintage Books. Coulter, Gerry. 2012. Jean Baudrillard: From the Ocean to the Desert, or the Poetics of Radicality. New York: Intertheory. Dant, Tim. 1986. Fetishism and the Social Value of Objects. The Sociological Review 44 (3): 495–516. Dreyfuss, Emily. 2019. Gilette’s Ad Proves the Definition of a Good Man Has Changed. Wired, January 16: 2019. https://www.wired.com/story/gillette-­we-­believe-­ad-­men-­backlash/. Edwards, Jim. 2011. 10 Advertisers Who Promote Anorexia in Their Marketing. CBS News, September 14: 2011. https://www.cbsnews.com/ news/10-­advertisers-­who-­promote-­anorexia-­in-­their-­marketing/.

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Fay, Michael, and Christopher Price. 1994. Female Body-Shape in Print Advertisements and the Increase in Anorexia Nervosa. European Journal of Marketing 28 (12): 5–18. Frank, Arthur. 2000. All the Things Which Do Not Fit: Baudrillard and Medical Consumerism. Families, Systems & Health 18 (2): 205–217. Goshorn, Keith A. 1994. Valorizing ‘The Feminine’ While Rejecting Feminism?- Baudrillard’s Feminist Provocations. In Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, ed. Douglas Kellner, 257–291. New York: Blackwell. Holt, Douglas. 2002. Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of consumer Culture and Branding. Journal of Consumer Research 29: 70–90. Izberk-Bilgin, Elif. 2010. An Interdisciplinary Review of Resistance to Consumption, Some Marketing Interpretations, and Future Research Suggestions. Consumption Markets & Culture 13 (3): 299–323. Kellner, Douglas. 1987. Baudrillard, Semiurgy and Death. Theory, Culture & Society 4 (1): 125–146. ———. 2002. Critical Perspectives on Visual Imagery in Media and Cyberculture. Journal of Visual Literary 22: 81–90. Krans, Brian. 2013. “Hypermasculinity in Advertising: Selling Manly Men to Regular Men.” Healthline, March 3. https://www.healthline.com/health-­news/mental-­masculine-­ads-­distort-­ mens-­perceptions-­030313#1. Accessed 30 June 2019. Moore, Suzanne. 1988. Getting a Bit of the Other-The Pimps of Postmodernism. In Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, ed. Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford, 165–192. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Moser, Keith. 2019. Has True Romance Disappeared in Consumer Society?: A Morinian and Baudrillardian Reflection of the Acute Crisis of Simulation. Popular Culture Review 30 (2): 183–208. ——— 2014. “Lena Dunham and her Simulated (CGI) Double: A Baudrillardian Interpretation of the Photoshop Controversy.” Magazine Americana (July 2014): n. pag. ———. 2016. The Encyclopedic Philosophy of Michel Serres: Writing the Modern World and Anticipating the Future. Augusta: Anaphora Literary Press. Nechvatal, Joseph. 2006. “Jean Baudrillard and a Counter-Mannerist Art of Latent Excess.” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 3, no. 2: n. pag. Norris, Trevor. “Consuming Signs, Consuming the Polis: Hannah Arendt and Jean Baudrillard on Consumer Society and the Eclipse of the Real.” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 2, no. 2: n. pag. ———. 2006. Hannah Arendt & Jean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the Consumer Society. Studies in Philosophy and Education 25: 457–477. Penaloza, Lisa, and Linda Price. 1993. Consumer Resistance: A Conceptual Overview. Advances in Consumer Research 20 (1): 123–128. Roeder, Amy. 2015. “Advertising’s Toxic Effect on Eating and Body Image.” Harvard Chan School News, March 18, 2015. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/ advertisings-­toxic-­effect-­on-­eating-­and-­body-­image/. Root, Andrew. 2012. A Screen-Based World: Finding the Real in the Hyper-real. Word & World 32 (3): 237–244. Rubenstein, Diane. 2008. This is Not a President: Sense, Nonsense, and the American Political Imaginary. New York: New York University Press. Safronova, Valeriya. 2019. “Gender Stereotypes Banned in British Advertising.” The New  York Times, June 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/style/uk-­gender-­stereotype-­ads-­ ban.html. Sieg, Emily. 2019. “Hyper-Masculinity: How the Media Perpetuates Unattainable Standards.” Medium, May 7, 2019. https://medium.com/@emilysieg33/ hyper-­masculinity-­how-­the-­media-­perpetuates-­unattainable-­standards-­38edac7d6806. Steigerwald, David. 2006. “All Hail the Republic of Choice: Consumer History as Contemporary Thought.” The Journal of American History (September): 385–403.

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Stibbe, Arran. 2015. Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By. London: Routledge. Tarasti, Eero. 2009. Semiotics of Resistance: Being, Memory, History-The Counter-Current of Signs. Semiotica 173: 41–71. Tiffany, Kaitlyn. 2019. “Why Gilette’s Toxic Masculinity Ad is Annoying Both Sexists and Feminists.” Vox, January 15, 2019. https://www.vox.com/thegoods/2019/1/15/18184072/ gillette-toxic-masculinity-ad-super-bowl-feminism. Topping, Alexandra, Kate Lyons, and Matthew Weaver. 2019. “Gilette #MeToo Razors Ad on ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Gets Praise-and Abuse.” The Guardian, January 15, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/15/ gillette-­metoo-­ad-­on-­toxic-­masculinity-­cuts-­deep-­with-­mens-­rights-­activists. Zapperi, Giovanna. 2009. Vénus mécanique: L’Automate féminin à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique. Cahiers du Musée nationale d’art moderne 107: 18–36. Keith Moser  is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Mississippi State University. He is the author of seven full-length book projects. His latest monograph is entitled The Encyclopedic Philosophy of Michel Serres: Writing the Modern World and Anticipating the Future (2016). Moser has also contributed sixty-four essays to peer-reviewed publications representing many divergent fields including French and Francophone studies, Continental Philosophy, environmental ethics, ecocriticism, ecolinguistics, biosemiotics, social justice, popular culture, and Maghrebi/ Harki literature.

Chapter 9

Paul Ricœur: A Hermeneutic Perspective on Humanizing Business Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

Paul Ricœur’s social and political philosophy can be applied to develop a critical hermeneutic philosophy of business ethics in order to humanize business (Rendtorff 1996 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Ricœur defends an interpretive social theory that integrates ethics, politics, law and economics. The catchword of this hermeneutic ethics is “the good life for and with others in just institutions” (Ricœur 1990, 276). This vision of ethics and social responsibility is based on a close relation between a philosophical anthropology of existential commitment, a vision of the good life and the respect for universal principles and rights. This business ethics is based on the recognition of the importance of institutions, practical wisdom and judgment in politics, law and economics in democratic communities. The foundation of Ricœur’s business ethics is a theory of interpretation as critical hermeneutics based on a hermeneutic movement of belonging and also taking a distance to the text between ideology of tradition and utopia of emancipation. Ricœur’s interpretation theory relies on a hermeneutics of historical consciousness, which acknowledges the place of human understanding between finite and infinite. Social and political action and indeed also action in organizations at economic markets takes place within a horizon of a concrete political community always open to reform of institutional frameworks and critique of common ideals (Rendtorff 2020a). Ricœur’s political theory, which can be seen as a critical framework for business ethics mediates between existential personalist philosophy of individual conviction and responsibility in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, John Rawls’ moral universalism as justification of fair institutions, Alasdair Macintyre’s and Michael Walzer’s Aristotelian theories of standards of excellence, substantial and concrete forms of life as origins of political life. The starting point is the communitarian idea that local culture and historical tradition, expressed in basic values and narrative representations are necessary conditions for a political community. J. D. Rendtorff (*) Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_9

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This vision of co-existence must, however, be compatible with Kantian universalistic and cosmopolitan ideals of equal social and political rights to all citizens, according to practical reason and categorical imperative. In this perspective we can talk about the necessity of global and cosmopolitan responsibilities of individuals and business organizations (Rendtorff 2017a). Thus, the method of Ricœur’s political philosophy, applied to business ethics and philosophy of management in order to humanize business can be characterized as a search for mediation of differences and oppositions, not a theory of the great synthesis of positions, but rather the dialectical search for understanding and effort to find common points, by showing the mutual implications of ideas and concepts which normally are considered to be contradictory and conflictual. In this sense, Ricœur proposes a philosophy of ethical legitimacy of humanistic management in organizations. Business legitimacy is based on critical hermeneutics applied to the search for the good life in business and economics (Rendtorff 2019a).

 he Method of Critical Hermeneutics in Business Ethics T and Philosophy of Management The core of Ricœur’s critical hermeneutics is the idea of Wounded Cogito, which Ricœur developed in his essay on Freud (Ricœur 1965). No Cogito is self-­transparent, as pointed out by Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Self-reflection happens in a dialectics of archeology and teleology. Understanding takes the long route through of the symbolic-metaphorical cultural and literary self-objectivations of humanity (Ricœur 1965, 13–61). This opposition of archeology and teleology of consciousness corresponds in social theory and philosophy of management to the tension between facticity and emancipation. Thus, we can place Ricœur’s philosophy as hermeneutic and existentialist contribution to the concepts, theory, history and recent developments of philosophy of management (Rendtorff 2010a, 2013a, b, c, d). Ricœur places himself between Gadamer and Habermas in their famous debate by finding a middle position between hermeneutics of culture and critique of ideology. He argues that there cannot be an absolute distinction between belonging to a tradition and taking a critical distance to one-self. Hermeneutics must accept the necessity of critical distance and critique of ideology must accept that now critique is absolute and that critical theory itself belongs to the tradition of the enlightenment (Ricœur 1987, 333). Thus, there can be no absolute separation between ideology and utopia. Ideology relates to the past, while utopia concerns the future. Both are modes of the symbolic self-representation of a community or an institution. Ideology is an imaginary narrative about the roots and foundation of a society, business or organization as collective memory, motivation and legitimation of present political and social action. This is based on a primary act of legitimation, indicating the origin of this social unit. The integrative function of ideology can disseminate in corruption and distortion, becoming a schematic code, where it is so different from reality, that it is false

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consciousness and social lies. Moreover, utopia can become crazy, distancing itself so from present society that it is forgetting the belonging to the community. But societies, organizations and institutions without ideology or utopia would be dead with no social imagination or vision of the common good (Ricœur 1987, 362ff). Accordingly, the method of critical hermeneutics in business ethics and philosophy of management takes it point of departure with the dialectics between distance and participation (Ricœur 1985–1987). Interpretation in philosophy of business ethics operates with organizational understanding within an open, unfinished and imperfect historical horizon of interpretation, based on context and situation. The business ethicist takes part of historical situation being in tension between a horizon of past experience and expectations for the future. Being affected by the past means that knowledge in business ethics is never ahistorical but dependent on tradition and culture and open for reinterpretation in confrontation with the future (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Therefore, concepts, principles, categories and interpretations in business ethics can only have meaning in relation to experiences and expectations in organizations and institutions in particular historical cases and circumstances. Events, decisions and actions in organizations correspond to individual interpretations and understanding, reflecting personal commitment and ethical promise in a field of experience and expectations. Hermeneutics in business ethics means that people in organizations are conceived as historical agents, who are determined by their bodily existence and inscription in the narrative cultures and meanings of the organization. There is no ultimate realization of business ethics, as the Kantian vision of universal peace in the Kingdom of Ends with universal respect and democratic justice remains an ideal of perfectibility for humanity (Ricœur 1987, 300). Thus, applying Ricœur’s hermeneutics of tradition and utopia to business ethics and philosophy of management means combining interpretation of values, culture and tradition with critical analysis, based on universal reason and rationality. According to this hermeneutics there are important ethical values to be found in narratives that are embedded in organizational culture and traditions. Nevertheless, it is also important to distance one-self to accepted culture and practice critique of ideology in confrontation with hidden power structures and figures of oppression in transmitted cultures and values of organizations and institutions (Rendtorff 2010b). This means that critical hermeneutics in business ethics always combines critical analysis with the attempt of deep understanding of organizations and institutions.

 his Vision of the Good Life as Ideal of Business Ethics T and Philosophy of Management The most important work for business ethics and philosophy of management is Ricœur’s work on ethics and political philosophy Soi même comme un Autre (1990), where Ricœur applies his hermeneutic philosophy of belonging and distance to an attempt to develop a theory of the ethical foundations of political community

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(Rendtorff 1996 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Ricœur builds different elements of his phenomenological philosophy in the attempt to develop a hermeneutics of the ethical self, based on ideas of personal responsibility, initiative and promise. The starting point for ethics, politics as well as business ethics and philosophy is a philosophical anthropology of fragility and vulnerability of human existence (Ricœur 1961, 21). The responsible self is ontologically committed in promise and existential consciousness, and it is a situated subject, a capable self, that is engaged in life in action and passion, and who is never morally neutral. At this level, the self is determined by projects of existence between action and passion and personal identity is shaped as a narrative identity that is constructed in interaction with others in community. The starting point of ethics is this personal vision of the good life in community, which is important for the formation of personal identity as narrative identity. And this vision of the good life lies behind the close link between selfhood and moral integrity (Rendtorff 2015). Here Ricœur defines the ethical aim of the good life with reference to Aristotle’s’ concept of ethics, and also following Nussbaum and Sen’s concept of capabilities. According to Aristotle, ethics is realized in the lifelong friendship with the other, based on difference, generosity and reciprocity in a mutual generous giving and receiving between free human beings. The ideal friendship is neither determined by common interest nor utility, but by the common vision of the good life, founded on real need and concern for the other as a happy, independent and responsible human being. According to Ricœur, ethics is basically grounded in mutual estimation and reciprocity with the other, and the idea of self-estimation and ontological commitment precedes the idea of the imperative of the other, which is proposed by Lévinas to be the absolute source of morality. The foundation of ethics is not an unconditional duty, but mutual affection, where the concern for the fragility of the irreplaceable other is a condition for personal and mutual happiness (Ricœur 1990, 236). Ricœur interprets Aristotle’s concept of friendship as the basis for the political community in organizations, institutions or even business organizations (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). The foundation of this life in community is not technological rationality, strategic calculation, or a modern rational natural law theory, where societies are justified as the result of a contract between egoistic and fearful individuals in an unbearable state of nature, but the genuine desire to live together in stable and just institutions. A basic condition for the political community is not a rational consensus, but rather sympathy and understanding based on the ideal of common realization of freedom in enduring political life and institutions. This is the meaning of contemporary institutionalization of contemporary business ethics and corporate social responsibility in firms (Rendtorff 2011) The art of politics is to let emerge the power and capacity for common action founded on the will to live together in the good life (Ricœur 1994). This is always presupposed and a very basic but, however, ontologically hidden condition of political life (Ricœur 1994, 29). The political community is aware of the finitude and mortality of human existence and will ensure the durability in the creation and formation of durable and just social institutions. But this also implies the awareness of

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the fragility and vulnerability of the political community, because no external standards can secure the persistence of the common power that can be dissolved in instrumental violence. The state is a historical community, where social rules are not only legal procedures but the incarnation of accepted norms and symbolisms expressed in the narrative identity of that community. Justice is an ideal in the narrative mythical-utopian self-representation of community. In the words of Eric Weil, who has also had a great influence on Ricœur’s political philosophy, the state articulates a historical diversity of institutions, functions and social roles, determined and guided by practical reason in opposition to technical rationality. According to Weil who was a professor at Lille in France and was 9 years older than Ricœur political community can be understood on the basis of Hegel’s philosophy. Following Hegel Weil emphasized the forms violence in political community and the relation between morality, politics and power. The important idea is that the community is considered as the realization of a living morality, a concrete moral life as a function of prudential rationality and reasonable action. The state implies at the same time the strife for rationality and as a universal concrete, with a particular history, a reflection of the passions and interests of individuals. In this way the state should be the synthesis of rationality and history in the tradition of the specific community (Ricœur 1994, 108). In this Aristotelian vision of the political community, justice that is founded in the common vision of the good life can be seen as the search for the right proportion between extremes, determined by the particularity of experiences, situations and involved persons. This idea includes a teleological concept of justice as equity, as the right middle between extremes in the distribution of the goods in society. The equality of distributive justice concerns primary and secondary goods, basic political liberties as well as the social and economic situation of the citizens. Although it includes a dimension of abstract equality, the concept of equity admits the heterogeneous character of the goods and must be considered in relation to the social context (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Ricœur relies on the communitarian theory of spheres of justices by Michal Walzer, founded in the shared values of the community that expresses this ideal of the realization of justice in the social distribution of goods and possibilities (Walzer 1984). Here a complex equality in different sectors of society: medicine, education, office, commerce is realized according to shared understandings of the Good. We can easily transfer Ricœur’s vision of the ideal of the good life as the foundation of social and political community to business ethics and philosophy of management. The market system should facilitate the good political community and market interactions should be built on the virtues and norms as the foundation of search of excellence. Therefore values are important dimensions of market relations to customers, seen from this perspective of the good market (Mattsson and Rendtorff 2006). Moreover, the firm or corporation may be viewed as a form of life or a culture of excellence, which must combine the vision of the good life of personal and collective narrative identity with respect for the moral norm and co-existence in the ethical life and mutual recognition of just organizations.

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The foundation of organizational ethics and politics is this vision of the good life in communities, organizations and institutions with other human beings. However, the communitarian vision of ethics and politics cannot guarantee universal moral norms. Therefore, Ricœur argues that no vision of the good can be acceptable without recourse to Kant’s concept of moral universality.

 he Necessity of Practical Reason and Moral Universality T in Business Ethics and Philosophy of Management In applying his critical hermeneutics between belonging and taking a distance to the communitarian vision of politics Ricœur argues that it is necessary to apply the Kantian concept of moral reason to justify the ethical vision of the good life. This can be conceived as a reflexive self-critique of the self in the light of the other. Kant’s concept of justice focuses on the formal equality before the law. In post-­ metaphysical philosophy, this resulted in pure formal theories founded on human autonomy and freedom, not advocating any vision of the good. To avoid this danger of formalism reducing ethics to empty systems, Ricœur argues that that a vision of the good has after all to be seen as the driving force of Kantian moral philosophy (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, b, 2014a, 199–218). Therefore the Kantian categorical imperatives are must be in the perspective of a hermeneutics of the self, focusing on the teleological aspects of Kantian ethics, in the following way: (1) It has to be investigated whether a vision of the good life is possible as a universal law, that without contradictions and bad moral consequences can be applied to all human beings. (2) The other human person must never be treated only as a means but also always as an end. (3) The goal of the moral law is the reign of human beings as goals in themselves in the kingdoms of Ends, a community of free human beings (Ricœur 1990, 237). The first formulation of the categorical imperative concerns the possibility of changing individual actions into a universal law. The self cannot without self-­ contradiction and in opposition to moral law, follow an ethical vision, which is incompatible with the happiness of other people. The morally evil person will in the end loose his self-respect, the moral correlation to the ethical concept of self-­ estimation. A person, who consequently chooses a bad moral maxim, determined by destruction and negation, ignores the other person’s essential significance for existential authenticity and self-respect. This is for example the case of the banality of evil of the Nazi-administrator Adolf Eichmann as described by Hannah Arendt in her theory of moral blindness as the lack of the capacity of judgment and moral thinking (Rendtorff 2014b, 2020b). The second formulation of the categorical imperative, considering the person as an ultimate end, can only be significant in the perspective of the good life. The golden rule “treat the others as you want them to treat you” is an important principle in the transition from ethical ideal to moral obligation. The words “treat the other as

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yourself” imply concern and respect for the dignity of the other person. This maxim is the essential protection of the other to avoid abuse in asymmetrical situations of violence or torture, where power is used for the humiliation, reification and destruction of the self-respect of the other person. The third formulation of the categorical imperative is the most important in the political perspective for the institutionalization of the teleological concept of justice, because respect and concern lead to a shared system of law, where individuals are conferred universal social and political rights as citizens of the kingdom of ends. This republican ideal of popular sovereignty and universal justice in procedural institutions is, in the perspective of a hermeneutics of the self, not only justified by individual freedom but realization of the state institutions as incarnation of shared values. In the case of business organizations it is possible to describe this institutionalization as creation of a space of shared value of ethical responsibility and good corporate citizenship (Rendtorff 2017b). Such interaction between the visions of the Right and the Good in the foundations of modern institutions is developed in Ricœur’s communitarian interpretation of John Rawls’ argument for “Justice as Fairness” in A Theory of Justice (1971). The principles of justice for a future state that are chosen by individuals behind the “Veil of Ignorance” are deduced of the interaction between philosophical ideals, intuitions and concrete conceptions of morality (Rawls 1971). According to Ricœur this imaginary deliberation process cannot only be justified on the ground of individual interests and autonomy, and the task is also to develop principles of justice valid for all members of society. Rawls’ first level principles of “Justice as Fairness” as respect for citizenship, basic rights and second level principles of distribution show a basic ethical concern for equality; The principles of “Equality before the Law”, “Proportionate Distribution” according to the need of the citizens, “the Difference Principle” and the “Principle of Mini-Maximization” imply a common vision of the Good, which however must be mediated in public political discussion and concrete legal practice (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Thus, the common good must be essential to management of stakeholders of the state and of local public organizations (Pedersen and Rendtorff 2004). In this way Rawls’ procedural theory of justice presupposes the idea of society as a cooperative venture and justice not exclusively as a theoretical concept but rather as a social praxis, based on the idea of the common good and not only on atomistic individualism. Therefore, even if a procedural and constructive theory of justice is necessary to ensure basic liberties, the Just cannot be totally separated from the Good. Rawls’ concern to avoid inequality that disfavors the poor as well as the weakest seems to promote this concern for the totality of community. To further avoid empty formalism Rawls’ principles of justice must be seen in relation to the particularity of a given historical situation, which Rawls, himself, in his later writings, e.g. Political Liberalism (1992), and with the statement “The Good shows the point, Justice draws the limit”, seems to be aware of. Rawls’ critique of teleological theories of justice can rather be seen as directed towards the particularities of the inequalities implicit in pure utilitarian theories of maximization of the Good as “the search for the greatest happiness for the greatest

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number”. Social inequality only serving the people who are the best off, cannot be justified. Accordingly, utilitarian and technological values, pragmatic calculation of consequences are subordinated to a vision of the common good  that depends on respect for the dignity of the individual. Utilitarianism implies the sacrifice of the individual for the common good of community. In the perspective of Ricœur’s philosophy, the only possible utilitarianism would be a “negative utilitarianism”, minimizing the unhappiness and poverty among the most fragile and vulnerable, instead of searching for a general maximizing of happiness without taking into account the difference between the weakest and the strongest in society (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). The function of the state is to mediate the communitarian and historical values and the universal norms to control economical rationality. It is not only as educator, but also as a state of force, following the rule of law, that it expresses the Monopoly of power that protects the basic rights of individuals and minorities from the abuse of the social majority. The point is Eric Weil’s idea of the political Paradox, which means that the state in modern society has conquered “the empty place of power” that earlier belonged to the sovereignty of non-democratic rulers using only force and violence. The political paradox means that a vision of the good always implies violence when it is going to be realized. The same paradox may be said to be the case of ethics and social responsibility in business where the search for the good may imply violence. At the same time the paradox implies that the state could fail to produce happiness, and thereby instead become a totalitarian regime that causes most unhappiness for the citizens (Ricœur 1990, p. 106). Therefore, the task is to secure that the constitutional state does not turn to arbitrary violence. Government need a balance of the force of law between power and violence, where the law submitted to bad political agency can turn into pure violence no longer guided by justice and the teleological vision of the common good (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Thus, Ricœur emphasizes the need for practical reason and moral universality in business ethics and philosophy of management. The political philosophy of business ethics and organizations needs to integrate the Aristotelian framework of the vision of the good life with the Kantian quest for rationality and universal validity. This is also essential for humanizing business with philosophy of management. The hermeneutic approach moving between participation and critique combines the Aristotelian vision of the good life with the Kantian moment of justice and universal rights. It is because of the standpoint of historical hermeneutics that it is possible to accomplish this move of mediation of the tensions between community and universality. Accordingly, Ricœur characterizes himself as a Post-Hegelian Kantian who accepts the necessity of an ethics of community with the need for universal institutions of justice and democracy.

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 he Realization of Ethics and Politics in Just Institutions T as Essential for Business Ethics and Philosophy of Management Thus, Ricœur needs Hegel’s concrete historical philosophy of realization of reason and morality in the ethical life of the historical political community to realize the vision of the “good life with and for others in just institutions” in real life in community. Today, given the challenge of the Anthropocene and the need for a new contract of nature, we may add “the good life with and for others in harmony with nature”. Thus, the philosophy of good life in just institutions implies a good and sustainable life with nature (Rendtorff 2019a, b, c). This can be called the bioethical dimension of Ricœur’s philosophy with focus on sustainability and responsibility for nature (Rendtorff and Kemp 2009). Indeed, this is also needed if we want to apply Ricœur’s philosophy to business ethics and philosophy of management, where ideas of sustainable life in nature and just and democratic institutions without corruption are important. In order to accomplish this move Ricœur relies on Hegel’s concept of ethical life (Ricœur 1990, p. 279). This vision of realization of ethical life as institutionalization of norms in community emerged out of Hegel’s critique of the danger of abstract Kantian morality as destruction of ethics. When practical reason cannot be in harmony with real life it has no value. An abstract concept of liberty is totally formal and cannot govern the reality of political life (Rendtorff 1996 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Ricœur says that it is tempting to follow Hegel and try to find a harmony between freedom and community in concrete mediations of community, the family, the economics and the feeling of togetherness in collective political units. However, as a Kantian hermeneutic philosopher Ricœur know that it is impossible to realize Hegel’s dream of total synthesis and harmony. There will in concrete ethical life in community always be tensions between the Aristotle’s vision of the good life and the Kant’s defense of universal norms and justice (Ricœur 1990, 237). 1. The first problem is the tension between freedom and norm. Institutions in a democratic society are here conceived as the realization of the moral norm at the institutional level of society. An institution is defined as a structure of the good of a historical community, that cannot be reduced to pure interpersonal relations, and that implies a certain vision of distributive justice. The value of this ethical is the acceptance of differences, social responsibility, tolerance and recognition of the pluralistic character of society. Here the values of the just state are the point where the individual recognizes itself in the will of the majority. The institutions express the objective spirit of practical reason, guaranteeing basic liberties. However, as a consequence of the totalitarian dangers of the objective practical reason should never be totally dissolved in the institutions, but remain critical towards the corruption of the institutions. 2. The second problem is the recognition of the existential tension between the individual and the state, between private and public, between the commitment to

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the other, the family, and the commitment to the values of the state, where the personal obligations and devotions of the citizen are designated to enter into insoluble conflict with the law and the morals of the state. The private sphere of commitments, responsibilities and beliefs can never totally be integrated into the morals of the political community. The finitude and tragedy of action signify that human beings on the political as well as the personal level are continuously confronted with destiny and never for certain have awareness and transparent knowledge of all the consequences of their actions. Moral choices, determined by ignorance, passion or emotional blindness lead to wrong actions and consequently the moral destruction of the self. Ricœur relies on Hegel’s interpretation of the Greek tragedy of Sophocles; Antigone, as an example of how even morally superior human beings can be caught in the game of destiny, the contingency and unexpectedness of human life (Ricœur 1990, 281). Kreon, a tyrant, the leader of the Polis, forbids Antigone to bury her brother at the burial place, because the brother has acted contrary to the wishes of the state. Antigone must make a choice between loyalty towards her brother and loyalty to the laws of the state. She chooses to bury her brother and therefore does not obey the law and institutions of the state. She is committed to a divine law, her own ontological commitment, and promise to her brother, which overrides her duty to respect the positive legal code of the state. The tragedy illustrates the priority of the personal commitment in relation to the objective legal code, and the possible oppositions between profound individual beliefs and state institutions (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). And business ethics it reminds us about possible strong tensions between values of individual employees and policies of the organizations that they work for. Political communities, even democratic societies obeying the rule of law are never totally without such moral conflicts. Personal ethical convictions, actions and responsibilities happen to be in insoluble conflict with the norms and the ethical life of the community. Such a conflict implies contradiction between universal principles of morality, the vision of the good life of the community and the ethical commitment of the individual in promise and responsibility to a divine law. Even the most well founded consensus would turn into totalitarianism, if it did not allow the emergence of dissent as a possibility that would always be real. Therefore, a realization of a final, universal, objective “ethical life” is impossible and there will always remain a potential gap between positive and divine law. Also, there are many tragic dilemmas in business life that we need to deal with. These confront individuals and organizations in challenges of economic man versus social man, profit versus sustainability, responsibility versus efficiency, truth versus organizational obligation, personal integrity versus commitment to business standards and tensions between organizational commitments and individual beliefs. Consequently, society must always recognize the eternal tension between the human being and the state without a total mediation of individual liberty in the rationality and unity of the state. Here, Ricœur argues that there will also be problems with a very harmonious unification of individual, market and state. Tragic

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dilemmas are due to human fallibility and finitude. This is the existential dimension of philosophy of management (Rendtorff 2010a, 2013a, b, c, d). In this context, Ricœur emphasizes the respect for the individual and the importance of conflict in the ethical life of community where individual freedom and subjectivity are essential parts of modern society. Justice and law cannot be totally founded on culture and tradition, but a universal dimension is acquired in the philosophy of law. By the continuous recognition and acceptance of the possibility of conflict as an essential dimension of democracy, the republican notion of peoples sovereignty, e.g. respect for autonomy and fair legal procedures as founded in the constitution and institutional political praxis, can mediate between individual, universality and community norms, in opposition to the terror and technological rationality of a totalitarian society, reducing the individual to an abstract function of the state (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). The character of this institutional praxis can be illustrated by the concept of authority (Ricœur, 1994, 19). In opposition to a totalitarian political institution, authority presupposes the recognition of the political community in a democratic process of legitimization. Authority is neither based on the natural will of God, nor on the laws of a totalitarian regime, but is founded on the decisions of the political community. Authentic political authority must be distinguished from domination and force, because it relies on the common power of the participants of the political community. Authority in open institutions relies on the shared understandings of the “vivre ensemble” in the political community (Ricœur 1990, 227). What can we learn in business ethics and philosophy of management from this concept of ethical life in community? We need to accept both conflict and consensus in ethical life of community of organizations. There are lot of ethical tensions between different visions of the good and the concepts of moral universality in organizations. We can learn from Ricœur that the Aristotelian vision of the good and the Kantian moral norm need to be realized in the common values of community in organizations, institutions and businesses. It is in the institutional life of business organizations that we need to live this ethical life based on respect for otherness, tolerance and solicitude as constitutive of the common values of the organizational community in business and institutions.

 he Need for Judgment in Politics and Social Theory, Business T Ethics and Philosophy of Management Ricœur emphasizes the importance of judgment to find the right balance between the good and the right in democratic institutions and societies. The task of judgment is to mediate in social and political conflicts by applying practical reason, wisdom and judgment to assure common action, good and right decisions concerning the good life in opposition to the fragility, the fault and the possibility of tragedy (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218, 2020b). Again, in

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considering practical reason Ricœur tries to combine Aristotle and Kant (Ricœur 1987, 237). Practical reason assures the respect for good and community while taking into account the moral norm and the basic procedural rules in a society. But, because of the possible exceptions to the rules and the particularity of situations, practical wisdom and judgment are required as a necessary supplement to practical reason. Further practical wisdom is required in exceptional situations of difficult tragic dilemmas where ethical principles and legal rules are difficult to apply. This is for example the case in medicine and healthcare (Jørgensen and Rendtorff 2018, 491). So all three faculties of human deliberation contribute to the work of the unfinished mediation between the ideal of the good life and universal principles in relation to concrete situations and social traditions. In this philosophy of judgment, Ricœur develops this new kind of mediation between critique and belonging, between practical wisdom and practical reason, between universal principles and concrete narrative traditions. Ricœur relies on the concept of judgment in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), inspired by Hannah Arendt in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1982). The Kantian understanding of judgment is an effort to apply the formalistic concept of practical reason to the situation and tradition of political community. Ricœur defines judgment as a peaceful way of solving social conflict, where individual execution of justice, revenge and physical aggression are replaced by codified neutral procedures. Here general ethical understandings and principles of justice are applied to concrete situations. The legal system, autonomous, different from and yet mediated through public debate and political legislation, implies a rational discourse about justice, where minimum mutual respect, human punishment and recognition of basic rights even of those to be punished replace pure violence. Judgment is not only determinate application of a predetermined rule, but rather reflective thinking. Although the reflective judgment in Kant’s Critique of Judgment primarily concerns aesthetics and natural teleology, one should not forget its significance for the concepts of political rationality and jurisprudence. There is a logical and structural analogy between aesthetical, political and judicial judgments. The characteristics of judgment are a mediation between particularity and universality in a space of intersubjective, public deliberation. Communication concerning judgments of opinion and taste relates to particular cases, and is founded on the common understanding of validity and shared values. Judgment as formation of political opinion, legislative act and concrete legal processes can be conceived as an interaction between understanding, imagination, reason and common sense (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Therefore, there are two finalities of law. On the one hand short term reasonable solution of conflict, on the other hand long-term formation of a just society. Being a result of intersubjective public debate, the formation of law in judgment has a teleological function as mediation of conflicts and contributes to social peace in the light of the regulative idea of progress in history and the perfectibility of humanity. Given legal rules and principles of justice cannot be directly applied to all situations, but must be interpreted as reflective judgments relative to new situations. The pluralistic character of social conflicts make the application of universal moral principles and

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revitalization of narrative traditions a question of a dynamic interpretation, where new situations without preceding cases challenge given legal standards and demand imaginative and original solutions at the limits of traditional understanding of law. Judgment must be understood as the ending of the process of deliberation, going from discussion to final opinion and decision about a social conflict. It is the final point and the fulfilment of the force of law which mediates conflict and violence through reason and discourse. The legal process can as such be seen as a codified mediation of social conflicts. Here the rationality of deliberation is well-founded opinion and social codification in written laws in an institutional framework with professional judges (Ricœur 1994, 176). Against the background of conflictual critical discussion and opinion, judgment is the final step, the closing of a process, leading to public action in execution of decisions, expressing the force and power of law in community. The procedural structure of judicial practice ensures the rule of law and the formal equality between citizens (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). Legal argumentation can be described as a communicative activity taking into account shared understanding in the context of the judicial framework, where the concept of justice is the guiding regulative idea of judicial practice. Here, argumentation and decision making is movement between concrete situations and abstract justifications, between shared convictions and critical rationality. Even if justice as such remains a transcending quasi mythological idea that is best revealed negatively by the understanding of injustice it remains the legitimizing idea of concrete judicial argumentation and practice (Ricœur 1994, 192). Justice in the legal system implies the confrontation between arguments that are tested according to facts, rules and convictions. However, the rhetorical character of judicial discourse also manifests the fragility of language between violence and discourse. Therefore legal decision making and argumentation cannot be reduced to positivistic legalism, but is guided by a teleological vision of social peace and the good for the individual and community. Ricœur characterizes the concept of judgment as the “just distance”, the just place between the parts of the conflict, the right distance from the factual situation through the procedural deliberation about particular conflicts in society. The ultimate goal of judging is the common recognition of the judgment by the involved parts and in this way build an understanding about the case despite tragic and hurtful experiences. Ricœur emphasizes the distributive character of judgment as being a peaceful way to solve conflicts of ownership in a discursive rather than in a violent way. It distributes things and goods among individuals. It decides conflicts of ownership among individuals taking part in society as a system of exchange of goods. Here judgment contributes to the delimitation between spheres in society. As a contributor to social peace, judgment presupposes a vision of society as fundamentally cooperative, so that the communitarian vision of community as a fragile and vulnerable context of community is behind the very exercise of judgment to maintain social peace. But conflicts about repartition of the Good in different spheres of justice often also transcend shared understandings. Common vision of the Good are often realized to be inadequate, and must be confronted with universal standards, individual autonomy. Disagreement with state policy can lead to civil disobedience in the name of the

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divine law, and the corresponding “hard cases”, that according to Ronald Dworkin’s analysis in Taking Rights Seriously (1977), an appeal to rights and principles must be seen as the foundation for innovation and reform insuring legal coherence. This conception of judgment focuses on the concrete conflicts in society, assuring the right proportion between shared understandings and judicial universality in opposition to ideology and contingent interests of power. Ricœur also adopts Dworkin’s hermeneutical-narrative understanding of law as integrity (in Laws Empire (1986)) concerned with the respect for principles of political morality and progressive innovation according to the principle of equality, fairness and impartiality, based on a permanent reinterpretation of the constitutional basis and emergent legal practice. In describing this movement of universalization, Ricœur is here close to Jürgen Habermas’ of the foundation of legal norms in domination-free communication and the interplay between facticity and validity. But although Habermas in his philosophy of law wants to integrate concrete moral convictions and experiences as basic for the formulation of new moral principles, it is difficult to give moral principles any substantial and contextual strength on a pure formalistic and procedural basis. Therefore, an abstract foundation of legal rules is impossible and the universal ideals must be related to the context of community, where common sense and shared values always determines the concrete processes of legislation between form of life and reflective ethical justification (Rendtorff 1996, 102–127, 2000, 2009a, 2014a, 199–218). This need for judgment in law and politics of democratic societies is important for business ethics and philosophy of management. There is a close relation between judgment and good leadership in organizations and corporations (Rendtorff 2017c). We need judgment in management and business ethics to find the right balance between visions of the good and universal principles and rights. In business ethics and philosophy of management, judgment contributes to making the right decision in concrete situations of decision-making. The turn towards the Kantian understanding of judgment seems to be a promising way of overcoming a too rigid separation between ethical principles and concrete situations of decision-making and action (Rendtorff 2009b). Ricœur’s vision of the “hermeneutical circle of practical judgment” between Aristotle, Kant and Hegel contributes with a solid basis for decision-­making in organizations, institutions and businesses. Here, we find an important framework for humanistic management with practical realization of ethical visions and moral norms in the practical ethical life of organizations, institutions and businesses.

Conclusion This article has presented the core ideas of humanity in business and philosophy of management from the point of view of Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutic Philosophy. Critical hermeneutics moves between understanding, interpretation and critique in order to find the right balance between economic efficiency and ethical humanism. The phenomenological hermeneutics of business organizations studies narratives,

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symbols and metaphors of organizational cultures in order to capture the meaning of business and life in organizations. From this point of view the hermeneutical movement of taking a distance from the text implies critique of ideology and power in organizations, based on the thinkers of suspicion, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Nevertheless, hermeneutics does not stay with critique of ideology. Rather, the hermeneutic perspective of humanizing business is based on a utopian vision and ideal of politics of the realization of the “good life with and for others in just institutions”. The starting point for ethical business is the existential commitment with the ethical vision of the good life in business and organizations. The hermeneutic study of humanity of business focusses on the historicity of temporal narrative identities of meaning and forms of action of individuals, cultures and collectivities in organizations. Organizations are viewed as political communities and concepts from political philosophy are important to capture the humanity of business. Ricœur submits an Aristotelian concept of justice to Kantian requirements of universality and combines it with Sen’s and Nussbaum’s concept of capabilities. Ricœur sees the desire to live together according to universal norms as the foundation of the just community, business or organization. This is an important normative dimension of the critical hermeneutic study of organizations. A good organization or a good society opens for personal search for the good life. Individual ethics is based on ontological commitment, responsibility, promise and integrity of narrative identity of individuals in community. The market system should facilitate the good political community and market interactions should be built on the virtues and norms as the foundation of search of excellence. Moreover, the firm or corporation may be viewed as a form of life or a culture of excellence, which must combine the vision of the good life of personal and collective narrative identity with respect for the moral norm and co-existence in the ethical life and mutual recognition of just organizations. However, as a post-Hegelian Kantian, Ricœur refuses the idea of full mediation of opposites in harmonious organizational life. Business and society are characterized by conflictual-consensual interactions, tensions between individuals and community, between individual autonomy and norms of community. There are many tragic dilemmas of business and ethics as well as contradictions between individual conviction and commitment and organizational requirements. These confront individuals and organizations in challenges of economic man versus social man, profit versus sustainability, responsibility versus efficiency, truth versus organizational obligation, personal integrity versus commitment to business standards and tensions between organizational commitments and individual beliefs. Ricœur emphasizes the need for reflective judgment as a “hermeneutic style of good government”. Judgment implies interpretation and explanation, critique and participation. Judgment takes place in the interplay between reflective and determinate judgment and it mediates practical reason and practical wisdom between Aristotle and Kant. Judgment is the exercise of interpretation and critique, reflection and understanding. Thus, judgment is essential for hermeneutic decision-making in business between tradition and innovation and the integrity of judgment is necessary to humanize business and ensure good corporate citizenship.

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References Arendt, Hannah. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s political philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking rights seriously. London: Duckworth. ———. 1986. Laws empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jørgensen, Kim, and Jacob Dahl Rendtorff. 2018. Patient participation in mental health care  – Perspectives of healthcare professionals: An integrative review. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences 32 (2): 490–501. Kant, Immanuel. 1790. Kritik der Urteilskraft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 1990. Mattsson, Jan, and Jacob Dahl Rendtorff. 2006. E-marketing ethics: A theory of value priorities. International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising 3 (1): 35–47. Pedersen, John Storm, and Jacob Dahl Rendtorff. 2004. Value-based management in local public organizations: A Danish experience. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal 11 (2): 71–94. Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. New York: Harvard University Press. ———. 1992. Political liberalism. New York: Harvard University Press. Rendtorff, Jacob Dahl. 1996. Critical hermeneutics in law and politics. In Paul Ricœur in the conflict of interpretations, ed. Lars Henrik Schmidt. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. ———. 2000. Paul Ricœurs filosofi. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. ———. 2009a. Business, society and the common good: The contribution of Paul Ricœur. In Business, globalization and the common good, ed. Henri-Claude de Bettignies and Francois Lépineux. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 2009b. Basic ethical principles applied to service industries. Service Industries Journal 29 (1): 9–19. ———. 2010a. Philosophy of management: Concepts of management from the perspectives of systems theory, phenomenological hermeneutics, corporate religion and existentialism. In Elements of a philosophy of management and organization, Studies in economic ethics and philosophy, ed. Peter Koslowski, 19–47. Heidelberg: Springer. ———, ed. 2010b. Power and principle in the market place: On ethics and economics. London: Ashgate. ———. 2011. Institutionalization of corporate ethics and social responsibility programs in firms. In Corporate social and human rights responsibilities: Global, legal and management perspectives, ed. Karin Buhmann, Lynn Roseberry, and Mette Morsing, 244–266. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2013a. The history of the philosophy of management and corporations. In Handbook of the philosophical foundations of business ethics, ed. Christoph Luetge, 1387–1408. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. ———. 2013b. Basic concepts of philosophy of management and corporations. In Handbook of the philosophical foundations of business ethics, ed. Christoph Luetge, 1361–1386. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. ———. 2013c. Philosophical theories of management and corporations. In Handbook of the philosophical foundations of business ethics, ed. Christoph Luetge, 1409–1432. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. ———. 2013d. Recent debates in philosophy of management. In Handbook of the philosophical foundations of business ethics, ed. Christoph Luetge, 1433–1457. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer. ———. 2014a. French philosophy and social theory. A perspective for ethics and philosophy of management. Cham: Springer. ———. 2014b. Risk management, banality of evil and moral blindness in organizations and corporations. In Business ethics and risk management, Ethical economy; no. 43, ed. Christoph Luetge and Johanna Jauernig, 45–71. Dordrecht: Springer.

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———. 2015. Business ethics, strategy, and organizational integrity: The importance of integrity as a basic principle of business ethics that contributes to better economic performance. In Handbook of research on business ethics and corporate responsibilities, Advances in business strategy and competitive advantage (ABSCA), ed. Daniel E. Palmer, 91–105. Hershey: IGI Global. ———. 2017a. Cosmopolitan business ethics: Towards a global ethos of management, Finance, governance and sustainability: Challenges to theory and practice series. London: Routledge. ———. 2017b. Creating shared value as institutionalization of ethical responsibilities of the business corporation as a good corporate citizen in society. In Creating shared value: Concepts, experience, criticism, Ethical economy; no. 52, ed. Josef Wieland, 119–139. Cham: Springer. ———. 2017c. Business ethics, philosophy of management, and theory of leadership. In Perspectives on philosophy of management and business ethics: Including a special section on business and human rights, Ethical economy, no. 51, ed. Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, 3–17. Cham: Springer. ———. 2019a. The concept of business legitimacy: Corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate governance as essential elements of ethical business legitimacy. In Responsibility and governance: The twin pillars of sustainability, Approaches to global sustainability, markets, and governance, ed. David Crowther, Shahla Seifi, and Tracey Wond, 45–60. Cham: Springer. ———. 2019b. Sustainable development goals and progressive business models for economic transformation. Local Economy 34 (6): 510–524. ———. 2019c. Philosophy of management and sustainability: Rethinking business ethics and social responsibility in sustainable development. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. ———. 2020a. Paul Ricœur and Danish Philosophy: Dissemination of Ricœur’s philosophy in the philosophical debate in Denmark, Ricœur’s influence on particular Danish philosophers and themes of discussion in Denmark. Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 53 (1): 84–107. ———. 2020b. Moral blindness in business: A social theory of evil in organizations and institutions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rendtorff, Jacob Dahl, and Peter Kemp. 2009. The Barcelona Declaration. Towards an integrated approach to basic ethical principles. Synthesis Philosophica 23 (2): 239–251. Ricœur, Paul. 1961. La symbolique du mal I–II [The symbolism of evil I–II]. Paris: Aubier. ———. 1965. De L’interprétation [On interpretation]. Paris: Le Seuil. ———. 1985–1987. Temps et récit I-III [Time and Narrative I-III]. Paris: Le Seul. ———. 1987. Du texte à l’action [From text to action]. Paris: Le Seuil. ———. 1990. Soi-même comme un Autre [One-self as another]. Paris: Le Seuil. ———. 1994. Lectures 1 [Readings I]. Paris: Le Seuil. Walzer, Michael. 1984. Spheres of justice, a defense of pluralism and equality. New  York: Basic Books. Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, PhD and Dr. Scient. Adm. is professor of philosophy of management and ethics at Roskilde University. Rendtorff’s research covers philosophy, business ethics, bioethics, ethics and law, and social theory. Rendtorff’s recent publications are Sustainability and Philosophy of Management, Emerald 2019, Cosmopolitan Business Ethics. Towards a Global Ethos of Management, Routledge 2017. Rendtorff is President  of the EXCOM of EBEN (European Business Ethics Network) and member of the Steering Committee of FISP (International Federation of Philosophical Societies). Rendtorff is editor of the Springer Series Ethical Economy, Presently, Rendtorff’s research interests are  philosophy of management, corporate responsibility, sustainability, and cosmopolitan business ethics.  

Chapter 10

The Use of Casuistry to Humanize Business Joanne B. Ciulla

Most people only pay attention to business ethics when stories about a company or businessperson that did something wrong appear in the media. We love a good scandal, and with so many 24-hour media outlets to talk about it, the news provides business ethics professors with plenty of material for writing the case studies that they use in class. Cases remind us that business consists of much more than hard cold economic transactions. It also engages the full spectrum of human brilliance and folly. As the stuff of gossip, ethical problems titillate. They are comedies and tragedies that move us from laughter to tears, reminding us that we are not spectators but participants in the human condition. Against the backdrop of this long-­ standing fascination with morality, we see that business ethics and many of the problems in its cases are not new. They represent problems that have popped up in business and life before. History offers us good news and bad news about business ethics. The good news is that we are not orphans but part of a family of scholars who systematically discuss cases about practical moral problems, including those related to business. The bad news is that our ancestors, the Sophists, and the casuists, were considered the horse thieves and quacks of moral philosophy. Critics disparaged them so much that the words “sophistry” and “casuistry” became pejoratives that described a specious form of hair-splitting argumentation. The court of history charged the Sophists with false advertising and dangerous practices. The casuists, known for their case approach to ethics, were indicted for recklessly disregarding or distorting moral Portions of this paper are adapted from Ciulla, Joanne B. 1994. Casuistry and the case for business ethics. In Business as a Humanity, eds. Thomas J. Donaldson and R. Edward Freeman, 167-183. New  York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Reproduced with permission from Oxford University Press. J. B. Ciulla (*) Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_10

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principles and pandering to the interests of the rich and powerful. The dubious reputation of our ancestors may explain why some people scoff and others giggle when we tell them that we teach business ethics. Unfortunately, we cannot choose our relatives; however, we can try to understand what they were trying to do and where they went wrong (Ciulla 1994). This chapter investigates the history of casuistry, which is a form of reasoning that examines how moral principles apply to practical ethical problems or “cases of conscience” (Jonson and Toulmin, 1988, p. 127). It explores the history of casuistry and the use of business ethics cases in history. The chapter begins with a discussion of sophistry, a precursor of casuistry, then it scrutinizes casuistry, and the how cases have been used in business ethics education, journalism, and philosophy. It argues that we can avoid the problems with casuistry and become better casuists by using literature from the humanities as business ethics cases. The chapter then outlines how to use humanities cases to gain perspective on contemporary ethical problems in business. It concludes by showing how humanities cases develop perspective on business practice, which is a necessary condition for humanizing business.

Sophistry and Teaching In Plato’s dialogue “Protagoras,” the sophist Protagoras says: “Personally I hold that the Sophist’s art is an ancient one, but that those who put their hand to it in former times, fearing the odium which it brings, adopted a disguise and worked undercover” (Plato 1971a, pp. 314–315). He says, some used poetry, religion, music, or physical training “as a screen to escape malice (p. 315).” There were several reasons why some people disliked the Sophists. Historically, the primary reason was that Sophists were usually foreigners and people regarded their ideas as a threat to the traditional order (Grote 1869). However, the most compelling criticism of the Sophists for our purposes, centers on the intent and methodology of their instruction. The Sophists did not just teach ethics; they taught professional ethics. For example, Protagoras says that in addition to teaching virtue, he teaches young men how to manage their personal affairs, household affairs, and state affairs “so as to become a real power in the city, both as a speaker and a man of action” (Plato 1971a, p. 317). Unlike philosophical or religious ethics, practical ethics assumes that people must also have the technical competence to sustain themselves in their professions. Inherent in business and politics is the potential for conflict between the demands of morality and the demands of winning an election or staying in business. In other words, you have to be a politician before you can be an ethical politician, and the same goes for businesspeople. Critics accused Socrates of being a Sophist, even though he never had students. Plato’s Dialogues show us how Socrates cross-examined and refuted interlocutors in hopes of encouraging and admonishing them towards a better understanding of concepts such as courage and piety. In the early dialogues, Socrates demonstrates why the Sophists’ definitions are inadequate. The difference between the Sophists’

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rhetorical method and the Socratic method rests more on the pedagogical goal; the techniques are similar. Rhetoric aimed at analyzing an argument and moving an audience. Socratic method endeavored to explore concepts and bring forth self-­ knowledge. Rhetoric was not necessarily bad but that it could be misused to make the weaker argument appear to be the stronger which is similar to some of the charges made against casuistry. One danger of teaching cases is that, like rhetoric, students focus on the good of particular actions, not the nature of “the good.” For example, in Double Arguments, the great rhetorician Gorgias argues that one cannot make general statements about ethics because one has to judge each case and each situation anew (Untersteiner 1954). The Sophists were accused of being ethical relativists who had anti-­ intellectual attitudes towards theoretical or scientific knowledge. As the sophist, Protagoras said, “Man is the measure of all things” (Plato 1971c, p. 856). Plato’s dispute with the Sophists rests on the conflict between absolutism and relativism that reappears throughout the history of Western thought. Plato envisioned ethics as scientific or universal knowledge, while the Sophists saw ethics only in terms of experience or practical knowledge. Unlike Plato, who thought ethics was a science (episteme), Aristotle tells us that ethics is a form of practical knowledge (phronesis) that people learn by experience. As we will see, the problem with casuistry and stems from this tension between ethics as episteme and phronesis. Lastly, for the Greeks, the moral character of the teacher is as important as his skill. So, teaching ethics for pay was suspicious. In the Protagoras and the Sophist Plato uses commercial imagery to talk about the Sophist. He refers to the Sophist as a “hired hunter of young rich men,” “a sort of merchant of learning as nourishment for the soul,” and a “retail dealer” in knowledge (Plato 1971b,  p. 974). Socrates warns us to be careful that the Sophist, “in commending his wares, does not deceive you like the wholesaler and retailer who deal in food for the body” (Plato 1971a, pp. 312–313). Since the Sophists usually taught men from wealthy families, there was a potential for conflict. Well into modern times, people frowned upon the idea of paying teachers because they feared that education would then change to please the whims of the students. Historian Jacques Le Goff notes that in the Middle Ages the argument against paying teachers was similar to the argument against usury: one should not pay teachers because that would be like selling knowledge, and knowledge belongs to God. In the case of usury, the same prohibition was made against selling time (Le Goff 1980). The idea of an ethicist as a hired hand reemerged in the seventeenth-century critique over the Jesuit casuists, who were accused of being apologists for their wealthy patrons. In the twentieth century, Peter Drucker (1981) made a similar charge against business ethics. He said it was nothing more than casuistry that either disparaged business or apologized for it. We might raise similar questions about business schools that compete for MBA students and ratings. A business school curriculum geared towards “customer” satisfaction, may not be the best place to produce humane business leaders unless the customer-students demand it.

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The Roots of Casuistry People often use the word “sophistry” and “casuistry” to refer to shady and unsound moral reasoning. However, the controversy over the Sophists had a somewhat different set of concerns that emerge over casuistry. Casuistry has historically appeared in tandem with some ethico-legal or purely legal absolutism, which is why many countries have a case law system. In its most positive sense, casuistry corrected the excesses of overly rigid laws by bridging the gap between abstract principles and particular cases (Sanderson 1877). This sort of legalism was not present in ancient Greek culture, so there was no real need for casuistry to fill the gap. The second reason why the ancient world did not need casuistry was that the notion of conscience was not developed until the time of the Stoics. While there were hints of conscience in the writings of Heraclitus, Hesiod, and Homer, there was generally no strong sense of self-condemnation. The word casuistry comes from the Latin casus, meaning case. In grammar, a case is the falling away or declension of a noun. By analogy, the term casuistry implies a kind of deflection or falling away from a law or principle. Casuistry serves the dual purpose of applying principles to cases and using cases to help us understand and sometimes alter principles. It is morality applied to particular situations. Parents are casuists when they explain to their children why individual acts are good and evil. Children do not learn the meaning of words such as good and fair by definition but by observing situations in which those terms apply. If the ascetic moralist is like a mathematician, the casuist is like a medical doctor, the former is interested in knowledge and judgment, whereas the latter is concerned with understanding and diagnosis (Jonson and Toulmin 1988). Jonson and Toulmin (1988) trace the roots of casuistry to Aristotle’s assertion that moral knowledge is phronesis, not episteme. We gain moral knowledge through experience but, unlike science or geometry, moral knowledge is not certain, nor is it universal. We see the beginnings of case analysis in the third book of Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle outlines how to appraise the morality of an action. He asks (1) “Who did it?” (2) “What was done?” (3) “In what context was it done?” (4) “Using what instrument?” (5) “To what end?” and (6) “In what manner?” (Jonson and Toulmin, 71). Later, in Cicero’s De Officiis, we see some of these questions applied to business cases. Cicero tells the reader that his intention is not just to raise questions but to resolve them completely. Cases similar to Cicero’s pop up in other texts over hundreds of years. The following is one famous example of caveat emptor: Suppose an honest man sells a house because of some defects that he is aware of, but others do not suspect. Suppose the house is unsanitary but is considered healthy; suppose no one knows that vermin can be seen in all the bedrooms, that the house is built of poor timber and quite dilapidated. The question is if the seller does not tell these facts to a buyer and sells the house for much more than he thought he could get for it, did he act without justice and without honor? (Cicero 1974, p. 54).

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After raising the question, Cicero looks at both sides of the case. Using natural law, definitions, and recognized duties, Cicero points out that concealment is different from keeping silent. In a similar case that would be relevant in any business ethics class today, Cicero tells the story of a merchant who arrives with a grain shipment at the gates of the famine-stricken city of Rhodes. The merchant knows that other shipments are one day behind him, but the citizens of the city do not. The question is, “Should the merchant conceal this fact from the buyers and charge a higher price?” (Cicero, 1974, p. 50). In his discussion of this case, Cicero pits selfinterest and profit-making against natural law and again reiterates the buyer’s right to know. Cases of price gouging in disaster situations are still around today.

The Problem with Laws Casuistry emerges as a means of discussing ethics in times when there is an over-­ reliance on the law or when there is legal or ethical absolutism. At its best, it corrects the excesses of the law, which is why many countries have case law systems. This feature is one reason people are interested in business ethics today. For a long time, we believed that laws and regulations were sufficient to affect ethical behavior in business. Any good corporate lawyer can ensure that a company adheres to the letter of the law. However, we have seen many situations where businesses act legally but unethically. Today, there still seems to be both an overdependence on the law and relativism in ethics. Extreme dependence on laws to regulate behavior is called nomism. Nomism is a tendency, found in some religions, to try to control personal and social life by making law the supreme norm. When a religion or a society degenerates into a mere formalism of conduct, it ceases to have moral conviction and purpose. For example, the founders of Judaism aimed at making all life conform to the law and wanted obedience to the commandments to be both a necessity and a custom. They realized, the danger of overdependence on the law and softened their legalism by emphasizing the sincerity of the soul. Merely following the letter of the law was not sufficient; the heart had to be inclined to the spirit of the law. In the covenant to be made with Israel, The Holy Bible (1989) (Jeremiah, 31.33, p. 755) says “the Law would be written in the hearts of the people.” We see this idea resurface in Kant, who also saw that what made an act moral was not just adherence to duty but originating in a good will (Kant 1993; Matson 1954).

Casuistry and Occupations In Christianity, casuistry became cases of conscience, and it became a formalized procedure for resolving cases. It consisted mostly of reasoning by analogy, using settled cases or paradigm cases to deliberate about new ones. The casuists embraced

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the complexity of cases and applied maxims and other principles to them (Calkins 2001). Some were developed to help priests recognize sins and judge sinners. The early texts of cases, called “Penitential Manuals,” started to circulate in the third century. These texts analyzed cases using the precepts of Roman law. In the fifth century, the Pelagian controversy about free will and the all-knowing nature of God increased the need for casuistry to mediate between practical questions about morality and religion. Penitential manuals proliferated after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 decreed that everyone had to go to confession once a year. The Scholastics turned the old legal casuistry of the Church into moral casuistry. Interest shifted from punishing souls to reforming them. Understanding the individual and his or her trade became an important part of the priest’s task. The first confessors’ manuals were also printed in local languages. The “best-sellers” were texts that had the highest number of questions about trade. These manuals were bought by wealthy merchants who sought the Church’s opinion on questions such as, “Is it legitimate to work in the fields or sell at fairs on Sunday?” According to the historian Jacques Le Goff, three principles emerged from these manuals: 1. Every Christian is essentially defined in relation to his profession: vocation and salvation. 2. All labor deserves compensation: vocation and money. 3. Every profession based on labor is justified: vocation and labor (Le Goff 1980, p. 118). Until the 1600s, ordinary Christians thought of sin in terms of the seven deadly sins: gluttony, lust, pride, envy, avarice, anger, and sloth – not the rules of the Ten Commandments. One reason for the sins’ popularity is that seven things are easier to remember than ten (Bossy 1988). They also had the advantage of being easy to portray symbolically to an illiterate public. Confessors’ manuals advised priests to watch out for gluttony in cooks, lust in innkeepers, and greed in lawyers. Sins were also related to the sinner’s place in the hierarchy. There were academic sins, judges’ sins, peasants’ sins, and mechanics’ sins. As the middle class grew, the Church created new categories. For example, the concept of purgatory became popular in the late thirteenth century because the Church needed a correlative place in the afterlife for the middle class. On earth, they stood between the powerful and the poor, the clergy, and the laity (Le Goff 1984). By the end of the twelfth century, the Church began to change its views on wage labor and the professions in part, because of the powerful new craft guilds and also because the Church had embarked on a cathedral building spree. In one famous incident, a group of prostitutes approached the Bishop of Paris and offered to donate a window to Notre Dame Cathedral. Unlike a guild donation, their window would not depict a scene from their trade. It would honor the Virgin Mary. The embarrassed bishop refused their money. Nonetheless, a monk named Thomas of Chobham wrote a decision on the case in one of the first confessional manuals of the period. It illustrates how casuistry can be used to support some principles of the Church while overlooking broader moral principles. It is also suspect because it seems to want to justify the desired outcome, which is raising money for the Church.

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Prostitutes must be counted among the mercenaries. They hire out their bodies and supply labor… Whence this principle of secular justice: she does evil in being a prostitute, but she does not do evil in receiving the price of her labor, it being admitted that she is a prostitute. Whence the fact that it is possible to repent of practicing prostitution while keeping the profits of prostitution for the purposes of giving alms. If, however, prostitution is engaged in for pleasure, and the body hired out to experience ecstasy, then one’s labor is not being hired and the profit is a shameful as the act (Le Goff, p. 66).

Here we see how casuistry can go wrong. In Chobham’s rush to add prestige to paid labor and fill the Church coffers, he almost forgets about the problem with prostitution. The result is an argument that would support a kind of Robin Hoodism. In other words, you can do anything as long as you repent and give the money to the Church or the poor. Chobham then moves on to consider other problems with the prostitute’s trade: If the prostitute perfumes and adorns herself so as to attract with false allures and gives the impression of a beauty and seductiveness which she does not possess, the client buying what he sees, which, in this case, is deceptive, the prostitute then commits a sin, and she should not keep the profit it brings her. If the client saw her as she really is, he would give her only a pittance, but as she appears beautiful and brilliant to him, he gives a handsome sum. In this case, she should keep only the pittance and return the rest to the client she has deceived, or to the Church, or to the poor (Le Goff, pp. 66-67).

In the emerging market economy of this time, the Church used cases to inch toward changes in its policies on business and the professions. For example, the Church used a fascinating variety of cases and arguments to reconceptualize its view of usury (Nelson 1969). Here Chobham appears to harken back to Cicero to support truth in advertising while at the same time providing a justification for accepting the prostitute’s donation (Ciulla 1994).

Casuistry and Business Cases Casuistry came under attack in the seventeenth century, most notably in Blaise Pascal’s Provincial Letters (Pascal 1982). Pascal’s served as the hitman for the Jansenists, a group of rigorous Catholics who were violently opposed to the moral laxity of the Jesuit casuists. Jesuits of this period, including Escobar y Mendoza, Luis Molina, Thomas Sanchez, and John Azor studied classical rhetoric and used it as a basis for refining their techniques of case analysis. Pascal’s attack on them was so vicious and delightfully written that he transformed the word “casuistry” into a derogatory term. His slurs on the casuist Escobar y Mendoza resulted in the French word “Escobarderie,” which became a synonym for duplicity. Pascal’s critique of the casuists was not always fair or loyal to the texts (Jonson and Toulmin 1988). However, there was much to criticize in the Jesuit doctrine of probabilism. The Jesuits took their inspiration from the words of Jesus to the adulterous: “Neither will I condemn thee” (John 8.11, p.95). They sought a moral

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minimum, and their goal was to make objective and meaningful judgments by holding a person innocent of sin in cases where there was doubt. Probabilism recognized that moral laws are not like scientific laws, so it is reasonable to doubt them in light of concrete examples. If the lawfulness of an act was in doubt, the Jesuits believed that it was reasonable to follow a probable opinion favoring liberty. Another way that they decided which opinion to follow was to choose the position held by the more famous scholar. Pascal interpreted probabilism to mean: when in doubt, do what you want. Like Plato’s displeasure with the Sophists, Pascal was offended by the casuists’ relativism and by their disrespect for moral laws. Not all of the casuistry that came out of this tradition was bad, nor did Pascal’s Provincial Letters (1982) kill off casuistry. The methods developed by the Jesuits for clarifying the circumstances of a case were still used in nineteenth-century texts. Consider, for example, Jean Gury’s analysis of this case, called “Of the Indirect Will”: Richard, an innkeeper, happy in having a large patronage, furnishes abundantly wine to the drinkers, incited by the love of lucre, and also by the desire to prevent blasphemous talk, though foreseeing that many of them will get drunk; in his conscience, he is not sinning. He harbors, even cheerfully, men who hold impious or obscene conversations, and he does not reproach them for it, because, says he is not responsible for their conduct (Bert 1940, p. 55).

In question 1 Gury asks, “Does Richard sin gravely in furnishing wine to people who will get drunk, without any better reason than his love for gain?” The answer to this question is yes if the innkeeper continues to serve wine to someone who is already drunk. Here he sustains a slight loss for the sake of preventing a certain sin. Question 2 asks whether the innkeeper sins by not preventing drinkers from committing blasphemy. Generally, no, says the casuist, because charity does not require that we sustain a considerable business loss (by not serving wine) in order to oppose sins. It is morally sufficient that the innkeeper desires to prevent drunkenness and blasphemy. A critic would argue that Gury’s pragmatism ignores and denigrates the duty to of oppose sins, but the more pragmatic answer is that you are not required to lose money to prevent blasphemy.

Casuistry in American Education The attack on Jesuits did not deter the English Protestants from writing massive books of casuistry in the late seventeenth century (Barclay 1876). English casuistry entered the American educational system in the eighteenth century. William Ames’s book of cases was standard reading at Yale, where casuistically instruction was part of the curriculum. Ames’s writings were replaced in the nineteenth century by Francis Wayland’s book The Elements of Moral Science, a best-seller that sold more than sixty thousand copies (Wayland 1963). The second volume of Wayland’s book was thoroughly casuistical (Wenley 1929). At Harvard, the required text for young men in the eighteenth century was Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory (Baxter 1854). Like other English casuists, Baxter included a section that provided

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directions for the conscience on buying, selling, borrowing, lending, and usury, and that included questions about bribes, contracts, and promises. In contrast to the Jesuits, the English casuists gave the benefit of doubt to the law only if there were more reasons not to follow it than reasons in favor of it. Notice how the principle works in the following problem from Baxter’s “Cases and Directions About Trusts and Secrets”: “What if a delinquent intrust [sic] me with his estate or person to secure it from penalty?” Baxter answers, “if the case has already been prosecuted and punishment required by the common good, then you shouldn’t take it. However, if you think that your friend will repent and that his act will result in what a magistrate (if he knew) might agree is a greater good, then go ahead just don’t lie or use other sinful means” (Baxter, 1854, 186). Here again, what bothered critics was that this pragmatic approach to ethics eroded adherence to the law and moral principles.

Casuistry in Literature and Journalism English casuistry soon found its way into literature and journalism. The best-known casuistical writer was Daniel Defoe. His novels Roxana, Moll Flanders, and Robinson Crusoe are full of characters who are blameworthy but evoke our sympathy. Defoe liked to write about how people rationalize immoral actions by making their situation the exception to the rule. In his essay “An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters” (1698), Defoe calls the tendency to misuse casuistry “playing Bo Peep with the Almighty” (Starr 1971). Many of Defoe’s story ideas came from the magazine The Athenian Mercury, called initially The Athenian Gazette: or Casuistical Mercury, which printed readers’ questions about moral problems. The magazine’s subheading read “resolving all the most nice and curious questions proposed by the ingenious of either sex” (Starr 1971, p. 2). First published in 1690, The Athenian Mercury was the forerunner of magazines like The Tatler and The Spectator. Its publisher and editor, John Dunton, wanted to “oblige the reader with a true discovery of the ‘question project.’” (Starr 1971, p. 4). By promising anonymity to his readers, Dunton hoped to elicit the “nice and curious questions” that people were too embarrassed to ask the divines (McEwen 1972). The Athenian Mercury used the write-in “Dear Abbey” format that still flourishes in magazines and newspapers today. For example, distinguished philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah “considers readers’ ethical quandaries” every Sunday in the New York Times Magazine. The cases from The Athenian Mercury were later categorized and republished in five volumes as The Athenian Oracle. Editors showed a mixture of respect for morality and pragmatism in their replies to readers’ queries. One section of the reprint contains cases on business and employment. For example, a shop clerk wrote: “I needed money but didn’t know anyone to borrow it from, so I cheated my master. After a time, I made up a greater sum and gave it to him for goods never sold, which will be a clear profit to him. In your opinion, is this a sin before God?”

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(Athenian Oracle, vol. 2, 1820, p. 183). The editors replied, because you ought to “do unto others,” it is a sin. They pointed out that the master might have needed the money before it was given back. Nonetheless, they went on to say, “We don’t think that you are obliged to mention it to him, for the world is reflective beg for God’s pardon and don’t do it again” (Athenian Oracle, vol. 2, 1820, p. 183).

Casuistry in Philosophy With the growth of literacy and the popular press, cases of conscience moved from the hallowed regions of religion and philosophy to the streets and coffeehouses. In his book Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England, William Whewell (1852) traces the roots of modern moral philosophy to the English casuists of the seventeenth century, including Jeremy Taylor and Robert Sanderson. Whewell maintained that Taylor’s use of cases as illustrations of moral principles was the first step toward a systematic approach to moral reasoning. During this time however, philosophy was beginning its Platonic ascent into ethical theory. As a sign of the times, Whewell changed the name of his chair at Cambridge from the Knightsbridge Chair of Casuistical Divinity to Professor of Moral Philosophy (Whewell 1852). By the twentieth century, G. E. Moore acknowledged in his Principia Ethica, that “casuistry forms part of the ideal of ethical science: Ethics cannot be complete without it” (Moore 1968). However, he washed the philosopher’s hands of applied ethics when he asserted that it is not the business of a moral philosopher to give personal advice. Jonson and Toulmin argue that modern philosophy’s rejection of case ethics “is a lingering expression of the intellectual dream that, after all, ethics may yet be transformed into a universal theoretical science” (Jonson and Toulmin, p. 163). I do not think that we should take this to mean that philosophy should give up this quest. The infamous history of sophistry and casuistry tells us that using case studies to teach ethics without some larger picture of morality and tradition elicits outrage (Ciulla 1994).

How Humanities Case Studies Humanize Business What we learn from the problems with sophistry and casuistry is that their focus on the here-and-now situations can lead to moral relativism and an erosion of moral principles. To humanize business, business ethics scholars and teachers need to pull away from the present (Ciulla 2011). Business ethics cases are usually recent ones that have been in the news, and many of them are about companies that have broken the law (Ciulla 2000). Such cases teach students how to analyze and solve ethical problems, but they do not always help them to see these problems in the broader context of humanity. Case studies from current events can present a fragmented picture of business. Students may be easily swayed by the noise about them in the

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media and write them off as nothing more than bad behavior of some greedy bad apples. When done properly, casuistry was designed to use cases to see patterns in various types of ethical problems. People are supposed to reason by analogy from one case to another as they lawyers do in case law systems. Business ethics cases tend to be categorized by their subject area, such as marketing, finance, healthcare, etc., whereas the casuists categorized their cases by the types of moral problems in them. Marty Calkins (2001) suggests that we would improve students’ ability to reason by analogy if there were a taxonomy of business ethics cases, based on categories of moral problems. I agree with Calkins, only I would give his suggestion a humanist twist. As we have seen from the examples in this chapter, when we look at history, we discover that many of our current moral problems are not new. Most are just variations on themes with new actors, props, and stage settings. The Bishop of Paris had to decide whether to take money from a disreputable business. Cicero offers cases about truth in advertising and price gouging. Gury’s case challenges us to think about whether a business is responsible for what customers do when they use their product. Baxter’s cases are about promise keeping and trust. There numerous sources for cases on business in history and literature. For example, Charles Mackay’s delightful classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds ([1841], 2001) offers accounts of tulip mania, when between 1637–1637, the Dutch traded tulip bulbs at enormous prices and then the market crashed. He also describes the South Sea Company bubble that almost destroyed the British banking system and led them to enact the “Bubble Act in 1720. Herman Melville’s haunting short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” ([1853], 2004) provokes questions about alienation, employee well-being, and meaningful work. The benefit of using cases like these is they show students that business ethics problems are inherent in the nature of business and human nature. Current business scandals are variations on a theme, not novel events.

Conclusion and Developing Perspective The checkered history of sophistry and casuistry does not tell us to reject casuistry, it alerts us to the dangers of doing it poorly and the merits of doing it well. We can become better casuists by thinking of cases as ethical problem types and using humanities cases in our teaching and research. Here is how one might incorporate the humanities into an ethics class and avoid the problems of the sophists and the casuists: 1. Find great cases from the history, literature, religion, etc. that exemplify general types of ethical problems in business. These create a broad context for the ethical problem. 2. Introduce some of the basic concepts and theories of ethics. Case analysis requires an understanding of moral principles.

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3. Use these moral principles to analyze the humanities cases. 4. Use the humanities cases to branch out into discussions of contemporary problems in business ethics. So much of business thinking is short-term and narrowly focused. This lack of perspective in business sometimes results in inhumane behavior. The humanities are an essential part of ethics because they give us a place to stand and offer perspective on where we are in the larger context of our common experiences and humanity. We cannot humanize business without developing this kind of perspective on the practice of business in our students and businesspeople.

References Barclay, Robert. 1876. The inner life of religious societies of the commonwealth. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Baxter, Richard. 1854. The Christian directory. In The practical works of Richard Baxter, Vol. I. London: Henry G. Bohn. Bert, Paul. 1940. The doctrine of the Jesuits. Boston: B. F. Bradbury. Bossy, John. 1988. Moral arithmetic: Seven sins into ten commandments. In Conscience and casuistry in early modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites, 235–264. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calkins, Martin. 2001. Casuistry and the business case method. Business Ethics Quarterly 11 (2): 237–259. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. 1974. De officiis. Trans. Harry G. Edinger. Indianapolis: The Library of Living Arts. Ciulla, Joanne B. 2011. Is business ethics getting better? Business Ethics Quarterly 21 (2): 335–343. ———. 2000. On getting to the future first. Business Ethics Quarterly 10 (1): 53–61. ———. 1994. Casuistry and the case for business ethics. In Business as a humanity, ed. Thomas J. Donaldson and R. Edward Freeman, 167–183. New York: Oxford University Press. Drucker, Peter. 1981. What is ‘business ethics’? The Public Interest 63: 18–36. Grote, George A. 1869. A history of Greece. Vol. 8. London: John Murry. The Holy Bible, the new revised standard version. 1989. Iowa Falls: World Bible Publishers. Jonson, Albert R., and Stephen Toulmin. 1988. The abuse of casuistry: A history of moral reasoning. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kant, Immanuel 1993. Grounding for the metaphysics of morals. Trans. James W.  Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Le Goff, Jacques. 1984. The birth of Purgatory. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Le Goff. 1980. Time work and culture in the middle ages. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago. Mario Untersteiner. 1954. The Sophists. Trans. Kathleen Freeman. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Matson, W.I. 1954. Kant as casuist. Journal of Philosophy 51 (25): 855–860. McEwen, Gilbert D. 1972. The oracle of the coffee house. San Marino: The Huntington Library. McKay, Charles. ([1841], 2001). Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. New York: Barnes & Noble. Melville, Herman. ([1853] 2004). Project Gutenberg EBook. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/ epub/11231/pg11231-­images.html (Accessed 22 Nov 2019). Moore, G.E. 1968. Principia ethica. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Pascal, Blaise. 1982. The provincial letters. Trans. A.]. Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin books. Nelson, Benjamin. 1969. The idea of usury. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plato, 1971a. “Protagoras.” Trans. W.K.C. Guthrie. In The collected dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, pp. 308–353. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1971b. “Sophist.” Trans. Francis MacDonald. In The collected dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, pp. 957–1017. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1971c. “Theaetetus.” Trans. F.M. Cornford, In The collected dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, pp. 845–919. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sanderson, Robert. 1877. In Lectures on conscience and human law, ed. Charles Wordsworth. London, James Williamson. Starr, G.A. 1971. Defoe and casuistry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. The Athenian Oracle. 1820. vol. 2. London: John Nichols and Son. Wayland, Francis. 1963. The elements of moral science. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Wenley, Robert M. 1929. Casuistry. In Encyclopedia of religion and ethics, vol. III, ed. James Hastings, 239–247. New York: Charles Scribner. Whewell, William. 1852. Lectures on the history of moral philosophy in England. London: W.J. Parker. Joanne B.  Ciulla is Professor of Leadership Ethics and Director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers University Business School. A philosopher by training, Ciulla has written extensively on Business Ethics and Leadership ethics. She is recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards for her scholarship from the International Leadership Association, the Society for Business Ethics, and the Network of Leadership at the Academy of Management. She has served as president the International Society for Business, Economics, and Ethics and the Society for Business Ethics.  

Chapter 11

Human Rights and Humanizing Business Surya Deva

Introduction There is a growing consensus among scholars and business leaders alike that businesses have a responsibility1 to respect human rights. The position taken by scholars like Milton Friedman and Elaine Sternberg, that the only responsibility of business is to maximise profits for shareholders (Friedman 1962; Friedman 1970; Sternberg 2000), is no longer a mainstream view. Nor many corporate executives are claiming today – at least publicly – that human rights are none of their business.2 However, there is lesser consensus on the why question: why should businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights, which were historically seen as guarantees only against the state? Several legal, moral, ethical, economic, political, empirical and normative justifications have been advanced over the years (Bowen, 1953; Clapham 1993; Deva 2012; Dodd 1932; Donaldson 1982; Donaldson 1989; Ratner 2001; Freeman 1984; Morrison 2014; Ruggie 2013). I will examine critically two of such justifications in this chapter. The first justification is the ‘social expectations’ logic which underpins the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) drafted by Professor John Ruggie, the then Secretary General’s special representative on business and human rights (SRSG). The second justification is the business case for human rights: that companies could improve

1  Although a distinction is made between ‘responsibility’ (moral obligation) and ‘duty’ (legal obligation), in this chap. I use the term responsibility to mean binding obligations both in morality/ ethics and law. 2  In addition to civil society advocacy and pressure from some investors and shareholders, the UN Human Rights Council’s endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in June 2011 helped in cementing this shift.

S. Deva (*) Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_11

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their bottom line – either by gaining competitive advantage or reducing costs and risks – by respecting human rights. After highlighting the normative inadequacies of these two responses to the why question, this chapter will propose an alternative justification for why businesses should respect human rights. I will argue that businesses ought to respect human rights as a matter of principle. Like any entity in a position to violate human rights, businesses should have a responsibility to respect all human rights. They should earn ‘profit with principles’: somewhat similar to Friedman’s ‘the rules of the game’, respecting human rights should be regarded a non-negotiable precondition for doing business. It may be useful to provide two conceptual clarifications at the outset. The term ‘humanizing business’ could mean different things to different people. I use this term to denote integrating human rights into the DNA and governance system of business. This would require revisiting the very purpose of business in society, making substantial changes in laws governing corporations, and managing expectations of shareholders to earn profits on their investment. In line with a widely accepted view (Perry 2007), human rights in this chapter are taken as based on inherent human dignity. I also take that all human rights are ‘universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated’ (Vienna Declaration Programme of Action 1993, art 5). A right means an entitlement, a claim for something against the state and/or other actors (Donnelly 2003, 8). Having a right implies at least three things. First, there is a bearer of rights: mostly individuals but certain collective rights can be vested in communities as well. However, artificial entities like corporations should not enjoy human rights (Inter-American Court of Human Rights 2016), though conferring rights on rainforest, rivers or the mother earth could be justified to mitigate risks of anthropocentricism. Second, a right entails presence of duty bearers, both state and non-state actors, including corporations. The nature and extent of the duties of different actors may though vary. Third, if a right is breached, the affected right holder – or someone else on behalf of such right holder – should be able to seek and enforce effective remedies. In order to be effective, remedies should be accessible, affordable, adequate and timely, and combine preventive, redressive and deterrent elements (UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights 2017).

Critical Review of Twin Justifications This section provides a critical analysis of two key justifications for why businesses should respect human rights: social expectations, and the business case. The key objective behind this analysis is to demonstrate how adopting normatively weaker justifications undermines the goal of humanizing business.

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Social Expectations to Respect Human Rights In his first report of 2006, the SRSG noted that companies are ‘constrained not only by legal standards but also by social norms and moral considerations’ and that many policies and voluntary initiatives adopted by companies are reflective of ‘how social expectations influence corporate behaviour’ (SRSG 2006, paras 70 and 74). Maintaining this trajectory, the SRSG in the 2007 report noted that soft law ‘derives its normative force through recognition of social expectations by States and other key actors’ and that his mandate ‘includes evolving social expectations regarding responsible corporate citizenship, including human rights’ (SRSG 2007, paras 45 and 63). He also noted that ‘Global brands and retailers, among others, have developed supplier codes to compensate for weak or unenforced standards in some countries, because global social expectations require them to demonstrate adherence to minimum standards’ (SRSG 2007, para 80). The SRSG proposed the ‘protect, respect and remedy’ framework in his 2008 report. It is notable that Pillar two of the framework (the corporate responsibility to respect) is rooted in ‘the basic expectation society has of business’ (SRSG 2008, para 9). Although the report acknowledged that ‘there are few if any internationally recognized rights business cannot impact  – or be perceived to impact  – in some manner’ (SRSG 2008, para 52), Pillar two is not grounded on the International Bill of Rights. Rather, the International Bill of Rights is used as a reference point, because this is the main benchmark ‘against which other social actors judge the human rights impacts of companies’ (SRSG 2009, para 53; SRSG 2010, para 60). At times, the SRSG presented the social expectations to respect human rights as part of a company’s social license to operate (SRSG 2008, para 549). This linkage became clearer in the 2009 report (SRSG 2009, para 46): over time companies have found that legal compliance alone may not ensure their social licence to operate, particularly where the law is weak. The social licence to operate is based in prevailing social norms that can be as important to the success of a business as legal norms. Of course, social norms may vary by region and industry. But one of them has acquired near-universal recognition by all stakeholders, namely the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.

By linking social norms to the success of a company, the SRSG here also hinted to the business case for human rights (discussed below). If respecting human rights is beneficial for the success of a company, it should do so for the bottom line reasons: he pointed out that ‘violations of this social norm are routinely brought to public attention globally through mobilized local communities, networks of civil society, the media including blogs’ (SRSG 2009, para 47). Ruggie in his book, Just Business, reflected on his six-year mandate of global policy making as the SRSG (Ruggie 2013). This book too reaffirms the social expectations justification as well as its linkage to social licence. I will focus here on the three major drawbacks of the social expectations thesis: methodological, normative, and practical.

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In terms of methodology, the process of generating social expectations, including the limited role played by rights holders, was problematic. Social expectations should have been gathered from society or the behaviour of a representative body of social actors. However, it seems that the SRSG gathered these expectations primarily from his survey of soft law standards, including codes of conduct adopted by companies. As compared to the SRSG’s engagement with companies and industry associations, his interaction with bearers of human rights was also limited (Lopez 2013, 69–70; Meyersfeld 2017, 175–80). Therefore, the expectations were really a corporate understanding and presentation of social expectations, rather than a true reflection of social expectations per se. One example should suffice to illustrate this point. In many cases, the expectation of communities is that a given project should not go ahead (AIDA 2018; Carbon Market Watch 2016). On the other hand, the UNGPs focus predominantly on prevention and mitigation of adverse impacts through human rights due diligence. In other words, the UNGPs give inadequate attention to the social expectation of ceasing certain harmful activities or not proceeding with projects opposed by the affected communities. At the normative level, the relation between social expectations and the International Bill of Rights is far from clear. Human rights are more than mere expectations: human rights are based on inherent human dignity and demand performance of obligations on the part of duty bearers. The SRSG argued that the normative force for soft law comes from recognition of social expectations from states and other actors. At the same time, he proposed that social expectations of respecting human rights should be seen from the lens of hard law, International Bill of Rights. In this process, the SRSG turned hard law into soft law for businesses. Although the International Bill of Rights does not explicitly apply directly to companies, this is implicit in the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by non-state actors within their territory and/or jurisdiction (see Bilchitz 2013, 109–23). Moreover, do social actors have certain expectations because of the International Bill of Rights, or did these social expectations arise independently? If the former, human dignity underpinning human rights should have been a more robust justification for businesses to abide by the International Bill of Rights. On the other hand, if social expectations are allowed to flourish independently in the latter scenario, they may not match exactly the International Bill of Rights. Furthermore, it is unclear why social expectations for companies were confined to respecting human rights, because the International Bill of Rights contemplates tripartite obligations for states and merely saying that companies are specialised organs of society does not answer this confinement of corporate responsibilities. In fact, some soft law standards already in existence during the SRSG mandate went beyond the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. For example, Principle 1 of the UN Global Compact, an initiative with Ruggie’s footprint, provides that businesses ‘should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights’. Similarly, the 2000 version of the ILO Declaration Concerning Multinational Enterprises expected multinational enterprises to ‘contribute to the realization of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work’ (para 8, emphasis added).

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There are also practical problems with the social expectations justification. As Lopez points out, social expectations imply that ‘such expectations about companies’ behaviour are bound to evolve over time as society evolves’ (Lopez 2013, 67). In other words, if social expectations are the basis of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, both the nature (from soft to hard) and extent (moving beyond respecting human rights) of this responsibility may evolve as per change in expectations. This change in expectations may be hastened by developments or events that took place after the SRSG’s mandate span (2005–2011). The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals as well as the Paris Agreement in 2015 illustrate this. However, neither the ‘protect, respect and remedy’ framework nor the UNGPs contemplate this possibility of evolution. Another practical challenge with the social expectations justification concerns the management of uneven or unreasonable expectations. It is unlikely that that these expectations will be identical throughout the world at any given point of time. Then there is a possibility of certain stakeholders having minimal or excessive expectations from companies. Moreover, if corporate responsibility depended on expectations, these could be manipulated by companies to their advantage, not least because dissemination of information, advertisements and social media algorithm are controlled by business. One may claim these practical challenges are unreal, because companies are expected to use the International Bill of Rights as a benchmark. However, if that is the case, social expectations as a justification to the why question add little value.

The Business Case for Human Rights Another prominent response to the why question is the business case for human rights: that companies should respect human rights for the bottom-line reasons. In other words, by respecting human rights, companies may gain competitive advantage over their peers, avoid legal or reputational risks, avail more business opportunities, generate goodwill, or reduce operational costs. The business case justification is advanced by UN agencies, governments, national human rights institutions, law firms, multi-stakeholder initiatives, business consultants, and industry associations. Some academics and CSOs also support this popular narrative. Let me refer here to a representative sample of proponents to illustrate this point. Both UNDP and UN Women often make a business case for gender equality (Steiner and Mlambo-Ngcuka 2018). The UN Global Compact also promotes the Women’s Empowerment Principles as they ‘emphasize the business case for corporate action to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment’ (UN Global Compact n.d.). UNICEF similarly notes that the ‘business case for a more child focussed approach to CSR is clear’ (Bull n.d.). In the same vein, the Human Rights Commission of New Zealand advises New Zealand companies that respecting human rights makes good business sense. It unpacks for them the business case in these words: ‘The reality is that the cost of

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breaching human rights can hurt a business significantly – from a financial point of view or in its credibility and brand reputation. It can also directly affect key relationships and shake consumer confidence’ (Human Rights Commission of New Zealand 2016). The World Business Council for Sustainable Development explains the business case as follows: ‘Understanding the human rights impacts on their business helps companies to better manage and mitigate reputational risks and minimize operational costs. Demonstrating corporate commitment to respecting human rights also leads to enhanced engagement with a variety of stakeholders and provides significant opportunities for companies to differentiate themselves from competitors’ (WBCSD n.d.). This message is reinforced in the Council’s CEO Guide to Human Rights: forward thinking ‘companies stand to enhance their business performance by reducing legal and regulatory risk, strengthening reputation, protecting their license to operate, acquiring and retaining talent, winning customers and earning their trust and loyalty. As a result, investors increasingly care, affecting companies’ valuation and cost of capital’ (WBCSD 2019). White & Case, an international law firm, in a January 2020 report made a business case for companies to understand human rights and ESG benchmarking. It notes: ‘Companies that do not have human rights policies and processes in place, are not working to identify and analyze their human rights risks and/or are not reviewing how they do business and engage in disclosure would be well advised to consider the potential benefits in changing their approach’ (White and Case 2020). Similarly, a collaborative report by CSOs and academic institutions, Good Business, aims to ‘present compelling economic arguments for respecting human rights in a succinct and accessible form’ (Bağlayan et al. 2018). The report considers examples of both cost/risk reduction (e.g., managing worker and community conflicts, avoid legal or reputational risks) and gaining competitive advantage (e.g., procurement opportunities, preparing for future market or regulatory trends). It concludes, for example, that ‘respecting human rights both internally and externally can benefit workplace productivity through attracting and retaining valuable employees, avoiding supply chain disruption and litigation’, while engaging with affected communities not only mitigates risk but can also be ‘financially rewarding’ (Bağlayan et al. 2018, 21 and 27). Moreover, ‘companies’ exposure to litigation (social, environmental, and human rights) may negatively affect their credit rating and access to capital’, even out-of-court settlements are proving to be costly for companies, and ‘bad publicity subsequent to a lawsuit often damages the public image of the firm regardless of the final ruling’ (Bağlayan et al. 2018, 42, 44–46 and 53). One can find support for the business case even in scholarly literature. After examining the issue, Greathead concluded that ‘incorporating human rights concerns into the operations of multinational corporations also brings with it rewards’ (Greathead 2002, 727). Baumann-Pauly and Posner note that a positive empirically verifiable co-relation between ‘the relative costs and economic benefits of adopting strong human rights policies’ remain inconclusive and that while ‘normative arguments are convincing in theory, they are unlikely to win the day inside most corporations where chief executive officers (CSEOs) must justify added costs to their

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shareholders’ (Baumann-Pauly and Posner 2016, 13–14). Hence, they provide illustrative examples of both positive and negative dimensions of the business case for human rights, and at the same time stress a ‘shared responsibility’ of various stakeholders (including large investors) to foster the business case (Baumann-Pauly and Posner 2016, 14–20). Porter and Kramer dismiss four prevailing justifications for CSR (moral obligation, sustainability, license to operate, and reputation), as all four focus on ‘tension between business and society’ (Porter and Kramer 2006, 81–83). As an alternative, they stress as follows the interrelationship between the two as critical to advance CSR (Porter and Kramer 2006, 83): Successful corporations need a healthy society. Education, health care, and equal opportunity are essential to a productive workforce. Safe products and working conditions not only attract customers but lower the internal costs of accidents. Efficient utilization of land, water, energy, and other natural resources makes business more productive. … At the same time, a healthy society needs successful companies. No social program can rival the business sector when it comes to creating the jobs, wealth, and innovation that improve standards of living and social conditions over time.

Porter and Kramer highlight mutual dependence of corporations and society based on the principle of ‘share value’. While they do not use the ‘business case’ terminology, their justification in essence is a variation of the business case in that it emphasises the ‘win-win’ narrative and asks companies to choose which social issues to focus in a strategic manner. Porter and Kramer suggest (Porter and Kramer 2006, 88): For any company, strategy must go beyond best practices. It is about choosing a unique position – doing things differently from competitors in a way that lowers costs or better serves a particular set of customer needs. Strategic CSR moves beyond good corporate citizenship and mitigating harmful value chain impacts to mount a small number of initiatives whose social and business benefits are large and distinctive.

Ruggie also alluded to the mutual dependence between business and society. Drawing mostly on studies concerning extractive and infrastructure industries, he highlighted the cost of conflict related to human rights abuses: it creates a ‘lose-lose situation’ for both companies and society (Ruggie 2013, 137–39). Based on the above review, the business case for human rights can be divided into two broad strands. By respecting human rights, businesses can: (i) gain opportunities – attract customers, retain employees, increase labour productivity, receive trade support, and secure public procurement contracts; and/or (ii) reduce costs and risks – avoid litigation, pre-empt conflicts, better use of staff time, avert reputational harm, avoid workplace accidents, reduce cost of accessing capital, and reduce consumption of water, electricity and raw materials. There is a key difference between these two strands. The conduct of not only company X but also its competitor company Y will be critical for the business case to materialise under the first strand, but not under the second strand. For example, if both X and Y respected (or abused for that matter) human rights, neither might have a competitive (dis)advantage if other variables remained the same. On the other hand, reduction of costs and risks for company X may materialise independent of the conduct of X’s competitors. If X is able to avoid conflicts with its employees and

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the community by respecting their human rights, it should result in cost savings irrespective of how Y treated its employees and the community. There may of course be situations in which the conduct of competitors may matter. For instance, if certain human rights abuses (e.g., compulsory overtime or discharge of effluents in rivers) have become normal in a particular industry or region, then no major community conflict might arise due to those abuses, thus undercutting the need to respect human rights for the bottom line reasons. Both strands of the business case are problematic and provide a weak basis to ground human rights responsibilities of business for several reasons. As I have argued elsewhere (Deva 2012, 140–43), the business case for human rights – especially the first strand – is rooted in the idea of ‘goodwill-nomics’ which is based on the following four interconnected assumptions: (i) that corporation X adopts policies and takes actions consistent with human rights norms whereas its competing corporation Y does not; (ii) that relevant stakeholders are aware of the fact that X is contributing to human rights realisation but not Y; (iii) that stakeholders value human rights and therefore would be willing, as well as able, to punish Y and/or reward X for their respective stands vis-à-vis human rights issues; and (iv) that the reward and punishment meted out by stakeholders would result in a positive or adverse effect on market share for and goodwill towards X and Y, respectively, thus giving a competitive advantage to the former. These four assumptions are questionable on several grounds (Stone 1975, 89–92). At the normative level, the very first assumption implicitly permits some corporations to ignore their responsibility to respect human rights, for there may not be a competitive advantage for X if all of its competitors respect human rights. As goodwill-­nomics treats human rights abuses by certain corporations as a fundamental or necessary precondition, this cannot be a sound premise for any theory that seeks to humanize business. Moreover, the business case makes the ‘cost and benefit’ analysis a legitimate tool for companies to employ in deciding whether to respect human rights or not. This would entail companies assigning human rights a calculable value and in turn encourage them to trade off human rights with profits (Langlois 1982, 283; Malloy 1986, 171–77; Cooter 1989, 835–37). However, numerous case studies show why a cost-benefit analysis is not conducive to promoting business respect for human rights (Li 2019; National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling 2011; Amnesty International 2004). At the practical level, the business case hypothesis simply assumes too much, because not all four assumptions may come true in many cases. As Parkinson points out, information flow among various stakeholders is fundamental to the success of this hypothesis: ‘For market mechanisms to “punish” a company that behaves irresponsibly it is necessary for those with whom it does business to be fully informed about its activities and their impact and to know how its performance compares with that of other companies’ (Parkinson 1999, 50 (emphasis added)). However, despite

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the rise in regulations requiring disclosure of non-financial information (Mares 2018), the flow of information is not always that smooth or forthcoming in markets, particularly because companies do not normally release self-disparaging data under the ‘comply or explain’ mode of regulation. Nor is the task of comparing the conduct of different corporations an easy one despite the evolution of corporate rankings such as the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark. For instance, the same contractor may be supplying a given product to two competing companies, or a product might be an assembled one comprising several parts manufactured across the globe in diverse conditions. Moreover, even if we assume that consumers and investors are well-informed of the opposing stands of X and Y vis-à-vis human rights, there is no guarantee that they would always reward X and/or punish Y. Not every consumer or investor is human rights conscious, or they may balk at the cost of doing so because the more the variance in price between the products and services of X and Y, the less the chances that rewards and sanctions will flow from consumers and investors (Liubicic 1998, 117–19). Alternatively, stakeholders might not be in a ‘position’ to change their market preferences because no viable alternative is available (Stone 1975, 90–91), or they may not fully understand the complex ethical dimensions involved in opting for a particular product or service (Auger et al. 2003, 296 and 299). Even if we disregard the case of those companies which have no reputation to protect, boycotts or ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns may only cause temporary damage to reputed corporations. Then there are companies that cannot afford to suffer short-­ term financial loss under the expectation of long-term profits or value enhancement. The presence of these multiple variables means that there is no universal, unqualified or absolute business case for human rights for all companies operating globally in all situations. If human rights are taken seriously by states and others market players (such as employees, consumers, investors, suppliers and financial institutions), there should be a business case for human rights, as these actors would reward human rights-friendly corporate conduct and shun companies abusing human rights. However, the market reality is far from this aspiration. In fact, there may also be a market to punish companies for supporting human rights. For example, in the context of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, people in mainland China have called to boycott several companies that (in)directly supported protests for freedom and democracy (Hong Kong Free Press 2019; Zheng 2019). The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Houston Rockets faced similar retaliation from Chinese people after the general manager of the Rockets merely tweeted ‘Fight For Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong’ (Bray and Blennerhassett 2019). In short, the business case for human rights at best should be treated with caution (Wettstein 2009, 276–80). But far more worrying is that the business case justification not only creates a false sense of ‘win-win’ situation for all stakeholders, but also turns human rights into another means to make more profit (rather than taming the unprincipled corporate temptation to make profits).

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An Alternative Justification In this section, I will outline an alternative and normatively more robust justification for why businesses should respect human rights. My starting point is that human rights are not uni-relational (individuals vs. state) in terms of responsibilities: not merely the state but any entity in a position to violate human rights should have a responsibility not to do so. Human rights can be fully realised only by imposing and enforcing a responsibility on all entities which could violate human rights, because states are proving to be unreliable in ensuring that non-state actors within their respective territory and/or jurisdiction respect human rights. Before I develop this justification below, let me flag two caveats. First, the justification advanced here for the why question seeks to supplement – not supplant – other normative justifications proposed by scholars. Thomas Donaldson, for example, has convincingly argued that corporations are moral agents and that they have certain minimal responsibilities beyond earning profits as part of a ‘social contract’ between business and society (Donaldson 1982; Donaldson 1989). Edward Freeman similarly developed the stakeholder theory to argue that business should create value for stakeholders not merely for shareholders (Freeman 1984; see also Freeman et al. 2010). Second, the nature of the responsibility of non-state actors including corporations need not be identical to that of the state’s tripartite obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. I do not address this issue in this chapter. However, the difference between the nature of responsibility of states and non-state actors does not undercut why corporations should have a responsibility to at least respect human rights. From the perspective of rights holders, it matters little who is a violator of human rights – whether a state agency or a company. What matters to them is their ‘ability to claim’ their rights against all entities that pose a potential threat to human dignity. Bestowing this ability on the rights holders would require putting corporations under a responsibility to respect human rights, because they can infringe almost every human right directly or acting in concert with others. Corporations have come to have a position to violate human rights because of the power – economic, political, social, technological, scientific, informational or cultural – and opportunities that they have. These power and opportunities are often granted or tolerated by the state. Granting licenses and contracts, conferring monopoly, privatisation of government functions, and outsourcing of public services are illustrative of this state of affairs. In fact, the idea of rights may not have been tied to states jurisprudentially or historically (Ratner 2001, 468–69), though human rights have generally ended up being conceived as a protective shield against the state (Reinisch 2005, 37–38). States have been treated as primary duty-bearers under international human rights law. But this does not mean that other duty-bearers could not co-exist with states (Jochnick 1999, 61). As Joseph Raz argued, an ability to impose new duties is a special feature of rights (Raz 1986, 171 (emphasis added)):

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[T]here is no closed list of duties which correspond to the right …. A change of circumstances may lead to the creation of new duties based on the old right. … This dynamic aspect of rights, their ability to create new duties, is fundamental to any understanding of their nature and function in practical thought.

Corporations are now performing many of the functions that used to be reserved for states, or the dividing line between the state and business may not always be clear in certain cases, e.g., a joint venture between a state-owned enterprise and a private corporation. Therefore, if the ambit of human rights responsibilities is not extended to corporations, it would mean that states can bypass their human rights obligations by privatisation and outsourcing of their activities to the private sector (Singh 2005, 205). Earning ‘profit with principles’  – adherence to human rights norms – should be regarded as a non-negotiable pre-condition of doing business, a privilege conferred by the state on behalf of society. Such a normative position is also line with evolving human rights norms at the international and nations levels. Despite flaws in the ‘social expectation’ justification highlighted above, the UNGPs reflect a growing consensus at the international level that all business enterprises have a responsibility to respect all human rights. At the national level, the horizontal application of human rights – through explicit constitutional provisions or judicial interpretation – signifies this trend (Oliver and Fedtke 2007). As an example of the former, one may refer to Article 8(2) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996, which provides: ‘A provision of the Bill of Rights binds a natural or a juristic person if, and to the extent that, it is applicable, taking into account the nature of the right and the nature of any duty imposed by the right.’ The approach of Indian courts, on the other hand, provides an example of extending through interpretation the application of constitutional rights to the private sector (Bodhisattwa Gautam v Subhra Chakraborty, AIR 1996; Vishaka v State of Rajasthan, AIR 1997; Apparel Export Promotion Council v Chopra, AIR 1999). Adopting a principled justification to the why question is critical to humanizing business, because normatively weak justifications not only dilute the currency of human rights but also undercut the nature of corporate responsibilities. For example, if the business case is the reason for companies to respect human rights, should they ignore human rights if there is no business case? Similarly, the social expectations justification rationale tends to convert legal rights into mere expectations. Human rights have intrinsic value – they should not be turned into another business tool employed in the service of profit maximisation. Operationalising the ‘profit with principles’ justification, which should contribute to the goal of humanizing business, would require fundamental changes to how business is done and conceived in society today. Many of these changes would have to be made through reforming corporate laws: the purpose of corporations should be to maximise common good rather than maximising profits for shareholders; directors should be duty bound to integrate the interests of non-shareholders into their decisions; corporate boards should be made more democratic by including relevant stakeholders; companies should be obliged to disclose non-financial information and conduct human rights due diligence; and a parent company should be

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accountable for human rights abuses of its subsidiaries. Unless such transformative changes are made, we might continue to scratch only the surface of the problem of deeply-­entrenched culture of corporate irresponsibility and impunity for human rights abuses.

Conclusion Businesses are an indispensable part of society with a huge potential to realise human rights. However, in a free market globalised economy, they have come to enjoy an unparallel power with no corresponding responsibility for causing harm to common good – from indulging in human rights abuses to causing environmental pollution, creating economic disparities and fuelling the climate crisis. The profit maximising trait coupled with opaque, undemocratic and transnational governance model of corporations encourage them to violate human rights and then evade accountability by exploiting various loopholes in the state-based territorial system. A fundamental shift is required to save capitalism and globalisation from becoming a tool for empowering the top one per cent population (Oxfam International 2020). Humanizing business should be part of this shift: human rights should be integrated into all decision-making processes of corporations. In this chapter I have critiqued two prominent justifications for why businesses should respect human rights: the social expectations thesis and the business case. As an alternative, I have argued that businesses should respect human rights as a matter of principle: since corporations are in a position to violate human rights, they should be under a responsibility to respect human rights as a non-negotiable pre-condition of doing business. This will provide a normatively sounder justification to the why question. After all, the real test for business commitment to human rights will be in situations when corporations stand for human rights even if doing so might not make economic sense, otherwise human rights end up becoming merely a corporate tool to maximise profits.

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Jochnick, Chris. 1999. Confronting the Impunity of Non-State Actors: New Fields for the Promotion of Human Rights. Human Rights Quarterly 21: 56. Langlois, Richard. 1982. Cost-Benefit Analysis, Environmentalism and Rights. Cato Journal 2: 279. Li, Mengxin. 2019. ‘Paying for a Bus Ticket and Expecting to Fly’: How Apparel Brand Purchasing Practices Drive Labor Abuses. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/04/23/ paying-­bus-­ticket-­and-­expecting-­fly/how-­apparel-­brand-­purchasing-­practices-­drive. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Liubicic, Robert. 1998. Corporate Codes of Conduct and Product Labelling Schemes: The Limits and Possibilities of Promoting International Labour Rights through Private Initiatives. Law and Policy in International Business 39: 111. Lopez, Carlos. 2013. The ‘Ruggie process’: From legal obligations to corporate social responsibility? In Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect? ed. Surya Deva and David Bilchitz, vol. 58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malloy, Robin Paul. 1986. Equating Human Rights and Property Rights: The Need for Moral Judgment in an Economic Analysis of Law and Social Policy. Ohio State Law Journal 47: 163. Mares, Radu. 2018. Corporate transparency laws: A hollow victory? Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 36 (3): 189. Meyersfeld, Bonita. 2017. Committing the crime of poverty: The next phase of the business and human rights debate. In Business and Human Rights: Beyond the End of the Beginning, ed. César Rodríguez Garavito, vol. 173. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Morrison, John. 2014. The Social License: How to Keep Your Organization Legitimate. London: Palgrave. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. 2011. Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling. https://www.govinfo.gov/ app/details/GPO-­OILCOMMISSION. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Oliver, Dawn, and Jörg Fedtke, eds. 2007. Human rights and the private sphere: A comparative study. Routledge-Cavendish: London. Oxfam International. 2020. Time to care: Unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620928/bp-­time-­ to-­care-­inequality-­200120-­en.pdf. Accessed 24 Jan 2020. Parkinson, John. 1999. The Socially Responsible Company. In Human Rights Standards and the Responsibility of Transnational Corporations, ed. Michael Addo, vol. 49. The Hague: Kluwer Law International. Perry, Michael. 2007. Towards a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter, Michael, and Mark Kramer. 2006. The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. Harvard Business Review 78. Ratner, Steven. 2001. Corporations and Human Rights: A Theory of Legal Responsibility. Yale Law Journal 111: 443. Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reinisch, August. 2005. The Changing International Legal Framework for Dealing with Non-State Actors. In Non-State Actors and Human Rights, ed. Phillip Alston, vol. 37, 37. New  York: Oxford University Press. Ruggie, John. 2013. Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights. New  York: WW Norton & Company. Singh, Mahendra Pal. 2005. Fundamental Rights, State Action and Cricket in India. Asia Pacific Law Review 13: 203. Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG). 2006. Interim report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. E/CN.4/2006/97. SRSG. 2007. Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. A/HRC/4/35.

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———. 2008. Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Business and Human Rights. A/ HRC/8/5. ———. 2009. Business and human rights: Towards operationalizing the ‘protect, respect and remedy’ framework. A/HRC/11/13. ———. 2010. Business and Human Rights: Further steps toward the operationalization of the ‘protect, respect and remedy’ framework. A/HRC/14/27. ———. 2011. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework. A/HRC/17/31. Steiner, Achim and Mlambo-Ngcuka, Phumzile. 2018. Making the Business Case for Gender Equality, 28 February 2018. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2018/una-­ justificacion-­economica-para-la-igualdad-de-genero.html. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Sternberg, Elaine. 2000. Just Business: Business Ethics in Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stone, Christopher. 1975. Where the Law Ends: The Social Control of Corporate Behavior. New York: Harper & Row. UN Global Compact. n.d.. “Endorse the Women’s Empowerment Principles”. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/take-­action/action/womens-­principles. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. 2017. “Access to effective remedies under the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework”. A/72/162. Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. 25 June 1993. Vishaka v State of Rajasthan, AIR 1997 SC 3011. WBCSD. 2019. CEO Guide to Human Rights. https://docs.wbcsd.org/2019/06/CEO_Guide_to_ Human_Rights.pdf. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. ———. n.d.. Human Rights. https://www.wbcsd.org/Programs/People/Social-­Impact/Human-­ Rights. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Wettstein, Florian. 2009. Multinational Corporations and Global Justice: Human Rights Obligations of a Quasi-Governmental Institution. Stanford: Stanford Business Books. White & Case. 2020. Human rights benchmarks: Corporate performance rankings on the rise, 12. https://www.whitecase.com/publications/insight/bhr-­benchmarks-­2020/human-­rights-­ benchmarks-­corporate-­performance-­rankings-­rise. Accessed 17 Jan 2020. Zheng, William. 2019. “Chinese internet users call for boycott of BNP Paribas over worker’s support for Hong Kong protest”. South China Morning Post, 18 September 2019. https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3027962/chinese-­internet-­users-­call-­boycott-­bnp-­ paribas-­over-­workers. Accessed 20 Jan 2020. Surya Deva is Professor at the Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, Sydney, and a member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. Prof Deva’s primary research interests lie in Business and Human Rights, India-­China Constitutional Law, and Sustainable Development. He has published extensively in these areas. He is one of the founding Editors-inChief of the Business and Human Rights Journal, and sits on the Editorial/Advisory Board of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law and the Australian Journal of Human Rights.  

Chapter 12

Christian-Catholic Humanism for Humanizing Business Domènec Melé

Introduction Although “humanizing” could be understood in different ways, generally evokes the idea of “give a human character to” or “make human” something. Thus, in a very basic way, humanizing business can be understood as a business appropriate to the human being. However, there are a variety of view on the human being and therefore on what is appropriate to human condition, and this may convert the concept of “humanizing” is something too vague to become operative and influential in managerial practice. Fortunately, there is certain convergence in accepting the dignity of the human being and in a set of human rights, which can be associated to this dignity, entailing specific duties. In addition, many recognize that human life is open to a continuous development and the noblest human capacities can flourishing. Both personal freedom and social and cultural conditions can contribute or not to this development. From this perspective, we would say that humanizing business entails managing business and organizations in a respectful way for the intrinsic worth of the human being and promoting human development. Christian Humanism (CH), as presented by Catholic teaching, is based on both reason and faith in Jesus Christ, is offered to Christian believers and also to all people of good will. In this chapter we will present essential aspects of CH and will discuss how it can contribute to humanizing business and business organizations by emphasizing human dignity and innate human rights along with the necessity of promoting integral human development (Melé 2015).

D. Melé (*) IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_12

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Reason and Faith in Christian Humanism “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth”. This words of John Paul II (1998) are in essence the rationale of Christian Humanism, which is based on Christian faith and also on sound rational insights on the human being. Christian faith proclaims “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman…” (Bible, Letter to Galatians 4:4). Based on this and other biblical texts, the Christian tradition proclaimed from ancient times the double nature of Christ, divine and human—“truly God and truly man”, in accordance with the Council at Chalcedon celebrate in 451  AC (Denzinger and Huenermann 2012, n. 301). Jesus Christ’s life and teachings presented in the Gospel—a crucial part of the Christian Bible—are a crucial reference for CH, but this humanism also entails moral teachings of the Old Testament (Jewish Bible), since Jesus Christ assumes by saying: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Bible, Matthew 5:17). Writings of the New Testament, which developed the teachings of Jesus is another source for CH. In addition, St. Paul, in the New Testament, affirms: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Bible, Letter to Philippians 4:8) Connected with this, he invites us to “test everything; hold fast what is good” (Bible, First Letter to Thessalonians 5:21). This openness to sound views on the human being can be applied to humanism by discerning different approaches with practical wisdom. In fact, Christian tradition has assumed valuable contributions on the human being from non-­Christian people. Thus, outstanding Christian thinkers, as St Augustin of Hippo (fifth century) and Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century) has taken elements from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Although the essence of CH is latent in the whole history of Christianity, it was in the end of the fifteenth century (Jakob Wimpfeling, John Colet, and Thomas More), when the stream of thought known as “Christian Humanism” emerged, having remarkable developments in the whole Renaissance period, with figures as relevant as Erasmus of Rotterdam and other less known as Picco della Mirandola and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. They paid attention to Roman moral philosophers, such as Cicero and Seneca, combining their ideas with the Bible and writings of early Christian authors, knowns as the Church Fathers). In the twentieth century, philosophers as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain – this latter with his (Integral Humanism (Maritain 1973) –, have developed a modern approach of CH.  Some Christian writers (Fyodor Dostoevsky, G.K.  Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Henri-Irénée Marrou, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn) took a CH outlook with a widely divergent viewpoints. It is also remarkable, modern Christian social thought, which has been reflected on contemporaneous events from CH perspective emphasizing the relevance of this humanism in our time. In

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particular Catholic social teaching (CST) (Melé 2018) presents itself addressed “to all men and women a humanism that is up to the standards of God’s plan of love in history, an integral and solidary humanism capable of creating a new social, economic and political order, founded on the dignity and freedom of every human person, to be brought about in peace, justice and solidarity.” (PSJP 2004, no. 19, italics in original). The Christian view of the human involves a set of features presented by philosophical anthropology (e.g., Haeffner 1989) consistent with Christian faith, including the consideration of the uniqueness and intrinsic worth of every human being, created in the image of God; a certain absolute—only submitted to God— with freedom, relationability, sociability and openness to the transcendence, and as a vocation to develop him or herself as a human being (see also Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, 1965, no. 12–17; hereafter GS).

 uman Dignity, Innate Rights and Integral H Human Development Christian Humanism assumes philosophical arguments on human dignity, including those derived from the spiritual character of the humans and capacity of self-­ determination, by which each person is owner of his or her acts, (Melé and González Canton 2014). These and other arguments and a wide consensus on respecting human dignity is reinforces by Christian faith. The Bible (1966), although does not use the expression “human dignity”, proclaims the intrinsic value of every human individual by explaining that the human creature –man and woman—was created by God to His to imaged and likeness (Bible, Genesis 1: 27). This is not contradictory with the preexistence of matter and to moderate evolutionist theories, but it does affirm a direct intervention of God in the creation of the humans and the existence of a spiritual element different from matter by which man and woman are image of God. This is great source for human dignity, but there is another even more important for Christian faith. This refers to the “Incarnation”, i.e., assumption of the human condition by the Son of God (Bible, John 1:14; Philippians 2:6–8), i.e., for the Incarnation”, “the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man” (GS 22). Furthermore, Jesus Christ redeemed humankind from sin (Bible, Marc 10:45; 1 Corinthians 15, 3, and others), allowing us to become children of God (Bible, John 1:12) and to have an eternal life in communion with God. Regarding this latter, the Catholic Church dares to affirm that “the root reason for human dignity lies in man’s call to communion with God.” (GS 19). In a certain sense, this embraces the previous theological reasons. In the Middle Age, Christian theologians developed the concept of “person”, denoting “high dignity” or “excellence”, which applied to rational subjects (Aquinas 1981[1273], I, 29, 3). In the Renaissance, Pico della Mirandola (1486), in a key text of Renaissance Christian humanism  – De hominis dignitate (The Oration on the

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Dignity of Man) –, emphasized human dignity. In modern times this concept has been particularly defended by the Catholic humanism (e.g., GS part I, Chap. I). Accepting human dignity entails respect for persons, without any distinction of who they are. CST goes to say in one of its documents that “no human law can the personal dignity and liberty of man be so aptly safeguarded as by the Gospel of Christ” (GS 41). Furthermore, CH strongly defends the existence of innate rights (human rights) rooted in human dignity. Although the foundation and contents of human right are object of debate, some consolidate rights are assumed by CST, even with a specific papal encyclical by Pope John XXIII (1963) –devoted to a great extend to human rights. On his part, Pope John Paul II affirmed that the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is “one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time” (John Paul II 1995, no. 2) and “a real milestone on the path of the moral progress of humanity.” (John Paul II 1979, no. 7). Promoting “integral human development” is also central in CH, at least in the understanding of CST (Paul VI 1967, no. 14; Benedict XVI 2009).This teaching invites “all people to do all they can to bring about an authentic civilization oriented ever more towards integral human development in solidarity.” (PCJP 2004, no. 3). In this context, integral human development is understood as the development of the whole person and of all persons. In this sense, Pope Paul VI wrote: “[the development] to be authentic, it must be well rounded (integral, sic); it must foster the development of each man and of the whole man. (Paul VI 1967, no. 14). Economic development is important but CST insists in that development is not reduced this development. In CH what counts is the person—“each individual human, each human group, and humanity as a whole.” (Lebret 1961, p. 28) Material progress is instrumental not as an end in itself. The calling to growth as a human being may be easily perceived. Such a growth means to development the noblest human capacities, which can be related to the knowledge of truth, especially regarding the ultimate meaning of life, and to love what is truly good. Christian faith rises this goal to a higher goal: to reach a profound communion with God (sanctity). The calling to this development is underlying in the Bible by exhorting to live virtues and to love God and the neighbor.

Love in Truth as the Central Virtue and Principle Christian humanism takes love of benevolence (agapé in Greek, charitis in Latin)— more specifically “love of benevolence” (willingness to do good)—as the key of a truly human fulfilment and the central value and virtue in CH. Jesus Christ summarize the completely moral law given in the Old Testament– the Law of Moses and the Prophets – in the double command of love: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Bible, Matthew 22:37–40). In addition, Jesus gave as a “New Commandment” to

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love one another as He loved his disciples (Bible, John, 13:34). Consistently, St. Paul, in the New Testament, presents love as the most important Christian virtue (Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:13), and adds that love binds everything together in perfect harmony (Bible, Colossians 3:14). Love animates and inspires other virtues: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13,4–7) and no true virtue is possible without love (Bible 1 Corinthians 13:3). St. Paul, and in another passage, adds: “do the truth in love” (Bible, Ephesians 4:15). Love “rejoices with the truth” and “do the truth in love”. These statements can be interpreted as love intertwines with truth. Truth gives love a specific content by knowing what is really worthy of love and avoiding understanding love in an exclusive emotional way. Pope Benedict XVI, who emphasize this point, affirms: “truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity” (Benedict XVI 2009, no. 3). This Pope, reflecting of importance of love and its connection with truth in Christian faith goes to affirm: “Caritas in veritate [love in truth] is the principle around which the Church’s social doctrine turns, a principle that takes on practical form in the criteria that govern moral action” (Benedict XVI 2009, no. 6). We could also say that love in truth is at the core of Christian humanism. Love includes justice  – giving to each what is due –but goes beyond justice including mercy. Respect for freedom –understood as responsible freedom  – is another crucial value. Thus, love can be recognized as an authentic expression of humanity accompanied by truth, justice, and freedom (Compendium 198–208). In this sense, CST affirms that social order –and therefore business – “must be founded on truth, built on justice and animated by love; in freedom it should grow every day toward a more humane balance” (GS 26).

The Human Person as the Business of Business Consistently with has been said, CH sees business as oriented to people. “In the economic and social realms, too, the dignity and complete vocation of the human person and the welfare of society as a whole are to be respected and promoted. For man [the person] is the source, the center, and the purpose of all economic and social life.” (GS 63). This, obviously, includes business. Along with a celebrate article of Sandelands (2009) we can say that the CH perspective of business is that “the business of business is the human person”. Business is about people and without people, there is no business. Business requires both people who promoted and managed businesses and people who associate themselves to carry out business. Of course, capital is also necessary—although less in knowledge-based business than in traditional industries based on intensive capital investment—but capital is an instrument for human work. Even more important is

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to state that serving people is what provide moral legitimacy to business. This contrasts with the view that employees are human resources for profits and with immoderate conception of property rights, understood as almost absolute ones. The human action is seen by CH as a whole and not only a means to get material or economic results. Applying this to business activity, according to CH, it makes no sense to separate “business decisions”, with no ethical content, and “ethical decisions” with no business content, with the action is an inseparable whole. This contrast con the “Separation Thesis”, described in terms of separating the discourse of business and the discourse of ethics is sentences like, ‘x is a business decision’ have no moral content, and ‘is a moral decision’ have no business content.” (Freeman 1994: 412). A practical consequence is that in managerial decision-making the decision should be taken as a whole, although different dimensions (ethical, economic, social, etc.) should be analyzed. CH respect the right of property, although not as an absolute and untouchable one, but subordinated to the universal destination of goods. CST moreover calls for recognition of the social function of any form of private ownership, which refers to its necessary relation to the common good (Compendium, 177–8; cf. John Paul II 1981, no. 14). Capital owners or their representative can hire people for business. However, labor should not be considered, by no means, as a commodity, but on the base that those hired are persons, conscious and free individuals, who associate themselves to carry out a common task under the leadership of business management. In this sense, CST affirms: “economic activity for the most part implies the associated work of human beings…” (GS 67), adding that “in economic enterprises it is persons who are joined together, that is, free and independent human beings created to the image of God.” (GS 68). Consequently, “a business cannot be considered only as a ‘society of capital goods’; it is also a “society of persons“ in which people participate in different ways and with specific responsibilities” (John Paul II 1991, no. 43) by providing management, capital and labor, as well other less direct activities or resources. Profits are necessary but the supreme end of the business firm. CST states that “The fundamental finality of this production is not the mere increase of products nor profit or control but rather the service of man, and indeed of the whole man with regard for the full range of his material needs and the demands of his intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious life” (GS 64). Not maximizing profits but serving the common good of the society is what gives moral legitimacy to business. Business serves the common good of the society through service provided to different groups of people involved in the firm, which can be termed “relation-holders”. In this sense, John Paul II affirms that “the purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons who in various ways are endeavoring to satisfy their basic needs, and who form a particular group at the service of the whole of society.” (John Paul II 1991, no. 35).

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Centrality of Work Within the Productive Process CH emphasizes the centrality of work within the productive process. “Human labor which is expended in the production and exchange of goods or in the performance of economic services is superior to the other elements of economic life, for the latter have only the nature of tools.” (GS 67). This consideration of work also applies in the current context of globalization (PCJP 2004, nos. 317–322), where sometimes unhuman working condition still persist. CST calls for “giving expression to a humanism of work on a planetary scale” (PCJP 2004, no. 322). Workers are relation-holders particularly emphasized by CH, considering firstly the dignity of work as a deliberate and free activity coming from the person and how work should contribute to human development. The latter is related to the fact that a worker does not only produces things but changes him or herself in physical, psychological and moral terms, getting tire, generating emotions, skills and virtues. Work needs remuneration but also recognition as a personal contribution to society. By working, a person develops his or her capacities, interacts with other people, and finds the opportunity to serve others. As Pope Francis has said, “work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment.” (Francis 2015, no. 128). All of this provides background for a managerial mindset which application can contribute to humanizing business management. That labor rights are included in the context of human rights is an outstanding point of Christian ethics. Among other rights we should remember are: a fair process of hiring and dismissal, working in healthy and safe conditions, receiving a fair wage, the right of worker association (unions), an appropriate participation in managing the business, and harmonizing work and family duties as much as possible. Particularly relevant for CH is the notion of “decent work” introduced by the International Labor Organization and reformulated by CST in these terms: Decent work “means work that expresses the essential dignity of every man and woman in the context of their particular society: work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children, without the children themselves being forced into labour; work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard; work that leaves enough room for rediscovering one's roots at a personal, familial and spiritual level; work that guarantees those who have retired a decent standard of living. (Benedict XVI 2009, no 63)

Making Profits with Honesty and Avoiding Greed The Bible encourages working and making honest profits but warns against greed, and the related vices of avarice and envy. Riches should be seen as instrumental, not a supreme good: “You cannot serve God and mammon (riches)” (Bible, Matthew,

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6:24), says Jesus. In practice, serving God rather than riches means putting people first when managing business, and considering profits not as the exclusive end of the business, but as instrumental for higher ends and a measure of the results. Profits are not acceptable if they have been gained without respecting peoples’ rights and their well-being. From the CH perspective, making business not a mere economic transaction but first of all, it is a human relation involving exchange. This human side of business entail morality and, consequently, it is acceptable to say that “business is business” if this expression would expresses business is an amoral activity. CH also emphasizes that making profits does not justify any means; on the contrary Christian moral, which informs this humanism as noted, defends that a good aim does not justify bad means. At this regard, St. Paul defends that we should do not evil that good may come of it (Bible, Letter to Romans 3: 8). In other words, certain actions are not morally acceptable whatever the end can be. Among these action directly contrary to human dignity and requirements of justice—giving to each what is due (his or her right) —is crucial in doing business. In both, the Old and New Testaments, there are many relevant texts regarding justice even with explicitly reference to business. For instance, St. Paul writes: “Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due” (Bible, Letter to Romans 13: 7). Making profits with honesty is legitimate, but the Bible remember us that “illgotten treasures profit nothing, but virtue saves from death.” (Bible, Proverbs 10: 2) and, consistently, adds that “better a little with virtue, than a large income with injustice.” (Proverbs 16: 8) and, using a metaphor, concludes: “the bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be filled with gravel (Proverbs 20:17). In the Old Testament, prophets often exhort people in power are strongly required to refrain from abuse of weak people. Thus, Nathan confronting King David (II Samuel 12: 1–13) and Isaias condemning several abuses: “This, rather, is the fasting that I [God] wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke” (Bible, Isaias 58: 6). Explicitly, the Bible condemns fraud and cheating in the Ten Commandments (Bible, Exodus 20: 15–16), as well as bribery and extortion: “You shall not distort justice; you must be impartial. You shall not take a bribe; for a bribe blinds the eyes even of the wise and twists the words even of the just.” (Bible, Deuteronomy 16:19). Regarding bribe in the God’s Law, given to Moses for the people of Israel, strongly forbids it: “Never take a bribe, for a bribe blinds even the most clear-sighted and twists the words even of the just” (Bible, Exodus 23:8). On fraud and bribes prophets often preached with some explicit reference to business (e.g., Bible, Amos 4:5–7), including forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of others. Particularly serious is fraud regarding wages: “Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” (Bible, Letter by St. Jaume 5: 4). Truthfulness is particularly valuated as show this text: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.” (Bible, Psalm 24:3–4);

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and this prayer: “Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from deceitful tongue” (Bible, Psalm 120: 2). A modern presentation of honesty in doing business is presented by Catholic Church, around of the Seven Commandment: “You shall not steal” (Bible, Exodus 20: 15), by affirming that it is against this commandment any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others, even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law” (Catechism 2409). More specifically, it is stated as morally illicit, “speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others; corruption in which one influences the judgment of those who must make decisions according to law; appropriation and use for private purposes of the common goods of an enterprise; work poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks and invoices; excessive expenses and waste. Willfully damaging private or public property is contrary to the moral law and requires reparation.” (Catechism 2409). It also remember that “promises must be kept and contracts strictly observed to the extent that the commitments made in them are morally just… All contracts must be agreed to and executed in good faith” (Catechism 2410). “Commutative justice obliges strictly; it requires safeguarding property rights, paying debts, and fulfilling obligations freely contracted.” (Catechism 2411).

Christian Humanism Entails Ecological Responsibility Given the centrality of the human person in Christian Humanism, one may object this may be in detriment of ecological concern. In fact, Lynn White, Jr. (1967), pointed out the Judeo-Christian tradition as cause of the current ecologic crisis. This was a controversial statement since the ecological crisis can be due to Capitalism, and its idea of wealth accumulation without pay attention to the environmental, rather than the Judeo-Cristian thought. It is true, however, that certain interpretation of the Bible might lead to accusation like this. Namely, the God’s blessing to humans saying: “fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth” (Bible, Genesis 1:28). Taking literally this affirmation and ignoring other passage of the Bible might lead to justify a despotic dominion on nature, but this interpretation is not correct. The second narration of the Creation in the chap. 2 of the Book of Genesis, helps us to understand the sense of “subdue the earth” and to see that the domination of earth is by no means absolute. In this second narration, God entrusted His creation to humans “to till and keep” (Bible, Genesis 2: 15). Other biblical texts make clear the God’s love for all creatures. Thus, this one: “you [the Lord] love everything that exists, and nothing that you have made disgusts you, since, if you had hated something, you would not have made it.” (Bible, Book of Wisdom 11:24) and the supreme domination of the Lord, while the human is a steward: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” (Bible, Psalm 24:1).

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Human dignity and the centrality of the human being is opposed to biocentrism and ecocentrism, which defend respectively the centrality of all form of live and the ecosystem. However, Christian anthropocentrism is by no means justifies a despotic exploitation of the nature but rather promotes caring nature with a sense of stewardship. Pope Francis, who devoted his encyclical-letter Laudato si (2015)—(LS) hereafter—to exhort ecological responsibility, is extremely vigorous in condemning what he calls “distorted anthropocentrism” (LS 69) and states that “clearly, the Bible has no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures.” (LS 68, our italics). As he explains ‘tilling’ refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while ‘keeping’ means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. “This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature … and “protection of nature was something that only the faint-hearted cared about. Instead, our ‘dominion’ over the universe should be understood more properly in the sense of responsible stewardship.” (LS, 116, our italics). Similarly, and as far as in the 16 century, John Calvin (1948[1554], in his commentary on Genesis 2:15, had also interpreted dominion to mean a responsible care and keeping that does not neglect, injure, abuse, degrade, dissipate, corrupt, mar, or ruin the earth. Humans have been the cause of the ecological problem but they should be also effective in its protection. Cruelty to animals and the inconsiderate exploitation of the natural environment detracts from human dignity. Christian humanism leads as to caring the nature—creation of God—and acting with ecological responsible, with a sense of stewardship, keeping “our common home” (Francis 2015, Introduction).

Conclusion Christian Humanism, based on both Christian faith and reason, presents human dignity, innate human rights, and integral human development as pillars for any social order, including business, with a set of implications discussed here, which places people at the center of business activity and, in different ways, promotes humanizing business. Christian humanism contrasts with secular humanism, which deniers of God and of all transcendence, although both share some common points. Secular humanism defends human dignity, human values and promotes wellbeing. However, it ignores a significant human dimension—the transcendence—and the possibility of a transcendent foundation of humanism. It also eliminates any spiritual motivation for humanizing business. In contrast, CH is enriched by the Christian faith without ignoring sound rational approaches to human dignity and what contribute to human development. CH has an internal logics and is open to dialogue with others perspectives, which do not dogmatically reject any religious contribution. This position meets secular open-mind perspectives, which seeking to dialogue with religious traditions and recognize “moral intuitions” which such traditions entail (Areshidze 2017).

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This chapter is aligned with the idea that CH needs to be rediscovered, after an age of dominative secularism and conforming social and economic affair as “if God does not exists”. As Benedict XVI argues “rediscover that Jesus Christ is not just a private conviction or an abstract idea, but a real person, whose becoming part of human history is capable of renewing the life of every man and woman.” (Benedict XVI 2007, no. 77).

References Aquinas, Thomas. 1981[1273]. Summa Theologiae. London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, Ltd. Available at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. Areshidze, Giorgi. 2017. Taking Religion Seriously? Habermas on Religious Translation and Cooperative Learning in Post-secular Society. American Political Science Review 111 (4): 724–737. Benedict XVI (Pope). 2007. Apostolic Exhortation ‘Sacramentum Caritatis’. Available at www. vatican.va ———. 2009. Encyclical Letter ‘Caritas in veritate’. Available at www.vatican.va Bible, The Holy. 1966. New Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition) Princeton: Scepter. Calvin, John. 1948[1554]. Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis. Grand Rapids. Denzinger, Heinrich, and Peter Huenermann, eds. 2012. Enchiridion Symbolorum. A Compendium of Creeds, Definitions and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Francis (Pope). 2015. Encyclical Letter 'Laudato si'. Available at www.vatican.va Freeman, R. Edward. 1994. The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions. Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (4): 409–429. Haeffner, Gerd. 1989. The Human Situation: A Philosophical Anthropology. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. John Paul II (Pope). 1981. Encyclical-Letter ‘Laborem exercerns’. Available at www.vatican.va. John Paul II. 1998. Encyclical-Letter 'Fides et ratio', on the relationship between faith and reason. Available at www.vatican.va. John XXIII. 1963. Encyclical-Letter ‘Pacem in Terris’ on human rights and peace. Available at www.vatican.va. ———. 1991. Encyclical-Letter ‘Centesimus annus’. Available at www.vatican.va. ———. 1979. Address to the United Nations on October 2nd. Available at www.vatican.va. ———. 1995. Address to the United Nations on October 5th. Available at www.vatican.va. Lebret, Louis-Joseph. 1961. Dynamique concrète du développement. Paris: Economie et Humanisme, Les editions ouvrierès. Maritain, Jacques. 1973. Integral Humanism. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. (Original: L’humanisme intégral. Paris: Aubier, 1936). Melé, Domènec. 2015. Three Keys Concepts of Catholic Humanism for Economic Activity: Human Dignity, Human Rights and Integral Human Development. In Humanism in Economics and Business. Perspectives of the Catholic Social Tradition, ed. Domènec Melé and Martin Schlag, 113–136. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2018. Catholic Social Teaching. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society, ed. Robert W. Kolb, 2nd ed., 391–398. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Melé, Domènec, and César González Canton. 2014. Human Foundations of Management. Understanding the ‘homo humanus’. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Paul VI (Pope). 1967. Encyclical-Letter 'Populorum Progressio' Available at www.vatican.va.

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PCJP (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace). 2004. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana). Also available at www.vatican.va Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. 1486. Oration on the Dignity of Man. Available in English at http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/pico_oration.htm. Sandelands, Lloyd. 2009. The Business of Business is the Human Person: Lessons from the Catholic Social Tradition. Journal of Business Ethics 85 (1): 93–101. Vatican Council II. 1965. Pastoral Constitution 'Gaudium et spes'. Available at www.vatican.va. White, Lynn. 1967. The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis. Science 155: 1203–1207. Domènec Melé  is Emeritus Professor and Chair of Business Ethics at IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain. He earned a doctorate in Industrial Engineering and another in Theology. Over the last 30 years, he has taught and published extensively in business ethics, Catholic social teaching (CST), and philosophy of management. His last book is Business Ethics in Action: Managing Human Excellence in Organizations, 2nd ed. London: Red Goble Press, 2019. Related with CST, he co-edited Human Development in Business (2012), Humanism in Economics and Business. Perspectives of the Catholic Social Tradition (2015) and A Catholic Spirituality for Business. The Logic of Gift (2019).

Chapter 13

The Possibility of Kindness in Business: Re-visiting the Case of Malden Mills from a Jewish Ethics Perspective Moses L. Pava

Creativity can replace conformity as the primary mode of social being. . . . We can cling to that which is passing, or has already passed, or we can remain accessible to – even surrender to – the creative process, without insisting that we know in advance the ultimate outcome for us, our institutions, or our planet. To accept this challenge is to cherish freedom, to embrace life, and to find meaning. (Stephen Nachmanovitch Free Play 1990, p. 189)

By anyone’s definition, Aaron Feuerstein had spent most of his life as a successful and creative entrepreneur. In 1995, his company, Malden Mills, employed 3100 union workers and generated $400 million in revenue. Malden Mills owned the patent on Polartec Fleece, an extremely lightweight synthetic fiber, made primarily from recycled products that keeps wearers warm and dry. This product was so innovative that Time Magazine named Polartec one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century. Malden Mills served as a supplier to such well-known companies as L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer, and Patagoinia. In addition, Malden Mills manufactured Polartec Fleece for military use by the US Army. At the same time that GE and other well-­ known companies were terminating employees and relocating overseas in search of less expensive labor, Malden Mills was increasing its workforce in Lawrence, MA, one of the most depressed areas of the country, and paying its employees above average wages. While the notorious “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap was the poster boy for sensible and aggressive business practices, Aaron Feuerstein quietly and methodically created a socially responsible and profitable business. “He extended credit to struggling local businesses, sponsored English classes for immigrant workers, and offered training for textile workers. He took special care of his own workers, making sure that they had a safe and comfortable work environment. Even union leaders praised him” (Massmoments.org 2003).

M. L. Pava (*) Yeshiva University, New York City, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_13

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Tragedy struck on the same night he was celebrating his 70th birthday with relatives and friends. On December 11, 1995 the worst industrial fire in Massachusetts history almost completely destroyed his manufacturing facilities. Feuerstein now faced one of the most difficult decisions of his long business career. He could pocket the anticipated $300 million in insurance and retire. He could use the insurance money and relocate the business overseas. Or, he could re-commit himself to Lawrence, MA, and to the guiding principles of his long and successful business career. Less than a week after the fire, Feuerstein publicly committed himself to remaining in Lawrence and rebuilding the factory. Feuerstein went even further than this. At a company-wide meeting, Aaron Feuerstein stated, “I will get right to my announcement. For the next 30 days, our employees will be paid their full salaries. But over and above the money, the most important thing Malden Mills can do is to get you back to work. We’re going to continue to operate in Lawrence. We had the opportunity to run south many years ago. We didn’t do it then, and we’re not going to do it now.” The auditorium erupted with relief, applause, and tears. Later, explaining his actions, he paraphrased the Talmud (the primary repository of ancient Jewish wisdom), “when all is moral chaos, this is the time for you to be a mensch [honorable, descent person]” (as quoted by Goodman 1995). Within a few months, however, business experts began to question Aaron Feuerstein’s dramatic decision. He parted ways with two of his key employees who strongly disagreed with him. In the end, it cost Feuerstein $25,000,000 to keep his employees on the payroll. He invested $400,000,000 to build a state-of-the-art factory, the first new textile mill in New England in more than 100 years. But by 2001, Feuerstein could not make the payments on his borrowed funds and he was forced into bankruptcy. For several years, Feuerstein struggled to keep family control of the business. In the end, he was not able to raise the $92,000,000 he needed to satisfy his creditors. In July of 2004, Malden Mills Industries, now controlled by the creditors, replaced Aaron Feuerstein as CEO of the company. This story, like all business cases, is inherently ambiguous and demands interpretation. The events retold in this narrative are not in dispute, nevertheless, there exist differences of opinion concerning the importance of various elements of the narrative. The next two sections of this paper will explore two highly divergent interpretations. The first version is the standard one taught in business schools and emphasizes Feuerstein’s overly emotional reaction to the fire and the need to apply the tools of rational-decision making, even in the face of powerful intuitions to act otherwise (Nohria and Piper 2003; Badaracco 2016). The second interpretation is less focused on explaining the ultimate outcome and is more interested in providing a deeper description of how Aaron Feuerstein may have understood the human meaning of his decisions to keep the employees on the payroll and to rebuild in Lawrence, MA. In the simplest terms, Feuerstein, motivated by his commitment, care, and compassion towards his long-time employees, in a bold defining moment, knowingly chose to surrender to the traditional value of kindness. Such an act knowingly violates the tenets of rational decision-making in favor of an alternative vision,

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what the late decision theorist James March has called the “Model of Appropriateness” (March 1994). Section “Is There Too Much or Too Little Kindness in Business? Interpretation Is Never Value-Free” explores how one might go about choosing between these two divergent interpretations. It turns that in choosing between interpretations it is our own values and beliefs and our own vision of business and its possibilities that are in play. Do we believe that there is a place for kindness in business? And, if so, is there too much kindness or too little? How we answer these questions will determine how we ultimately choose to judge Feuerstein’s behavior. Finally, the concluding section of the paper shifts its focus forward and considers the future of kindness in business. To the extent that every act of kindness is and must be justified in purely strategic terms, we might continue using the term kindness, but its original significance will continue to atrophy to the point where the word itself becomes hollow and meaningless. On the other hand, if businesses legitimate themselves to the public because of the wealth businesses produce and because of the voluntarily cooperative ways in which the wealth is produced, genuine kindness in business will potentially flourish. But this second possibility will happen only to the extent that our society truly does value kindness for its own sake.

I nterpretation One: “The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions” (Unknown Author) According to the first interpretive perspective, Aaron Feuerstein is admittedly a man of integrity, compassion, and goodwill. To my knowledge no one has ever suggested that Feuerstein’s character or intentions were tainted in any way. In fact, ironically, this turns out to be an important part of the story. In deciding to rebuild a state of the art facility and to continue paying his employees during the rebuilding period, he failed to act rationally in the strict sense that he failed to identify all possible actions and the likely consequences of those actions. In this telling of the case, he allowed his unexamined emotions to dictate his decisions and then stubbornly clung to his initial framing, regardless of predictable outcomes. Harvard Business Ethics Professor Joseph Badaracco (2016) offers the best version of this interpretation. Among the elements of the case, Badaracco underscores all of the following: • In making his decisions within the first week of the fire, a highly charged and emotional Feuerstein acted impulsively and in haste. His first thoughts were about what he should do rather than what he could do. • He failed to heed the advice of his closest business associates and, even worse, he shut down all dissenting opinions, when he ought to have been actively seeking them out. • He failed to utilize even the simplest of decision trees. Therefore, he never even considered several other possible actions and/or compromises. “Each was some

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combination of closing businesses that were failing, investing heavily in R&D for promising new products, outsourcing some production, selective rebuilding, and generous severance and retraining support for laid-off workers” (Badaracco 2016, p. 34) Further, even the informal use of a decision tree would have forced Feuerstein to consider the ugly and not unlikely possibility of failure and eventual bankruptcy. He under-estimated the extremely competitive nature of the textile industry. He over-estimated his own abilities to succeed, a cognitive defect known as the self-enhancement bias. He over-estimated his moral responsibilities and sense of obligation to his employees. And, finally, Feuerstein intuitively counted the wellbeing of his current employees more than other stakeholders and potential stakeholders thus violating a central tenet of utilitarianism. “What matters are all the consequences for everyone affected by your decision—and this means everyone” (Badaracco 2016, p. 16, emphasis in original).

Badarraco is not unsympathetic to Feuerstein, but in the final analysis his interpretation of what really happened is an attempt to cut through the ambiguities and uncertainties built into the facts of the matter to reach a final and definitive judgment. He writes: After the terrible fire, he [Feuerstein] felt a heavy burden of responsibility. Thirty-three of his workers had been injured, twelve critically, and hundreds of people were about to lose incomes they really needed. Feuerstein wanted to do all he could to help his employees. He felt a deep and urgent sense of obligation to them. That is why he made the quick commitment to rebuild everything. Feuerstein’s instinct was exemplary, but it was also a runaway train. (Badaracco 2016, p. 25)

For sure, this version of Feuerstein’s tale, like all interpretations, necessary leaves out many of the salient facts of this case. For example, it neglects to mention that following his decision, 1-bankers were more willing to lend to him, 2-government officials helped him to obtain building permits quickly, 3-suppliers and customers promised to support him, and “4-Massachusetts…offered Malden Mills tax breaks…valued at about $15 million over three years if he rebuilt the mill and hired all his workers back” (Nohria and Piper 2003). This interpretation also fails to understand why Feuerstein is still considered a hero among many commentators (other than the assertion that they are wrong, perhaps in just the same way that Feuerstein was wrong) and, most importantly, there is no attempt to explain Feuerstein’s own unhesitating “yes” to the question of whether or not he would do it all over again, if given the chance (Tennant 2015). Despite these limitations, the story Badaracco tells is quite compelling. It is seemingly consistent with Milton Friedman’s theory of profit maximization, even as it pays homage to the stakeholder model of the firm, and it fits well with the dominant capitalist ideology of consequentialism. Finally, it resonates strongly with and reinforces what we all already knew before we read Badaracco’s interpretation, i.e. “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

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Interpretation Two: Rationality Is a Settling Strange as it may seem, if we read History with any degree of thoughtfulness, we shall find, that the checks and balances of Profit and Loss have never been the grand agents with men… (Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times (1829) as quoted by Bronk, 2009)

An alternative way of telling the same story is to frame the case as a defining moment for Aaron Feuerstein and Malden Mills. Starkly put, Feuerstein seized an opportunity to promote and instantiate the value of kindness in business. He cared deeply about his employees and he was fully prepared to undergo the Herculean and maybe even Sisyphean task of keeping employees on the payroll and rebuilding his mill in Massachusetts, in spite of the risk of failure. He did so despite the fact that he was acting outside of the confines of a traditional community but in the context of a modern, pluralistic, and purposive organization. At age 70, he put aside the tenets of the rational model of decision-making not out of emotional immaturity, a lack of professional managerial skills, or ignorance, but he ignored the rational model in favor of a commitment to, what the decision theorist James March has dubbed, the model of appropriateness. Here the decision-­ maker does not ask and answer questions about potential actions and their preferred consequences, but one asks and answers questions about identity, character, and meaning: Who am I? What kind of a situation is this? What does a person like me do in a situation like this? (March 1994, see especially pp. 57–138). These questions challenge us to think deeply about our values and most favored identities, but they are always hard to answer and even harder to implement, with no pre-set responses or simple algorithms to consult. Here, we must willfully and consciously author our own story and thus actively assume responsibility for our own actions. From the point of view of the second interpretation, Aaron Feuerstein quickly intuited that a person like him in a situation like this prioritizes the ancient and traditional value of kindness first and looks for strategic ways to implement his decision only afterwards. To Feuerstein, in this moment, rationality would have been a settling. Here, what is important to explore is not why Malden Mills eventually went bankrupt, but what is important is to carefully investigate Aaron Feuerstein’s motivation and stubborn effort to promote kindness in business. And, to accomplish this task, one must grasp more fully what kindness entails and what it may have meant to Aaron Feuerstein in the moment of crisis, immediately following the fire.

Kindness Is Not an Obligation but a Gift According to the first interpretation, Aaron Feuerstein was motivated by a “heavy burden of responsibility” and a “deep and urgent sense of obligation” to his employees. From this view, ethics is postulated merely as a constraint on behavior, and Feuerstein was acting out of an overly developed conscience and a misplaced sense of altruism.

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According to the second interpretation, though, there is no reason to assume that Feuerstein acted on the basis of an existing moral responsibility to keep paying his employees, nor is there a need to assume a shared sense of corporate social responsibility. Had Feuerstein consulted either a business ethics professor or his rabbi, it is unlikely that either of them would have told him that he must pay idle workers and that he must rebuild in Massachusetts. Thinking of kindness as a burdensome constraint entirely misses the point of what kindness is. Aaron Feuerstein continues to pay his employees, but does not do so in order to conform to a pre-existing moral obligation. Rather, Feuerstein continues to pay them as a voluntary and expressive act of kindness. In continuing to pay his employees and to rebuild his factory in Massachusetts, he is acting out of a compassionate interest and concern for the plight of his employees as fellow human beings. He recognizes that he is not a fully independent agent, but he and his employees are interdependent. Simply put, he cares about what happens to them and surrenders to this shared concern, with a mature sense of fulfillment and joy. Genuine kindness represents neither self-interested nor altruistic behavior but transcends this familiar dichotomy.1 His decision is a performance of hope (Pava 2019). It is an act that is designed to transform a community’s shared fear in the aftermath of a destructive fire into a shared desire to engage the world in the uncertain task of rebuilding and starting over. While the gift of kindness guarantees nothing, performing hope does materially improve the odds of a successful turnaround. As the philosopher Martha Nussbaum has put it, “Hope is…not just an emotion; it’s a syndrome linked to action…I will get in there and try to make this good outcome more likely” (Nussbaum 2018, p. 205). Kindness is an example of supererogation or what is called in the Jewish tradition lifnim mishurat hadin (usually translated as beyond the letter of the law). As the philosopher David Heyd has noted supererogatory acts are completely voluntary, intrinsically valuable, and intended for the good of the recipient(s). They are acts that are good to do, but not bad not to do. Or in Heyd’s words, “omission is not wrong, and does not deserve sanction or criticism” (Heyd 1982, p. x). Kindness, like all the gifts of supererogation or lifnim mishurat hadin (acting heroically, forgiving, volunteering, and many others) cannot be understood as yet one more example of a market exchange to be explained and judged through the rational model of decision-making. Not every exchange in the market is a market-­ based exchange, or so might Feuerstein claim.

1  As Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor put it in their book On Kindness, “So it is not that real kindness requires people to be selfless, it is rather that real kindness changes people in the doing of it, often in unpredictable ways”. Real kindness is an exchange with essentially unpredictable consequences. It is a risk precisely because it mingles our needs and desires with the needs and desires of others, in a way that so-called self-interest never can...Kindness is a way of knowing people beyond our understanding of them (2009, p. 13).

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Kindness Is a Form of Art Just as good art expands the domain of sense making so too do successful acts of kindness expand the domain of human values by enlarging its field of concern and application. In the domain of writing, here is how the Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard explains why she engages in her art: We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times…Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house. (as quoted by Popovia 2012)

Of course, it would be absurd to expect Dillard to explain why she writes as an example of rational decision-making in order to promote her own interests. What is interesting about this quote, though, is how close her understanding of the art of writing is to the art of kindness. In choosing to continue to pay his employees Feuerstein is certainly serving as a kind of “witness” to the plight of his employees. He too is noticing the “beautiful faces and complex natures” of his fellow workers. And, finally, one might suggest that he too, at minimum, is attempting “to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us…” Feuerstein’s focused-attention and openhearted kindness, like all acts of kindness, is a form of revelatory art but in the domain of action.2 Another writer Adrienne Rich, in reflecting on why she writes poetry, writes as follows: Where every public decision has to be justified in the scale of corporate profit, poetry unsettles these apparently self-evident propositions, not through ideology, but by its very presence and ways of being, its embodiment of states of longing and desire. (Rich 1993, p. xxi)

It is doubtful whether Feuerstein could ever produce through words the kind of unsettling poetry described by Adrienne Rich. But re-read her comment and substitute the word poetry with Feuerstein’s real world act of kindness and see how the typical business school interpretation described in the earlier section of this chapter, grounded in an ideology of profit maximization, is unsettled and challenged. Where poetry is metaphorically the “embodiment of states of longing and desire,” an act of pure kindness is quite literally the embodiment of such states.

2  For a fuller discussion on the connection between kindness and art see Kindness and the Good Society by William S. Hamrick (2002, p. 243).

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The Centrality of Kindness in the Jewish Tradition It is not difficult to understand why kindness may have loomed so large for Aaron Feuerstein, a graduate of Yeshiva University and a practicing Jew. From a Jewish values perspective (and from virtually every traditional moral perspective), it is taken as axiomatic that living a life loyal to the aspiration of loving-kindness will increase human solidarity and flourishing, even if it does not increase efficiency and profits in the short run. In Jewish thought, kindness is one of the three pillars along with Torah and service, upon which the world rests. The rabbis recognized Abraham, the very first self-identified Jew, for his virtue of kindness. Isaac’s wife Rebecca was chosen for the kindness she displayed in freely offering to provide water to Eliezer’s thirsty camels. While historians may think that the Romans destroyed the second Temple in Jerusalem, Rabbinic thought imaginatively suggests that the destruction was caused by a lack of kindness among the Jewish citizens of Jerusalem, which ultimately led to internal strife within the Jewish community. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, in the wake of the Temple’s destruction, boldly posited that kindness now replaces sacrifice as the primary means of atonement, provocatively suggesting that in a post-­ Temple Judaism, kindness is a secular analogue to holiness. Finally, observant Jews like Aaron Feuerstein are reminded every morning in the Prayer Service that kindness is one of the few mitzvoth (commandments) where there is no “fixed measure.” How could there be, since kindness is not something that can be quantified? Perhaps Feuerstein was consciously or unconsciously attempting to emulate the first century sage Shimon ben Shetach who purchased a donkey from an Arab and later discovered a pearl hidden in the saddlebag. Upon this surprise discovery, Shimon ben Shetach’s students were ecstatic, imagining that with his newfound wealth, their teacher would no longer have to work in the flax business and could now devote himself full time to the study of Torah. The students argued to their teacher that all of his contemporary rabbis agree that the law states that if you find something that belongs to a heathen you may keep it. Nevertheless, Shimon ben Shetach would have none of this. “Do you think that Shimon ben Shetach is a barbarian?” he rhetorically asked them. Shimon ben Shetach, through an act of moral imagination, voluntarily chose to return the pearl to its original owner. Acting on the basis of the concept of the lifnim mishurat hadin, beyond the letter of the law, Shimon ben Shetach challenged the accepted wisdom of his time and chose to humanize the Arab seller and to set a precedent for extending concern and care just beyond the confines of one’s immediate community. Perhaps the most relevant and on point teaching in the Jewish tradition with regard to Aaron Feuerstein’s predicament, one that Feuerstein was undoubtedly familiar with, is found in Maimonides’ Code of Jewish law, known as the Mishneh Torah. It is here that Maimonides famously identifies the eight levels of Jewish charity. The highest level, according to his ladder of giving, is “forming a partnership

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with a person in need…finding a job for a person in need, so long as that…partnership or job results in the person no longer living by relying upon others.” And, while this prescription is included in a law code, its placement at the apex of giving, indicates that it is clearly considered by Maimonides as a supererogatory act, completely voluntary, intrinsically valuable, and intended for the good of the recipient(s), a going beyond the letter of the law. Or in less technical terms, Maimonides’s formulation is a call for an artful and voluntary act of kindness, perhaps even an example of a kind of secular holiness, a gift to the least well-off members of society, one that questions, challenges, and attempts to alter permanently the inherited social hierarchy.

Kindness Cannot Be Institutionalized Compassion, and perhaps even kindness, is a basic human instinct, one that scientists are now uncovering is associated with feelings of joy and even happiness. And, yet, kindness, like all acts of supererogation, cannot be formally legislated as an obligation, nor can it be understood as a moral duty. The reason for this is simple enough. If one must act kindly, one cannot act kindly. More and more businesses recognize the benefits that can be earned from acts of kindness. Businesses have discovered that kind acts often produce good outcomes (see Grant 2013). But, businesses that conceptualize kindness solely in strategic and rational language and attempt to formally institutionalize kindness fail to understand kindness on its own terms and therefore fail to reap its benefits. I am reminded of this every time I enter my neighborhood pharmacy. Without fail the clerk working the cash register and following corporate orders welcomes me into the store with a fake smile and a perfunctory greeting. It is equally a chore for the clerk to stop whatever else it is that he or she is doing and to greet the customer as it is a chore for the customer who is now obligated to return the false kindness. It is a routinized dance, enacted hundreds of times per day, which gives genuine kindness a bad name.

Kindness Is Like Loving the Stranger Kindness is like the biblical prescription of loving the stranger. Just as one cannot command kindness, it is seemingly unreasonable for the Bible to command loving the stranger. By definition the stranger is the unknown or the other (and decidedly not the neighbor). The key to at least partially unraveling the mystery here is to realize that loving the stranger is not just one more commandment among the hundreds of other commandments. Rather, one of the very purposes of the system of commandments and laws, taken as a whole, is to create an environment conducive to allowing members of the community the opportunity to choose to love the stranger and in this way to continually extend the circle of the Bible’s concern outwards. For

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example, what in Shimon ben Shetach’s time may have been considered as a supererogatory act – returning a lost object to a heathen – today is a moral obligation from a Jewish perspective. So, too, with kindness in business. One of the very purposes of business is, or at least might be according to my interpretation of Aaron Feuerstein’s behavior, to judiciously allow its practioners an opportunity to engage the other (in the case of Feuerstein, his employees) with kindness and thus to continually extend the circle of business’s concern outwards. Today’s act of kindness, if repeated enough times by enough people, might even eventually become tomorrow’s ethical and/or legal obligation. That’s how the circle of ethics grows. While kindness itself can never be formally institutionalized, the principle of kindness is a dynamic principle that serves to enlarge the domain of ethics. In those businesses that consciously create a hospitable environment for the performance of individual acts of voluntary kindness, over time, as these acts are emulated over and over, what started out as voluntary acts may morph into obligatory acts. Kindness is an exploration of what is possible and not an exploitation of what is.

I s There Too Much or Too Little Kindness in Business? Interpretation Is Never Value-Free Both of the interpretations offered above are consistent with the underlying facts of the case, even if there is a difference of emphasis on what facts are most important. If it is impossible to say that one interpretation is objectively true and the other is objectively false, how is one to distinguish and to choose between them? As one of my favorite professors put it, “when in doubt, the answer is always the same. It depends.” The utilitarian theory of ethics states that an act is ethical, if and only if, it leads to the greatest good for the greatest number and thus every individual stakeholder and potential stakeholder counts in exactly the same way. To quote Badaracco again, “What matters are all the consequences for everyone affected by your decision— and this means everyone” (Badaracco 2016, p. 16, emphasis in original). If one is a true believer in utilitarianism, then the second interpretation is immediately eliminated from consideration. This is because the second interpretation is grounded in the model of appropriateness and by design this model does not even consider the value of outcomes for distant stakeholders. By definition, the recipients of kindness are recognized as special and unique and their well-being is granted outsized consideration.3 3  A full-blown utilitarian simply cannot understand the meaning of kindness, as the meaning of kindness is derived from an altogether different logic. This does not imply that a utilitarian would automatically agree that continuing to pay the workers and rebuilding in Massachusetts is the wrong choice. In the moment, it still may have been the correct choice (no one can know with certainty), but now the “kindness” showed to Feuerstein’s employees must be completely re-inter-

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While it is relatively obvious why a utilitarian would not accept the second interpretation, what is less obvious, is why a utilitarian would bother, in the first place, to tell the first version of the story at all. Or, in other words, why pick on Feuerstein to begin with? The answer, I suggest, is that utilitarians tell and teach this version of the story because, while they do not endorse kindness in business themselves, they believe that we live in a world where too many business leaders continue to be tempted to engage in kindness, forgetting, or, in the case of students, never have been exposed to Adam Smith’s powerful capitalist principle: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (2009, p. 15). Therefore teachers should provide salient examples – like the case of Aaron Feuerstein – to would be business leaders about how bad things can happen to good people the moment one diverges from the rational model of decision making and the single value of corporate efficiency. The story serves as an appropriate initiation and excellent socialization device to eliminate kindness before it happens again. The implied message is clear, “You don’t want to end up bankrupt like the ‘kind’ Aaron Feuerstein.” In this view, to quote Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, kindness is “a forbidden pleasure” (Phillips and Taylor 2009, p. 5). Advocates for the second version of the story flirt with the idea that even in business, there are worse failures than bankruptcy. Efficiency is a value, maybe even the most important value in business, but it is not the only value, nor from a normative view, should it be. Business is conceptualized as more complex than this. To some extent this is not such an odd claim, even to the ears of the most ardent advocates of the profits-only school of thought. No one ever accused Steve Jobs of being too kind in business. But Steve Jobs does provide an excellent example of a business leader who understood intuitively and openly demanded that business, in his case the business of computers, is about much more than efficiently maximizing profit for shareholders. Consider the view of Joshua Rothman of The New Yorker magazine. Rothman wrote, Steve Jobs believed that: there was a special kind of technological beauty, uniquely realizable in the medium of computers, which itself verged on, and sometimes attained the status of art. Certainly he aspired to artistic success. In 1984, he had the signatures of the core Macintosh engineers engraved on the inside of the machine; in 1988, introducing the NeXTcube at Davies Symphony Hall, in San Francisco, he held up one of its circuit boards and called it “the most beautiful printed circuit board I’ve ever seen in my life.” (The audience applauded.) He loved “design” but yearned for something grander and more emotional. (Rothman 2014)

The Wall Street Journal, hardly known for endorsing squishy business values beyond efficiency, went even a step further than The New Yorker’s celebration of

preted and justified in purely strategic terms. It will motivate workers to work harder, it will improve the reputation of the company, or it will lead to tax breaks. But for all of this to happen, Feuerstein must knowingly and convincingly pretend that he is acting kindly, even though he really knows that it is an ersatz kindness and he is merely trying to fool everyone to obtain his preferred outcomes. Although a possibility, I assume most utilitarians, perhaps with the exception of the Machiavellians among them, would prefer not to make all of this explicit, at least publicly.

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the aesthetic in business, in a piece by Holman W. Jenkins Jr., where the author tried to understand and explain Steve Jobs unswerving commitment to quality. After paying some initial lip service to the familiar profit-based rhetoric “Let’s acknowledge …the pursuit of excellence was hard-headed business strategizing…” Jenkins shifted course dramatically, threw up his hands, and had to admit something more than “business strategizing” was at play when it came to Steve Jobs. “Mr. Job’s determination to make superb products was, one likes to think, an expression of love for the world, life and possibility” (emphasis added, Jenkins 2011). Imagine this: Business as a location for the “expression of love for the world, life and possibility,” and now one may at least be open to consider the possibility of kindness as a legitimate business value, for it too is a product of “love for the world, life and possibility.” It is even possible now to imagine, at least, that Aaron Feuerstein saw the crisis associated with the fire as an opportunity for a non-violent, micro-­ revolution, in the domain of business values and ethics, pushing the frontiers of what business is really for. Aaron Feuerstein, at age 70, was a boundary-crosser, who tried to alter completely our understanding of kindness in business, transforming it from a forbidden to an unforbidden pleasure. Recall that Badaracco criticized Feuerstein for thinking first about what he should do rather than what he could do. Feuerstein’s response to such a critique might easily have gone as follows. “The commitment to act kindly (doing what he should do) broadens the playing field and enlarges human choice and potential (doing what he could do).” In the end, it appears that neither version of the story is value-free and the choice between them is, at least, in part dependent upon one’s own values. To the extent that one is convinced that kindness is a human weakness, and business leaders are already too prone to deviate from profit-maximization, the first version of the story is the obvious one to tell. On the other hand, for those that believe with the philosopher Alan Ryan that “We mutually belong to one another…” (as quoted by Phillips and Taylor, 2009, p. 4), and that there is too little kindness in business, the second version of the story is the preferred one, even if Feuerstein himself eventually lost control of the business. Teachers and students must study the facts of the case of Malden Mills and best practices in business, but teachers and students studying this case should also self-­ reflect and ask themselves explicitly: Is there too much or too little kindness in business? Teaching either version of this story to students alone, as if the facts of the case interpret themselves, independent of self-reflecting on one’s own values and beliefs, is more a form of propaganda than a form of education.

Is There a Future for Kindness in Business? In this concluding section of the paper, the focus shifts from looking backwards to looking forward and now considers the future of kindness in business. The argument in this section extends the observation that our values and beliefs determine our

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interpretations of past events and suggests even further that it is our values and beliefs that contribute, at least in part, to how the future will unfold. To the extent that every act of kindness is and must be justified in purely strategic terms in order to maximize profits, we might continue using the term kindness, but its original significance will continue to atrophy to the point where the word itself becomes hollow and meaningless and acts of kindness are converted to merely cynical attempts to manipulate others. From this point of view, genuine kindness is condemned to non-reality. This is one version of our shared future and, in my more pessimistic moods, it is not clear to me that we are not already there. On the other hand, if we truly value kindness not only because kindness gets us good things but because kindness is good for its own sake, as has traditionally been implicit in Judaism and I assume almost every religious and moral tradition, then we can expect to find genuine acts of kindness popping up all over the place. This is a second version of our shared future. And, there is at least some preliminary evidence to support it. Consider the following examples: Gravity Payments’ Dan Price chooses to pay his employee a living wage of $70,000. Starbucks provides pension and educational benefits to its employees. Wal-Mart and other major corporations donate millions to help out the victims of Hurricane Florence. Tim Cook responds to a conservative investor group NCPPR when asked about justifying Apple’s Sustainability Program from a financial perspective: Mr. Cook replied – with an uncharacteristic display of emotion – that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues. “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” It was the same thing for environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas that don’t have an immediate profit. The company does “a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.” Reportedly looking directly at the NCPPR representative, he said, “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”

John Mackey and Raj Sisodia of Whole Foods, among many others, are developing a conception of business that put care and compassion at its core. They dub this “conscious capitalism” and describe it as follows: See in your mind’s eye a business that chooses and promotes leaders because of their wisdom and capacity for love and care, individuals who lead by mentoring and inspiring people rather than commanding them or using carrots and sticks. These leaders care passionately about their people and the purpose of their business and care little for power or personal enrichment. Imagine a business that exists in a virtuous cycle of multifaceted value ­creation, generating, social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, cultural, physical, and ecological wealth and well-being for everyone it touches… (Mackey and Sisodia 2014, p. 32)

It is possible to imagine a different world than the one we seem we to currently inhabit. But imagining a different world isn’t quite as good as living in one. Do the above examples indicate anything at all about the possibility of kindness in business or are they merely the exceptions that prove the rule of business as usual?

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I am revisiting the case of Aaron Feuerstein here because I believe students need to be exposed to both of the interpretations I have offered here and they need to understand the role that their own values and beliefs play in choosing between an overly emotional Aaron Feuerstein and an Aaron Feuerstein who is known as the “Mensch of Malden Mills” and is genuinely and appropriately concerned about the fate of his employees. Once students understand their own roles in interpreting the past, the hope is that they will also begin to understand something much more important; their own roles in choosing and co-creating the future, before others, with different agendas, choose it for them. The novelist Saul Bellow once said, “There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive”4 I would only add that kindness is one of the forms of such an illuminating art.

Works Cited Badaracco, Joseph. 2016. Managing in the gray: Timeless questions for resolving your hardest problems at work. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press. Bronk, Richard. 2009. The romantic economist: Imagination in economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, Ellen. 1995. All it takes to be a hero is to be a mensch. The Baltimore Sun, December 22. Grant, Adam. 2013. Give and take: A revolutionary approach to success. New York: Viking Press. Hamrick, William. 2002. Kindness and the good society. Albany: State University of New York. Heyd, David. 1982. Supererogation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jenkins, Holman W., Jr. 2011. The amazing Steve jobs story. The Wall Street Journal, August 26. Mackey, John, and Raj Sisodia. 2014. Conscious capitalism: Liberating the heroic spirit of business. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press. March, James. 1994. How decisions happen: A primer on decision making. New  York: The Free Press. MassMoments.Org originally posted in 2003 at https://www.massmoments.org/moment-­details/ fire-­destroys-­malden-­mills.html Nachmanovitch, Stephen. 1990. Free play: The power of improvisation in life and the arts. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Perigee. Nohria, Nitin, and Tom Piper. 2003. Malden Mills (A). Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2018. The monarchy of fear: A philosopher looks at our political crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster. Pava, Moses. 2019. Everyday redemption: Performances of Hope. In Research in ethical issues in organizations, vol. 21. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited. Phillips, Adam, and Barbara Taylor. 2009. On kindness. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Popovia, Maria. 2012. The meaning of life. BrainPickings, June 17. https://www.brainpickings. org/index.php/2012/09/17/the-­meaning-­of-­life/ Rich, Adrienne. 1993. What is found there: Notebooks on poetry and politics. New York: WW Norton and Company.

4   As quoted at https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/10/saul-bellow-nobel-prize-acceptancespeech/

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Rothman, Joshua. 2014. Was Steve jobs an artist? The New Yorker, October 14. Smith, Adam. 2009. Wealth of nations: A landmark classic. Blacksburg: Thrifty Press. Tennant, Paul. 2015. Despite bankruptcy, former Malden Mills owner glad he saved jobs after historic fire. The Eagle Tribune, December 11. Moses L.  Pava  is the former Dean of the Syms School of Business, the Alvin Einbender University Professor of Business Ethics, and Professor of Accounting. He has been teaching at Yeshiva since 1998. A 1990 PhD graduate from NYUs Stern School of Business and a 1981 graduate from Brandeis University, Dr. Pava has numerous books, including: Jewish Ethics in A PostMadoff World, Business Ethics: A Jewish Perspective, Leading With Meaning, The Jewish Ethics Workbook, The Search for Meaning In Organizations, and Jewish Ethics As Dialogue. He has authored scores of articles, including “Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance,” one of the most cited articles in the field of corporate social responsibility. He serves on the editorial board of Journal of Business Ethics and the Journal of Jewish Ethics. He lectures across the country and around the world on Jewish business ethics, spirituality in business, and corporate accountability.

Chapter 14

An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Humanizing Business: The Case of Greek Orthodoxy George Gotsis and Ioannis Katselidis

Introduction To better conceive of the particularities of business processes, we need to resort to a variety of cultural discourses, including the religious ones, given the multiplicity of symbolic and other contextually articulated practices underlying economic activities. Religious discourses in particular, are expected to affect individual and societal perceptions of business activities in different contexts, given the articulation of value- and religious belief systems and their significance for societal goals and objectives. In these contexts, religion is assuming a societal dynamic, claiming societal relevance, positively affecting economic performance and growth rates (e.g. Iyer 2016; Karaçuka 2018). Religious experience may be beneficial to management pursuits in emerging markets: intrinsic religiosity can be positively correlated with economic growth in a variety of social settings, business activity being the intervening variable. Religious orientation and value-based attitudes are found to entail higher levels of business activity, given the importance of intrinsic religiosity for market-orientated behaviors consonant to perceptions of market justice. This is also the case in countries where Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the dominant religion. Orthodox Christianity is considered as a societal phenomenon entailing multilateral and complex relationships with various domains and spaces of social life, yet the issue of whether Orthodox churches encouraged the vast process of disenchantment of the worldviews and rationalization of social life, remains inconclusive (Ahonen 2012). This is due to the Weberian belief that the Orthodox religiosity remained overly otherworldly to generate an economic ethic that could G. Gotsis (*) Professor of Economics in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece e-mail: [email protected] I. Katselidis Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_14

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significantly influence the respective societal contexts: such an approach, however, fails to capture the complexity and multidimensionality of the issues involved, a fact that necessitates a more nuanced theoretical elaboration (Makrides 2019). Religion effectively permeates ethnic and collective identities and political institutions, given the interplay between Orthodox Church and other socio-economic factors. The Greek case is slightly different: albeit Greek Orthodoxy dominates many aspects of individual and collective experience, Greece is far better integrated in the current economic transformations as a member of the European Union, a dominant supra-­ national and trans-cultural entity. Nevertheless, little attention has so far been given to the work ethic of Greek Orthodoxy, as well as to the eventual impact of the respective religious commitments on managerial pursuits. This paper is intended to examine the basic concepts, tenets and principles of Greek Orthodoxy’s worldview which is grounded on personalism, the latter underlying a relational view of self that emerges in specific faith communities. It then applies this notion of personhood to value-based business pursuits and assesses their potential impact on various stakeholders’ motivation and action. Particular emphasis is attributed to the societal relevance of this comprehensive worldview that is in a position to harmonize the goals of individuals, organizations, and the society. In this respect, it is argued that Greek Orthodoxy’s personalist ethos informs binding principles that have to be examined in their relationship to cohesive communities that foster human flourishing and promote a conception of common good defined in terms of ultimate human ends. In the last section devoted to the historical framing of such communities, the paper demonstrates that there is a rationale in viewing Greek Orthodoxy’s person-centered ontology as manifested in community good that serves as a condition for the realization of personal good. Implications of the present study, as well as areas of prospective research, are equally taken into consideration.

Greek Orthodoxy: A Person-Centered Worldview Greek Orthodoxy is an integral part of the comprehensive ecclesiological cluster of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Orthodox churches have assumed the form of national communities that are not elevated to separate, independent denominations, as they maintain full Eucharistic communion with one another and share a common liturgical tradition, thus shaping a transnational religious cluster (McGuckin 2014; Roudometof 2015). The theology, devotion and religious life of contemporary Greek Orthodox Church draw in particular on the Greek patristic synthesis of Christianity and Hellenism, as well as on neo-patristic, Byzantine and post-­ Byzantine sources (Kalaitzidis 2014; Larchet 2018; Louth 2017; Ware 2012) that reflect a strong commitment to both eucharistic and ascetic traditions of Eastern Christianity (Papanikolaou 2011b). In Greek Orthodox theology, religious truth cannot be individually attained on the ground of mere intellectual capacities. On the contrary, it emerges as a by-product of shared experience and interpersonal

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communication within the body of the church. In the following, we shall discuss in brief five main pillars of contemporary Greek orthodox theology, namely, modern orthodox ontology, ecclesiology, theology of personhood, theology and ecology, and political theology.

Modern Greek Orthodox Ontology Undoubtedly, contemporary theological trends in Greek Orthodoxy support this view of theology, not so much as an academically delineated discipline, but primarily as an experienced communion, a participation in the authenticity of Christian spiritual life, which is considered irreducible to strict logical formulations (Staniloae 1994). Drawing on earlier trends in Russian neo-patristic synthesis on person-­ centric-­ontology (see for instance, Asproulis 2012; Bogataj 2018; Gavrilyuk 2013; Ip 2018; Rusnák 2018), eminent Greek theologians like Nikos Nissiotis (see Asproulis 2018 for a review), John Romanides, Christos Yannaras (see Harper 2018 for a review; also, Cole 2019; Mitralexis 2012, 2019; Russell 2016) and John D. Zizioulas (see Bathrellos 2013; Gschwandtner 2015; McPartlan 2018) advanced the byzantine-patristic argument that, albeit God’s essence remain inaccessible to our intellectual categories, His divine, uncreated, unmediated, direct actions permeate the universe. This cosmic event amounts to an exaltation of any possible aeon (created world) in a process of eternal transfiguration by uncreated grace and glory1 (Zizioulas 1993). In this respect, the world is elevated to a reality revealing Christ’s presence, insofar as every created thing has been implanted an innate principle, a particular logos or raison d’ etre, that makes it unique in its relation to the uncreated deity. In this conception of the triune God, Greek Orthodoxy constantly seeks to affirm both God’s otherness and nearness. In a nutshell, every human being is unique in its vocation to render the ultimate reasons of all created things manifest through actualizing its innate potentialities. Underlying this specific mission for humankind is the view of the world as both a divine gift and a central task for man to perform: human beings have been accorded the right to deeply humanize a world while remaining cognizant of and thankful for this invaluable, divine gift (cf Kušnieriková 2017; Papanikolaou 2011a; Vasilescu 2011).

1  Interestingly, Jing (2019) identifies elements of convergence and divergence between the respective cosmologies of Orthodox theology and Daoism. In this view, both belief-systems share the idea of feminine wisdom, a concept preceding every form of being. The paradoxical nature of Sophia in certain strands of Orthodox theology however, is different from the neutrality of the impersonal Dao, fact that culminates in acts of salvation through the love of a transcendent God in the former, and in achieving perfection through self-cultivation, in the latter.

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Greek Orthodox Ecclesiology Human beings flourish as inextricable parts of a living organism, the Church of risen Christ. In contemporary Greek theology, the Church denotes an intrinsically participative entity that substantiates society as the body of living Christ through the sacrament of Eucharist. Albeit the latter takes place locally, it assimilates the universal dimensions of an all-encompassing event that transcends any boundaries thus, claiming a catholic significance (Zizioulas 1993). The ideal of catholicity applies not to the institutionalized church as an ecumenical association of believers, but to each local assembly that celebrates the Eucharist as an act of transcending spatial and temporal limitations (McPartlan 2004). This mode to envisage the religious community, entwined with a theology of ‘synodality of the church’ (Miltos 2019) is not bereft of social connotations, as we shall explain in the following. Contemporary Greek Orthodox thinkers employ the concept of communion to denote not only a model of ecclesiology, but also an ideal and desired mode of human coexistence. Human beings are then urged to realize their full potential not as isolated autonomous individuals, but as human persons engaging in interpersonal relationships of reciprocal and unconditional love: this pattern of behaviour is intrinsically relational, given that we tend to actualize our genuine human nature through relationships of altruism, primarily through philanthropy and beneficence, a core concept in the entire Christian tradition (Loudovikos 2018).2

A Theology of Personhood In sum, the ecclesial event (grounded on relation building) appears to be at odds with any form of rigid, institutional religion. Created out of nothingness by a beneficial divine intervention, the human being does not exist as an individual, but only with reference to the person. Therefore, the Church is not viewed as an assembly of individuals, but primarily as a community of persons seeking genuine existence, namely a way of being and behaving sustained by freedom and love (Lemeni 2018). Sacramental life is thus intertwined with meditation and psychological healing (Engelhardt 2018; Markides 2017): love, care and compassion shape the essential values for the development of human personality, as well as for psychological health and well-being of individuals and of their communities. Furthermore, these value-­ systems tend to be the constituent parts of an ethics and spirituality centred on 2  It is here noteworthy that Adam Smith, who is renowned as the “Father of Economics”, in his famous Wealth of Nations (1776) regarded self-interest and self-love as the fundamental motives of human motivation and action. However, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), by recognizing the plurality of human incentives, he emphasized the pleasure of mutual sympathy: “How selfish so ever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it” (Smith 1759, 4).

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otherness, on other-regarding relations. Such existential anthropology of personhood allows for a conception of subjectivity and sociality in terms of a different ontology, one that enriches western traditions by the mutual engagement in deep relationality (Davydov 2017; Lubardić 2011a, b; Papanikolaou 2008; Prevelakis 2018; Torrance 2011). The role of spiritual guidance in this process of spiritual transformation underlying the development of virtue,3 as well as the attainment of internal purity, is highly recognized in the Orthodox Christian tradition. Orthodox Christian Ethics is entrenched in the inter-relatedness and wholeness of all aspects of life, a perspective that secures the integrity and unity of existence. This personalist ethos underlies inner dispositions, intentions and overt behavior by facilitating Christian understanding of the wholeness of all things, even in their distinctiveness and uniqueness. The fundamental premise of this ethos is the concept of the integrity of creation, experienced in the sacramental life of the church amidst contemporary, secularized societies (Dumitraşcu 2014; Olteanu and de Nève 2014).

Orthodox Theology and Environmental Ethics This particular ethos generates attitudes that favour other-centred concerns, either to the creation or to other human beings. Creation assumes a sacred dimension that evidences the ascetical, as well the Eucharistic relationship between humans, God and the world (Chryssavgis 2009, 2010, 2013; Papanikolaou 2013). In accordance with this line of reasoning, human responsibility is incarnated in activities that respect the world as built environment, rejecting its exploitation for merely egoistic purposes and advocating the proper treatment of all stakeholders. The ethical corollaries of this worldview involve stances that reflect a deep environmental sensitivity, as well as a sense of administering resources entrusted to man as central to our innate calling4, the latter culminating in a profound expression of stewardship of the entire creation (Yannaras 2013).

3  It is here worth pointing out that the notion of “virtue” has been also connected to Aristotle who claimed that virtue (aretai is the particular Greek word that somewhat loosely is translated as “virtue”) is a quality that may lead to human well-being/happiness or eudaimonia, which is a way of life according to both the virtues of thought and character. Aristotle also related virtue to the concept of “mean state” (μεσότητα): “virtue or excellence is a characteristic involving choice, and (…) it consists in observing the mean relative to us, a mean which is defined by a rational principle, such as a man of practical wisdom would use to determine it” (Aristotle 1962, 43). 4  Sister Theosemni vividly depicts this principle as follows: “When we struggle with the conviction that God has providential care for the world, we preserve our self-consciousness: a monastery in its location, a priest in his parish, a bishop in his diocese, laypeople in their family or workplace, government ministers in their positions of responsibility, children in their class at school. In this way, each individual can become aware of the sacredness of the world. Our path on earth thus becomes a witness to hope and joy; the things of this world cease to be ephemeral and subject to corruption and are transfigured into things immortal and eternal” (Theosemni 2018, 756).

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More specifically, the admonitions of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew are saturated with a profound environmental awareness (Bartholomew and Chryssavgis 2011). Patriarch Bartholomew has developed an environmental argument centered on the theological, spiritual and social premises of eastern patristic tradition, calling upon humankind to refrain from consumerism and alter its lifestyle in order to secure sustainability. In conformity to this line of reasoning, the world has witnessed a rampant environmental degradation due to the failure of governments to implement environmental policies, accompanied by a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor (Gschwandtner 2010). Environmental, just as social issues, are perceived as the by-product of an innate imbalance in our relationship with God, given that humans appear ignorant of the divine economy for all creation. Patriarch Bartholomew has continually proclaimed the primacy of spiritual values in shaping an environmental ethics insofar as for him, the current crisis is not primarily ecological but ultimately, spiritual5. This model of stewardship is regulated by an emphasis on virtuous self-­ sufficiency, the ability to harness self-interested activities and serve one’s legitimate needs, in a spirit of humility and altruistic love as prerequisites for equity and true justice. Orthodox economic ethics is characterized by a strong social consciousness that reclaims both the universal vision of Orthodoxy and the particularity of its witness in a highly fragmented society, thus affirming our true vocation, the attainment of theosis, deification and godlikeness.

A Political Theology In Greece, Orthodoxy is intrinsically intertwined with later historical, cultural and societal developments and in certain cases, it has claimed political connotations (Mitralexis 2018; Purpura 2017). This type of political theology, which is based on apophaticism as well as on a person-centered ontology, is referring to a political community that attains its truth through nurturing a set of relations, commensurate 5  In the patriarch’s view, any environmental intervention is dictated by the need to protect our common home (oikos), this attitude being a novel form of household management. This theological worldview is founded on the core patristic premise that the world we live in is the visible part of God’s creation, governed by His providential care for all life forms. Drawing on Old Testament and subsequent patristic ideals of the sacredness of the entire creation, the ecumenical Patriarch envisages ecology as an integral part of life, a conception based on the notion of the integrity of human life that permeates the biblical narratives (Sereti 2018). In accordance with this line of thought, the ecological problem affects humankind, inducing a strong negative effect on the indigent and vulnerable groups (Morariu 2019). These challenges, the Ecumenical Patriarch contends, necessitate initiatives reflecting our solidarity and humanity for the marginalized and the poor. The vision of integral ecology Bartholomew advocates, urges us to undertake new initiatives that effectively address exploitation, extreme poverty, and economic marginalization. This conception of ecology has a close affinity with Roman Catholic views of integral ecology grounded in Catholic social teaching on the priority of the common good and the importance of sustainable communities (see Christie et al. 2019).

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with the set of relations that the ecclesia, the community of the faithful, seeks to foster (Skliris 2019). The Orthodox Church still remains not only an integral part of Modern Greek cultural identity, but also an important factor in affecting collective identities insofar as this spiritual tradition has entered in critical encounters with both ancient and modern cultures (Gounelas 2018; Katerelos 2018). The presence of Greek Orthodoxy in Greek society reflects the very specificities of the latter and in particular, the progressive emancipation of individual religiosity from the influence of extremely conservative extra-ecclesial brotherhoods promoting a moralist spirit that dominated religious discourses in Greece for many decades (Katerelos 2018). We have so far discussed the ethical and institutional dimensions of Greek Orthodoxy. We proceed to the elaboration of a theoretical model, capturing the potential influences of this religious trend on business practices.

Greek Orthodoxy’s Potential to Humanizing the Workplace Humanizing Decision Making Processes The effects of different religions on business activities may be diverse, and certainly they are not easily subject to a robust theoretical conceptualization. Drawing on Gotsis and Kortezi’s (2009) categorization of individual outcomes of religious belief, we focus on the eventual significance of religion for ethical decision-making. Not unexpectedly, there is an extant literature that concentrates on the implications of religious convictions for enhancing and facilitating ethical awareness, as well as for drastically reducing unethical behavior in business settings (Drakopoulou-Dodd and Gotsis 2007). These beneficial outcomes seem to be corroborated in a large variety of religious contexts, whether Christian or not. Empirical findings suggest that there is a tendency towards underscoring the role of character and virtue in ethical decision-­ making in organizations (Crossan et al. 2013). This tendency is undoubtedly subject to theoretical scrutiny: it not only depends on the content of religious dogma and on the concomitant value-systems, but also on individual religiosity, as well as on the salience of religious belief, i.e. on the intensity and quality of individual religious norms and values in orientating action. In this respect, various religious systems involve normative elements that help enhance ethicality in business. In the context under examination, Greek Orthodoxy’s worldview incorporates ethical norms and values that constrain self-interested activities and help believers refrain from various types of unethical decision-making. The Greek patristic notion of administering the world in a spirit of responsibility towards humanity and God so as to achieve justice, precludes engagement in unethical activities that violate or distort one’s relationship with others. However, the salience of religious experience that motivates believers to act and behave accordingly, remains probably the most important

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factor. In sum, Orthodox Christian worldview has the potential to implement God’s will on one’s life in a way profoundly beneficial to others, whether fellow-­ believers or not.

A Humanistic Leadership Style We have so far argued that Greek Orthodoxy’s worldview embodies those normative elements that are in a position to generate ethical decisions in business settings. Tentatively, we can assume that Greek Orthodoxy’s spiritual values influence management and leadership styles in the respective business processes. This statement seems to be somewhat general; it appears as a commonplace assumption, unless we properly identify the kind, as well as the content of the values under discussion. However, we have already argued that such a value-system is first and foremost centred on otherness. This ethos is inherently relational and communal in nature. The others’ needs are mostly valued, given that individual identities are shaped through interpersonal communion, as discussed earlier. Greek Orthodox leadership styles, if properly enacted, appear to have an elective affinity with spiritual leadership exemplified for instance in church’s pastoral activities: such leadership ethics is not merely reminiscent of, but also indicative of a proper servant leadership style, in which the business leader aspires to properly serve employees’ genuine needs. Admittedly, Greek Orthodoxy elevates this aspect of service (diakonia) to a core value of its moral teaching at the ecclesial, as well as the social level. Such an appropriate Christian conception of leadership should claim wider acceptance. In this respect, Eastern Orthodox view shares with other spiritual-based perspectives a potential for enhancing humility, hope, perseverance, endurance, truthfulness, moderation, temperance, altruism and forgiveness in the workplace, through inclusive frameworks in which naive and egoistic self-interest is far from being the sole priority in business processes. This view of business leadership goes beyond individually centred leadership styles insofar as it is concerned with end-­ and ultimate values such as social responsibility, social justice or equity. Interestingly, Orthodox Churches’ spirituality encompasses a rich variety of affectional qualities (hope, love, gratitude, appreciation of beauty, care and humility), that are in position to deeply influence dispositional and attitudinal states and to enrich work and organizational psychology with a new, more humane potential. Undoubtedly, Greek Orthodoxy shares with other religious traditions this commonality concerning the quality of its proper workplace spirituality.

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A Personalist Corporate Culture We have so far argued that Greek Orthodox managers exhibiting high level of religious salience will tend to employ religious criteria to inform decision-making and to enrich leadership and managerial practices, even to the detriment of his/her short-­ term interests just like other counterparts belonging to other religious convictions. In addition to these ethical, psychological and strategic outcomes, there are undeniably some further implications at the organizational level. More specifically, certain ethical elements of the religious worldview under discussion have the potential not only to enrich, but also to justify a certain type of organizational culture. An important aspect of Greek Orthodoxy’s worldview, rooted in the Greek patristic tradition, is the deep respect, which is not confined to one’s follow believers, but extended to any human being as a person with inalienable rights, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, race, and cultural diversity. This emphasis on otherness reflecting God’s presence permeates the monastic and anchoretic traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy as an expression of a genuine ethos incarnated in other-centred attitudes, as already discussed. Accordingly, these stances have the potential to offer invaluable support to anti-discrimination workplace cultures, as well as to policies eliminating coercion and other abusive practices in contemporary workplaces.

A Communitarian Model of Personalist Business Ethics Religious traditions can enrich ethics in business activities. Yet, an issue unexplored in the extant literature refers to which specific model of business ethics could be mostly appropriate to a specific tradition. In the respective literature, we tend to differentiate between a set of alternative moral traditions characterising particular business environments. Utilitarianism, for instance, appears somewhat incompatible with many religious systems, at least to the extent that these normative systems discourage the unidimensional emphasis on instrumental goals and objectives, or on initiatives ignorant of the most valued aspects of human life.6 On the contrary, deontological7 or virtue ethics8 traditions place an emphasis on duties and character 6  It may be claimed that for utilitarians, even the act of self-sacrifice is not worthy in itself, but it is done for the sake of benefit. Any individual willing to sacrifice himself/herself will do so in order to minimize the pain of others; thus, the morality of utilitarianism is found in the absence of pain (Mill 1863). 7  For instance, the Kantian ethical system, through the categorical imperative, treats the moral action as a duty, regardless of which obligation/duty is concerned. On the other hand, the Utilitarian system uses the general benefit/good, quantitative or qualitative, as a means of determining whether an action is ethical, and proceeds to an examination of the negative and positive consequences of the moral actions. 8  Virtue ethics goes back to Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics, where the essential moral questions related to the moral character of individuals. For Aristotle, “virtue is understood as a contex-

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­education, respectively.9 Thus, virtue ethical traditions are frequently construed as a necessary precondition for the implementation of distinct dimensions of workplace spirituality (Gotsis and Kortezi 2008; McGhee and Grant 2018). Such ethical frameworks may reflect earlier biblical tenets orienting managerial action, or addressing issues of any potential deficit in morality and work ethics. Greek Orthodoxy’s moral vision, albeit embodying principles of this type, is irreducible to ethical attitudes exclusively centred on moral duties, or on the cultivation of individual virtues. This is due to the overtly relational nature of Eastern Orthodox views regarding co-human existence: if personal identities emerge from, and are shaped by, genuine ecclesial relationships, then a sense of self, as well as personal narratives are communally constituted and collectively experienced. Such an embedded self finds its culmination in caring relations with other persons, whether religious affiliates or not. Greek Orthodoxy’s value system seems to be substantiated in an ethics of care, primarily focusing on character traits (love, affability, meekness, humility, compassion) that are deeply valued in close personal relationships.10 Managers and business leaders should have to cultivate such interpersonal qualities that involve the consideration of others, in a context of deep sensitivity to the motives and feelings of any organizational stakeholder.

The Corporation and Its Social Environment As already known, not only corporations but small businesses as well, do not act in a social vacuum. On the contrary, they ultimately operate in a properly structured institutional and social environment, most frequently interacting with this in tual mean between deficiency and excess of a value that is important in itself” (van Staveren 2001, p. 203). Furthermore, both Adam Smith and David Hume recognized the significance of virtuous character traits in human life, while the former tried to connect them to the market economy, arguing that virtues and the market are not opposites, but virtues can contribute to the better markets’ functioning (van Staveren 2009). As regards the modern era, it seems that Elizabeth Anscombe’s article entitled “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) resurrected virtue ethics in contemporary discussion, invigorating this moral tradition. 9  There have been writers who believe that virtue theory of ethics has at least two significant merits compared to competitive moral theories: (a) its emphasis on virtuous qualities of (human) character strengthens ethical motivation and (b) it treats the issue of moral impartiality in an effective way; some virtues are impartial and some others are not, hence there is no general requirement of lack of bias, but what is needed is the examination of the various virtues and their interconnections with respect to impartiality (Rachels 2012). On the other hand, one main disadvantage of virtue theory relates to the fact that it cannot help us in cases of moral conflict. Namely, the advice “to be virtuous” cannot be helpful in these circumstances where two different virtues are contradictory (ibid). 10  The ethics of care, which is closely related to virtue ethics, places more emphasis on communal relationships than deontological moral theories and utilitarianism (see Graafland 2007). Interestingly, an ethics of care framework has been employed in support of relational leadership styles that can inform sustainability initiatives (see Nicholson and Kurucz 2019).

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specific ways. These frameworks affect business processes by underpinning the social desirability of doing business and hence, motivation. Culture as a set of shared values and beliefs, reflects wider societal responses, exemplified in specific traditions and practices underlying personal values. Religious and cultural traditions impact upon motivation, especially in the case of societies that postulate a certain societal ethics: the latter may in fact constrain, facilitate or impede certain business activities. Greek Orthodox worldview seems to conform to this pattern, insofar as it appears adaptive to its social environment. Despite its stereotypic representation in current discourses, partly concerning its ambivalence towards affirming human rights (Brüning 2016; Koutroubas 2018; Makrides 2018), Greek Orthodoxy is not far from being a resilient system, certainly not hindering, even facilitating social change (Maican 2018; Makrides 2012; Willert and Molokotos-Liederman 2012). In this respect, a reappraisal of its societal dynamic is constantly evoked. Orthodoxy is not a static or monolithic and outdated system, as many like to present it. On the contrary, it can endorse and promote various changes, despite internal criticism and reactions. Conversely, social settings may acclaim managerial behaviours exhibited in pro-­ social activities. Collectivist cultural traditions develop such perceptions supportive of socially responsible business behaviour. In particular, a religiously motivated Greek Orthodox manager may identify adequate reasons for engaging in corporate beneficence, or exhibiting a higher degree of corporate social responsibility. Responsible business behaviour, especially that revealing a deep concern for social issues in which diverse stakeholders are deeply involved, is mostly valued as a specific application of long-standing biblical and patristic tenets (Merianos and Gotsis 2018). In Greek Orthodoxy’s worldview, capital accumulation is not sanctioned for its own sake: only the redistribution of surplus through charitable giving proffers moral and social legitimacy to corporate activity. Greek Orthodox worldview embodies a potential that helps resist exploitative working conditions, encouraging pastoral practices that reduce job insecurity, alleviate poverty and favour responses to lack of employee voice through proper self-management of all stakeholders, akin to its prevailing moral precepts. Furthermore, a manager for whom a Greek Orthodox identity is salient, would find sufficient reasons for promoting environmental friendly technologies, or for demonstrating environmental responsibility, given the deep environmental sensitivity evidenced in Orthodoxy’s conception of the creation. This is valid in the Greek case, despite the somewhat paradoxical paucity of relevant empirical data regarding Greek-Orthodox business leaders. Most importantly, the relational view of human interactions offers an impetus to shaping effective business networks in conformity to structural patterns of Greek diaspora, of Greek expatriates by reasons of mere necessity: affiliation of this type fosters the formation of social capital conducive to sustainable competitive advantage, or yielding higher financial returns.

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 istorical Framing of Personalist Business Ethics H in Greece Greek Orthodoxy is a constitutive part not only of Greek diaspora, but also of native Greek social entities, as already implied. The latter have been supposed to be a representative case of family-based cultures, in which allocation of resources and responsibilities largely presupposes a kinship basis that precedes any articulation of economic considerations. In collectivist cultures, family networks address precise social requirements as a source of social identity, conducive to the economic welfare of the respective group. Especially in Greece family roles, albeit redefined and readjusted to changing societal expectations, reveal certain basic elements that secure institutional stability: traditional norms, religious influences and customs enriched by a long-standing cultural heritage. In this setting, family-businesses permeated multiple economic sectors as a component of growth processes both in the Greek family business system and in the emerging markets of other Balkan economies of transition. Family members were in a position to shape business networks drawing on resources embedded in family contexts that extended beyond the traditionally defined boundaries of the family firm. Small businesses of this type generated additional social capital, especially through ethical stewardship of resources, as mandated by biblical and patristic tenets. Greek family-business networks can be traced back to the early eighteenth century, the Greeks finding themselves under Ottoman occupation (Vlami and Mandouvalos 2013). During the nineteenth century, Greek shipping families flourished through maritime trade, progressively gaining control over the Aegean, as well as over other areas of the Eastern Mediterranean basin (Foreman-Peck and Pepelasis 2013). In benefiting from their privileged geographical position, leading Greek merchant families were effective in extracting considerable surplus from the Black Sea grain trade. In so doing, these religiously shaped family networks achieved sufficient income that significantly allowed them to prosper through market-­oriented activities. This concomitant market integration was critical in reducing the risks inherent in such activities through shaping a global network of commercial regions situated along shipping trajectories, enhancing connectivity, as well as diminishing isolation and eschewing economic marginalization. Greeks, as well as other ethnic minority groups were successful in developing merchandising competencies and in advancing human capital endowments, insofar as venture creation was experienced as a means of reshaping collective identities, if not as a channel for societal emancipation. Such ethno-religiously motivated groups redefined social boundaries by engaging in prosperous activities, pursuing profitable niches and cultivating personality attributes not inimical to business venturing. In this environment, religion was supportive of a type of indigenous, Greek communitarianism based on the need to harmonize individual with collective pursuits through benefaction and charitable mechanisms that alleviated poverty and enhanced community coherence. In a

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nascent Greek state, socially beneficial personal enrichment was not perceived as posing a threat to collective identity formation. Last but not least, Greek Orthodox Church’s involvement in shaping a safety network protecting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members reflects the Church’s attempt to transcend the secular-religious divide by imbuing its benevolent action with a properly Christian hope (Makris and Meichanetsidis 2018). These social welfare initiatives are manifest nowadays, as a practical response to the human cost of a major economic crisis which has severely affected Greece since 2010. In this respect, and given the shortcomings of the Greek social welfare system, the Orthodox Church intensified its material and spiritual support to the needy. These interventions strengthened the symbolic role of the church which effectively acted, not merely as a charitable organization but primarily as a fictive family, as well as a social partner of the state (Molokotos-Liederman 2019). In the aftermath of the aforementioned economic crisis the Orthodox church of Greece assumed a new role, that of a social actor willing to alleviate the economically worse-off11. Equally importantly, the Church experienced internal tension in view of reshaping its distinctive identity12, the current crisis perceived as a challenge for the Church to constructively adapt its relevance to the emerging needs of twenty-first century Greek society (Molokotos-Liederman 2016).

Discussion Greek Orthodoxy, as discussed in the first section of this short paper, incorporates variety of theological trends drawing on Greek patristic, Byzantine and post-­ Byzantine theological, liturgical and catechetical traditions. Orthodoxy, although embodying an encompassing societal ethos favouring belongingness and uniqueness, has not yet elaborated a coherent and comprehensive teaching on management, in sharp contrast to Roman-Catholic contributions to this very subject (Guitián

 This role became manifest in multiple initiatives, even in religious tourism, the latter promoting a sense of hospitality, ecological awareness and a spiritual meaning of leisure in a consumerist society (see Seraïdari 2019). 12  By contrast, the Orthodox church of Cyprus moved to another direction, assuming a new role, somewhat unparalleled in the history of the Orthodox Churches. The church of Cyprus nurtured a hybrid model that favoured entrepreneurial pursuits, in the context of which the bishop is sometimes far from being hesitant to engage in economic activities, for instance in the banking sector, religious tourism, commercial companies or manufacturing. These new economic engagements are framed as a practical response to new societal needs and justified in terms of promoting the general public good. As Roudometof (2019) has plausibly argued, this type of entwinement between entrepreneurship and religious organizations is perceived as diverging from the typical state-church model prevalent in most Orthodox national formations. The Orthodox Bulgarian church seems to follow a similar developmental path insofar as this church has tried to secure its institutional autonomy by seeking to rationalize its economic activities in view of maintaining its societal influence (see Kalkandjieva 2019). 11

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2015; Retolaza et al. 2019; Rousseau 2017, Sison et al. 2016). As a result, there is a paucity of research on whether and how Eastern orthodox worldview affects managerial outcomes, the respective field of intellectual inquiry still remaining highly underdeveloped. However, after examining both the analytical and the historical dimensions of Greek Orthodoxy, we could infer that this religious tradition advances societal perceptions of business as a socially constructed, spiritually mediated and culturally embedded process. Business activities are experienced as ethically constrained human pursuits encouraging socially responsible initiatives to enhance abundance and prosperity through both network-building and cooperation. Thus, management is viewed as an essential relational endeavour involving various groups of stakeholders, and certainly not as an egoistically motivated human aspiration. These distinct features are shared by other socio-cultural traditions, fostering ethical decision-making and servant-leadership styles, as well as psychological well-being through responsible business. Yet, Orthodoxy seems to slightly differ, in that it privileges a relationally experienced business ethos centred on caring for any unique stakeholder, affirming otherness and consequently, positively valuing a dynamic positive interplay between both insiders and outsiders. Such views of managerial activity appear consonant to contributions focusing on the need to reconsider the prevailing under-socialized conceptions of business practices. Recent scholarship has effectively challenged the long-standing notion of management as an intrinsically individualistic practice centred on an atomistic and isolated agent, insofar as such approaches tend to considerably ignore the specific milieu that supports, shapes and drives organizational initiatives. Not unexpectedly, the need for nurturing more humane practices in the direction of humanistic management (Arnaud and Wasieleski 2014; Melé 2012; Pirson 2019; Wagner-Tsukamoto 2018; Zawadzki 2018), as well as the call for a personalist business ethics grounded in a variety of Christian traditions supportive of human dignity (Acevedo 2012; Pless et al. 2017), are endemic in recent scholarship that elevates humanizing business to a core organizational priority (Acevedo 2018; Shapiro 2016; Shapiro and Naughton 2015). In this vein of reasoning, the dynamics of embeddedness, social conditioning and interactive processes aiming at fostering the common good should be attributed equal weight to the business potential to reshape existing structures through individual agency (Arjoon et al. 2018; Aust et al. 2019; Costa and Ramus 2012; Frémeaux and Michelson 2017; Sison 2016; Sison and Fontrodona 2011, 2012). Furthermore, this view appears on one hand commensurate with, and reflective of the need to adopt a more flexible concept of rationality in managerial action and in particular, one that erodes the atomistic model of economic activity by taking into account ethical, as well as cognitive constraints (Hartman 2015). On the other hand, the ecclesiastical event is reminiscent of attempts to position a notion of a self-­ embedded in social interactions, as well as to underscore the limitations of discourses focusing on a sameness principle, while being ignorant of otherness’ potentialities.

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The potential impact of Greek Orthodox theological tradition on humanizing business has been articulated at two distinct, yet interrelated levels. First, we examined the possible implications of Greek-Orthodox worldview for management activities. Second, we referred in brief to a few examples indicating how certain religious affiliates have historically behaved and acted as a minority group under Ottoman rule. In contextualizing such personalist ethics we argued that Greek merchant groups dominated relatively homogenous markets through commercial expansion, establishing small businesses and creating social networks supporting and maintaining a distinctive cultural identity in the face of political authoritarianism and rigid market structures. Such a type of personalist business ethics is not merely communitarian in nature: it is not centered on subsuming individual to collective interests, but rather on reconciling and ultimately harmonizing individual and collective goal-setting, profit-seeking and the common good.13

Concluding Comments Greek orthodox worldview is not unimportant to the formation of modern management processes, or to the implementation of policies aiming at fostering organizational objectives. Though the relationship between Greek Orthodoxy and business world may be context-specific and varying over time and social setting, the content of this particular theology, as well as the salience of religious values to individual selves are expected to affect managerial activities, especially when religious criteria are adopted to inform decisions. We offered tentative suggestions in the context of which a religious emphasis on personal freedom and human relationality leads to positive individual (ethical decision-making, servant leadership style, enhanced psychological well-being, meaning of life), as well as organizational (value-based culture) and societal (service orientation, stewardship, sustainability) outcomes. We thus posited that religious convictions centred on otherness are expected to enrich business discourses, in conformity to specific societal goal-setting. We in turn demonstrated that Greek Orthodox beliefs shaped by various processes of cultural transmission underlie collective identities that are far from being detrimental to business engagements. These religious tenets are conducive to social capital and network building amidst ethnic communities overlapping with this particular religious adherence, as our assumptions predict. Greek orthodox worldview can harmonize individual creativity and freedom of expression on one hand and shared societal values on the other, thus being in a position to support more humane  For instance, as Merianos and Gotsis put the matter, “the rich Christians should learn to manage their wealth in a way that proves its social utility and furthers the common good (…) the human relationship with material goods should not be one of ownership (despoteia), since nothing really belongs to human beings, but one of proper administration planned to serve the common good. Thus, one can only claim ownership of the achievements of the soul, charity and benevolence” (Merianos and Gotsis 2018, 50 and 92).

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business environments. Further research is particularly encouraged in view of empirically assessing the specific ways through which highly committed Greek Orthodox managers, leaders and employees act and behave in certain business settings and under different circumstances. Most importantly, our suggestions are construed in the light of the societal relevance of a coherent religious system being operative within personal narratives, attitudes and commitments irreducible to self-­ interested motives oriented solely to the logic of satisfying instrumental outcomes.

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Harper, Demetrios. 2018. The purpose of morality in the theological schema of Christos Yannaras. In Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, theology, culture, ed. Andreas Andreopoulos and Demetrios Harper, 56–73. London: Taylor and Francis. Hartman, Edwin M. 2015. Rationality in management theory and practice: An Aristotelian perspective. Philosophy of Management 14 (1): 5–16. Ip, Pui Him. 2018. On the ‘patristic grounding’ of Christos Yannaras’s ‘Prosopo-centric ontology’: A methodological exploration. In Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, theology, culture, ed. Andreas Andreopoulos and Demetrios Harper, 41–55. London: Taylor and Francis. Iyer, Sriya. 2016. The new economics of religion. Journal of Economic Literature 54 (2): 395–411. Jing, Jianfeng. 2019. Sophia and Dao: The convergence and divergence of the core concepts of the orthodox church and Daoism. Logos and Pneuma - Chinese Journal of Theology 51: 259–288. Kalaitzidis, Pantelis. 2014. .New trends in Greek orthodox theology: Challenges in the movement towards a genuine renewal and Christian unity. Scottish Journal of Theology 67(2): 127–164. Kalkandjieva, Daniela. 2019. The economic development of the Bulgarian orthodox church since the liberation of Bulgaria (1878). Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 185 (1): 125–144. Karaçuka, Mehmet. 2018. Religion and economic development in history: Institutions and the role of religious networks. Journal of Economic Issues 52 (1): 57–79. Katerelos, Kyrillos. 2018. Orthodoxy and west in modern Greece. In Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, theology, culture, ed. Andreas Andreopoulos and Demetrios Harper, 159–173. London: Taylor and Francis. Koutroubas, Theodoros. 2018. Diversity of Greek orthodox discourses on human rights. In Orthodox Christianity and human rights in Europe: A dialogue between theological paradigms and sociolegal pragmatics, ed. Elisabeth Alexandra Diamantopoulou and Louis-Léon Christians, 189–206. Brussels: Peter Lang. Kušnieriková, Michaela. 2017. Acting for others: Trinitarian communion and Christological agency. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Larchet, Jean Claude. 2018. Hypostasis, person, and individual according to st. Maximus the Confessor, with reference to the Cappadocians and St. John of Damascus. In: Personhood in the byzantine Christian tradition: Early, medieval, and modern perspectives, edited by Alexis Torrance and Symeon Paschalidis, 47–67. London: Taylor and Francis. Lemeni, Daniel. 2018. Wheat and weeds: Ecclesia vs. religion in the thought of Christos Yannaras. In: Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, theology, culture, edited by Andreas Andreopoulos and Demetrios Harper, 89–104. London: Taylor and Francis. Loudovikos, Nicholas. 2018. Consubstantial selves: A discussion between orthodox personalism, existential psychology, Heinz Kohut, and Jean-Luc Marion. In Personhood in the byzantine Christian tradition: Early, medieval, and modern perspectives, ed. Alexis Torrance and Symeon Paschalidis, 182–196. London: Taylor and Francis. Louth, Andrew. 2017. Orthodox mystical theology and its intellectual roots. In The Cambridge intellectual history of Byzantium, ed. Antony Kaldellis and Niketas Sinlossoglou, 509–523. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lubardić, Bogdan. 2011a. Orthodox theology of personhood: A critical overview (part 1). Expository Times 122 (11): 521–530. ———. 2011b. Orthodox theology of personhood: A critical overview (part 2). Expository Times 122 (12): 573–581. Maican, Petre. 2018. The orthodox church: Back to progress. Irish Theological Quarterly 83 (3): 235–249. Makrides, Vasilios N. 2012. Orthodox Christianity, change, innovation: Contradictions in terms? In Innovation in the orthodox Christian tradition?: The question of change in Greek orthodox thought and practice, ed. Trine Stauning Willert and Lina Molokotos-Liederman, 19–50. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2018. Orthodox personalism: In favor of, or against human rights? In Orthodox Christianity and human rights in Europe: A dialogue between theological paradigms and

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Theosemni, Sister. 2018. The protection of the environment as applied to the environmental education programme of the holy monastery of Chrysopigi, Crete. The Ecumenical Review 70 (4): 751–757. Torrance, Alexis. 2011. Personhood and patristics in orthodox theology: Reassessing the debate. Heythrop Journal, Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology 52 (4): 700–707. Vasilescu, Elena N. 2011. A face to face encounter: The God-humanity relationship as reflected in the icons of the eastern Christian (orthodox) church. Byzantinoslavica 69 (1–2): 70–85. Vlami, Despina, and Ikaros Mandouvalos. 2013. Entrepreneurial forms and processes inside a multiethnic pre-capitalist environment: Greek and British enterprises in the levant (1740s–1820s). Business History 55 (1): 98–118. Wagner-Tsukamoto, Sigmud. 2018. For humanistic management and against economics. Business and Society Review 123 (3): 459–488. Ware, Kalistos. 2012. Orthodox theology today: Trends and tasks. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 12 (2): 105–121. Willert, Trine Stauning, and Lina Molokotos-Liederman. 2012. Conceptual overview: How can we speak of innovation in the Greek orthodox tradition? Towards a typology of innovation in religion. In Innovation in the orthodox Christian tradition?: The question of change in Greek orthodox thought and practice, ed. Trine Stauning Willert and Lina Molokotos-Liederman, 1–18. Aldershot: Ashgate. Yannaras, Christos. 2013. Existential versus regulative approaches: The environmental issue as an existential and not a canonical problem. In Toward an ecology of transfiguration: Orthodox Christian perspectives on environment, nature, and creation, ed. John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz, 186–192. New York: Fordham University Press. Zawadzki, Michał. 2018. Dignity in the workplace: The perspective of humanistic management. Journal of Management and Business Administration Central Europe 26 (1): 171–188. Zizioulas, John. 1993. Being as a communion. In Studies in personhood and the church. Crestwood: NY. St Vladimir’s Seminary. George Gotsis  is Professor of Economics in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, School of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His research interests comprise business ethics and humanistic management, religion and management, workplace spirituality and diversity, and history of economics and business. He has published papers on these issues that appear in international (as well as in Greek) peer-reviewed journals. He is the main author of a book on workplace diversity entitled Critical Studies in Diversity Management Literature: A Review and Synthesis (Springer Briefs Series in Psychology). Berlin/Dordrecht: Springer, 2014. He has been co-author (with Dr. Gerasimos Merianos) of a monograph on the history of early Christian economic practices (G. Merianos and G. Gotsis, 2018. Managing Financial Resources in Late Antiquity: Greek Fathers’ Views on Hoarding and Saving. London: Palgrave MacMillan). Ioannis Katselidis  Dr. Katselidis obtained a BA from the University of Piraeus, an MSc from the University of Birmingham, and an MSc and PhD from Athens University of Economics and Business. He has been adjunct lecturer at Athens University of Economics and Business, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Hellenic Naval Academy, the University of Piraeus, and the University of Patras. He was also a research fellow at the Center of Planning and Economic Research (KEPE). In addition, he has published scientific papers in refereed journals such as the Journal of Economic Issues, the Journal of Economic Methodology, the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, the European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and the International Journal of Social Economics, and he has also participated in Greek and international conferences. His research interests include economic methodology, history and philosophy of economic analysis, and labor economics and policy.

Chapter 15

An Islamic Perspective of Humanizing Business Rafik Beekun

Give full measure when you measure, and weigh with a balance that is straight: that is the most fitting and the most advantageous in the final determination.



The Qur’an, 17: 35.

The Islamic perspective of humanizing business centers around a cardinal concept in Islam—the concept of tawheed (unity). This concept describes the oneness and uniqueness of God in comparison to creation. As Badawi (2018) indicates, “[this] comprehensive meaning of the Unity of God implies other types of unity”, including unity of creation, unity of mankind and unity of various aspects of life, including business. Key ethical virtues enjoined in the Qur’an (the Word of God as revealed to Prophet Muhammad (p)1) as well Sunnah or Hadith (what the Prophet Muhammad said, did and approved of) indicate that Islam actively humanizes business: it stresses the inherent dignity of all human beings, encourages a free market system instead of exploitative monopolies (Ibn Taymiya 1992), and uses a stakeholders’ perspective (Freeman 1984, 1994) to ensure that multiple stakeholders that interact with businesses are treated justly and benevolently. Overall, Islam emphasizes the humanistic relationships between businesses and its multiple stakeholders including the community at large.

 Peace be upon him. Muslims use these words whenever they mention the name of a prophet. I am using this here once at the beginning of this chapter. 1

R. Beekun (*) Management Department/MS 28, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_15

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 nity and the Rejection of All Forms of Discrimination U by Businesses According to Islam, humanity is one large family typified by unity in its diversity since God created the human race from the same two parents, Adam and Eve. In Islam, all human beings carry within them “the breath of God” (Qur’an, 38:72), and as such are beautiful and dignified. Diversity among human beings is not divisive, but rather a manifestation of his Infinite and Creative Power, and is not to be used to divide humans in any walk of life including business. God highlights why he has created a diverse human race in the Qur’an (49:13): O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you.

The Prophet Muhammad, too, emphasized this aspect of Islam in his final sermon: All mankind is from Adam and Eve. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab have any superiority over an Arab; a white has no superiority over a black, nor does a black have any superiority over a white; [none have superiority over another] except by piety and good action.2

Islam therefore rejects racism in all aspects of life, and businesses that will only hire or promote from certain ethnic groups are violating one of its core principles. The concept of tawheed (unity) also extends to both sexes. As pointed out by Beekun and Badawi (2005), Islam is against sexism as often practiced by business. For example, in America nowadays, women are on average paid a mere 77 cents for every dollar that the average man earn for equal work, but the average African American woman receives only 64 cents while the average Latina woman only 55 cents in comparison to Caucasian American men (Shriver 2014). Further, Hill et al. (2015)) indicate that only 4% of all CEOs were women in all publicly traded companies, and that businesses are systematically biased against women and ethnic minorities in their promotion process (Dreher et  al. 2011). Businesses tend to believe that men are more competent and communal than women, and tend to direct men towards leadership positions but women to other positions (Fernandez and Sosa 2005). By contrast, Islam challenges sexism. To begin with, God describes women as being men’s spiritual equals: Never will I suffer to be lost the work of any of you, be he male or female. (Qur’an, 3:195)

He also makes it clear that the only basis for superiority among humans is piety, not gender (Qur’an, 49:13). Specifically with respect to business, it is important to note that the first female CEO in Islamic history was Khadija, the wife of Prophet Muhammad. She singlehandedly managed a very successful trading business, and was exporting her goods to markets as far away as Syria. She later hired Muhammad  https://www.islamreligion.com/articles/523/prophet-muhammad-last-sermon/

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to work for her because he was well known for his integrity and honesty, and that was before he received divine prophecy. Throughout Islamic history and extending to the present, numerous women have followed in her steps excelling in business, the military, jurisprudence and rulers of Islamic countries (funci.org 2016). Whereas the dismal treatment of women in some Muslim-majority countries is primarily culturally based,3 Muslim feminist Susan Carland (2017) indicates that Islamic law has from the beginning afforded women many rights. Indeed, a Muslim woman has always had the same right and obligation to an education as her male counterpart does, the right to financial independence (in both earning and spending, including owning property, entering contractual agreements and initiating enterprise), the right to be a religious authority equivalent to men, as well as the right to social and political participation. Carland also notes that there were female companions of the Prophet Muhammad approaching him to request education when men were blocking their opportunities. Muhammad also showed great respect and compassion and benevolence to anyone who was being mistreated. Though he originated from a society that used to engage in the infanticide of young female babies, he stood up for women. For example, in a hadith narrated by Abu Huraira in Al-Tirmidhi, the Prophet is reported to have said, The best of you is the best to his wife and I am the best to my wife.4

This spirit of respect and compassion extends to all of humanity--as exemplified when the Islamic Council of Europe issued a Universal Islamic Declaration of Human rights on September 19, 1981: Islam gave to mankind an ideal code of human rights fourteen centuries ago. These rights aim at conferring honour and dignity on mankind and eliminating exploitation, oppression and injustice.5

Thus, with respect to the LGBTQ community, it is noteworthy that in 2013, the Islamic Society of North America—the largest Muslim organization in the US and Canada—approved of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and joined an interfaith coalition supporting ENDA.6 ISNA called ENDA a “measured, 3  For example, female genital mutilation (FGM) stems from ancient Pharaonic culture, and is unfortunately practiced by some Muslims, Christians and Jews especially in certain areas of Africa, Asia and the Middle East and within communities where this is an ancestral practice. The Qur’an never mentions FGM, and any hadith relating to it are mostly weak and unauthentic. None of the four main schools of thought in Islam view it as obligatory, and Sheikh of Al Jami’al Azhar, Grand Imam Sayyid Tantawy, said that female circumcision “has nothing to do with religion.” Islamic Relief Policy Brief Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, 4  https://messageinternational.org/the-sunnah-of-marital-relation-the-prophet-as-the-ideal-spouse/ 5  http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/islamic_declaration_HR.html#equality 6  As ISNA explained on its website on November 19, 2013, “We differentiate between someone’s lifestyle and belief system, and their right to express or believe whatever they would like to believe. At the same time, we defend and preserve our right to disagree with them in their lifestyle, and to engage them in debate with intent to persuade. Disagreement is different from discriminating against or depriving someone of a job.” http://www.isna.net/isnas-position-on-enda/

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common sense solution that will ensure workers are judged on their merits, not their personal characteristics like sexual orientation or gender identify.”7 In fact, Islam not only rejects discrimination of any kind in the workplace, but also urges that Muslims focus on meritocracy. In this famous hadith (Taymiya 1966), Muhammad stresses the importance of competence: Whoever delegates a position to someone whereas he sees someone else as more competent (for the position), verily he has cheated God and His Apostle and all the Muslims.

One last form of discrimination that still unfortunately exists in business is against the disabled. Often their disability is used to stereotype them, and they are not treated kindly or fairly. In Islam, disabled people are to be treated with respect, kindness and equanimity in all paths of life including business. A disability does not make a person less of a human being. A famous blind companion of the Prophet was Abdullah Ibn Umm Maktum. Although we will discuss a famous incident about him later in this chapter, he was not only partly responsible for the call to prayer, but would also often be put in charge of Medina, the city of the Prophet when the latter was out of town. At the huge and bitter battle of Qadisiyyah against the Persian army, the blind Ibn Umm Maktum courageously carried the flag of the Muslim army, and made the ultimate sacrifice. He was found martyred on the battlefield, still clutching the flag entrusted to him.

Unity Between Business and Other Aspects of Life Tawheed also implies that there is no dichotomy among the various aspects of a person’s life. The secular and the religious are not compartmentalized. As such, work (‘amal) is viewed as a form of worship (‘ibada) (Al Faruqi and Raji 1992). To ensure that man does not introduce a disconnect between work and worship, God mentions ‘amal in connection with faith (iman) in more than fifty verses in the Qur’an (Ahmad 1995). This in turn means that all human undertakings including work that is business-­related form part of humankind’s religious beliefs, and that he/ she will in fact be held accountable to God for any misdeeds in his/her business transactions (Saeed et al. 2001).

Unity, Trusteeship and Values Governing Business Activities The concept of tawheed also suggests that God is the Owner of everything in the universe, and humankind is simply His trustee or Khalifah on earth. Accordingly, humans must fulfil the requirements of that trusteeship by abiding by key ethical values that permeate all aspects of their life including business (Beekun 1997).  https://more.bham.ac.uk/euro-islam/tag/enda/

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These values are repeatedly enjoined upon by God in the Holy Qur’an, were modeled by his Prophet in his own life, and include for example ‘adl and qist (justice) as well as ihsan (benevolence). Within the context of business, the above values ensure that all transactions are conducted in as ethical a manner as possible since they pertain to worship. As Beekun and Badawi (2005) indicate, ‘Adl connotes both balance and equilibrium in one’s business transactions with other stakeholders, and is explicitly related to one’s faith (Qur’an, 5:8). By contrast, qist refers to the idea that one should allot every person his/her fair due. Thus God says in the Qur’an (49:9). [And] be fair: for God loves those that are fair and (just)

Benevolence or kindness is encouraged in Islam, and differs from justice (‘adl). Referring to the Qur’anic injunction “Lo! God enjoins justice and kindness” (Qur’an, 16:90), Al-Qurtubi (1966) indicates that while ‘adl is what is obligatory, ihsan extends above and beyond what is required, and often also refers to excellence. For example, an employee must not only work the hours she is paid for, but must seek to do the best job she can during her workday. This is emphasized by the Prophet Muhammad when he said, “God loves, when one of you is doing something, that he [or she] do it in the most excellent manner.” (Al-Qaradawi 1995). Similarly, as we will see later, employers must not treat their employees as beasts of burden, but rather kindly, justly and with respect. The above values govern the relationships among multiple business stakeholders in Islam, and these linkages are described now.

Humanizing Business Activities from a Stakeholders’ Perspective As stated earlier, Islam promotes a symbiotic relationship between business and multiple stakeholders. Since I have discussed in more detail elsewhere how Islam treats multiple business stakeholders (Beekun 1997; Beekun and Badawi 2005), I will cover only a subset of these stakeholders focusing primarily on how Islam humanizes the relationship between business and them. Employees: Islam not only rejects discrimination of any kind in the workplace, but also urges that Muslims in business and other domains emphasize meritocracy. In this famous hadith (Taymiya 1966), Prophet Muhammad stresses the importance of competence: Whoever delegates a position to someone whereas he sees someone else as more competent (for the position), verily he has cheated God and His Apostle and all the Muslims.

Businesses should not be using racism, sexism, nepotism or any other unfair biased criteria in hiring, promoting or even laying off their workers; rather, they should be hiring and promoting based on competence and merit. The core of the

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employer-employee relationships is summed up by the following Divine injunction from the Qur’an (4:58): God commands you to render back your trusts to those whom they are due; and when you judge between man and man, that you judge with justice.

The business and its employee must agree on the wages that he/she will be paid prior to the work being done. Abu Sa‘eed Al-Khudri narrated that the Prophet said: “Whoever employs someone to work for him, he must specify for him his wage in advance,8“and these wages must be equitable. Should there be any wage exploitation, the muhtasib or ethics officer can investigate what a fair market wage is for such a position, and set the ujra mithl or wage accepted by others for comparable work (Ibn Taymiya 1992). Further, wages must not be withheld or delayed but paid promptly once the employee has done his work (Anas ibn Malik, Sahih Al Bukhari, hadith no. 3.480). As narrated by Abdullah Ibn Umar, the Prophet said, “Pay the laborer his wages, before his sweat dries up.”9 (Sunan Ibn Majah). Besides rejecting any type of wage exploitation, Islam safeguards the employee’s beliefs and privacy. It is noteworthy that Islam preaches respect for other faith-based communities since the Qur’an clearly states (106:8), “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.” Accordingly, many companies, e.g. IKEA Saudi Arabia, pay heed to and respect the beliefs of its local and expatriate employees, giving them reasonable time off to practice their faith. Businesses in not engaging in wage exploitation or violating the employee’s freedom of religion are already following the law, but Islam wants businesses to do much more; they must relate to their employees in an all-encompassing humane manner. When communicating with employees, leaders should not do it solely via impersonal memos or mass email directives. Too many of us in business are so busy multitasking that we brush off and/or communicate in a curt and often offensive manner with those around us. It is reported that when the Prophet would talk to somebody, he would turn his whole body towards that person and give him/her his complete attention. The Prophet stated, “O people, know that I am only a human being,” and exemplified humility no matter who addressed him. Once when Muhammad was overly focused on spreading the Message of Islam to some of the local chieftains, and failed to pay attention to a blind man, Abdullah Ibn Umm Makthum, who was genuinely interested in the faith, God remonstrated him in the Qur’an (80: 5–10). As for he who thinks himself without need, to him you give attention. […] But as for he who came to you striving [for knowledge] while he fears [God], from him you are distracted. No! Indeed these verses are a reminder; so whoever wills may remember it.

From that day on, the Prophet paid special attention to him, would ask him about his affairs, help him with his needs, and seek his advice. Indeed, no human being is too little to be treated with kindness, to be paid attention to and to be served no matter  http://www.masjidma.com/2018/02/27/the-employer-employee-relationship/  Sunan Ibn Majah, volume 1, Book of Mortgages, Ch. 4., Hadith 2443.

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what the circumstance is, and that applies to business interactions too. The best leaders can learn a lot about what is going on in their business by active listening, and serving. Paralleling what Muhammad once said, “The leader of the nation is their servant”, Greenleaf (2015) studying the example of Jesus, has proposed the idea of servant leadership whereby the best business leaders are those who serve. Finally, Islam protects the privacy of those employed by a business. Whether the employee has a disability that impairs him/her in some aspects of work or has some sort of blemish on his/her record, Islam enjoins the business not to broadcast it publicly. The Qur’an (4:149) states, Whether you publish a good deed or conceal it or cover evil with pardon verily God does blot out (sins) […].

Employers. A key stakeholder in business is the employer herself/himself. We have already discussed some of the areas where Islam expects employers to behave humanely towards their employees, i.e. drawing up fair and halal work contracts, timely and equitable wages, as well as respecting the beliefs and privacy of their employees. Just as in the case of employees, Islam requires that employers do not attempt to deceive their employees in any way. The Prophet is reported to have said, “The merchants will be raised on the Day of Resurrection as immoral people, apart from those who fear God, and act righteously and speak the truth.”10 (Sunan Ibn Majah). In return for being paid and treated justly, the employee is expected in Islam to reciprocate accordingly. We have already indicated that the employee is expected to turn in excellent (ihsan) work in return for fair and timely wages. More specifically, the worker must satisfy the conditions between him and the employer as long as these conditions are halal (permissible) in Islam. For example, an employee could not contract to sexual abuse by her employer, and would not be expected to abide by any such “agreement”. To the extent that the contract is for halal activities, God states, “O you who have believed, fulfill [all] contracts.” (Qur’an, 5:1). Further, employees are expected in Islam not to take advantage of their employers through deceptive practices such as padding their expense accounts, selling off company secrets, having someone clock them out, embezzlement, etc. The Prophet is reported to have said, “Whoever deceives is not one of us.” Customers: Customers are not be charged exorbitant prices either because of manipulation of prices via hoarding, and they must not be lied to or be the victims of any type of sales deception. Products provided to buyers must be wholesome and not adulterated or spoilt in any way. In a hadith (saying) reported by Abu Huraira and found in Sahih Muslim, the Prophet said, The Messenger of God (P) happened to pass by a heap of eatables (corn). He thrust his hand in that (heap) and his fingers were moistened. He said to the owner of the heap of eatables (corn), ‘What is this?’ ‘Messenger of God, these have been drenched by rainfall.’ He (the

 Susan Ibn Majah. Vol 3, Book 12, hadith 2145. Sahih hadith (authentic saying of the Prophet) reported by Isma’il bin ‘Ubaid Rifa’ah from his grandfather Rifa’ah.

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Prophet) remarked, ‘Why did you not place this (the drenched part of the heap) over other eatables so that the people could see it? He who deceives is not of me (is not my follower).11

Indeed, in Islam, caveat emptor does not exist. According to the “option for misdescription” in Islamic law, customers may return anything bought at any time if any kind of deceptive practices were used during the transaction. Thus, lemon laws are redundant in Islam since the business must inform the buyer of all defects in a product before he purchases it. Discussing a sale between a buyer and a seller, the Prophet is reported to have said, “[If] they spoke the truth and made clear (the defects of the goods), then they would be blessed in their bargain. And if they told lies and hid some defects, their bargain would be deprived of God’s blessing.’ And the Prophet re-emphasized this in another hadith reported by Abu Huraira in Sahih Al Bukhari: I heard Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) saying, “The swearing (by the seller) may persuade the buyer to purchase the goods but that will be deprived of Allah’s blessing.”12

Suppliers/Sellers: We already discussed the attributes of products sold by sellers. One more attribute would be that the seller must not be selling products or services that are forbidden in Islam, e.g. drugs or stolen goods. Further, the seller must to the best of his/her ability disclose all the defects in the products. Otherwise, the seller must take back whatever was sold should the buyer decide ex post that he/she wants to return it. However, just as the rights of the buyer are protected because there is no concept of caveat emptor in Islam, similarly, the supplier/seller is accorded some measure of protection. This hadith of the Prophet, narrated by Qadim bin ‘Abdur Rahman from his father is quite telling: If two parties to a transaction differ, and they have no proof, and the sale item remains (unredeemed), then what the seller says is valid. Or they may cancel the transaction.13

Prices, in turn, are to be decided by the market unless a business is deliberately manipulating them through hoarding or through other type of market interferences. Such attempts at market manipulation are not allowed in Islam. In a hadith reported in Sahih Muslim, the Prophet said, He who hoards is a sinner.14

Should hoarding especially of staple foods, the muhtasib or ethics officer can intervene, and set a fair price. Other deceitful businesses such as the swearing of oaths, shilling or even bribery are all forbidden in Islam. Debtors: As indicated above in all business transactions, Islam argues for behavior that is equitable and kind. Benevolence (ihsan) is to permeate all business activities, including the area of debts. Since business financing often comes from other businesses such banks and venture capitalists, God in the Qur’an (2:280) ordains  Reported by Abu Huraira, in Sahih Muslim, hadith 0183  Abu Huraira, Sahih al Bukhari, hadith no. 3.300. 13  Sunan Ibn Majah, volume 3, book 12, hadith 2185. This hadith is graded as sahih. 14  Ma‘mar ibn Abdullah al Adawi, Sahih Muslim, hadith no. 3910. 11 12

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that the debtor be treated with benevolence especially if she or he is experiencing hard times. If the debtor is in a difficulty, grant him time till it is easy for him to repay. But if you remit it by way of charity, that is best for you if you only knew.

Please note that all business debts are, according to the Qur’an, to be covered by written contracts (Qur’an, 2:282) to prevent any misunderstanding between the one giving out the loan and the one borrowing the money. Should the debtor be “of limited understanding”, the Qur’an suggests that his/her guardian be the one who dictates his/her side of the contract. Additionally, to ensure that neither side distorts the contract, God in the same Qur’anic verse orders that there be witnesses to be the agreement. Given the presence of such a written contract, the debtor must in turn not take advantage of the benevolence shown to him by his investor, and delay repaying his debt. This is why Islam insists on Muslims honoring any type of contracts: O you who believe! Fulfil all your covenants. (Qur’an, 5:1) Fulfil (every) engagement, for (every) engagement will be enquired into (on the Day of Reckoning). (Qur’an, 17:34)

Prophet Muhammad also stated that “Procrastination (delay) in paying debts by a wealthy man is injustice.15”. Partnerships: Debts often involve interest (riba), and these can over time put the debtor at risk. Islam absolutely opposes interest (Iqbal 1988; Beekun and Badawi 2005). As Beekun (1997) points out, “the size of the rate of interest charged is inconsequential; riba is absolutely prohibited. There is no opportunity cost of lending money in Islam. The lender is making money without any fear of loss.” Since there is likely to be a wealth asymmetry between the lender and the debtor, the practice of lending with interest only serves to deepen the gap between the poor and the rich. Islam wants wealth to circulate in order for all members of society to benefit from it as much as possible. This is why Allah warns in the Qur’an (2:275): Those who devour usury will not stand except as stands one whom The Evil One by his touch has driven to madness. That is because they say: “Trade is like usury,” but God has permitted trade and forbidden usury.

To humanize business transactions that need investment capital and pre-empt the exploitation of the debtors by lenders, Islam advocates for business partnerships that don’t rely on interest. Such projects are encouraged in Islam (Al-Qaradawi 1995). One such partnership, Al Mudaraba occurs for example when an entrepreneurial businessman lacks venture capital. The investor invests his/her capital while the entrepreneur invests his/her labor/expertise. Both parties must agree in advance via a written contract how any profit or loss will be shared, and no profit can be allocated until all losses have been taken care of, and the lender’s equity has been fully restored (Beekun 1997). In this manner, the investor/lender is not solely 15

 Hadith reported by Abu Huraira, Sahih al Bukhari, no. 3.486.

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enjoying a guaranteed rate of return while the debtor is left to deal with any loss by herself/himself. The Environment. Given their role as God’s Vicegerent on earth (Qur’an, 2: 30), humans have been entrusted with taking of the environment, and accordingly businesses must take care not to damage the environment while manufacturing their goods or providing their services. Indeed, God warns humankind multiple times in the Qur’an about spreading corruption in the land (7:57; 28:83). Beekun and Badawi (2005) using the Islamic principle of (Qiyaas) indicate that restrictions can be imposed on sources of pollution to protect the environment. Examples include nuclear waste, pollution of any kind, the treatment and disposal of wastes (Ibn Taymiya 1992).

Conclusion As I indicated earlier in this chapter, there is no dichotomy between business and other areas for ethics. Because of the unity of God’s creation, Islam transcends all aspects of life and there are common elements between business ethics and all other aspects of a human’s life. That God wants all Muslims to behave justly, benevolently and with kindness extends to the world of business. Islam wants businesses to behave using the same values and to care about the multiple businesses and people it deals with. Muhammad as a trader and as a shepherd understood this symbiotic relationship between business and other walks of life, and with the divinely inspired word of God in the Qur’an as well as his own divinely inspired behavior and words worded very hard to ensure that Muslim businesspersons behave caringly with love, compassion, benevolence and respect towards and their stakeholders across time and space.

References Ahmad, Mushtaq. 1995. Business Ethics in Islam. Islamabad: IIIT. Al Faruqi, Ismail Raji. 1992. Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life. Kuala Lumpur: IIIT. Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. 1995. Dawr Al-Qiyam Wal-Akhlaaq Fi Al-Iqtisaad Al-Islaami. Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah. Al-Qurtubi, Abi Abdullah Al-Ansari. 1966. Al-Jaami` Le-Ahkaam al-Qur’an. Beirut: Daar Ihyaa’ Al-Turaath Al-Arabi. Badawi, Jamal. 2018. Muslim Contribution to Civilization. Muslims in Calgary website. https:// muslimsincalgary.ca/muslim-­contribution-­to-­civilization/. Beekun, Rafik Issa. 1997. Islamic Business Ethics. Herndon: IIIT. Beekun, Rafik Issa, and Jamal Badawi. 2005. Balancing Ethical Responsibility Among Multiple Organizational Stakeholders: The Islamic Perspective. Journal of Business Ethics 60 (2): 131–145. Carland, Susan. 2017. Fighting Hislam: Women, Faith and Sexism. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Publishing Limited.

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Dreher, George, Jeong-Yeon Lee, and Thomas Clerkin. 2011. Mobility and Cash Compensation: The Moderating Effects of Gender, Race, and Executive Search Firms. Journal of Management 37 (3): 651–681. Fernandez, Roberto, and Lourdes Sosa. 2005. Gendering the Job: Networks and at a Call Center. Journal of Sociology 111 (3): 859–904. Freeman, Robert. 1984. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman. ———. 1994. The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions. Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (4): 409–422. Funci.org. 2016. “Great Women in Islamic History: A Forgotten Legacy.” https://funci.org/ great-­women-­in-­islamic-­history-­a-­forgotten-­legacy/?lang=en Greenleaf, Robert. 2015. The Servant as Leader. The Greenleaf Center for Servant leadership. Hill, Aaron, Arun Upadhyay, and Robert Beekun. 2015. Do Female And Ethnically Diverse Executives Endure Inequity in the CEO Position or Do They Benefit from Their Minority Status? An Empirical Examination. Strategic Management Journal 36: 1115–1134. Iqbal, M. 1988. Distributive Justice and Need Fulfillment in an Islamic Economy. Islamic Foundation, Leicester, UK. Saeed, Muhammad, Zafar Ahmed, and Syeda-Masooda Mukhtar. 2001. International Marketing Ethics from an Islamic Perspective: A Value-Maximization Approach. Journal of Business Ethics 32 (2): 127–142. Shriver, Maria. 2014. A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink. New  York: St Martin’s Griffin. Taymiya, Ibn. 1966. Al Siyasatus Shariah Fi Islaahir Raaie war Raiiyyha or On Public and Private Law in Islam. Beirut: Khayats. Taymiya, Ibn. 1992. Public Duties in Islam – The Institution of the Hisba. Translated by Muhtar Holland. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. Islamic Society of North America. Rafik Beekun is Professor of Strategy and Ethics. He specializes in strategic management, business ethics, and leadership. Dr. Beekun has published in many academic journals including the Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, etc. He has published several books, including Islamic Business Ethics. In 2012, he served as co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Management Development on “Practical Wisdom for Management from the Islamic Tradition.” Previously, Dr. Beekun was a past president of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS), and served on the Board of Advisors of the North American Islamic Trust as well as the Board of Directors of the Islamic Society of North America.  

Chapter 16

A Buddhist Perspective on Humanizing Business Otto Chang and Chi Sheh

The Goal of a Buddhist: Enlightenment For Buddhists, the goal of their Buddhist practices is the cessation of human suffering such as worries, sorrows, pains, afflictions, old age, illness, and death (Keown 2004; Buswell and Lopez 2013). The list goes on forever. It could include other afflictions such as association with the unbeloved, separation from the loved, not getting what is wanted, and inability to satisfy your strong ego (Anderson 2013). The list could also be expanded to include some negative or unpleasant emotions or feelings such as anger, hatred, jealousy, lamentation, grief, fear, distress, uneasiness, and despair. This state of complete cessation of all kinds, forms, and shapes of human suffering is called Nirvana. Reaching the state of Nirvana is the goal of every Buddhist. But before one can completely eradicate all these human sufferings, one must investigate the origin of human sufferings. Buddha, in his first sermon to his first group of five disciples, expounded the origin of human suffering in the second truth of the Four Noble Truths (Williams 2002; Keown 2013). Here the so-called “Truths” is nothing but observations from actual human experience. It does not have the connotation of “absolute” truths as common people tend to ascribe to that word. In the first noble “truth” or the first “observation” about suffering, Buddha revealed an observation that many common people tend to agree: there is a lot of human suffering in life. In the second noble truth or the second observation about suffering (called “dependent origination of suffering” in Buddhist terminology), Buddha told us: there is a cause for the suffering. To be more exact, Buddha traced the origin of suffering in twelve steps, or twelve causal relationships (Gethin 1998; Harvey 2015). The twelve steps of “causal” relationships in reverse order are: 1. Aging, death, and the entire mass of suffering; 2. Birth or rebirth; 3. Becoming, existence, O. Chang · C. Sheh (*) University of the West, Rosemead, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_16

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or karmic force in action; 4. Cling, grasping, or attachment; 5. Craving; 6. Feeling; 7. Contact; 8. Six-fold sense base; 9. Name and form (mind and body), 10. Sensual consciousness; 11. Volitional impulses; 12. Ignorance. Translated into loose common English language, the twelve causal relationships read like this: Why do we have this entire mass of suffering? It is because we are born or reborn into the world. Why are people born into human world? It is because of the working of karmic force which bring forth existence. Why do karmic force work? It is because people’s habit of clinging, grasping, or attachment. Why do people become attached? It is because of the emotion of craving. How does the emotion of craving arise? It is because people have feeling. Why do people have feeling? It is the result of the sensory organs encountering the outside world. Why does contact arise? It is because human beings are equipped with six senses of eyesight, sound, smell, taste, body sensation, and mental function. Why do the six senses arise? It is because humans have body and mind. Why do body and mind arise? It is because people have sensual consciousness. Why does sensual consciousness arise? It is because people have volitional impulses. Why do people have volitional impulses? It is because people are not enlightened, they think and act on ignorance of not knowing what the reality is and what is best for themselves. So, can human suffering be completed eliminated? The third noble “truth” says yes. The state of complete removal of suffering, which is called Nirvana, is possible. How to do it? The fourth noble “truth” provides the solution: since the root cause of all this mess of suffering is ignorance, the ultimate solution is by eradicating ignorance, or by becoming enlightened. So how to become enlightened? Buddha’s answer is the Eight Noble Paths: right views, right thoughts, right speech, right actions, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration (Anderson 2013). The most important path to become enlightened is to build the right view so that one can see the reality and the law of dependent origination, that everything depends on other things to exist, and that the world is an intricate web of causality which becomes the force of karma. An enlightened person understands if one is loving, kind, and compassionate and behaves accordingly, one will reap the positive rewards of peace, tranquility, and fulfillment. In contrast, if one is egoistic, self-centered, ill-willed, and behaves unfriendly and hostilely to others, one will reap the fruition of tension, hostility, uneasiness, and emotional or mental disturbance. Moreover, an enlightened person understand that things are constantly changing and evolving as causes and conditions change, it is unwise to cling, grasp, or attach to anything, including the concept of self-identity. These right views and right thoughts, which are called “Wisdom” in Buddhism, will guide one to behave morally, that is, to speak positively, to act positively, and to choose a livelihood that will not harm other sentient beings. To be able to develop the right view and the right thoughts, one can use the help of three meditation skills: right endeavor, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Right endeavor advises practitioners not to practice too hard to cause anxiety and distress, nor to practice too easy to achieve little progress. Right mindfulness requires practitioners to develop the habit of being aware of one’s own feeling and thoughts. Right concentration allows practitioners

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to think or analyze things critically without committing fallacies or falling into traps of mental or emotional biases (Bodhi 2006).

Can Enlightenment Be a Goal by Itself? So, enlightenment is the main goal of any Buddhist. The life of a Buddhist is to devote his or her life toward this goal. An interesting question arises: can a practitioner achieve the goal of enlightenment by his or her efforts alone without involvement of other people? Or alternatively, can enlightenment be a goal by itself without involvement of other goals in life or in society? The answer is a resounding no. The Eight Noble Paths provide an unequivocal answer. Right view and right thought require a practitioner to understand the intricate relationships between one and his or her fellow human beings in the form of karmic law, that positive deeds bring positive fruitions and negative deeds bring negative fruitions. Right speech, right action, right livelihood all specifies moral principles in dealing with other human beings in our society. To become enlightened, one must appreciate the interconnectivity of all sentient beings and conduct himself or herself morally and ethically. To assist practitioners to become enlightenment, Buddha further encouraged his disciples to practice the “Four Immeasurable Mind”: loving-kindness or benevolence, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity (Bodhi 2000). The Four Immeasurable Mind requires the practitioners to act benevolently and peacefully to others in their daily life. In addition, practitioners were required to become a member of the Sanga community in which strict precepts or code of conducts were prescribed. In the life of a Sanga community, Buddha spoke about six harmonies that the members of a sangha community share (Chodron 2008). They enable the practitioners to achieve the long-term benefit of enlightenment. The six harmonies are: To be harmonious physically, to be harmonious verbally, to be harmonious mentally, to be harmonious in the precepts that members keep, to be harmonious in the views that members hold, and to be harmonious in how members share the requisites they receive. As Buddhism evolved through history, more and more social engagement activities were required of practitioners. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition that was developed later, a Buddhist practitioner will not achieve the ultimate enlightenment until he or she has served others by assisting them to become enlightened through his or her numerous reincarnated lives. To a Mahayana Buddhist, a practitioner can never achieve the goal of enlightenment by his or her efforts alone without involvement of other people. Or alternatively, enlightenment cannot be a goal by itself without involvement of other goals in life or in society.

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The Two Paths of Practices to Achieve Enlightenment When Buddha started his teaching, his initial emphasis was the enlightenment of individual practitioners. In this early stage of Buddhist development, enlightenment is a direct goal for practitioners. The practitioners achieve enlightenment by eradicating ignorance through renunciation and perseverance. This suggests that practitioners gain most insights from their own personal experience, application of knowledge, and critical reasoning. Although involvement with other people or sentient beings are helpful and beneficial for the development of compassion, which in turn, is instrumental in the path toward enlightenment, but strictly precepts, renunciation of worldly desire, absorption in deep meditation states, and critical analysis of practitioners’ mental and emotional working are considered as essential endeavor toward enlightenment. This path is mostly identified with the Theravada tradition of Buddhism which is prevalent in South East Asia area and is perhaps closer to the original Indian form of Buddhism. As Buddhism evolved, however, there was a shift in emphasis from self-­liberation or individual enlightenment toward the enlightenment of other sentient beings. Buddhist practitioners realized that self-liberation was not enough, if someone was truly enlightened, he or she ought to be compassionate. If a practitioner was genuinely compassionate, he or she would not be satisfied with the removal of his or her own suffering. Instead, he or she would work on relieving other’s suffering while he or she worked on his or her liberation. Thus, the concept of Bodhisattva path emerged. The Bodhisattva path, frequently identified as the Mahayana Tradition of Buddhism, promotes the idea that a Buddhist practitioner should not just seek personal enlightenment but the enlightenment of all beings. It also accepts a wide range of approaches to enlightenment; it includes not just meditation and personal disciplines but selfless service and working in the world for the benefit of others. To become a Bodhisattva, the most important step is the invocation of the Bodhisattva Vow—the vow to relieve all sentient beings from suffering. To practice Bodhisattva path, renunciation from the world is not necessary. On the contrary, it may become counter-productive to the Bodhisattva practice. For the purpose of assisting others to achieve enlightenment, a Bodhisattva must be skillful in utilizing all necessary means and tools in the secular world to assist others. Worldly desires are not necessarily bad, on the contrary, it can be used to motivate many people initially to start their search for enlightenment. The spirit of the Mahayana Buddhism is clearly reflected in one of the Mahayana sutra– the Vimalakirti Sutra. In that sutra, the main protagonist of the text was a wealthy merchant householder. However, he is also a powerful bodhisattva with Buddha-like qualities. He enters dens of iniquity, such as gambling parlors, brothels, and the haunts of philosophers of other schools, but even in so doing, he is merely appearing to conform with the ways of this world in order to bring sentient beings to the realization of the truth. In Chap. 3 of the Sutra, Vimalakīrti bests Māra (the “Buddhist devil”) by accepting 12,000 goddesses from him for his “servingwomen”. These goddesses have just been rejected by another advanced practitioner

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from the Theravada Tradition as improper, but Vimalakīrti immediately takes the occasion to convert them towards ultimate awakening (Felbur 2015; McRae 2004). When one reads the sutra, one cannot help to think that practicing Buddhism in the business environment may be a more effective and higher-level approach to achieving enlightenment than practicing Buddhism in the traditionally monastic lifestyle.

 he Only Way to Operate a Business for a Buddhist: T Humanizing Business For a Buddhist who practices the Bodhisattva path, the only way to operate a business is to humanize the business. The basic or fundamental belief for all Buddhists is that the highest form of human wellbeing or happiness cannot be achieved only by money, profit, or wealth. The pursuit of money, profit, or wealth, on the contrary, brings unhappiness and harmful consequences to humans, as frequently observed by modern psychologists and environmental scientists (Belk 1984; Argyle 2001; Bakırtaşa et al. 2014). For Buddhists, practicing compassion and selflessness in a business environment mandates all Buddhists to adopt the stakeholder approach to business operations (Donaldson and Preston 1995; Phillips 2003; Harrison et  al. 2010; Freeman and Moutchnik 2013). In the traditional shareholder view of business, only the owners or shareholders of the business are the stakeholders, and the business has a fiduciary duty to put their needs first, that is, to increase value for them. Stakeholder theory, in contrast, argues that there are other parties involved, including employees, customers, suppliers, financiers, communities, governmental bodies, political groups, trade associations, and trade unions. This stakeholder view of a business resides well within the basic doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism. In all Mahayana Buddhist traditions, it is commonly believed that a Buddhist practitioner will not achieve enlightenment until he or she can relieve suffering of others and assist others to become enlightened as well. In the business environment, the stakeholders are the immediate contacts that a Buddhist can show his or her compassion and his or her fellowship in assisting others to become enlightened through modelling the best of human morality and humanity—that is, to humanize the business. For a Buddhist, to humanize the business means: First, a business should treat everyone related to the business as a human being with a Buddha nature (a potential to become a Buddha). It is important for businessmen and top executives to always remind themselves that every business is a community of people who get together to promote the good of one another as they produce or market goods or services for the public. The stakeholders of every business, i.e., the consumers, the rank-and-file employees, the managers, the funds providers, the suppliers, the immediate community in which the business operates, and the public at large are not just factors of production or economic resources. They are first and foremost people who want to attain their fullest development as human beings (Villegas 2018). For Buddhists,

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attaining the fullest development as human beings means becoming enlightened. Therefore, the goal of Mahayana Buddhist entrepreneurs is not profit, but enlightenment of all sentient beings. Second, humanizing business means a business should treat everyone as an end, not as a means. No business enterprise should treat human beings as mere factors of production, like land, machinery equipment, and raw materials that are dispensable or disposable. Those who manage businesses must always treat the various stakeholders as people who have legitimate emotional and spiritual needs in addition to the economic ones (Moore 2005). To treat other human beings as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers is shameful and inhuman. Buddhists believe that the common good is not the greatest good for the greatest number, but a social or juridical order which enables every single member of society to attain his or her fullest development economically, politically, socially, culturally, morally and spiritually. In short, his or her integral development to enlightenment. Third, to humanize business means a business should bring out the best of human nature. In a business setting, this usually means that a business needs to create a positive work environment characterized by mutual respect, trust, collegial relations, two-­ way communication, consensus building, team work, goal congruency, employee empowerment, autonomy, incentive for innovation, and allowance for trial and errors (Rampton 2017; Lucas 2019). The Mahayana Buddhist value of compassion and service to others are particularly conducive to create such positive work environment. For a Mahayana Buddhist business leader, the best of human nature is the Buddha nature. If a business leader can bring the Buddha nature out of each of the employees, he or she is assisting others progressing on the path toward enlightenment. The workplace is then his or her temple of Buddhist practice. Fourth, to humanize business means a business should create a work environment that conforms to human nature. Unlike machine, human nature does not like monotone work or tasks. Most human beings are playful and experimental, enjoy trying new things, and contrive new ways of doing things. Industrial psychologists have observed that monotone work or tasks increases human fatigue and reduces safety and productivity over the long run (Schaufeli and Salanova 2014; Game 2007). It is also a work environment that will not be conducive to work improvement and innovation. Finally, to humanize business means a business should assist and support everyone economically and spiritually to attain enlightenment. In order to achieve this, a business must provide adequate compensation, bonus, and fringe benefits to allow employees to live comfortably without fear of unemployment. In addition to economic security and stability, a business should create an organizational culture that models the core values of compassion, selflessness, service, peace, and equanimity. In summary, for a Buddhist, there is no other way to run or manage a business other than to humanize the business.

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 etachment or Attachment? Are There Limitations D of Applying Buddhism to Stakeholder Relations? Someone might question the limitations of applying Buddhism to stakeholder relations because Buddhism is traditionally known to encourage its practitioners to practice detachment and renunciation. Desires and attachment seem to be considered as impediment rather than something beneficial to practice. This is special true in early Buddhist development. However, when the Mahayana Buddhism emerged, the idea of detachment took a new meaning or interpretation. It is believed that a true Mahayana Buddhist should even detach from the practice of detachment. According to Mahayana Buddhist doctrine, desires themselves are not at faults. It is the people that attach to the desires who are the problem. Desires are neutral themselves; a desire can be positive or negative to the practitioners. For example, a vow to deliver all other sentient beings is itself a strong attachment, but it boosts the practice of compassion and charity. Greed in material possession is generally considered to be hindrance to Buddhist practice. But certain degree of material possession is necessary for maintaining physical and mental health for successful pursuit of dharma practice. True detachment in the Mahayana tradition allows your mind to be objective so you can analyze the consequences of a desire. But practicing detachment does not mean that one should be detached to life and live an emotionless life. When one become emotionally detached, one is disconnected from one’s feelings. A person then is not really getting involved in decisions, actions, relationships, or life itself. True detachment, however, calls for the practitioner to entirely emotionally immerse in life. True detachment allows for deep involvement—because of the lack of attachment to outcome. The trick is behaving like an Oscar award-winning actor playing a role: become fully emotionally immersed and recognize that you can step outside of the character and be objective. The emotions in that moment are just as real as your dreams, goals, and plans. This ability to recognize that one can step outside and reflect—to not attach to any desired outcome—is what true detachment is about. As spiritual author Ron W. Rathbun wrote, “True detachment isn’t a separation from life but the absolute freedom within your mind to explore living” (quoted in Lechner 2019). For a Mahayana Buddhist, desires and attachment to desires can be powerful means to motivate practitioners in the pursuit of enlightenment. Therefore, there are no limitations in applying Buddhism to the stakeholder’s relation. On the contrary, for a Mahayana Buddhist business, he or she should be the leader in promoting and applying the stakeholder theory in its management and operation. A Mahayana Buddhist business should keep in its focus the interest of not only shareholders and owners, but also the employees, consumers, suppliers, community, and general public.

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Gender Equality in Workplace from a Buddhist Perspective Buddhism, from its beginning, advocated gender equality in its doctrine and practice. The founder of Buddhism, Gautama Shakyamuni, permitted women to join his monastic community and fully participate in it, although there were certain rules or conditions. The nun’s sangha was a radical experiment for its time (Murcott 1991). For spiritual attainment, women and men have equal spiritual capabilities in that women not only can, but also in many cases have, attained spiritual liberation. Such a belief is found in various sources across various periods, including early Buddhist literature in the Theravāda tradition, Mahāyāna sūtras, and tantric writings. There are records of women and even children who attained enlightenment during the time of the Buddha. Moreover, Buddhist doctrines do not differentiate between men and women since everyone, regardless of gender, is subject to old age, illness, and mortality. The suffering and impermanence that mark conditioned existence apply to all (Woodhead and Partridge 1961). In one of the later and more liberal Mahayana sutras, the Lotus Sutra, gender equality to attain Buddhahood was explicitly highlighted. In the thirteenth chapter of the Sutra, entitled “Encouraging Devotion,” Shakyamuni bestows prophecies of future enlightenment upon a multitude of women. And the people to whom Bodhisattva Never Disparaging bows in reverence (acknowledging their inherent Buddha nature), saying, “I have profound reverence for you, I would never dare treat you with disparagement or arrogance,” include both laymen and laywomen, priests and nuns. The premise, here, naturally is that women equally can attain Buddhahood (Ikeda 2001). In Buddhism, there are various references to the gender differences among practitioners. But these references are colored by the views of men and women that were prevalent at the times and in the societies where these teachings were expounded. They cannot be taken as having universal application. Gross (1992) pointed out that “a misogynist strain is found in early Indian Buddhism. But the presence of some clearly misogynist doctrines does not mean that the whole of ancient Indian Buddhism was misogynist.” For example, there are statements in Buddhist scripture such as depicting women as obstructers of men’s spiritual progress or the notion that being born female leaves one with less opportunity for spiritual progress. However, in societies where men have traditionally dominated, a negative view of women might be simply reflecting the empirical political reality (Woodhead and Partridge 1961). Gender equality is one of the core values of Buddhist doctrines. Buddha is radical and revolutionary in allowing female practitioners to join the Sangha community since the inception of Buddhism. Although some of the statements regarding gender differences were referenced in various early sutras, the gender equity in attaining enlightenment was reaffirmed frequently in the later Mahayana Buddhist texts. In the modern world, gender equality will be assumed and practiced in any business organization, if the enterprises subscribe to Buddhist values and principles.

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Prohibited Trades or Products from a Buddhist Perspective One of the Noble Eightfold Paths to enlightenment is Right Livelihood and entails earning a living that does not harm oneself and others including: (1) not to engage in an occupation that deals with weapons that can harm or kill sentient beings, (2) not to engage in slavery and human trafficking trades including prostitution, (3) not to engage in an occupation breeding or selling animals for slaughter or as a butcher slaughtering animals for sale, (4) not to engage in drugs and intoxicating drinks that can harm or kill sentient beings, and (5) not to engage in selling poisons and pesticides. These are the occupations discouraged and forbidden by the Buddha, because they involve in breaking one or more of the Five Precepts, which are the very basic moral rules for the Buddhist layman. Anyone who is attempting to develop morality, concentration, and wisdom, to grow in compassion and insight, cannot deal in weapons of any sort, at any level of the business because by doing so he would be involving himself in causing harm or injury to others for his own monetary gain. These days the probability of trading in human beings as slaves or for prostitution is limited, but certainly any job with such overtones is to be avoided. Breeding animals for slaughter as meat is forbidden because it breaks the first precept of abstaining from killing for Buddhist. For the same reason, any Buddhist should avoid hunting and fishing, or killing animals. Dealing in alcohol or intoxicating drugs would be making oneself directly responsible for encouraging others to break the fifth Buddhist precept of no intoxication. If someone manufactures, deals in, or uses insecticides or other kinds of poisons in his or her work, the person is engaging to some degree in wrong livelihood because the act is considered to break the first precept of no killing. However, the motivation behind the use of poison has a great deal to do with the depth of the karma being created. A doctor may give drugs which are harmful to bacteria and viruses, not because he hates them, but because he wants to cure the human being. Here the good karma more than balances the bad karma. But if one goes about applying poison to rat-holes and cockroaches’ hideouts with anger, one would be generating considerably strong bad karma. Although a business entity is usually a separate legal body rather than a natural person, business enterprises are urged to avoid conducting any business that are harmful to humans, animals, community, and the environment.

Practical Implications of Buddhism for Humanizing Business From a Buddhist perspective, the followings are business practices an enterprise can adopt to humanize its business: Revise the Mission of the Business Mission statement tells a lot about the character of a business. It communicates loudly to its employee what the company is all about. If a business is serious about

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humanistic management, it should develop or revise its current mission statement to reflect its emphasis on the values of human beings in its business operation. Develop Flat Organizational Structure Flatter organization structures usually facilitates internal communication of an organization. It also facilitates employee empowerment, autonomy, motivation, work satisfaction, morale, productivity, innovation, and creativity (Swart 1973). Most high-tech companies have a flatter organizational structure than traditional companies. The flatter the organizational structure, the more prominent an individual human being’s needs and aspirations can be highlighted and built into the strategic goals of an organization. If an enterprise is serious about humanizing its business, it should aim to build an organizational structure that is flatter to facilitate the building of an organizational culture manifesting human dignity and values. Encourage Employee Ownership of the Business Nothing can be more practical for an enterprise to allow their employees to become owners of the business and to share the profit, if the goal of a business is to develop its employees to become happier people and eventually become enlightened. By doing so, the employees will be treated with dignity and respect because they are the owners and their own bosses. The employees will enjoy the highest job satisfaction because they reap the fruits of their labor. The employees will be provided with the highest level of job security, economic rewards, and safety standards. The employees will have the incentives to act compassionately within and outside the corporate boundary. They will essentially use the corporate entity to practice human virtues such as loving kindness, self-respect, empathy, prudence, and tolerance of diversity and differences. Practice Sustainability Management Modern business theories and practices have been guided primarily by the notion of economic rationality, where profits maximization and shareholder wealth maximization are the main goals that are both taught in the classroom as well as the commonly accepted dogma espoused by CEOs and managers alike. This emphasis on assessing businesses on the basis of material accumulation, in the form of profits or wealth, as well as control over resources such as capital, natural resources, or monopoly rights or power over certain market segments have resulted in many instances where companies have prospered at the expense of costs on the environment as well as other costs incurred on employees, consumers, and the society at large. This approach overlooks humanity’s connection with society and nature, which is not surprising since such connection can only be accomplished through an understanding of the interconnectedness of all beings, both human and non-human. The ultimate test of a company to show their emphasis on humanistic values is to practice sustainability management, that is, to hold themselves to be accountable for the impacts of their actions on the environment and the global community (Montiel and Delgado-Ceballos 2014). Many of the current business practices are harmful to animals, vegetation, and human health. Advancing profit and economic gains by sacrificing the environment

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is never good business. It is short-sighted and irresponsible. If a business wants to humanize its operation, it needs to practice sustainability management. Specifically, the company must ensure compliance with environmental regulations, establish sustainable policies and initiatives, set sustainability performance goals that are strategic and ambitious, build awareness of sustainability programs within the company, and measure and report the effectiveness of sustainability management initiatives. We have seen progress towards these objectives in the developed world in terms of the creation of sustainability reports at most Fortune 500 companies. Also, the field of asset management has seen the explosive growth of socially responsible investment funds that make their investment choices based on ESG (environment, social, and governance) metrics that look beyond the traditional financial ones of profits and financial return. Extant literature points that a shift from a perspective based on economic rationality towards a spiritual perspective provides an alternative way of looking at sustainability (Ehrenfeld and Hoffman 2013). Daniels (2007) posit that Buddhism enables the transformation of an individual’s thinking in a way that “enhances prospects for sustainability”. One of the profound ways it accomplishes that is by fostering a deep feeling of connectedness, to self, to others, and to nature. On the other hand, the full extent to which Buddhism can influence and inform sustainability at a societal level, within the goals of a business, is yet to be fully explored. If alternative approaches to sustainability can be built where an understanding of interconnectedness is central to its definition, it could have the profound effect of challenging the way in which business success is defined. When this happens, we will be that much closer to seeing what humanizing business truly looks like.

References Anderson, Carol. 2013. Pain and its ending: The Four Noble Truths in the Theravada Buddhist Canon. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-81332-0. Argyle, Michael. 2001. The psychology of happiness. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Bakırtaşa, Hülya, Buluşa, Canberk, and Bakırtaş, İbrahim. 2014. The effects of materialism and consumer ethics on ecological behavior: An empirical study. European Journal of Sustainable Development, 3, 4, 125–134. ISSN: 2239-5938. 10.14207/ejsd Belk, Russel. 1984. Three scales to measure constructs related to materialism: Reliability, validity, and relationships to measures of happiness. In NA – Advances in consumer research volume 11, ed. Thomas C. Kinnear, 291–297. Provo: Association for Consumer Research. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2000. Abhidhammattha Sangaha: A comprehensive manual of Abhidhamma, 89. BPS Pariyatti Editions. Bhikkhu Bodhi. 2006. The Noble Eightfold Path: The way to the end of suffering. Retrieved 4 July 2006. Buswell, Robert E., and Lopez, Donald S. 2013. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University. ISBN 978-1-4008-4805-8 Chodron, Thubten. 2008 Six harmonies in a sangha community. In Importance of Vinaya. https:// thubtenchodron.org/2008/04/harmonious-­dharma-­communities/. Retrieved July 15, 2019. Daniels, P. 2007. Buddhism and sustainable consumption. In Ethical principles and economic transformation: A Buddhist approach, ed. L. Zsolnai, 35–60. New York: Springer.

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Donaldson, Thomas, and Lee E.  Preston. 1995. The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, and implications. The Academy of Management Review 20 (1): 65–91. Ehrenfeld, J.R., and A.J. Hoffman. 2013. Flourishing: A frank conversation about sustainability. California: Stanford University Press. Felbur, Raffa. 2015. Vimalakīrtinirdeśa. Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism 1: 274–282. Freeman, R.  Edward, and Alexander Moutchnik. 2013. Stakeholder management and CSR: Questions and answers. Umwelt Wirtschafts Forum 21 (1): 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s00550-­013-­0266-­3. Game, Annilee. 2007. Workplace boredom coping: Health, safety, and HR implications. Personnel Review 36 (5): 701–721. Gethin, Rupert. 1998. Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gross, Rita M. 1992. Buddhism after patriarchy: A feminist history, analysis and reconstruction of Buddhism, 43. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-1403-3. Harrison, Wicks, Parmar, and De Colle. 2010. Stakeholder theory, state of the art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harvey, Peter. 2015. The conditioned co-arising of mental and bodily processes within life and between lives. In A companion to Buddhist philosophy, ed. Emmanuel, Steven M.. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-119-14466-3 Ikeda, Daisaku. 2001. Gender equality in Buddhism. In The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra. World Tribune Press. https://www.sgi.org/ru/sgi-­president/writings-­by-­sgi-­president-­ikeda/a-­grand-­ declaration-of-gender-equality.html Keown, Damien. 2004. A dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-157917-2. ———. 2013. Chapter 4: The Four Noble Truths. In Buddhism: A very short introduction, 48–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lechner, Tamara. 2019. 5 Steps to detaching for a happier life. https://chopra.com/articles/5-­steps-­ to-­detaching-­for-­a-­happier-­life. Retrieved July 16, 2019. Lucas, Susan. 2019. How to get the best results from your employees. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/get-­results-­from-­your-­employees-­4021721. Retrieved July 15, 2019. McRae, John. 2004. The Sutra of Queen Śrīmālā of the Lion’s Roar and the Vimalakīrti Sutra (PDF). Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. ISBN 1886439311. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 12, 2014 (From Kumārajīva’s Chinese and featuring short introduction, glossary, and minor notes). Montiel, Ivan, and Javier Delgado-Ceballos. 2014. Defining and measuring corporate sustainability: Are we there yet? Organization and Management 27 (2): 113–139. Moore, Geoff. 2005. Humanizing business: A modern virtue ethics approach. Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (2): 237–255. Murcott, Susan. 1991. The First Buddhist women: Translations and commentary on the Therigatha, 4. Parallax Press. ISBN 978-0-938077-42-8. Phillips, Robert. 2003. Stakeholder theory and organizational ethics. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 66. ISBN 978-1576752685. Rampton, John. 2017 10 Ways to make your employees 10x more productive. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/304220. Retrieved July 15, 2019. Schaufeli, Wilmar, and Marisa Salanova. 2014. Burnout, Boredom and engagement in the workplace. In An introduction to contemporary work psychology, ed. Maria C.W. Peeters, Jan de Jonge, and Toon W. Taris. Hoboken: Wiley. Swart, Carrol. 1973. The worth of humanistic management: Some contemporary examples. Business Horizons 16 (3): 41–50. Villegas, Bernardo M. 2018. Humanizing the business sector. Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 13, 2018. https://opinion.inquirer.net/116717/humanizing-­business-­sector, Retrieved July 15, 2019. Williams, Paul. 2002, Buddhist thought (Kindle ed.). Taylor & Francis.

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Woodhead, Linda, and Partridge, Christopher. 1961. Religions in the modern world: Traditions and transformations. Kawanami, Hiroko (3rd ed.). Abingdon. ISBN 9780415858816. OCLC 916409066. Otto Chang, Ph.D., is the Paul E. Shaffer Professor of Accounting Emeritus at Purdue University Fort Wayne. He is an accounting and business educator with specialty in taxation, international accounting, business ethics and philosophy, corporate governance and social responsibility. He is a Buddhist practitioner in the Tian-Tai heritage.  

Chi Sheh, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at University of the West. He is a finance and business educator with specialty in financial markets, business ethics and philosophy, and social impact investing. He conducts research in the areas of market microstructure and behavioral finance, and specializes in applying experimental methods to the analysis of financial markets and human behavior. He is also the Director of the University of the West Socially Responsible Investment Fund, and the faculty advisor to the Sustainable Investing Club.  

Chapter 17

A Hindu Perspective on Humanizing Business Anantanand Rambachan

Introduction: Unity and Diversity “Hinduism,” is an astonishingly diverse tradition, suggested by the word “Hindu” itself. This term has been used at different times, and even at the same time, to signify geographical, religious, cultural and, in more recent times, national realities. “Hindu” is the Iranian variation for the name of a river that the Indo-Europeans referred to as the “Sindhu”, Greeks as the “Indos” and the British as the “Indus”. Those who inhabited the regions drained by the Indus river system were derivatively called Hindus. They did not share a homogenous religious culture and, today, the Hindu tradition reflects the astonishing variation in geography, language and culture across the Indian sub-continent. It helps to think of Hinduism as a large, ancient and extended family, recognizable through common features, but also reflecting the uniqueness of its individual members. Though generalizations are hazardous, various scholars have identified some common features and themes. (Puligandla 1975, 25–26; Organ 1974, 28–34). These include: (1) recognition of the significance of the four Vedas as sources of authoritative teaching. The four Vedas (Rg, Sama, Yajur and Atharva), are widely acknowledged by Hindus to contain revealed teachings, and acceptance of the authority of the Vedas is commonly regarded as necessary for Hindu orthodoxy, even though such acceptance may be merely formal and nominal. In reality, Hindus look to a wide variety of sacred sources that include texts like the Bhagavadgita, Ramayana and the Mahabharata. (2) the belief in a moral order and rebirth (karma and samsara), emphasizing human responsibility and the short and long-term consequences of actions. The idea here is that every volitional action produces a result that is determined by the nature of the action and the motives underlying these. The consequences of these actions may stretch into lives beyond the present one. (3) The A. Rambachan (*) St. Olaf College, USA, Apple Valley, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_17

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affirmation of an ultimate reality, spoken of as brahman, that is regarded as both transcendent and immanent; it is called by many names and imagined in diverse forms. (4) The view that ignorance (avidya) of the nature of this reality is the fundamental human problem and the primary cause of suffering. Ignorance is the assertion of separate selfhood, our failure to understand ourselves as identical with or part of an unlimited, interrelated reality. Ignorance expresses itself as self-­insecurity, a persistent sense of want and lack and this, in turn, leads to greed, an insatiable grasping after wealth and power with no thought of consequences for the common good. (5) An optimistic outlook flowing from the belief in the possibility of liberation (moksha). Liberation awakens us to the unity of life, frees us from self-­ centeredness and inspires us to lives committed to the common good. These common orientations provide the fabric, as it were, out of which a rich theological diversity is woven. Given the rich cultural diversity of the Indian sub-continent where the Hindu tradition developed, it will not surprise that the divine is represented in innumerable forms (murtis) and has countless names. Names and forms are anthropomorphic, theriomorphic and abstract; they include both the masculine and feminine. The facts of diversity, antiquity and practitioners numbering almost one billion across our world suggest that one will surely find Hindus who understand the different names and forms as signifying distinct divine realities and a polytheistic worldview. I venture to state, however, that most Hindus have a more complex understanding of the manyness of divine names and forms and the oneness of the divine. A verse of the Rg Veda (I.164.46) tells of “The One Being, the wise speak of in many ways: they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.” What we have here is the pervasive acknowledgement of one ultimate being (ekam sat), but spoken of differently by the wise (vipra bahuda vadanti). Those who name the divine as Agni, Yama or Matarisvan, are not, in reality, addressing themselves to different realities, but to one true being. One name is not true and all others false and one name does not include and represent all others. Each is a name for the one. Oneness and manyness are not exclusive; these are complementary.

Humanizing Business and Anthropocentrism I understand the principle and purpose of humanizing business to mean that mean that business enterprises ought to be committed to the flourishing and dignity of all human beings and to the service of the common good. The project of humanizing business excludes the instrumentalization of human beings for the sake of profit maximization, with no regard for harm inflicted on them, and especially on the poor and marginalized. Humanizing business requires assent to and operation within an ethical framework that gives priority to the avoidance of causing harm and commitment to the overcoming of suffering. It is ethically unacceptable to pursue profit through means that cause harm (himsā).

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From a Hindu perspective, however, humanizing business is problematic if it implies an anthropocentric focus that promotes the pursuit of human interests in ways that degrade the environment and recklessly exploit all other living beings for human ends. The natural world does not exist solely to serve human ends. Its value cannot be measured only by what it contributes to our existence. We are not at liberty to destroy and exploit everything we perceive as not necessary for our own prosperity. Theologically, the world invites our reverence and respect. It is a wondrous outpouring of the infinite divine that is present equally and identically in both the human and the world of nature. The Bhagavadgita 7: 8–9, invites us to see the divine in the taste of water, the brilliance in the moon and sun, in the pure fragrance of the earth and in the radiance of fire. The Svetasvatara Upanishad (4:3) speaks of the divine presence in “the dark blue bird, the green one with red eyes, the rain-cloud, the seasons and the oceans.” We are invited to see the beauty of the world as an expression of the infinite, through which we are connected intimately with all that exists. Humanizing business requires a commitment to ecological integrity and sustainability.

Humanizing Business and Human Dignity The obligation to humanize business, which I equate with a commitment to the universal common good, and the regard for human beings as ends in themselves, proceeds from the acknowledgment of the intrinsic dignity of every human being. Hindu traditions affirm unreservedly the equal existence of God in all. Isa Upanishad begins with the famous call to see everything in the world of movement as pervaded by God. There is no life outside of God and there is nothing that exists which is not sustained by God. In the perspective of the Bhagavadgītā (13:27), one sees truly only when one sees the supreme God existing equally in all beings. The living presence of God in all beings is the source of the inherent dignity and equal worth of every human being. It is our most fundamental antidote to any business practice that denies the personhood, worth and dignity of others. Such practices include forced labor, human trafficking, inadequate wages, unaffordable health care, child labor, and the exploitation of vulnerable human beings such as migrants and refugees. Put simply, we cannot honor and value God and devalue and dishonor human beings through business practices that cause harm and impede their flourishing. Our understanding of the divine requires diligence and discernment in identifying such practices and systems and articulating critiques from our theological commitments.

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 umanizing Business and the Universal Common H Good (Lokasangraha) The Bhagavadgita commends, on two occasions (3:20; 3:25), a commitment to the common good. The teacher, Krishna, urges his student, Arjuna, to consider the common good in all undertakings; commitment to the common good is commended and praised as superior to actions that are selfish and self-centered. The Sanskrit equivalent in the Bhagavadgita for the common good is lokasangraha. Lokasangraha is inclusive. It includes all human beings, but also the world of nature. It does not allow us to privilege unjustly the interests of a particular business, nation, religion, race or gender. It excludes the pursuit of personal and institutional interests in ways that violently impede the flourishing of all. It excludes trying to lift oneself or one’s institution by crushing others. Lokasangraha ensures that virtues are not privatized but applied publicly for peace, justice and flourishing of all. The common good is not served by an economic system that depletes our natural resources, eradicates our bio-diversity and adversely affects our climate. The public good becomes the measure of the meaning of all that we do. In the Hindu tradition, this concern for the common good is not limited to actions of individual human beings. It must also become normative for the policies and practices of corporations, institutions and states. We are all, individuals and institutions, called to commit to the common good in everything. The Hindu tradition that advocates for this commitment to the common good also provides its theological justification. At the heart of this theology is the understanding of the unity and interdependent character of existence. One of the important creation narratives occurs in the Taittiriya Upanishad (2.2.1) which offers a sequence of the emergence of the great elements and life from the infinite (brahman). The first to emerge is space; from space comes air; from air comes heat or fire; from fire comes water; from water comes the earth, from earth vegetation, from vegetation food and from food, living beings. The point is that we are formed of the universe, represent it in our bodies and always organically connected with it. The earth is in everything solid in our bodies, water in all that is liquid fire in the body’s warmth and energy, and air in the breath. Dualistic language that speaks of human beings and nature as separate realities is both false and dangerous. It is false because we are we an organic and integral part of the natural world, made from and embodying space, air, fire, water and earth. We do not exist independently. It is dangerous because it objectifies the natural world and contributes to the belief that we can commercially destroy the natural world without destroying ourselves. The interdependent character of existence that is the foundation of our commitment to the common good includes also our relationships with the human community. The Hindu tradition describes every human being as born into debt (rnam). To be human is to be indebted; one does not develop one’s human potential outside of a human community. The tradition emphasizes our indebtedness, among others, to the divine, to parents and ancestors, to teachers, to other human caregivers and to nature. We exist and have the potential to flourish because we are a part of a

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generous and supportive interdependent whole. The proper response to this understanding of our unity, indebtedness and interdependence is commitment to the common good and generosity. If we selfishly receive and exploit without generous self-giving, we deplete the resources of our world and become agents of suffering. Yajña is the term used in the Bhagavadgita to describe this generosity. Bhagavdgita (3:12) describes those who benefit from others’ giving without responding with generosity as thieves. There is no good reason why these teachings ought not to be applied also to business corporations. Business corporations are, after all, indebted to a variety of agents for their success. The text (3:13) likens those who are not committed to the common good to persons who selfishly cook only for themselves; virtuous persons committed to the common good cook both for themselves and for others. The food of the selfish is impure; the food of the virtuous is pure. Mutual commitment to the common good, teaches the Bhagavadgita (3:12) is the way ordained by the creator for human prosperity. It is the wish-fulfilling cow that provides for all human needs. It is shortsighted of businesses to think that they can prosper at the expense of wider community or by selfishly extracting and utilizing the resources of the community without contributing to its sustenance and wellbeing. Although enjoying many of the rights and privileges of individual persons and wealth and power that surpass nations, business corporations have not consistently concerned themselves with the common good. Because of the global nature of corporations, the rights and powers they enjoy are exercised often by shareholders who have no concern for the wellbeing of local communities where these businesses establish operations. The sole measure of success of many of these corporations is the maximization of profit and market share. Towards this end, consumerism is encouraged and relentless advertising generates artificial desires for more and more products to the long-term detriment of the common good.

Humanizing Business and Non-Hurting (Ahimsa) The unity of existence in the divine, the intrinsic dignity of every human being and the interdependent nature of existence are among the significant reasons that non-­ harming (ahimsa) is the cardinal virtue of Hindu ethics. In his understanding of the meaning of ahimsa, Gandhi explained that in its negative form it means abstention from injury to living beings. In its positive form, ahimsa is the practice of love and compassion (daya) for all. For Gandhi, ahimsa also means justice towards everyone and abstention from all forms of exploitation. In other words, ahimsa is consistent with a commitment to the common good. When translated into an active virtue, ahimsa requires that we properly inquire into the causes of human suffering with the aim of overcoming these. We cannot ignore the suffering of human beings when they lack opportunities to attain the necessities for dignified and decent living or when suffering is inflicted through oppression and injustice based on gender, birth or race. Working to overcome

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suffering means identifying those political, social and economic structures that cause and perpetuate suffering. The unmistakable call to be one with the suffering other requires nothing less. “No man,” wrote Gandhi, “could be actively non-violent and not rise against social injustice no matter where it occurred.” (Gandhi 1980, 75). It is this perspective that led Gandhi to emphasize the need for economics to be infused with an ethical concern and focus. “True economics,” said Gandhi, “never militates against the highest ethical standard, just as all true ethics to be worth its name at the same time must also be good economics.” (Gandhi, 1969, 321–322). We fail in our purpose of humanizing business if we do not interrogate corporations with questions about ethical responsibility and purpose. In the Hindu tradition, humanizing business requires a commitment to doing no harm (ahimsa) and to the promotion of the common good (lokasangraha).

Humanizing Business and Caste Although acknowledging core Hindu teachings that affirm human dignity, concern for the common good and non-hurting, we cannot ignore social structures in the Hindu tradition that contradict and are in opposition to such fundamental principles. Such structures also impede efforts to humanize business. With regard to the Hindu tradition, one such relevant structure is caste. Theories abound about the origin of caste, most of which are speculative and inconclusive. Whatever might have been its historical origin, the caste system evolved, like race, into a hierarchical and unequal ordering of society into four groups, differentiated on the basis of ritual purity and occupation. At the top of the social order are the brahmins, teachers, priests and custodians of the sacred knowledge. Following the brahmins are the kṣhatriyas, warriors and political leaders, defenders of the community and guarantors of political order and stability. Next comes the vaishyas, merchants and farmers, the generators and distributors of wealth, and the shudras, who are laborers and servants of all others. The system also led to the creation of a large group of outcastes or untouchables who were considered ritually impure, unequal, and denied all privileges and rights belonging to members of the caste order. Similar to race, caste is a hierarchical or graded ordering of human beings based on notions of purity and impurity. Those in the upper echelons of the caste order are ascribed greater purity. Those outside the fourfold order are impure and capable of polluting others by contact. Hence they are regarded as untouchable (asprishya). Rules and rituals evolved to prohibit and limit relationships and contact between pure and impure groups. These include commensality or eating restrictions. Contact was also controlled by endogamy restrictions which limited marriage to partners within a caste and by physical segregation in local communities. Most importantly, membership in a particular caste is determined by birth. One is born into a caste, even as one is born into a so-called race. Although there is change in the contemporary Hindu world, birth determined one’s occupation and thus defined and limited one’s human possibilities. In the assumptions of inequality and the limits placed on

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freedom, caste violates human dignity, the obligation not to inflict injury and the commitment to the common good. Obviously the common good does not include all human beings. We should not overlook the fact that caste is fundamentally exploitative. Exploitation of labor and limited access to material resources were greater as one went down in the caste hierarchy. Purity and impurity distinctions were employed to assign places in the social order, create boundaries and exploit. This legacy continues. One recent study shows that despite a general improvement in income levels among all Indians, poverty is still highly concentrated among traditionally disadvantaged groups such as the Dalits and Adivasis.1 If the humanizing of business means that business enterprises ought to be committed to the flourishing and dignity of all human beings and to the service of the common good the social and economic inequities of caste must be addressed.

Humanizing Business and the Four Goals of Life In its description of the good life, the Hindu tradition has identified four complementary goals: (dharma), wealth (artha), pleasure (kama), and liberation (moksha). Hinduism recognizes that every human being has certain basic material wants such as the need for food, clothing and shelter and it is legitimate that these be decently satisfied. Hinduism does not view involuntary poverty favorably and understands it a source of suffering. The tradition does not see the business enterprises as intrinsically opposed to the common good. The second goal of the full human life is kama which refers to pleasure in all its forms. Life would be unattractive without the joys that we derive from music, song, dance, art, sports, good food, friends and family. Hindus are not so spiritually minded that they despise the gain and enjoyment of material things. Kama includes sensual as well as aesthetic enjoyment. Sculpture, music and dance flourished with the blessings of the Hindu tradition and Hindus love to celebrate life through these forms. The good life is more than just having the ascetic minimum for survival. Humanizing business requires a commitment to decent and fair wages for employees (artha) but also a concern for the emotional wellbeing of employees and a work environment that is pleasant and that minimizes stress (kama). The third goal of life is dharma. This word is quite difficult to translate into English. It is derived from a Sanskrit root “dhr” which means to support, or to maintain. It includes all the ethical values that Hinduism understands as necessary for the support and flourishing of individuals and communities. It is often translated as virtue, obligation or morality. In Hindu mythology, the symbol of dharma is a bull, whose four feet are truth, purity, compassion and generosity. These are some of the important values associated with the practice of dharma. As a goal of life, dharma

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reminds us that we live in a social context and we cannot pursue our individual or corporate goals in life, such as wealth and pleasure, with no regard for the wellbeing of others. The attainment of wealth and pleasure by causing pain and suffering to others or by denying them the right to satisfy these needs is contrary to dharma. Hinduism requires that we broaden our perspective to include the good of others. There are no good reasons why the implications of dharma, and especially its commitment to the social good, should not apply to businesses. Wealth must not be sought in ways that involve harm, deception or fraud. I have already commented on the significance of non-hurting as a cardinal value associated with dharma. Wealth that is acquired through violent and unjust methods that inflict suffering on others is condemned. There is a similar condemnation of wealth that is used to oppress, devalue and demean others. All of these teachings about wealth imply that wealth is distorted when it is acquired and utilized in ways that harm the common good. The misuse of wealth by individuals and corporations contributes to its unsustainability and is detrimental to the common good. We ought not to promote wealth as a goal to be pursued without ethical considerations, disregarding the wisdom of the tradition about what truly makes for human happiness. Though giving approval to the pursuit of wealth and pleasure within the ethical framework of a regard for the common good, Hindu traditions call attention to the limits of these ends. A life circumscribed by these ends is ultimately unsatisfactory and inadequate and leaves us wanting and restless. The fourth and highest goal of human existence in Hinduism is moksha (liberation). The creation and enjoyment of wealth are ultimately subservient to higher ethical and religious purposes.

Humanizing Business and Human Transformation Since business corporations, at least as legal entities, did not exist during the early history of most of our religious traditions, our teachings and teachers do not speak directly about their responsibilities or offer specific perspectives. Hindu traditions, however, are eloquent about the fundamental causes of human suffering and offer visions of the good life for all. In the case of the Hindu traditions, the root causes of suffering are ignorance, greed and greedful actions (avidya-kama-karma), spoken of as the three knots of the heart. Ignorance is the assertion of separate selfhood, our failure to understand ourselves as identical with or part of an unlimited, interrelated reality. Ignorance expresses itself as self-insecurity, a persistent sense of want and lack and this, in turn, leads to greed, an insatiable grasping after wealth and power with no thought of consequences for the common good. When individual choices and actions spring from ignorance and greed, the consequence is inevitable suffering for oneself and for others. If ignorance and greed are conditions that afflict us as individuals, it is true also that these afflictions extend to the group or collective identities that we profess as members of nations, ethnicities, genders and races. When the profession of group identities is characterized by ignorance and greed, these demean other identities and become oppressive and

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unjust. The corporation is another more recent expression of our collective identities. Here the knots of the heart (ignorance-greed-greedful actions), as we see in so many cases, get institutionalized in the corporate personhood and identity. The maximization of profits through growth becomes the sole concern, with little or no concern for the common good. Where there is greed, individual or institutionalized, there is never enough and there is little concern about outcomes beyond one’s own gains. In this matter, I want to emphasize the historical role of our traditions as teachers, educators and disseminators of wisdom. We must vigorously assume this public role for the sake of the common good. As teachers, our analysis and critique of the causes of suffering in ignorance and greed must not be limited to the individual. It is urgent that this be extended to business corporations. Because of the global reach of corporations and their growing power and wealth, they cause suffering that outweighs anything that individuals can do. Religious traditions concerned with the overcoming of suffering cannot ignore the role and impact of corporations. Those who lead, manage, work for and invest in corporations are also members of our traditions and participate in our communities. As primary sources of ethical teachings, religious traditions have a responsibility to instruct that our moral responsibility for the common good is not limited to our role as individuals but must be extended to the collectivities, the institutionalized selves in which we participate, politically or economically. We do not abdicate or hand over our ethical obligations to care for others, to share and to be generous when we participate in collectivities. We cannot drop our intrinsic values at the corporate door each morning, compartmentalizing ourselves and our ethics. Greed and all its negative consequences are not justified or ignorable when exercised in the name of a corporation or group. Our religious traditions are profound wellsprings of wisdom about the dangers of greed and they offer rich theological resources for a commitment to the common good. This wisdom and these resources need to be shared with the corporate world. Our traditions do not serve the common good if our deepest teachings stop with the individual. In a world where the prevailing voices speak for a limited good, the good of the nation or a specific community, or the corporation, our traditions have the vision and potential to speak powerfully for the universal common good. We must ensure that our voices are not mute or compromised, and that we are not seduced by power and wealth. Humanizing business is an obligation necessitated by the deepest teachings of the Hindu tradition.

Bibliography Gandhi, Mahatma. 1969. The Voice of Truth. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing. ———. 1980. All Men Are Brothers. New York: Continuum. Organ, T.W. 1974. Hinduism. Woodbury: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. Puligandla, R. 1975. Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Shri Bhagavadgita. 1993. Trans. Winthrop Sargeant Albany: State University of New York Press. Upanisads. 1996. Trans. Patrick Olivelle. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Anantanand Rambachan is Professor of Religion, Philosophy and Asian Studies at Saint Olaf College. Rambachan has been involved in the field of interreligious relations and dialogue for over twenty-five years, as a Hindu participant and analyst. He is the author of several books including The Advaita Worldview: God, World and Humanity (SUNY Press 2012), A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two is Not One (SUNY Press 2014), Essays in Hindu Theology (Fortress 2019). His writings include a series of commentaries on the Ramayana. The British Broadcasting Corporation transmitted a series of 25 of his lectures around the world.  

Chapter 18

A Daoism Perspective on Humanizing Business Yanxia Zhao

Daoism is famous for its natural centred philosophy and its nature-human unified religion. People may wonder: How can a nature centred tradition contribute to a human norm focused business field? The fact is, although Daoism is famous for being a nature centred philosophy, yet the deep concern of this philosophy is indeed for the best of humans’ wellbeing and sustainability. As Craig Johnson noticed, ‘Taoism (pronounced Daoism) is the path to both professional and personal fulfilment’ (Johnson 2000, 84). From Daoist perspective, different from the way of heaven which is ‘taking away things from the one who are sufficient to offer them to those who are insufficient’, the way of humans is to ‘take away from insufficiency to those who already in sufficiency’ (Laozi 1984, 665). To compare these two ways, it is not hard to find out that the natural way can allow myriad things to be operated in a sustainable and perfect manner, while the human way does not able to even keep the humans alone in a sustainable and wellbeing manner. Thus, in order to ensure human society to live in a better and sustainable way, human individuals and organizations need to follow the way of nature, that is, the way of Heaven and Earth. As Daodejing states: ‘Humans follow the principle of the Earth; the Earth the Heaven; the Heaven the Dao; and the Dao the Nature’ (Laozi 1984, 619). Therefore, to put nature into the centre of consideration is to ensure humans can find their true selves, connect with their innate natures, and live in a fulfilled, natural and high quality long life. Because of this, Daodejing, the fountainhead of both Daoist religion and philosophy has indeed to be able to ‘offer interesting perspectives on the relationship between personal development and sustainability’(Gerstner 2011, 675). As Ansgar Gerstner declares, ‘Although the Daodejing is a text that is more than 2,400 years old, its concepts regarding leadership nevertheless fit well into current discussions on

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sustainability and responsibility’(Gerstner 2011, 675). Therefore, Daoism indeed has a perfectly fitting characteristic to humanizing business. Then, what can Daoism contribute to modern business theory and practices? As we already know that the reason why humanizing business is being proposed is because that there are serious problems appeared in the traditional way of doing business, that is, to see business as a place merely for people to make money and to earn profits. People in business fields would like to believe that if only they have fully completed their legal and moral responsibilities as a company and an employer, they have done enough. Neither do they have any responsibility in caring whether or not their business have potentially or in fact brought harm to either their society or their natural environment; nor do they need to consider and care how to satisfy their employees’ personal spiritual or physical need. However, from Daoist perspective, business is a tool only for individual and organizations to develop their potentials and to fulfil their heaven endorsed human innate natures, and therefore, businesses should be designed and established in a holistic way and to be operated and managed in a holistic manner.

Philosophy Behind Daoist Holistic Business In his article ‘Taoist Leadership Ethics’, Craig Johnson clearly states that ‘Taoism addressed many of the ethical shortcomings of dominant Western culture, but… At the very least, leaders need to recognize that Taoism is an integrated philosophical system with its own set of human nature, way of understanding and spirituality.’(Johnson 2000, 84) Thus, to understand of Daoist business and leadership, we have to discuss the key concept of Daoist philosophy.

Dao, Nature and Human Being In Daoist philosophy, ‘Dao’ is the central concept. Dao not only connects to the nature and the law of the nature, but also the innate nature of human being and the state of formless ‘wuji’ where all potential possibilities may form from it. All these will lead Daoism to a holistic understanding of business. From Daoist perspective, Dao is the origin and source of the universe and the universe is a holistic natural continuous developing world, while humans are only part of the natural world. In front of Dao, humans have no difference from the other living and non-living beings. Since the natural law (the way of nature) is the ruling principle of the whole world, and thus, humans same as all other beings on earth, will all have to follow the way of the nature. More than this, ‘Heaven can long lasting and Earth can long enduring’; and ‘why can the Heaven and Earth endure for a long age is due to its avoidance of self-creation’ (Laozi 1984, 601). This means that to follow the way or the principle of nature rather than create something new for

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one’s own purpose, can ensure the sustainability and safety of humans to exist for a long period of time. In the Book of Changes, it claims: ‘There is a similarity between him and heaven-earth, and hence there is no contrariety between him and them. His knowledge embraces all things, and his course is (intended to be) helpful to all under the sky; - and hence he falls into no error. He acts according to the need of exigency of circumstances rather than being carried away by their current appearance; he rejoices the ultimate goal of Heaven and also knows its ordinations; - and thus he has no anxieties’(Lou Yulie 2016, 235). As Yangzhu says ‘the treasure part of intelligence is to cherish the existence of oneself; the unworthiness part of a force is to be used for invading objects’ (Yang 1979, 234) and therefore, ‘following the movement of the heart to act, and with no-­ violation against what is favoured by the nature, then people will not be persuaded by fame’ (Yang 1979,  220). Therefore, all human activities including business design, business operation and business management, should be all under the guidance of such a natural centred sustainable principle. In the meantime, since all myriad things are thrived from the Dao and are the manifestation of the Dao and therefore, humans neither have right to disturb the natural harmonious order, nor have rights to abuse or harm the other beings through their own benefit focused so called creative acts. If humans dare to use their human wisdom to manipulate the nature and the natural harmony, not only the purity and genuineness of human heart will be stained. As Zhuangzi explained this logic in thus way: ‘Where there are machines, things will have to be done in a machine way; when things to be done in a machine way, it will request the doers to have a machine like hearts. With a machine like heart in your breast, there will be a lacking in pure whiteness. The gods of life [of the body] will be disturbed and there will no longer be a place there for the Tao to dwell’ (Zhuangzi 1994, 129). The nature will also feed them back with harsh punishment even death penalty. That means, if a company was established, operated and managed under the principle of against natural harmony, in consequence, such a company will hardly achieve long-term flourish, if it is not facing immediate death. Business managed in such a manner will definitely encounter a huge risk in its sustainability. In another words, if only a company or a business organization is designed and managed in the manner of following the Dao of Nature, such kind business would have chance to be successfully operated for a longer time. Because, only could such type of business be able to gain a full support from both its employees and its social and natural environments. Indeed, as part of the holistic wholeness, a business company of any kind will all need a sustainable natural environment and a harmonious social environment to ensure its wellbeing and well doing. Humans including their societies and organizations all cannot self-stand without the support of the society and nature. However, since the natural resources that a business company are relying on always have limitations as well as their own operational order, thus in order to keep the already over explored natural resources to be sustainable, it is essential for humans to apply virtues of ‘Jian’(simplicity), ‘pu’ (undecorated) and ‘se’(economy) into one’s business operation and management. Therefore, it is important for business companies and

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organizations to consider how to keep a harmonious relationship with the nature and the society in the very beginning of both its planning and operational process.

Dao and the True Human Innate Nature From Daoist perspective, Dao is not only the source and the principle of the universe but also it manifests itself into the existences and developments of all beings. Thus, every being in fact shares the same essence of the Dao in their innate natures. Therefore, the real meaning of everything is to fully develop the potential of its own innate nature. ‘Things directly coming out of its origin it called as heavenly nature, to nurture and complete such a nature is what humans can do. To be able to nurture what heaven produced rather than twist their heavenly nature can be named as the Son of Heaven’ (Lushi Chunqiu 1984, 1364). Taking humans as an example, the innate nature of a human individual is what the heaven has given to/indorsed within him/her individual life. The meaning of human life therefore is to develop out what she/he is best at in one’s potential from within. Thus, a real value or a true nature of a business, or any other works that humans have to do or would like to do, should all be something that not only can sustain their own and family lives, but also can act as a platform or tool for them to develop their own potentials that already within them. As Autry and Michell state in their book, Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching: The more you embody these [Taoist] teachings, the more the scattered parts of your life fall into place and become a seamless whole; work seems effortless; your heart opens by itself to all the people in your life; you have time for everything worthwhile; your mind becomes empty, transparent, serene; you embrace sorrow as much as joy, failure as much as success; you unthinkingly act with integrity and compassion; and you find that you have come to trust life completely (Autry and Mitchell 1988, xviii).

This means, earning money from business can only satisfy the bottom needs of human individuals; humans should have more and much higher expectations from the work they are undertaking. In fact, if a business can be designed as a platform for their employees to develop their potentials and creativities, such a business will have sufficient vital force to be sustainable and growing bigger and stronger. On the contrary, if a business is designed in a manner of not only supressing its employees creativity but also having no space for their personal developments, such a business will neither have vital energy for sustain and grow, nor the way to attract excellent employees to work for it. So, to provide a friendly, harmonious, and flexible working environment, it is essential for a business to nourish and produce more creative, effective excellent work force for itself. In short, from Daoist perspective, a business company or every working place for humans should be a place to help individual to realize their potential creativity rather than a place to suppress human creative nature. A business with the focus purely on money and financial profit is far away from an ideal Daoist business.

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Wuji and Daoist Holistic Business In Daoist cosmology, the ‘One’ being generated first from the Dao is the ‘Qi’ (the energy), and the original state of thus One/Qi is ‘Wuji’ (the Infinite Energy). Wuji is a state where the formless energy with all potential power and full possibility can form into anything in any style. However, when the inner power De started the changing process of the Dao, change becomes inevitable. The second step of the Dao in its changing process is from the One to generate the Two: ‘The Great Oneness generated the two aspects which is where the Yin and Yang come out of’ (Lushi Chunqiu 1984, 1392). When the Two have formed within the One but not been separated yet from each other, this state is ‘Taiji’, the Great Ultimate. Taiji is a harmonious unity of two different forces of yin and yang. In such a state, although yin and yang as two different forces play different roles and have different functions and contributes, yet they still are not entirely divided from each other and still belong to one holistic unity; and the relationship between them are supporting and complementing, with no conflict to each other: ‘The myriad things were generated from the Great Oneness and transformed by the yin and yang.’ (Lushi Chunqiu 1984, 1392). From this Daoist understanding of cosmology it can be seen that Wuji, the infinite energy, is the closest one toward the Dao. Since Wuji is a formless state with all potentials, and has a characteristic of changeable flexibility, this make this state closer to the perfect and ultimate good of the Dao. From Daoist perspective, to use strict regulations to manage a business and severe punishment to control employees will definitely supress the creativity of the employee and restrain the potential of a business. This in a long run will not be good for the development of that business at all. Base on this cosmology, Daoism creates a ‘wei wuwei’(acting in non-action) leadership style. They believe that the environment created by non-action leadership will be a productive one without involving any kind of constant prompts and interference. Since the constant prompts and interference were considered as interrupting the natural balance (Lin et  al. 2013,  94). This mode of action (acting in non-action) allows for accomplishments and achievements in a sustainable way. (Gerstner 2011, 676).

Equality of Yin-Yang and Taiji Although from religious spiritual level, Daoism emphasises on the unified Oneness and return to the Dao; from both cosmological and philosophical level, Daoism put more emphasis on the equality of the two of Yin and Yang: ‘one yin and one yang together is called as the Dao’ (Lou Yulie 2016,  236) and believes all beings are compromise by yin and yang: ‘Tao gave birth to the One; the One gave birth to the Two, the Two gave birth to the Three and the Three to the Ten Thousands things. Things of Ten thousands all carry the yin on the back and embrace the yang, and all

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blend the breath to create harmony’ (Laozi 1984, 635). Therefore, the collaboration of the two opposite forces of yin and yang are the source of creativity and creation: ‘Due to the penetration and engagement between Heaven and Earth, ten thousand things formed their essence; because of the reconstruction of life force through the male and female, ten thousands things were born’ (Lou 2016, 251). Therefore, the communication and multi-transformation and multi-corresponding to each other is essential to the development and completion of the myriad things: ‘the multi-­ corresponding between heaven and earth made ten thousands things into being and the multi-corresponding of sages making the world in peace’ (Lou 2016, 118). The harmony of yin and yang is called as taiji. The harmonious taiji state is the second closest state toward the Dao, and in taiji state, although the role, the function, and the attribution of yin and yang are different, yet they are equal in position and statue: they multi support each other, and they both have same important roles to play. Therefore, both of them need to be respected and accounted as important part of the whole. The relationship between yin and yang needs to be mutual and harmonious. To apply this yin-yang and taiji theory to the business management, many relationships within and outside of company can be viewed from a new vision. As the yin-yang relationship can stand for the female-male relationship, the team member and leader relationship, the Junior and senior relationship, the employee and employer relationship, the customer and business company relationship, as well as the relationship between the company and its social and natural environment, thus, if only this taiji and yin-yang harmony is applied into company relationships, the harmonious relationships between the employer and the employee, between the senior and the junior, and between male and female employees within the company all can be established. More than this, the harmonious relationship between company and customers, between company and its local community and society, as well as the relationship between company and its natural environment can also be established. If only a harmonized holistic whole mode of taiji is applied into business operation and management in order to allow above mentioned opposite parties in an equal and multi support taiji situation, such a business can be run with the most desirable outcome and greatest achievement.

Special Value of Human Life and Human Heart Daoism, especially Daoist religion puts a heavy focus on human life, and on how to prolong human life to longevity even to immortality. From Daoist religious perspective, human life is a treasure. Although in terms of human life as the manifestation of the Dao, there is no difference between human life and other forms of live. However, since human life is composed by the balance of yin and yang, which makes human not only have the physical body, but also consciousness and spirituality, and this puts humans in a better position to experience and to pursue the Dao. In

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this sense, human life is a treasure. Because human life is a treasure, thus to maintain it on its best condition and to develop out of its full potentiality are necessary. How to maintain human individual life and develop individual full potentials? From Daoist point of view, to keep the original innate nature of human individual into an intact state and allow one to look inside to connect oneself with one’s innate nature and in the meantime to keep one’s heart to be pure, simple and peaceful are the essential condition for one’s self-realization and full development (Zhao 2014, 183). For the Daoist, societies, including businesses and states, are only tools to help humans to experience and return to the Dao. Therefore, the most important aim of doing business is to provide a platform for both the employer and the employees to develop their own potentials. To earn money for satisfying their essential needs of self-cultivation and self-realization is the second important aim of doing business. The Daoism never encourage people to take earning rich or fame through business as the aim of individuals who are doing business, nor promoting ideas of earning honour and respect through doing business. Of course, to use oneself as a tool to earning fame, reputation, rich and honour, or even harm ourselves to make these listed achievements are strongly against by Daoism (Zhao 2014, 178). Thus, a business only focus on money-making is definitely not a good business. A good business in Daoist perspective has to a business who can focus on how to provide an effective platform for both its employer and employees to develop their full creativity and potentiality. As Ansgar has recognized, ‘In the Daodejing, personal development and leadership personality are seen as the driving forces behind the development of true sustainability in operational processes and interactions, whether the context be business, political, or social governance’ (Gerstner 2011, 675).

Daoist Style Business Management In the ‘Sovereignty: the Tao Principle of Self Management’ in book The Tao of Relationship Maintenance for Mind Controllers: A Hypnotic Guide to Long-Term Care & Deliberate Change Management, Joseph Crown declares that Holistic is the central characteristic of Daoist style business management (Crown 2016, 17). Silent personal modelling guidance through altruistic action just as water is the typical characteristic Daoist style leadership. To use Non-action and Softness to mobilize everybody to work in the company to develop their maximum potential and creativity is the Daoist way and method to ensure the continuity of a business in development and success; the Three Treasures of ‘Ci (parental like of love and kindness), Jian (simplicity) and Bugan wei tianxia xian  (to be cautious in doing something entirely new for the world under heaven)’ act as the strategy of business design and operation.

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Holistic Characteristic of Daoist Business Management Applying harmony into different relationships is the main manifestation of the holistic Daoist business characteristic. According to Laozi: ‘Empty your mind of all thoughts, maintain the deepest harmony,’ this is the way to ensure one ‘Become a part of All Things’ (Laozi 1984, 609). Since everybody comes out of the same source, being able to ‘become a part of all things’ will allow one to be able to ‘merge with source’ (Laozi 1984, 609). If everything is seen from the original source, then there will be no struggle but tolerance and impartiality prevailing in dealing relationships among each other. Based on this logic, Laozi, the founder of Daoism and author of Daode Jing, calls the process of ‘Merging with the source’ as a process of ‘harmonizing’ (Laozi 1984, 609). Such a process of ‘merging with the source’ is also known as the cycle of destiny by Laozi. For him, to Know ‘the cycle of destiny’ is equal to know the ‘Absolute’; and ‘Knowing the Absolute is called insight’. ‘To know the Absolute is to be tolerant. What is tolerant becomes impartial’ (Laozi 1984, 609). If only things are impartial, they become powerful, this is the effective way to ensure things to be successful rather than become part of misfortune: ‘What is impartial becomes powerful; What is powerful becomes natural; What is natural becomes Dao’ (Laozi 1984, 609). Otherwise, ‘Do not know the Absolute Is to recklessly become a part of misfortune’ (Laozi 1984, 609). How to practise such a holistic management in Business? To cultivate oneself to become a person who can have insights on things, who know where the cycle of destiny or the absolute lies, and how one can apply tolerance and impartial into business relationships. Thus, personal cultivation is essential for Daoist holistic business model. The request of personal internal cultivation for the purpose of connecting to one’s innate nature is not only applied to the employers and the senior managers of a business organization, but also to the normal workers and any single individual who works at the company. Different from current business world where business is a place for employer to earn fortune/richness and employees to earn life living, the Daoist idea of business is a place which could provide platform to enable people to earn their livings, but also to develop their special skills and talent that are connected to their unique innate natures. So personal development and personal realization related individual cultivation is essential for everybody who work in a business environment.

Water-Like Leadership Style Since 1980s, Daoist scholars have been often quoted in discussions of empowerment and those interested in exploring the relationship between Taoism and leadership (Johnson 2000, 85). Among them John Herder’s The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age (1985), Stephen Thomas Chang’s The

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Integral Management of Tao: Complete Achievement (1988) and Bob Messing’s The Tao of Management: Tao Te Ching adapted for a New Age (1988) are those very famous ones in 1980s. Stanley M. Herman’s The Tao at Work (1994), Diane Dreher’s The Tao of Personal Leadership (1995), James Autry & Stephen Mitchell’s Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching (1988) are those famous in 1990s. Yoshifumi Taguchi’s Tao Management: Japanese Management Philosophy Based on the Tao Te Ching (2006), and Joseph W. Mayo and John Everett Button’s Chaos to Clarity: The Tao of Risk Management (2015) are typical examples after 2000. Most Daoist business promoters and believers believe that following Daoist principles could make leaders more collaborative, creative and flexible and therefore could possess more highly desirable qualities in a decentralized, rapidly changing work environment. They also believe that Daoist leaders can experience a sense of inner peace or balance which often missing in modern business world.(Johnson 2000. 85) Because Daoist business management always started from self and health management, as Rei K. Chou and Rei-­Kwen Chiou has discussed in Tao Of Health: The Chinese Art Of Stress Management, Health, And Longevity (2001) and Samuel Beasley discussed in his book Sovereignty: The Tao Principle of Self-Management in 2018. According to Lee, the ideal Daoist personality was inspired by the characteristics of water, which consists of the following essential attributes: altruism, modesty, flexibility, transparency, and softness (Lee et al. 2005, 24). In the book of Daodejing, it claims that Water is the one so close to the Dao: ‘The Highest Virtue is like water. The character of water is to benefit the ten thousands creatures, yet itself does not take any credits from its merits; beyond this, it contents a place where all crowd would distain. This marks it so like the Dao (Laozi 1984, 601). Why water is like the Dao? According to Daode jing, the fundamental character of the Dao is ‘to generate and nourish’: ‘The way of heaven is beneficial without harm; while the way of the sage is act without striving’ (Laozi 1984, 669). ‘To generate them but never lay claim to them, acting on them for their establishment yet never lean upon them, to guide them as an elder yet never preside them. This is so called unfathomable virtue’ (Laozi 1984, 603). Water has exactly similar characters as this. First, water is altruistic. All species and organisms depend on water. Without water, none of them can survive. Water is always silently supporting life without demanding anything in return. Thus, good Daoist leaders should learn this altruistic character from water: to be supportive and beneficial to not only their team members but also their social and natural environments, yet remaining silence and lower position to avoid fame and honour claiming. Why should leaders should learn from water for this altruistic character? Laozi suggested that thus an altruistic character can actually help people to achieve something great in the end. He claims that, for those who ‘allow ten thousands things to depend on him/her for existence, and for those who make things success without claiming an ownership of the success, and for those who always nourish ten thousands things but never intent to control them’, although they never intend to be followed as a great leader, people will go to follow them to make them the great leaders

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(Laozi 1984, 627). He believes that one ‘could finally achieve a greatness due to his/ her none intension of being great’ (Laozi 1984, 627). Modern research has also suggested that leaders who display self-sacrificial altruistic behaviour lead their followers more effectively than those without self-sacrificial altruism; (Choi and Mai-Dalton 1998, 476) and this might be an evidence for the effective function of the Daoist wateristic model leadership in practice. Second, Water has a character of modesty. Laozi says, ‘He who knows glory yet cleaves to ignominy, will becomes like a valley (who can receives all things into himself)’ (Laozi 1984, 622). ‘The sage wants only things that are unwanted, set no store by products difficult to get, learning things the others don’t want to learn and turning all men back to the things they have left behind. By doing so, the ten thousand creatures may be restored to their self-so. This is why the sages do things but not dare to act’ (Laozi 1984, 655). The water has exactly such a ‘modest’ character as the Dao: although all living beings all need water to nourish them and water is always supporting them all in accordance with their particular needs; yet water never want to take credit from any of them; it always puts itself in the lowest place where nobody will strive for. Laozi observed that if only one is altruistic, humble and modest to others, conflict among people would never happen: ‘Simply don’t content, then amiss can be avoid’ (Laozi 1984, 601). More than this, from Daoist perspective, leading behind the scene and supporting in a silent humble mode, is the best leadership that can ensure a great success of the action under the leadership of this leader. A silent modelling style of leadership without of management and control can ensure a success of an action: How did the great rivers and oceans get their kingship over the hundred lesser streams? Through the merit of being lower than they. Therefore, the sage in order to be above the people must speak as though he were lower than the people, in order to guide them he must put himself behind them. Only thus can the Sage be top and the people (yet) not be crushed by his weight. Only thus can he guide and the people (yet) not be lead into harm. Indeed in this way everything under heaven will be glad to be pushed by him and will not find his guidance irksome. This he does by not striving. And because he does not strive, none can contend with him (Griffith 1997, 70).

Thirdly, Softness is another virtue to be associated with the characteristics of water, which despite its softness can have quite penetrative and corrosive powers (Gerstner 2011, 678). As stated in Daode Jing: ‘The softest one in the world can drive the hardest one under Heaven and Earth’ (Laozi 1984, 636) and ‘the weak and soft can defeat the strong and hard’ (Laozi 1984, 628). ‘Nothing under heaven is softer or more yielding than water; but when it attacks hard and resistant there is not one of them that can prevail. For then can find no way of altering it. That the Yielding conquers the resistant and the soft conquers the hard is a fact know by all men, yet utilized by none’ (Laozi 1984, 666). That is why humble and modesty plays such an important role in Daoism. When many cultures value a sense of authority, assertiveness, aggressiveness and competitiveness, and promote ‘hard as iron’ as a heroic character, Daoist enhance a soft and gentle manner of leadership and believe that a business culture characterised by forbearance would be considered by the Daoism as a key to success and creativity:

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Flexibility is the fourth characteristic of water. ‘The sage has not heart of his own; he uses the heart of the people as his heart’ (Laozi 1984, 640). It is a natural way that if you want to remain full, you have to be twisted first; to become straight, you have to let yourself bent; to become full you have to be hollow’ (Laozi 1984, 616), so the water is always keeping itself as flexible as possible in order to deal with any unexpected circumstances and uncertain changes. ‘This capability of flexibility, may it be in terms of thinking, decision-making, or solutions-finding, can be also linked to the concept of change, which is fundamental in Daoism’ (Hannig 2019). This adaptable and flexible of water lends to a great deal of wisdom to leadership. Water can stay in a container of any shape, ‘water has no shape but that of the container’ (Lu 2001, 280). As Lee has recognized: Good leaders can adjust themselves to any environment and situation just as water does to a container….. Maintaining flexibility and adapting to the dynamics of change, like water following its path, are probably the best options for a leader. There is no such thing as the best leadership style or governing method across time and space in the world; rather, the best principle is being flexible and fluid, finding the appropriate way for here and now (Lee et al. 2008, 92).

This characteristic of the water closely connected to water’s another characteristic, that is: ‘self-transformation’ or ‘self-cultivation’. Water never strives for its fixed form of existence and it becomes vapour when it meets hot temperature and ice when it meets cold temperature. It can be transformed as blood or milk, and it can also become river stream and sea waves. It can be as pure as crystal but also can be as turbid as mud. It has a capacity of transforming itself in accordance with the requirement of natural environment. Applying this self-transforming character into human self- development, self-cultivation come into needing. In the business management field, since the practice of wu wei requires an abstaining from force, enforcement and interference, and therefore such a practice will requires not only ‘a proper communication of the vision through all channels’, but also all the people involved in this vision to have a “mindset of continuous improvement” (Gerstner 2011, 677). Thus, individual self-cultivation includes both the employer and employee is not dispensable. Therefore, everyone in the Daoist business will all need to realise and to develop a right mode of ‘action’ according to their own innate nature and potential talent inherited naturally within them.

Non-action Strategy Nature Centred Daoism proposes that nature (ziran) is seen as a ‘self-organizing spontaneity of the universe’ (Miller 2006, 8) and believes that it relates to process and capacity for autonomous self-transformation. More than this, the Daoist believes that ‘the capacity for self-transformation that is inherent within things and generally do not seek to exert influence through external creative acts’ (Miller 2006, 9). Thus, through a happy self-transformation rather than a suffering change forced by those external enforcements of regulations and laws, employee and employer can work

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harmoniously on the way of creatively keeping the business in a sustainable developed way. Based on such an understanding, Daoism promote a strategy of ‘non-­ action’ in business management and business design. First, non-action in business management: doing but not interfering. Laozi says, ‘Tao never does, yet through it all things are done’ (Laozi 1984, 629), the non-action here is not to mean doing nothing, but to support ten thousand things to act according to their own way without purposed intervention and interference. ‘The sage says, so long as do nothing, the people will of themselves be transformed. So long as I love quietude, the people will themselves go straight. So long as I act only by inactivity the people will of themselves become prosperous’ (Laozi 1984, 648). Since Daoism believe that Dao is in everything, and everybody has the potential to connect themselves to the great Dao of wisdom, thus, the leader’s role is to facilitate and silent guidance rather than bossing and pushing. The principle of non-action (wuwei) is to minimize the need for interference and to reduce friction (Gerstner 2011, 677). As Johnson suggested: individuals who follow the Dao (including those who are leaders) should do the following things: (a) exert minimal influence on the lives of followers; (b) encourage followers to take ownership of tasks; (c) employ “soft tactics,” such as persuasion, empowerment, modelling, teamwork, collaboration, service; (d) reject the use of violence; (e) demonstrate creativity and flexibility; (f) promote harmony with nature and others; (g) live simply and humbly; (h) reject the trappings of status and promote equality; (i) recognize the underlying spiritual dimension of reality; and (j) give to and serve others (Johnson 2000, 83).

And these principles appear to provide an ethical framework for many of the latest trends in the literature: empowerment, teamwork, collaboration, servant leadership, spirituality in the workplace, and rapid innovation and thereby enabling to follow the natural way, Daoism may complement what is missing in the West and help managers and leaders function more effectively and with more satisfaction.(Kim and Mauborgne 1992). Second, dare not to be a pioneer in business design and strategy. This ‘doing but dare not’ action strategy closely related to the three treasures that Laozi claimed, that is: the ci (unconditional love of parents), the jian (frugality) and the ‘bugan wei tianxia xian’(refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven), which Laozi believed that can ensure things to be done but also in a wide impact and sustainable way (Laozi 1984, 657). Laozi suggested that doing things as a sage, one should assess ten thousands things to their naturally self-so, this is so called do but not dare act (Laozi 1984, 655). Daoist believes that daring is not equal to braveness. The true braveness should base on principle of parental love and compassion; should follow the simple and frugality requirements. If a braveness only lies on daring without compassion and consideration of simple and frugality, such a braveness can only bring harm even death: ‘He whose braveness lies in daring, slays. He whose braveness lies not daring, gives life’ (Laozi 1984,  662). Because one should ‘Express simplicity and embrace uncarved block, lessen self-focus and diminish desire;’ (Laozi 1984, 612) it also because that ‘the uncarved Block, though seemingly of small account, is greater than anything that is under heaven’ (Laozi 1984, 626).

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To ensure things to be successful and harmless, one should not dare without careful thinking, but should ‘deal with things in their state of not yet being, put them in order before they have got into confusion,’ (Laozi 1984, 653) ‘plan for the difficult while things are still easy. Act on the great while it is still small’ …… the great matters of the social world must start with something small. This is the reason why one should do before they decide what they are going to act. ‘sage can embody the greatness due to he does not act great’ (Laozi 1984, 654). Cautious thinking and conservative attitude are always necessary, because they are the insurance of long-life and enduring insight. As Daode Jing claims, In ordering human and dealing with nature, nothing beats conserving. In general, simply conserving is what we can call early readiness. Early readiness: let us call it ‘emphasizing storing virtuosity. Emphasizing storing virtuosity implies that everything is subdued. Is everything is subdued, no one knows its zenith. If no one knows its zenith it can have states. The mother of having states call long endure. This is called the deep root and inherent base, a way to long-life and enduring insight’ (Laozi 1984, 650).

Therefore, in order to ensure the sustainable and long lasting business operation, do not be dare to do thing the others dare not do is essential in business designing.

Conclusion Based on above discussion it can be concluded that the Daoist business management not only relevant to modern business management filed, it can indeed bring new insights to modern business management through its holistic thinking, through its water-like leadership style, through its natural centred and careful consideration in business design. This ancient old but still relevant management theory and practice can shed a new light for us to resolve the current problems prevailing in business management field and provide us a new way of thinking in how to deal with human relationships as well as relationship between human and natural world in business field.

Bibliography Autry, James A., and Stephen Mitchell. 1988. Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching. Riverhead Books. Beasley, Samuel. 2018. Sovereignty: The Tao Principle of Self-Management. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Chang, Stephen Thomas. 1988. The Integral Management of Tao: Complete Achievement. Atlantic Books. Choi, Y., and R.R.  Mai-Dalton. 1998. On the leadership function of self-sacrifice. Leadership Quarterly 9: 475–501. Chou, Rei K., and Rei-Kwen Chiou. 2001. Tao of Health: The Chinese Art of Stress Management, Health, And Longevity. Vantage Press.

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Chunqiu, Lushi. 1984. Chinese Philosophy History Dada Collection-Section of Pre-Qin Period. Vol. 2, 1363–1448. Zhonghua Shuju. Crown, Joseph. 2016. ‘’ In The Tao of Relationship Maintenance for Mind Controllers: A Hypnotic Guide to Long-Term Care & Deliberate Change Management. Mind Control Publishing in conjunction with Crown Publication. Dreher, Diane. 1995. The Tao of Personal Leadership. Harper Business, A Division of Harper Collins Publisher. Gerstner, Ansgar. 2011. Leadership and organizational patterns in the Daodejing. Journal of Management Development 30 (7/8) Emerald Group Publishing Limited: 675–684. Griffith, Tom, ed. 1997. Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature. Hannig, Alicia 2019. Daoism in Management. https://www.academia.edu/13759831/Daoism_in_ Management, access 1/8/2019. Herder, John. 1985. The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age. Vol. 1722. Green Dragon Publishing Group. Herman, Stanley M. 1994. The Tao at Work. Vol. 1773. Jossey-Bass. Johnson, Craig. 2000. Taoist Leadership Ethics. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 7 (1): 82–91. Kim, W.  Chan and Renee Mauborgne 1992. Parables of Leadership. https://hbr.org/1992/07/ parables-­of-­leadership Laozi 1984. ‘Wang Bi’s Commentary on Daodejing ’, Chinese Philosophy History Dada Collection-Section of Pre-Qin Period. 2, Zhonghua Shuju: 593–669. Lee, Y.-T., Norasakkunkit, V., Liu, Li, Zhang, J., and Zhou, M. 2005. Taoist altruism and wateristic personality: East and West. Paper presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Society for CrossCultural Research, February 23–27, Santa Fe, NM. Lee, Yueb-ting, Ai-guo Han, Tammy K.  Byron, and Hongxia Fan. 2008. Daoist Leadership: Theory and Application. In Leadership and Management in China: Philosophies, Theories, and Practices, ed. Chao-chuan Chen, 83–107. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP. Lin, Liang-Hung, Yu-Ling Ho, and Wei-Hsin Eugenia Lin. 2013. Confucian and Taoist Work Values: An Exploratory Study of the Chinese Transformational Leadership Behavior. Journal of Business Ethics 113 (1): 91–103. Lou Yulie楼宇烈 2016. Zhouyi zhu jiaoshi周易注校释, zhonghua shuju中华书局. Lu, J.C. 2001. Yuanrong de taiji Miaoli: Huashen, duidai, xiuxing (Taiji: A seamless theory about life, relativity and change). Taibei: Third Nature. Mayo, Joseph W., and John Everett Button. 2015. Chaos to Clarity: The Tao of Risk Management. Milton Chadwick and Waters Publishing. Messing, Bob. 1988. The Tao of Management: Tao Te Ching adapted for a New Age. Vol. 1710. Green Dragon Publishing Group. Miller, James. 2006. Daoism and Nature. In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb, 220–235. Oxford: Oxford UP. Taguchi, Yoshifumi. 2006. Tao Management: Japanese Management Philosophy Based on the Tao Te Ching. East Bridge, a nonprofit corporation. Yang Bojun杨伯峻 1979. Liezi Jizhu列子集释, Zhonghua shuju中华书局. Zhangzi庄子. 1994. Zhong Guo Chuangtong Webhua Duben: Zhuangzi. Beijing Yanshan Chubanshe北京燕山出版社. Zhao, Yanxia. 2014. Yangzhu’s Guiji yangsheng and its Modern Relevance. Philosophy Study 4 (3): 173–188. Yanxia Zhao  graduated from Nankai University at Tianjin of China, Yanxia obtained her Associate Professor title at China before she came to the UK for her PhD studies. She achieved her PhD degree from the University of Wales in 2006 and then to be appointed as Teaching Fellow by University of Wales Lampeter to begin her UK career in the same year.  She was appointed as a lecturer in Chinese Studies in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in 2008 and promoted as

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Professor of Chinese Studies in 2016. Her expertise and academic interests are comparison of religions, Confucian Ethics, Daoist Body Philosophy and Chinese arts of wellbeing. Her English books include Father-son relationship in Christianity and Confucianism (Sussex Academic Press 2007); Chinese Religion: A Contextual Approach (Continuum 2010), and Taiji Yangsheng Chinese (China Intercontinental Press, 2018). Her English articles include ‘Yangzhu’s Guiji Yangsheng and Its Modern Relevance’ (Philosophy Studies, Vol 4 Number 3, 2014), ‘The Spirit of Charity and Compassion in Daoist Religion’ (Socialogy and Anthropology 3(2) 2015) and ‘Daoist Healthy Longevity Yangsheng and the Ageing Society (Journal of Daoist Studies, Vol 9, 2016).

Chapter 19

Humanizing Business Through Confucian Meritocracy Tae Wan Kim

 he Relevance of Confucian Political Ethic T for Corporate Governance One might suspect that Confucian philosophy, developed for political governance, is hardly relevant to corporate governance. There have been contested debates about the adequacy of political philosophy (Hartman 2001; Heath et al. 2010; Moriarty 2005; Phillips & Margolis 1999), particularly, of John Rawls’s theory of justice for business ethics, due to the theory’s almost exclusive focus on “basic structures of society” (Rawls 1999a: §2, 1999b: § 15, 16). Unlike Rawls’s theory that considers macro institutions of a society, however, Confucian political philosophy’s primary interest is human relationships between leaders and those who follow them within a hierarchy (Chan 2014; Elstein 2009; Schwartz 1985; Tan 2010). In other words, Confucianism is a political ethic. Confucian classical texts do not discuss what we now call “corporations”—a relatively modern invention—, but the real issue is whether or not Confucianism has resources for contemporary issues. Confucianism has rich resources about humanizing governance. A major question of the Confucian political ethic is: Under what conditions is the leader’s authority is created, maintained and lost in a hierarchy (Chan 2014)? Interestingly, modern theories of the firm seek to answer almost the same question that Confucian political ethic asks. Since Ronald Coase (1937), it has been understood that firms are hierarchies and that the distinctive characteristic of hierarchy is authority (Zingales 2000 for reviews). If Adam Smith’s invisible hand explains everything in the economic life through the price mechanism, there is no need for firms to exist. But firms exist like “islands of conscious power in this ocean of unconscious co-operation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk” T. W. Kim (*) Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_19

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(Coase 1937, 386; quote from Robertson 1923, 85). Unlike in the market, a “distinguishing mark of the firm is the suppression of the price mechanism” (Coase: 389). Within a firm as hierarchy, the price mechanism is significantly replaced with authority. Some have argued that the firm looks like authority relationship, but in fact it is a market transaction in disguise. For instance, Alchian and Demsetz (1972) argue, “Telling an employee to type this letter rather than to file that document is like my telling a grocer to sell me this brand of tuna rather than that brand of bread” (777). However, the “Return to the Market” approach cannot resolve Coase’s (1937) question, but only begs the question. Firms are distinctively different from the market, and authority is prevalent within organizations (e.g., Barnard, 1938; Coase, 1937; Kennedy et  al. 2016; Simon 1957; Weber, 1922/1978: 956). As Herbert Simon (1957) points out, managers are authorities in hierarchy who have power to demand that low-ranking individuals follow their orders without giving reasons for demanding compliance. Simon (1957) aptly describes the authority relationship: “An individual accepts authority when he sets himself a general rule that permits the communicated decision of another to guide his own choice (i.e., to serve as a premise of that choice) independently of his judgment of this correctness or acceptability of the premise (italics added) (Simon: 1). This is why a major question of corporate governance and theory of the firm has been how an authority should govern the hierarchy or how authority is created, maintained, and lost in hierarchy.

Humanizing Governance Through Confucian Meritocracy What, then, does the Confucian tradition say about authority in hierarchy? Confucianism, leadership is fundamentally an ethicized quality (e.g., Bell 2008; Chan 2014). Confucian authors, including, for instance, Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi, understand that authority is and should be created, maintained, and lost in hierarchy primarily to the extent that it earns, maintains, and loses its ethical legitimacy. This ethicized view drastically contrasts with the conventional (but mistaken) belief that, for Confucianism, authority in hierarchy derives from pedigree. In fact, in ancient Chinese societies, a worthiness-based view of authority made Confucian thought distinct from the practice of hereditary succession, governed largely by the order of pedigree. It is helpful to explore the socio-political context in which Confucian thought originated. Much of Confucian thought was seminally developed around the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (about 770–220 B.C.). During those periods, a gradual reinterpretation of the nature of leadership occurred. In the beginning, the pedigree-based account of leadership was a pattern. Consider, for example, a passage from Zuo zhuan, a historical record of the period: When a heir-apparent dies, his younger brother from the same mother is appointed; if there is none, then the eldest [of other brothers] is appointed. If their age is equal, then the worthy

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is chosen. If the candidates are equally appropriate, then divination by making cracks is performed—this is the way of the ancients (from Pines 2013, 163).

But such a pattern was not regarded as ethically legitimate. During the early Chinese history, Pines (2013, 163) writes, “the system of hereditary office holding never gained ideological legitimacy.” Confucius was a major thought leader who protested the pedigree-based view of leadership. He did so by a conceptual revolution-conceptually reinterpreting the condition of being junzi (gentleman, 君子) as pertaining to one’s ethical qualities rather than bloodline. Originally, junzi was the name of the most important elite designation during early Chinese aristocratic periods. Confucius ethicized the condition of being junzi. Consider, for example, a passage in the Analects: Confucius says, “If the gentleman (junzi) [the leader] is not grave (zhong 重), then he does not inspire awe (wei威)” (Analects 1.8).1

Here, what makes junzi awe-inspiring is not pedigree, but an ethical quality or a virtue. Such an ethicized reinterpretation of junzi is found in countless passages in major Confucian texts, and the ethicized view of leadership has been the backbone of Confucian tradition. Interestingly, a Chinese (classical) term for authority, quanwei (權威), is a combination of the two terms “graveness” and “awe-inspiring,”2 although the above passage uses a different term, zhong, for graveness. In fact, quan in quanwei (authority) is almost synonymous with zhong in this context. Etymologically, quan refers to “weight” used for a scale (Analects 9.30, 20.1), the part used as a standard, a model, or an examplar that governs lightness and heaviness. In this sense, other English translatons of junzi, “exemplary person” (Ames and Rosemont 1998), “profound person” (Tu 1985) or “consumate human being” (Fingarette 1981) are all consistent with the Confucian view of leadership. At the heart of this reformative movement was Confucius, and his political vision was the beginning of a more mature Confucian thought, later conceptualized as “Elevating the Worthy (shang xian 尚賢),” which has formed the foundation of the Chinese educational curriculum and the civil service examinations for two thousand years (Elman 2013). As a result, ordinary people living in contemporary East Asian societies understand the term junzi from an ethicized perspective, and most of them do not know that junzi was originally the name of the highest title of elite designation during ancient aristocratic periods. The conceptual reinterpretation that Confucius made, as a consequence, has marked a substantially different view about leadership in the subsequent people’s minds for over two thousand years. Relatedly, one notable aspect of the Analects is that it was the first book in Chinese history to discuss shi (士)—the lowest stratum of hereditary aristocracy. The book treats the role of shi quite similarly to that of junzi, a move analagous to claiming that Rosa Parks should have been treated as white passengers were treated

 Translation is from Dawson (2008)  The same term is used in other Asian countries like Korea (gwon-wi) and Japan (ken’i).

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on a bus in the 1950s. An underlying thought is that even shi could be junzi if a person were worthy to be junzi, regardless of pedigree. An acute reader might point out that the disucssion of “Elevating the Worthy” and the moralized reinterpretation of junzi and shi is applicable to aristocrats but not relevant to kingship (Graham 2003: Ch. 4). Thus, so long as a corporation is consideed as a monarch and the highest managerial position (e.g., CEO) as the king, the moralized Confucian account of authority is applicable to all but the CEO/ Chairperson or the highest managerial position. Although there is room for debate (Tiwald 2008; Kim S. 2014; Chan 2014), the moralized understanding of authority is very much applicable to the throne itself in the Confucian tradition. A keyword to explore such an interpretation is “Heaven’s Mandate,” an influential concept in Confucian classics and real politics (Allan 1981, 2015; Chan 2014; Creel 1970; Ivanhoe 2007; Pines 2013; Schwartz 1985; Stalnaker 2013; Tiwald 2008). As the notion of junzi is reinterpreted as a moralized one, distinct from the pedigree-based view of junzi, the notion of Heaven’s Mandate discussed in early Confucian texts is also reinterpreted as a moralized notion of a supreme diety (Poo and Muzhou 1998). There is room for debate about the nature of Heaven in the Confucian thought, but it is widely accepted that Heaven’s Mandate is deeply associated with the good life of people or their moral perfection. Heaven was considered to invest serious interest in people’s self-cultivation, living well, or good life. But Heaven’s Mandate is not simply equivalent to mere approval of people or popularism (Ivanhoe 2007). Unlike the Western idea of democracy that authority comes from the consent of free individuals over whom authority is exercised, the Confucian account of Heaven’s Mandate takes human well-being as the fundamental basis for possessing authority. For early Confucians, “Heaven’s Mandate” was understood as a kind of “trustee” that cares about, defends, and promotes the well-being or good life of people. “Heaven’s Mandate” appears in numerous places in Confucian texts, including the Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Book of Documents, and Way of King Tang and King Yu. One well-articulated understanding is found an ancient text, Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals: If a person’s virtue is sufficient to ensure peace and contentment for the people, Heaven will give its mandate to him to govern, but if the vice of a serving ruler is sufficient to seriously harm the people, Heaven will take away the mandate from him (from Chan 2014).

The repeated narrative of “Heaven’s Mandate” found in well-respected Confucian texts is that it is “Heaven,” not pedigree, that grants leadership to the king, and the fundamental reason for Heaven to do so is for the king to serve the people. Most important, if the king dysfunctionally serves the people, “Heaven’s Mandate” will no longer support the king’s leadership but move on to someone else who is most capable of and committed to respectfully and harmoniously serving the people. In the Confucian tradition, the legitimacy of leadership in hierarchy depends fundamentally upon the leader’s capability and commitment to using the power only in the noble service of protecting and promoting the good life or well-being of the people.

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The Way of King Tang and King Yu, discovered in 1993 as part of the Guodian Bamboo Slips, further support the view that “Heaven’s Mandate” penetrates the Confucian view of leadership. Consider the following passage: The kingship of Yao and Shun benefited everyone-under-heaven, yet it did not benefit them…To benefit everyone-under-heaven and not to benefit oneself is the zenith of ­humaneness. In ancient times men of worth, humaneness, and sageliness behaved in this manner[I(Slips 1-3; 22/1-9)].3

Tang [or Yao] and Yu [or Shun] are the two legendary kings of the Shang dynasty (a period before Zhou). The story is still familiar to people living in contemporary Confucianism-influenced societies, as Aesop’s Fables are to Westerners. The basic story line follows the kingship succession from King Tang to King Yu. The succession story is not rare in Chinese history, but what makes this story radically distinctive from others is that Shun was not Yao’s son. Yao honorably gave up the ambition of family succession, and, rather, chose the worthy one—Shun. To hand over the kingship to the worthy, Shun, King Yao himself abdicated. The underlying principle of king succession introduced and defended by the narrative is that the worthy must be the king and that one is worthy to the extent that one is competent and committed to enabling a certain type of social function critical for the well-being or the good life of the people. We can imagine that the narrative was read as quite subversive of the existing order, hereditary king succession. It is unclear whether the story is historical fact or not. Regardless, scholars pay attention to the story because early Confucian texts almost unanimously invoke the legendary story and praise the two kings. For example, consider a passage from Mencius: Heaven does not speak, but simply reveals the Mandate through actions and affairs…He [Yao] put Shun in charge of affairs, and the affairs were well ordered, and the people were at ease [or content, pleased] with him. This was the people accepting him. Heaven gave it to him, and people gave it to him. Hence, as I said, ‘The Son of Heaven [ruler] cannot give the world to another person (Mencius 5A5.6).4

Early Chinese authors made “their claims to power in the guise of sages, histories of a past that served both as a ground for criticisms of government” (Lewis 1999, 363). Hence, it can be reasonably infered that early Confucian authors repeatedly used the story of the two legendary kings to protest to hereditary leadership succession and defend the worthiness-based leadership.5 The Confucian principle of leadership submits that leadership must be created, maintained, and replaced fundamentally based on qualities or worthiness, and the Confucian conception of worthiness (or merit) is understood primarily through how much the leader is competent and committed to serving lower-ranking individuals  The translation is from Allan (2015).  Translation is from Van Norden (2008). 5  In particular, Mencius is known for his suggestion that kings can be justifiably removed, exiled, and even killed, if they fail to serve the people by failing to meet their fiduciary duties to people. See Mencius 1B6, 1B8. 3 4

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in the hierarchy (organization). Specifically, the two Confucian concepts “Elevating the Worthy” and “Heaven’s Mandate” with respect to leadership can be summarized as follows: Confucian meritocracy: Any adequately genuine Confucian humane governance must be designed with the primary aim of cultivating and selecting “the worthy,” and a person is worthy, primarily but not limited to the extent that she is capable of and committed to creating value(s) for all involved parties who have authority relationships with the leader of the hierarchy.

This worthiness-based leadership is real Confucianism. It is strongly supported by the two most widely accepted Confucian concepts about leadership.

Confucian Authority as Reciprocity One may argue that Confucianism in the workplace creates some kind of political conformism. The critique also may say that given that conformity and obedience to authority in Confucianism are oriented toward strengthening leader’s authority, it is even hard to imagine that a leader may lose his/her authority, so you may consider elaborating a bit more how such a situation may even be possible. For Confucians “[h]ierarchy itself, to be sure, does not preclude reciprocity” (Schwartz 1985, 71). For Confucians, a person is worthy to the extent that she contributes to creating a good life for lower-ranking individuals by enabling positive and virtuous relationships (Chan 2014). Here, makes authority legitimate is not only the high-ranking individuals’ capability and commitment to create successful performances for the good life, but also the positive relationship created between highand low-ranking individuals. Notably, Confucius in The Analects makes the point in several places. For example, consider this: The governor of She asked about government. The Master said, “Ensure that those who are near are pleased and those who are far away are attracted. If a man is tolerant, he will win the multitude. If he is trustworthy in word, the common people will entrust him with responsibility. If he is impartial, the common people will be please. When distant subjects are unsubmissive one cultivates one’s moral quality in order to attract them, and once they have come one makes them content. … and you will win the hearts of the people all over the world” (13-20, from Chan 2014, 38, italics ours).

The relational orientation in the Confucian meritocracy submits that authority is in fact a precarious, vulnerable, and fragile power. It’s easy to lose. Authority is in part constituted by the attitudes and commitments of both the leader and followers. So, either side of the relationship can undermine authority by withdrawing the appropriate attitudes of trust, commitment, care, and support. So Chan (2014) argues that the “authority is based on the people in the ethical sense that authority ultimately resides in the ‘hearts of the people’—true authority can only be accepted, recognized, and willingly complied with by the people.” Early Confucians recognized that the willing acceptance of the people couldn’t be obtained through might or institutional

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office alone. To be truly authoritative, high-ranking individuals must win the hearts of the low-ranking individuals by striving to be virtuous as well as competent.

Implications for Leadership Succession in East Asia Confucian meritocracy is practically relevant to contemporary issues of business ethics, especially, the problem of hereditary Chief Executive Officer (CEO)6 succession in publicly traded, family-controlled firms (e.g., Samsung Electronics) in East Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and, potentially, Mainland China. In this sect. I critically investigate whether or not Confucianism justifies the popular practice of hereditary CEO succession in East Asia. It is maintained that Confucianism does not legitimatize but, rather, criticizes the existing practice. Although the chosen topic is specific, it has broad implications for corporate governance issues in East Asian firms and the relevance of Confucianism to contemporary business ethics. In the Fortune Global 500, only about 15% of the companies are family-­controlled firms (Economist 2014). Most founders in the Western business world choose among professional CEOs rather than from the “Lucky Sperm Club,” to use Warren Buffet’s term. One axiom of the Western corporate governance model is the separation of ownership and management—that is, ownership of a corporation is widely dispersed among various parties, including shareholders, while the board and the manager controls. Accordingly, in Western societies, the CEO or the chairperson is considered as an agent or a trustee of investors. So, the authority of the CEO is legitimate to the extent that she appropriately serves a fiduciary duty to investors and other involved constituents. This model does not apply to East Asian settings, in which the majority shareholder is the CEO or the chairperson, who is typically the offspring of the founder. Given that separation between ownership and management is absent, so is the notorious “agency problem”7 in the Asian context. However, just because the agency problem is solved does not mean the governance problem is solved. Asian family-­ controlled publicly traded corporations have distinct dilemmas. Among these, one that gets the most attention in East Asian societies is the succession problem.

6  Caveat: In this article, CEO means the highest ranking or position of an organizational hierarchy. Conventionally, CEO in the western business world is the highest managerial position, and the person who occupies the position has the strongest managerial control. In East Asian firms, however, there often exist managerial positions higher than that of CEOs. For instance, the chairperson of Samsung Electronics, Lee Kun-hee, the founder’s son, has the strongest de facto managerial control, and his managerial position is called “Hoi-jang.” His son, Lee Jae-yong’s, position is Vice “Hoi-jang.” The literary meaning of “Hoi-jang” is chairperson of the board, but it is also understood as the highest managerial position. Below “Hoi-jang,” there are two or three CEOs. In this essay, CEO means the highest managerial ranking position, whatever it happens to be called. 7  Agency problem is how principals can effectively monitor agents’ opportunistic behaviors.

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Because one family who wants to sustain its own power controls the firm, it bequeaths management as well as ownership of shares of stock. Most (over 70%) of major publicly traded corporations in East Asia (except for China)8 are family-controlled (Economist 2014). Most of such firms have chosen hereditary succession as the norm for decades (Fernández-Aráoz et  al. 2015; Groysberg and Bell 2014). The parent (typically, the father) bequeaths his share of stocks to the children and, more important, he transfers his rankings or positions such as CEO and/or Chair of the board. As a result, current chairpersons, CEOs, or similar highest-ranking individuals of most major East Asian firms are the children of the founders, and the third or fourth generations of the founding families have already taken or are preparing to take the reins from their predecessors. The Asian succession practice is reminiscent of the hereditary succession of kingship in a monarchy. East Asians often describe those corporations as “empire,” “dynasty,” or “monarchy,” and the chairman or the CEO as “the king” (Harian 2012; Rhee 2008; Sui 2014). Sons’ battles over succession of the CEO position are described as a “War of Princes” (Choe 2015). It is no surprise that Samsung Group’s Chairman Lee Kun-hee’s leadership is described as “emperor management” (Chang 2008). Why bother? One important reason is that it is often and quite heedlessly (and falsely, as shall be discussed later) believed that hereditary CEO succession is a Confucian practice and asserting that a certain practice is Confucian is a powerful way to justify it in East Asian contexts given its status as a dominant civil religion (Ivanhoe and Kim 2016), as similarly as saying that a certain practice is biblical has powerful ideological effect in the so-called Bible Belt in the U.S. Even those who criticize family succession presume that it is a Confucian practice. A Wall Street Journal article, “Putting a Stop to South Korea’s Family Empires,” naively assumes, “When power changes hands, family succession is assumed in accordance with Confucian tradition” (Kirk 2015). Academia is not immune to this trend. Yan and Sorenson’s (2006) influential article in the field of family business, “The Effect of Confucian Values on Succession in Family Business,” argues that Confucian influence (Confucian values such as filial piety and family) is positively related to hereditary CEO succession.9 The same or similar assumptions or beliefs are found in many other newspaper articles and academic works that discuss family succession in East Asian firms (e.g. Byford 2012; Deng 2011; Kee 2008; Taylor A. 2014; Yu and Kwan 2013; Wehrfritz 2003). Another interesting view found in the media is the perspective that connects hereditary CEO succession to the concept of “Confucian Capitalism” (e.g., Um 2010). A theoretical defense of Confucian industrial development has been made. Among others, notably, Tu Weiming (1988, 1989, 1996, 2000) and Herman Kahn (1979) argued that Confucianism and its values, such as loyalty, harmony, and family, contributed as a major explanation for the rise of “Industrial East Asia.” The

 Most of the Chinese corporations are still state-owned.  Most management papers that discuss family succession in Asian firms cite Yan and Sorenson (2006) and accept the claim that the practice is in accordance with Confucian tradition. 8 9

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popularity of the notion of “Confucian Capitalism,” however, has brought about some serious misuses of the term. A notable example is the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew’s claim that authoritarian regimes can be defended by Asian (especially, Confucian) values, whereas encouraging human rights or democracy in East Asian societies is incompatible with Asian (especially, Confucian) traditions (see, Sen 1997 for discussions). In contrast to Lee’s understanding, over the last decade, there has been a growing consensus among leading Confucian scholars that Confucianism and human rights (or at least their spirit) are not necessarily incompatible, although Confucians cannot accept the Western expression of the concept at face value (e.g., Angle 2002, 2009; Chan 1997, 1999, 2004, 2014; Lee 1992). Even those who take a radical position that Confucianism has no room for the individualist “self” construal (e.g., Rosemont, Jr. 2015) should admit that Confucianism embraces the moral importance of rationales underlying the concept of human rights (e.g., flourishing, well-being, or protection of community: see, Kim T. 2014). As discussed in the previous section, the philosophical teachings of Confucian texts would not support the popular belief that hereditary CEO succession in the East Asian context is a Confucian practice. As Craig Ihara (1992) points out, the misunderstandings or misuses come largely from confusion between (a) Confucianism understood as the philosophical teachings, lessons, and ethos shaped by Confucian classical texts, including but not limited to Four Books and Five Classics,10 and (b) the existing perceived behavioral pattern of contemporary East Asians. In theory, (b) can have nothing to do with (a). Interestingly, Weiming Tu’s (1988, 1989, 1996, 2000) conceptualization of “Confucian Capitalism”11 is quite strictly in line with (a), while Herman Kahn’s (1979) is a paradigm example of (b). Kahn was, after all, a game theoretic military strategist with the RAND Corporation. Tu’s choice toward (a) is quite natural, given his serious philosophical works on Confucianism (e.g., 1972, 1978/1998, 1989). In contrast, as Tu (1989) points out, Kahn’s writing is occupied with “his journalistic penchant for anecdotal evidence” (83), rather than rigorous analysis of Confucianism. When Kahn (1979), for instance, writes, “societies based on the Confucian ethics may in many ways be superior to the West in the pursuit of industrialization affluence and modernization” (121), he draws upon neither Confucian classical texts, nor authoritative contemporary interpretations. In a similar line of reasoning, Peter Berger (1988) criticized misuses of the term Confucianism, pointing out that perception studies that use Confucian ethics as the key variable investigate individuals who, in many cases, “have never read a Confucian classic” (7). To distinguish (b), the perceived behavioral pattern, from 10  Four Books include Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects, and Mencius. It is known that Zhu Xi selected the Four Books. The Five Classics include Classic of Poetry, Book of Documents, Book of Rites, Book of Change, and Spring and Autumn Annals. 11  Tu rarely uses the term “Confucian Capitalism” in his works (1988, 1989, 1996, 2000). He instead uses “Industrial East Asia.” For simplicity’s sake, in this article, I use the term “Confucian Capitalism.”

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(a), the actual teachings of Confucianism and its normative thoughts, Berger (1983) proposed calling the former by the term “vulgar Confucianism.” Since most of management research that uses the terms “Confucian Capitalism” or “Confucianism” uses Confucianism as a perceived behavioral pattern, following Kahn’s choice, (b), it is no exaggeration to say that most of such existing research in economics and business in fact relies on “vulgar Confucianism” as the variable. Similarly, that the popular belief that hereditary CEO succession is a Confucian practice is another example of “vulgar Confucianism.” One might argue that the family-member CEO in the East Asian firm is really the worthy one who can best serve the involved corporate constituents, and that is why he is currently the highest managerial individual. First and most obvious, the current CEOs were not chosen through the worthiness-based examinations. They competed, but only with other family members. In the existing system, non-family members have no chance to compete with family-members based on worthiness. Thus, it cannot be said that a family member’s status as current CEO or chairperson is evidence that he or she is the worthy. Of course, this also does not show that the current CEO is not the worthy. However, there are notable social scientific studies by which we can infer that family-member CEOs may not be the worthy. Family CEOs tend to have a significant desire to maximize their “socio-emotional wealth,”12 even at the expense of corporate profit (Gomez-Mejia et  al. 2007). Family firms offer pay incentives to family agents, even though these incentives do not appear to be positively associated with firm performance (Schulze et  al. 2001). Control over the firm’s resources makes it possible for family CEOs to be unusually generous to their children and relatives, and typical family firms, in fact, provide family members with secure employment, perquisites, and privileges that they would not otherwise receive (Gersick 1997). Finally, it is empirically shown that in the context of East Asia, family firms that transition from family to professional CEOs exhibit higher performance than that of family firms that continue to be managed (Chang and Shim 2015). This section has implications for Westerners, too. Western researchers can obtain knowledge about East Asia’s worldview and, more specifically, what Confucianism indicates about the legitimacy of managerial authority and leadership change. Second, the Confucian account of corporate governance can provide a comparative point of view, by which Westerners can critically reflect upon practices of Western family-controlled firms. Finally, in practice, Western activists, who invoke “an Anglo American language” (Perry 2008, 37) to pressure East Asian corporations’ governance reform, can better situate their arguments within a framework culturally familiar to East Asians.

 “Socio-emotional wealth” includes the ability to exercise authority, the satisfaction of needs for belonging, affect, and intimacy, the perpetuation of family values through the business, the conservation of the family firm’s social capital, the fulfillment of family obligations based on blood ties rather than on strict criteria of competence, and the opportunity to be altruistic to family members.

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Conclusion This chapter explored why, for Confucianism, workplace meritocracy is a fitting way to humanize the workplace. What does it mean to be humane in Confucianism? An answer was to be Junzi. Originally, Junzi was the name of the most important elite designation during ancient Chinese aristocratic periods. Confucius revolutionized the meaning of Junzi by ethicizing it, radically ignoring all pedigrees and class systems. The redefined condition to be Junzi is mainly about how to lead an organization, understood primarily as a form of hierarchy. The Confucian ethical quality to be Junzi was elaborated in this chapter under the broad term, “Confucian workplace meritocracy.” It is that any adequately genuine governance must be designed with the primary aim of cultivating and “Elevating the worthy,” and a person is worthy, primarily but not limited to the extent that she is capable of and committed to creating value(s) for all involved parties who have authority relationships with the leader of the hierarchy. A major question of the Confucian political ethic is: Under what conditions is the leader’s authority is created, maintained and lost in a hierarchy? Interestingly, modern theories of the firm seek to answer almost the same question. This chapter also discussed practical implications of Confucian workplace meritocracy upon how to rethink about the nature of the firm and how to humanize leadership selection and change. Confucianism is an influential tradition and civil religion in East Asian societies, so the adjective “Confucian” has moral, political and ideological power. Management researchers, policymakers, and public media should be cautious when they describe a certain business practice as Confucian. This chapter discussed and refuted the popular belief that the philosophy of Confucianism justifies hereditary leadership succession in East Asian firms. The analysis revealed that Confucian leadership is worthiness-based: that is, leadership in an organization must be created, maintained, and replaced fundamentally based on qualities understood primarily through the leader’s competency and commitment to the firm’s investors and other involved stakeholders. To overcome the ideology of vulgar Confucianism, when the term “Confucian” is used to explain or rationalize Chinese or broadly Asian economic models and business practices, writers or whomever should carefully examine whether or not what they dub as “Confucian” is justifiably Confucian.

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Yan, Jun, and Ritch Sorenson. 2006. The Effect of Confucian Values on Succession in Family Business. Family Business Review. 19: 235–250. Yu, Fu-Lai, and Diana S. Kwan. 2013. Family business succession in Hong Kong: The case of Yung Kee. Frontiers of Business Research in China 7: 433–460. Zingales, Luigi. 2000. In Search of New Foundations. Journal of Finance. 55: 1623–1653. Tae Wan Kim  is Associate Professor of Business Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University. He did his PhD in Ethics and Legal Studies at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. He studies AI ethics, future of work, data capitalism, and cross-cultural ethics. He is an editorial board member of Business Ethics Quarterly and Journal of Business Ethics. Kim served a program committee of AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Society and Ethics (2019). Kim is a committee member of the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy Systems and Halcyon Dialogue for Responsible Integrated Technology Certification.

Part II

Literature and Creative Arts Perspectives on Humanizing Business

Chapter 20

A Novel Perspective on Humanizing Business Paul D. Savage

The Business Novel What is a business novel? If you ask around for examples you may be met with a blank stare. After some thought, someone might point to “the greats1” or “the classics”, referring to older novels such as Melville’s Moby Dick, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and how these provide all manner of insights into societies and social interactions. Others may refer to books where organizations, businesses, and resources, are the context of the story such as Eggers’ The Circle, Grisham’s The Firm, or Herbert’s Dune, and companies or organizations play key roles in the plot. In rare cases, someone may have looked up “business novel” and found a niche genre of books that are promoted with this label.2 Examples include Goldratt’s The Goal, Kim’s The Phoenix Project, and Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. In general, classical, modern, or niche novels propose a (another) world that allows for insights into our world – including the world of business (Morson and Schapiro 2018; Aroles et al. 2019). They can also stand in opposition to prevalent discourses of the day (Beyes 2009), for example, that everything should or could have some use for business. Lastly, after insights for business and resistance to (types of) business, novels may offer us a sense that there is no  I am indebted to Morson & Shapiro’s work “Cents & Sensibility” regarding economics and great literature. 2  The authors of these latter types of novels are often professors or consultants introducing a concept or theory in a fictional manner, such as the Theory of Constraints, operational development (DevOps), team dynamics or project management. Although this genre does self-identify as business novels, it is my position that all novels have something to say to business, either through structure or through content. 1

P. D. Savage (*) Arcada University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_20

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business without humans. It is us, and perhaps only a small part of who we are and what we do.

Business and People While businesses are legal entities, tax entities, and financial actors, they are not self-aware beings. The firm in John Grisham’s The Firm is a small group of people at the top of a company who take actions against one of their own colleagues. Although having the business name in the title of the book, Eggers’ The Circle, is a company run by “Three Wise Men” who are human beings. Science fiction provides examples of future organizations and organizing without human(-noid) actors, through human-made artificial intelligence “finding itself”, such as Gibson’s (1984) character, Wintermute. Others, like Asimov’s (1954) character R. Daneel Olivaw,3 benevolently guide humanity. In the most common example, A.I.’s take the opposite approach and tyrannically strive to wipe out humanity, as in Wilson’s (2011) Robopocalypse. The point here is that outside of science fiction, we neither have examples of fully self-aware businesses, nor businesses without humans owning, producing, or managing the process. What this means is that we can trace actions we ascribe to the company back to the behaviour of individual people – either directly or indirectly. At this moment in time, and historically, business is the outcome of human will.4 Business is a context rich in source of material for fictional literature, due in large part to the relationships between people that arise through the routines, struggles, boredom, and triumphs of any business endeavour. In addition to this, the business world is rife with narratives that are not objective statements of reality, but subjective projections of possible futures and re-contextualized pasts. While readers may often enjoy the experience of a story told in the context of the business world, it is common in this type of study to ask how novels can support business. We look to novels for insights that will make us better business practitioners. However, we can also use novels to challenge our relationship to business – not only granting business such a key role in our society, but also granting it being, as though it could act without us. Novels position business as a context in which all of us engage with our and others’ humanity, be it a coffee shop near home, the internet provider’s chat-bot, or the launch of a new hedge fund in London. Business is a human affair.

3  Isaac Asimov’s character is a robot that lives through more than 19,000 years of human civilization, shepherding humanity through the rise and fall of empire. He appears first in The Caves of Steel, and continues in both the Robot and Foundation series of books by the same author. 4  Algorithms are usually mentioned at this point, to illustrate some non-human actors in markets. I agree that they can act autonomously once they are set up by a human. When they mess up, we still blame a person.

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Novels as Proposals Novels are long, fictional, descriptive narrative books, covering a broad range of human experience. They reference life and death, relationships, power, money, and values through a structure that can open us up to insights that are hard to obtain elsewhere. Novels plod through the long seconds and minutes of our days, contemplating objects and situations that we might overlook. The text slows time, both because we read slower than we see the world around us, and also as the author may choose to dwell on a moment with several pages of text. This revealing through a series of words, one after another, that which is visible in whole, in a split second in the real world (Eco 1994) is intrinsic to novels. Taking time away from plot development may be done to force the reader into a type of contemplation that moves from action to idleness – from doing to being. And yet, the slowed time may also obscure the whole, blinding us to the bigger picture behind an overly-detailed description of minutiae. As a reader, this dual possibility of slowed description can help us approach life, and certainly organizational life in the context of business, with both an appreciation for the complexity of our experiences, and a suspicion towards narratives in general. Is there more here than meets the eye? Perhaps. Is there so much here that I cannot see the truth? Also possible. This process of slowing life to describe the environment also challenges, at a deeper level, the “action imperative” (Rancière 2016) in novels and in business, namely, that everything must move forward. Moreover, moving forward is done by certain types of people – people of action. In contrast to the action imperative, constant growth and progression are questioned under the magnifying glass of long, descriptive text. Morson and Schapiro (2018) point to business concepts that may be visualized and presented as explanations to highly complex interactions. Their observation is that sometimes this type of abstraction may simply be a distraction from what is actually occurring. Not only is it possible to over-simplify a situation through concepts, but it is possible to drive our attention in a completely different direction. Models are fictional representations that simplify and in many cases idealize life. Fictional, because as Ricoeur (1984) points out, they reference an object, but are not the object itself. It is sometimes a graph, with numbers, symbols, and lines, proposing a world with complex relationships of extraction, production, distribution and consumption. It may be blinding us to all that is unsaid, unwritten, un-visualized. As an ideal, diagrams of overlapping circles, sweet-spots, and outliers project a view of individual actors that simply cannot capture the complexity of the human mind, interacting through social norms with hundreds of others. In reading novels, we are co-creating another world with the author, as our minds process the text. In the same way, we are co-­ creating this world with our colleagues as they verbally or textually speak about a possible organization or about the ideal customer. Neither exist in reality, yet, and may never. But the world that we are co-creating is informing us how to behave and to think here, now, in reality. The difference that a novel approach makes is that in this instance we can question how this co-creation may be opening up or closing off reality from us. We can take this further as many business stories speak of leaders,

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loyal customers, engaged employees in sweeping and abstract generalizations. We see this particularly in the genre of non-fictional books on leadership  – leaders’ habits, ways of dealing with others, self-discipline, positive psychology, etc., are proposed as examples for those who are not leaders. Sometimes, there is an invitation in leadership literature to follow the leaders, a type of mimicking that the leaders themselves might not have done in their early days. In contrast, as a reader of novels, one is exposed to the particularity of individuals. It is not that generalizations are not made in fictional literature, but that certain tools are available to the author and reader that are not available to us otherwise. One such tool is knowing the mind of a particular person. In a novel, you can often read descriptions of what the characters are feeling and thinking. In some cases, you can even know the character’s emotional and psychological state before or more profoundly than the character themself. In real life, we cannot read thoughts. Certainly, we can speculate and come pretty close to understanding from time to time, but people sometimes lie to us and at other times lie to themselves.5 However, being able to engage with the thoughts of another, to see how those thoughts drive behaviour or inaction, not only helps us make sense of others, but more importantly gives insight into our own selves. The possibility for a humbling moment of realization, that we have not understood another person, or ourselves, is extremely valuable. Fictional narrative can bring to light hidden causes for our own behaviour. Catharsis can arise in us when we see our mistakes put on display in another world through the lives of other people, slowly and methodically, through long, descriptive text.6 Another related tool is the ability to see what is done apart from others, without witnesses. Although everything we see a person do at work is indicative of their mind-set and character, it is only indicative. Late nights, weekends, and early mornings still remain outside of our view. This is a critical aspect missing from leadership books and why we may need to question the current narratives on saviour CEOs (Bloom and Rhodes 2018). In novels, we see from the other side of locked doors, and must be willing to accept that something more could also be happening behind real locked doors. On the positive side, acknowledging a richer, broader CEO or customer life can lead to a kind of empathy. However, it may complicate business processes. For example, this may challenge the rational maximizer concept of economic modelling (Morson and Schapiro 2018), as characters in novels and in real life not only act sometimes irrationally, but quite often against their own long-term interests. Self-destructive behaviour, over-exposure to immediate gratification, and something as simple as greed or a crime of passion can make a great novel, but also seems to fill our news channels and courtrooms. Despite great writing and visuals, companies come to our 5  Authors may do the same. In fiction, non-essential background histories can be blended with real world events and then changed, providing a different reality from the one in which we were placing the novel. For example, in Ian McEwan’s “Machines like me”. In this version, Margaret Thatcher leads the British to defeat against Argentina in the Falklands War of 1982. 6  This is why I struggle with the concept of certain literature being labeled “great” and “classic”. A moment of catharsis came to me through a book about people worshipping a bear in Richard Adams’ Shardik.

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attention for the great successes and failures of their individual members – sometimes working together with others and sometimes alone, behind closed doors.

Business as Fiction As mentioned, many stories are about people of action. In business, when there is success, there is a CEO to take responsibility for it or point to the team that made it happen. When there is failure and loss, individual employees are fired by the owners or leaders. However, within novels this notion of the great person of action was challenged with the move towards realism around the 1850s through the work of Flaubert and Conrad, among others (Rancière 2016). This introduced two ideas that undermine the standing business has in our lives. The first is that anyone is worthy of great emotions – not just the hero(-ine) of society. The second is that the realism of fiction arises from the mundane, quotidian, rather than the grand movements of plot. Here, we move away from the heroic Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk, towards a call centre employee in Ireland, a baggage handler in Kuala Lumpur, and the forklift operator at a construction site outside Atlanta. Each of the latter have as active and rich an emotional life as the former. And yet, we do not hear from them. Several things are made possible with this shift. For example, recognizing the polyvocal nature of organizational narratives adds tremendous complexity, as everyone is given equal authority to have their version of the firm validated. In this sense, there is not “a” company, but multiple companies with the same name. At the same time, a challenge is raised to owners and senior leaders regarding their role in articulating what is the company, and what is not. It is a passive resistance to say that we do not agree with the story, but active resistance to take away the power of the storyteller, as is done quite often through social media channels accentuating marginalized corporate narratives. As to the second idea, there is a tyranny of plot in novels before the shift to realism in the 1800s. Storytelling requires selecting the right pieces of narrative, putting them down in a plot, and sharing that with others. The attention to realistic description, and the subsequent post-realist literature, suspends emplotment, suggesting the artificiality of projecting plot onto every single encounter between people, or actants (things that act upon us). By the same token, organizations are now striving to tell great stories, to be storytelling fountains, emplotting (or putting into a plot) actions and historical events in the development of the firm. But why does so much of our life and business need a story? In many cases, it is simply the realization that the human mind is able to remember or to sympathize with a story better than with a factual, numerical accounting – a good story equals higher sales. Stories serve to make sense of complex situations in a simplistic way (Yorke 2013). There is a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories give meaning where in the worst case, there is no meaning. Taking this a step further – the imposition of plot, forcing a story onto a plotless cycle of production and consumption, does occasionally ring false. “Justifying his refusal to transform the breaks in the story into chapters, Conrad told his editor that all there is, is one

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episode. A single present is all there is.” (Rancière 2016, 40). An extreme outcome of reading novels may be the discovery that we have a voice worthy of being heard, and that voice might say, “There is no plot. No future, no past – only a permanent present.”

The Literary of Business As we are discussing the humanizing of a real-world activity – business – with fiction, we want to find another bridge between these worlds. It is not only the text of the novel that has relevance for humanizing business. I propose three structural elements that arise naturally both in literature and in business that can lead to useful outcomes; the real, the fictive, and the imaginary (projecting the author’s purpose or intention). Here I am adapting the work of Wolfgang Iser (1993) on literature and applying it to the world of business. With novels and in business, each of these three elements comes to bear upon us. First, the real world here is that experiential world of the senses, the physical and material world we encounter daily  – sidewalks, buildings, animals, bodies, heat and wind, for example. Second, the fictive element in novels is the world of the text, an “other” world proposed to us that references possibilities (Ricoeur 1981). In any fictional story, there must be a sufficient amount of the real things, words and grammatical structure that we have been exposed to in reality, for the story to make sense. This referencing of another world with bits and pieces of our world relies on deviations to declare the fictionality of the text.7 Third, the author of a novel has an intention that lays outside the story itself, and yet is signposted there. There is a reference to reality behind the fictional story and while it is not always explicit, it sheds light onto the real world. What is it the author wishes to say to us, that the characters in the novel do not say? What is perhaps controversial with this approach is to suggest that in business there is a great deal of fiction that is communicated as real; strategy, entrepreneurial opportunities, change management, and the pricing of financial instruments, to name a few. These refer to the company as we predict it to be, might wish it to be, and most importantly what it is not (as yet) today. That “as-yet” can be understood as “not-yet-real” and perhaps fictive. There is enough reality in these business narratives to make sense, but perhaps enough deviations from current reality to suggest fictionality. At a shallow level, while we have narratives about saving the planet, being sustainable, and having an impact on our communities, we also need to challenge the authors’ intentions here. Is the current sustainability narrative in Company X an attempt to illustrate the firm’s environmental consciousness? Or is it a façade, a type of “green-washing” to cover the reality of exploitative behaviour? Novels teach us that it is probably both, possibly simultaneously, and with a few people feeling anxious about the conflict.

7  This is contested in academia. What makes a fiction? What is true in fiction? How much reality in a novel tips it into the realm of history? If the author says the book is non-fiction, is it so?

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At a deeper level, there is little difference between the structure of novels, which references the not-yet-real through a mix of real and fictive text, and the structure of many business stories that do the same. By recognizing who is authoring (guiding, directing) this particular text of an organization can we begin to see what it is that the organizational story is sign-posting – saying about the author’s intention or purpose – and therefore what is the statement about reality being made in and through this fiction. In a sense, we can hear the owners’ view of the world as we listen to those people given the authority to speak on behalf of the firm.

Recognition as a Process Recognizing what we speak of and who is speaking is a process of recognition. This process takes place when reading novels, but recognition has several different meanings. Using the work of Paul Ricoeur (2005), I articulate five types of recognition. When we read the text of a novel, we recognize the words and we give them shape and form in our minds – we recognize them as separate from other objects – the first type. Next, we decide on their value, or truth – the second type. As we get into the story, we move from objects to ourselves, reflecting from time to time as to what we might do in similar situations. Self-recognition is the third type. We may think of others we know, and perhaps see them as able to act or to think in particular ways – the fourth type. If the writing is very suited to our frame of mind, we may experience a sense that the author has seen us, somehow. This last type, mutual recognition, is rather nuanced, and there is a certain simultaneity in Ricoeur’s perspective that is naturally suspended with books and reading in linear time. Generally speaking, it would be both the author and the reader grant one another recognition as someone who is able to act. If we suspend linear time for a moment – we can speak of granting one another recognition in the moment of co-production, or when the text is read. In any case, the process starting from “seeing” an object through to mutual recognition with the author, is a natural outcome of our relationship to fiction, referencing as it does real objects, values, ourselves, and others in the co-created space of the text being read. The last type, granting another the “right” to see you, can have profound effects on our emotional and psychological states – catharsis, sympathy, understanding – as the world of the story takes shape in our reading. In terms of business, we often start with the recognition of a business opportunity – i.e. a carriage with a motor instead of a horse – as seeing something apart from all other things, and then deciding it has value. This process continues with self-recognition, whereby we start to see ourselves as able to act, to do things to make it happen, to do the work of the organization. From there, we see others as able to act, as well, and this may occasionally lead to mutual recognition in the workplace, where we simultaneously grant one another the right to recognize each other, that “we” let the other person see us and they do the same. What is apparent, however, is that within novels the process of recognition occurs in the moment of co-creation of that world of the text. In the same way, we could draw a tentative conclusion regarding

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business; that mutual recognition becomes possible through co-creation of the world of the firm. As we enact the story of the firm, through meetings, emails, logos, uniforms, and instruction manuals, with one another, we also grant others the ability to see us, and we return the favour.

Thinking Through the Author The co-creation of a world, be it the other world of the novel or the other world of business, provokes reflection on the text, the words, sentences, and grammar used in a particular context. These words have reference to our real world experience, so that we can understand the text. In novels, the language used can, of course, deviate from expectations, but if so, the deviation should be on purpose, and nonetheless within a range of possible meanings.8 Authors consider their intended readers – who they may be, and what they may experience in reading this or that piece (Eco 1994). Literary theory researchers go further and ask what ideal or model type of reader is made visible by this novel. The ideal or model recipient could be understood as the person who has the full ability to understand or to interpret the text. For example, if an author makes a short reference to the Red River Rebellion without explaining much, then the ideal reader is someone familiar with Louis Riel, Canada, the Métis. Perhaps the lack of background is an oversight on the part of the author’s assumptions. With this, we can draw a parallel to the world of business, as there are potentially different types of recipients for our firm’s services, products, and communication; the intended and the ideal/model recipient. The intended recipient is the one we have in mind when designing our product or service. As such, the model author in business is implied by the frameworks in place in the business itself. Sometimes unforeseen, the model recipient is the outcome of our own unconscious biases, our own education, cultures, social norms, and unspoken expectations. Being aware of the intended and a possible ideal, leads us to be both outwardly focused as to the effect we are trying to achieve, and inwardly focused as to the frameworks we impose when building our narratives and businesses. Self-reflection is a natural outcome of reading novels due to their structure and consumption. Long, descriptive narrative can call to mind the minutiae of life, the frozen moments that remain so, as our gaze is directed by the author to smells, sights, sounds, emotions and thoughts, panning about the room or scene. However, even very long books are incomplete in creating another world in its entirety. As Umberto Eco writes, “Every text // is a lazy machine asking the reader to do some of its work” (Eco 1994, 3). Reality is far too complex an experience to be captured in text, and we make up for the lack through cognitive processes that fill in the gaps. Self-reflection arises as we are producing the filler around the text, in our minds, and participating with our own

8  Dogs in fiction are not two-legged, feathered, flying animals  – unless the author is calling birds “dogs”.

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selves as both source of detail and consumer of our own co-production. We are writing alongside the author in a sense, to come to grips with the ambiguity of what is left unwritten or unsaid. Ambiguity is one of the strengths of well-written novels, but it is also the result of building the world of the text through reading. We weave our own lives into the material of the text, referencing our vocabularies and experiences to give meaning to the words and to understand what the author is saying – not to everyone – but to me. If nothing else, as members of organizations we use our own lives as the threads of a tapestry illustrating a firm, but without us, there is no firm.

Conclusion Perhaps we do not have a generally accepted genre called the “business novel” because we do not need it. At its core, a business novel label would identify a book that does what all novels do – offer a co-created, other world, with characters experiencing life and perhaps, death. As a fiction, it would need to invoke enough reality to be understandable and believable, but deviate from historical narrative sufficiently, either explicitly or implicitly, so that it did not seem “true” historically. Although not mandatory, there could be some conflict, some references to time, plot, and perhaps other aspects that make it interesting to follow. However, since the movement towards realism in the 1850s and the subsequent post-realist or modern novel, we can speak of novels as offering not only insights, support and resistance to current business narratives, but counter-narratives that question whether or not there is such a thing as a business. This is meant in the sense of an entity with its own being, will, capacity to act, and by extension, its right to speak. Perhaps the reason we do not have business fiction is not a statement about a lack in literature but rather a statement about business. In this novel perspective, business can be seen as a type of fiction, constantly referencing a world that requires our reading – our co-creation – and as such only exists within the proposed world of the text until we call it forth through our subsequent behaviour. The firm, the university, the governmental agency, and the not-for-profit association all have this in common – they are made up of, made for, and made by humans. Business is nothing but human.

References Aroles, Jeremy, Stewart Clegg, and Edward Granter. 2019. Death and the Penguin: Modularity, alienation and organising. Culture and Organization 25 (2): 104–117. Asimov, Isaac. 1954. The caves of steel. New York: Doubleday. Beyes, Timon. 2009. An aesthetics of displacement: Thomas Pynchon’s symptomatology of organization. Journal of Organizational Change Management 22 (4): 421–436. Bloom, Peter, and Carl Rhodes. 2018. CEO society: The corporate takeover of everyday life. Zed Books Ltd.

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Cervantes. 1992. Don Quixote. Trans. Peter Motteux. London: Wordsworth Classics. Eco, Umberto. 1994. Six walks in the fictional woods. Harvard University Press. Eggers, David. 2013. The circle. New York: Random House LLC. Gibson, William. 1984. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books. Goldratt, Eliyahu M., and Jeff Cox. 1984. The goal: A process of ongoing improvement. Routledge. Grisham, John. 1991. The firm. New York: Random House. Herbert, Frank. 1965. Dune. New York: Chilton Books. Iser, Wolfgang. 1993. The fictive and the imaginary: Charting literary anthropology. JHU Press. Kim, Gene, Kevin Behr, and Kim Spafford. 2014. The phoenix project: A novel about IT, DevOps, and helping your business win. IT Revolution. Lencioni, Patrick. 2006. The five dysfunctions of a team. Wiley. Morson, Gary Saul, and Morton Schapiro. 2018. Cents and sensibility: What economics can learn from the humanities. Princeton University Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2016. The lost thread: The democracy of modern fiction. Bloomsbury Publishing. Ricoeur, Paul. 1981. Hermeneutics and the human sciences: Essays on language, action and interpretation. Cambridge University Press. ———. 1984. Time and narrative. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press. ———. 2005. The Course of Recognition. Trans. David Pellauer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tolstoy, Leo. 2006. War & Peace. Trans. Anthony Briggs. London: Penguin Classics. Wilson, Daniel H. 2011. Robopocalypse. New York: Doubleday. Yorke, John. 2013. Into the Woods: How stories work and why we tell them. London: Penguin UK. Paul D. Savage, originally from Vancouver, Canada, has a Doctor of Science (PhD) in Economics and Business Administration from Aalto University in Finland. His work on narratives, identity and fiction is based primarily on entrepreneurial startups in Silicon Valley. As well, he is interested in large, corporate continuous improvement initiatives and how language can affect behavior and identity. His professional background is diverse – starting in 1990 as an actor in a touring theatre group, he has also worked in logistics, radio, finance, farming, oil fields, and academia. He teaches public speaking, interpersonal and embodied communication, and performance in presentations. He currently lives in Helsinki, Finland.  

Chapter 21

Fiction and Cross-Cultural Understanding Pierre Robert Cloet, Alain Max Guénette, Marie-Anne Mirabeau Paquiry, Philippe Pierre, and Michel Sauquet

Introduction Thinking that one’s own value is intermingled with other values, is a much bigger, nobler and more generous plan than that which tries to make one’s own value apply to the whole world (Glissant 2010).

The artist’s words are always more invaluable and more scathing as reality becomes more complex to decipher. Literature is always ahead of life. The purpose of this chapter is to shed light and take advantage of the “conscious and contradictory real life stemming from the contact of cultures” following Edouard Glissant’s words; this contact of cultures which tends to take place more and more strongly in each of us and around us. Our research aims at exploring the perception and actions that individuals bring into play when they face the “oddness” of the events and new ways of being. Everyday, management practices offer us such confrontations. Resulting from market globalization, firms and organizations have been increasingly – and at a fast pace – bringing together people, working teams and individuals who had been so far living in quite separate temporal and spatial boundaries. In the work sphere, the acceleration experience daily portrays individuals as pierced by P. R. Cloet Université de Paris-Nanterre, Nanterre, France A. M. Guénette (*) University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, Delémont, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] M.-A. Mirabeau Paquiry Université Paris 9-Dauphine, Paris, France P. Pierre Sciences Po Paris, Paris, France M. Sauquet Fondation Léopold Mayer, Paris, France © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_21

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stimulations coming from everywhere, fragmenting them, alienating them, enriching them… A process that inundates the everyday life with multiple external influences and prevent people from telling their reality from behind their closed doors; a process linked to a connecting global capitalism that spreads mobility widely. Globalization or rather the different “types” of current globalization generate a differential production of cultures and eventually leads to a society made of individuals that are so-called connected but who are in fact more and more controlled and forced to live alone. For many years, as professors, as researchers, as practitioners and as experts in human resources management, we have been defending the idea that the growing worldwide trade and market liberalisation do not result in a total homogenization of the different cultures but rather tend to build up different “mosaic” frames in which a given signifier receives a whole range of different interpretations  – following the place where it is received  – similarly to a process of impersonal individuation. Patrick Chamoiseau who will be one of the men of letters mentioned in this chapter wonders: “how about (…) the identity created by a composite people; does the whole world become composite? Is the process of increasing complex identities and cultures that is in action in the world like what we have experienced? what are the new forms of the “living together” in society? (Chamoiseau and Larcher 2007). The artists we have studied in this chapter all point out how much constant a temporary state is, a state where no element has the value of a model. This unstable state can help us to find a new way for management practices, to find a complexity and the unity of which cannot be found where the concepts such as Logos, culture, values, right and wrong…. usually suggest us to look for. The main meaning of this short article, and more widely of our reflexion in cross-­ cultural management, is to highlight that the individual cannot be summed up to one single category but rather lives with the subjective experience from his/her multiple social group membership. As a result, this make a person feel that he/she is always this additional something else than what the others tell he/she is, never quite what one expects the person to be and often just a rough draft of himself/herself. As Amin Maalouf reminds it, a person’s identity work cannot be compared to a partitioned cabinet: “half French and half Lebanese? Not at all! The identity cannot be compartmentalized, it can neither be split into halves or thirds, nor can it be separated with clear boundaries. I have only one, made of all the elements that has shaped it, and following a particular “proportioning” which is never the same from one person to another” (Maalouf 1998). In the same vein, Jean-Marie Le Clézio (1980) expresses the rewriting and reconstitution paths in some of his novels (Le Clézio 1980). As for Lewis Carroll, he presents us Alice who, in her dreams, faces this subjective experience by falling into a well and experiencing initiatory rites beyond the looking glass (Carroll 2016 [1865]; 2016 [1872]). Finally, Jhumpa Lahiri evokes this “mosaic” of “feelings mosaic” which assails the individual when foreign partners meet (Lahiri 2004). We do not emphasize enough the individual transformations when passing from one cultural form to another, which would in fact contribute to build a

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“trajectorography”1 as Paul Virilio puts it (1995). In this chapter, this is what we aim at doing: considering the concept of culture as a “track” of what happened to an individual in terms of events. The intercultural question would amount to ask how an individual is able or not to “enter into an event” – or an experience – to understand it and to develop cross cultural competencies out of it. In other words, integrating an “emerging” property, as biologists explain it: something else and something more than the interacting elements of the entity do not have on their own. The intercultural horizon would then consist in wondering whether (and how) the subject can build him/herself up out of the traces of those experiences with alterity. Tahar Ben Jelloun’s words in 1999 sheds light on our project: “literature changes neither the human being, nor the society. Even so, the absence of literature would make the human being even more difficult to associate with”.

 bout Identity and Alterity with 2 Novels: Désert, by JMG Le A Clézio (1980) and Le Rocher de Tanios, by A. Maalouf (1993)  o Be a Foreigner Is to Be Below the Water When Others Are T Talking to You from Above the Surface (Montaigne 2007) What is literature? It is the story of the human possibilities, of all the human possibilities. Literature opens the way for a new future, makes amend or comforts. Individuals willing to change know very well that literature is the shortest way to experience changes, even if it leads someone to there through roundabout paths, with sideway steps, and by decentering; with literature, one goes from the closest to the most remote, and in this oddness, one faces reality. The works of the two authors – Maalouf (1993) and J.M.G Le Clézio (1980) – are marked by the subjects of alterity and identity, about which A. Maalouf writes in his essay: “my purpose not being (…) to find again in myself any “essential” belonging in which I could recognise myself; I rather adopt the opposite behaviour: I search my memory to drive out the highest number of elements of my identity, I collect them together, I line them up, I renounce none of them”. Indeed, the author is suspicious about any kind of essentialism, that is, any conception that would be narrowed, confined in one single category, monolithic in a way. Le Clézio would certainly share this viewpoint as it seems to be expressed in his novel Désert in which the main character, a young girl named Lalla, attempts to rebuild history to better understand her own situation. In A. Maalouf’s novel (1993), the young man who is the hero, Tanios, strives to question some values or reflexes he has been instilled. In those cases, both characters lead different quests: Lalla the girl from North African desert seeks for discovering big cities thus fleeing from an arranged marriage, and Tanios tries to overcome a 1  As opposed to “geography”, P. Virilio states that, thanks to technologies, identity may be replaced by a “trackability” as one could feel at home anywhere… and nowhere.

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superstitious fear. In both cases, what is intended is to undermine the group’s values so as to make them evolve, in the best cases.

Tanios et Lalla, Two Crossed Fates Tanios ‘s – the child from the Lebanese mountains – destiny is first marked by the mystery that surrounds his birth with rumours spreading in the country about who his “real” father is. Destiny strikes again in the 1830s on a day a religious head is killed, forcing Tanios into exile (it is then a period when the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and England are fighting over this divided promised land,). Lalla lives in a shanty town where she rambles in the heat and the sunlight; she never complains. She sings to herself; she observes. Lalla’s happiness is obviously made of scenes: the stroll, the water from the fountain, the fire, the bath, the market, the party. Those sequences are interrupted with stories and songs. Lalla works to help her aunt to feed her sons and her niece; however, she does not earn enough, so her aunt decides to marry her to a wealthy man. As she does not agree with this plan, Lalla decides to flee. Both Maalouf and Le Clézio postulate openness to the outside world and promote cross-culturality. By articulating the individual destiny to the historical memory, both authors also show in what way an individual “track” may lead to deconstruct the group’s perspectives; indeed, those are generally based on an ideology which itself tends to fall within tradition. Thus, the two heroes’ life stories explain how different groups overcome the crisis, survive from it and re-found the future. In Le Rocher de Tanios, the hero’s personal fate does admittedly generate the group’s dislocation, but at the same time it enables Tanios to discover many of the head’s weaknesses; as for Désert, when Lalla comes back to the edge of the tarred neighbourhood and gives birth by the sea, on her own, the scene also marks the beginning of a new era and of a new story for the group.

 reeing Oneself and Exploring: Fragments from Patrick F Chamoiseau’s Literary Work  he Link Between Identity and Alterity Is Above All That T of Freeing Oneself “One has to free his/her imaginary” keeps writing Patrick Chamoiseau who defines himself as “a speech marker”. Free it from the confinement of any kind of exteriority, from the colonizer’s look, from Mother Land Africa which is a fanciful perspective spread by the illusion of the “Negritude”. What can be retained here is that, for Le Clézio as well as for Maalouf, when it comes to studying cultures, there is always

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a risk of a unity of meaning that would explain us – from an upright position, and eventually in a rather foolish way  – our thousand ways of being, of living and of loving. Twenty years ago, Patrick Chamoiseau contributed to create a praise of creoleness2 together with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant (1989). The neologism DIVERSALITY, in capital letters, appeared then… The novelistic dynamic of creoleness to which Patrick Chamoiseau contributes is a West Indian reality which has been made possible thanks to a renewed understanding of it. “It is a descent down into oneself, but without the Other, without the alienating prism of the Other” (Bernabé et  al. 1989). Truth can be found within oneself, here and now. This is one of the main lessons to draw from this work, as well as the political project of this anticolonialism and independence literature. How to think in two languages but in an approach that is different from this never-ending “conqueror-predator” one? This can be answered by asserting that the creole condition has not emerged from a “unique trunk-root-tree” as Western genealogic trees are usually represented. The identity principle of creoleness drastically breaks up the filiation figures. The creole condition is one of multiplied roots, as those of the banyan tree which does not grow only vertically (the colonial ideologies which claims to the instituted divine right legitimacy praise verticality). The metaphor for the banyan tree is also used by some other authors of creoleness, such as the Haitian poet René Depestre when he writes: “as well as its main roots, the banyan tree has some aerial roots which go back to the ground to turn into another new tree. A continuous loop between heavens and earth. I have a “banyan identity” (…). Over my life experiences, I have overlaid in myself various cultures, while never losing my Haitian roots. People believe they know a person’s identity only from one of his/her roots. It is an illusion.3

 he Link Between Identity and Alterity Is Also One T of Exploration The novelistic “Antillanité”4 contributes to situate writing within that natural frame of a birth or of the celebration of this “relational asset of languages, cultures and of human trajectories” in the Caribbean area (Chamoiseau 1990). The novel Texaco (Chamoiseau 1992) particularly illustrates this “diversality” as the “dynamic of Unity becoming Diverse”. It tells about a “mangrove-neighbourhood” strongly marked by exodus and the aftermaths of the Pelée Mountain’s eruption which

2  Creoleness: from French “Créolité”, a literary movement first developed in the 1980s by the Martinican writers Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. 3  http://ile-en-ile.org/rene-depestre-haiti-dans-tous-nos-reves 4  Antillanité: a literary and political movement developed in the 1960s that stresses the creation of a specific West Indian identity out of a multiplicity of ethnic and cultural elements.

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destroyed Saint-Pierre city in 1902. A “courage-area” with stubborn inhabitants, considered as “squatters” by the Béké5 owner. A “composite-area” which rises again and again from its past, despite the many evictions led by the oil operator firm, as the inland’s newcomers obstinately repair the damages and settle massively in the periphery of the chief-town. Once one has elected the idea of “creoleness” in him/herself, one does not start “being”, one suddenly starts “existing”, existing the same absolute way as the wind that blows and mingles together the earth, the sea, the tree, the heavens, the smells and all the qualities…” (Chamoiseau 1997). So, the identity is an “existing”, a “being” that is, by relations, always at the start. It cannot be subsumed under a reified perspective of the “being”. The characters of Patrick Chamoiseau’s novels (Balthazar Bodule-Jules, Madame Paville, Sarah Anaïs-Alicia, Solibo, Marguerite Jupiter, Déborah-Nicol, Timoléon, Pipi…) constantly weave the actual experience to the creole culture and also carry out the fertilization of the French language with Creole language. Chamoiseau’s stories about his childhood especially fits to this poetry that brings together harmoniously the preserved diversities and “those shreds of the oral memory scattered all around the country, those bits and pieces of nursery rhymes, those bursts of voices, those rags of words that mainly whirl permanently” (Chamoiseau1990). “Creolisation” is not a fusion; it does require that each of its component persists while it is already being changed” was writing Edouard Glissant (1997).6

Alice and Her Double Trip (Carroll 2016 [1865]; 2016 [1872]) Oh, what fun it will be when they see me through the glass in here and they cannot get at me! (1872)

I f You Don’t Know Where You Are Going, any Road Will Get You There With his two tales, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and with Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll offers to read about the gap between the classical universe of the nursery rhymes and Alice’s surprise and lucidity when facing some events in the deepness then through the looking-glass. Each trial is in fact a step in her initiatory journey as each encounter enables her to discover the world, particularly the adult’s world but also to discover herself.

5  Béké: Creole term to describe a descendant of the early European, usually French, settlers in the French Antilles. 6  Glissant, Édouard, Mondialité: Or the Archipelagos of Edouard Glissant, Skira Paris, 1997 [Traité du tout-monde, Gallimard, 1997].

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and you’re in the Second Square to begin with; when you get into the Eight Square, you’ll be a Queen. What do you mine by “if you really are a Queen”? What right have you to call yourself so You can’t be a Queen, you know, till you’ve passed the proper examination. And the sooner we begin it, the better (1872).

When Alice skips from one square to another on the chessboard, crossing the rivers, she travels in a sort or archipelago where encounters are fantastic and incongruous. Lewis Carroll shows how Alice moves around by sliding, with sideways movements, from one small island to another. Moving alongside the surface does allow her to step through the other side, into this new place, an old void that she is happy to reach, the kind of happiness one feels when fleeing. The Daresbury-born author also raises subjectivity through the language analysis, from how unconscious manifests itself, to enunciation processes, but also argumentative processes, and narrative forms as many ways to express subjectivity.

I f the World Does Absolutely Have no Sense… Who Can Prevent Us to Create One? Reality is what a majority of people have decided to name reality. In Carroll’s tales, words can be combined (use of puns, implicit ideas, ambiguities…) to create meaning (or rather meaninglessness). Carroll plays with homophonies: So, she (Alice) began rather timidly: Am I addressing the White Queen? But I don’t want it done at all! groaned the poor Queen. I’ve been a-dressing myself for the last two hours (1872).

Carroll also plays with historical references: The Lion and the Unicorn are both symbols used in the Royal Coat of Arms, but also represent the opposition between the political figures Gladstone and Disraeli; the following part also deals with royalty: I don’t think it never happened before that anyone had to take care of two Queens asleep at once! No, not in all the History of England, it couldn’t, you know, because there never was more than one Queen at a time (1872).

The powerful use of nonsense is highly obvious when Alice meets Humpty Dumpty: the character mentions an un-birthday gift or uses some portmanteau words, such as brillig which is supposed to mean ‘four o’clock in the afternoon’, the time when meats have to be grilled. In comparison to those nonsenses and portmanteau words, one can imagine what could be the reaction of some freshly recruited staff members when they hear jargon or acronyms spoken commonly and frequently in the firm they join. With the succession of events, encounters, ordeals and progresses, Lewis Carroll offers an unusual, incongruous and astonishing universe as Alice travels from one

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island to another (the checkerboard in Through the Looking-Glass). Through contact with this alterity Alice  – although irritating herself her interlocutors  – faces absurdity, distances herself from the events and by doing so gets enriched by those experiences, and shows more creativity, as the Knight does: In fact, the more head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things (1872).

A Moving Identity: The Case of Nikhil (Lahiri 2004) Read all the Russians, and then reread them”, his grandfather had said. “They will never fail you.

“ Man Is Wise, Intelligent and Reasonable When It Comes to Matters Concerning Others, But Not When He Is Concerned Himself.” (Gogol 1917) The main character in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel – The Namesake (Lahiri 2004) – is named after the celebrated Russian author: Nilokaï Gogol. He is indeed the favourite author of the character’s grandfather, Ashoke. This latter has been initiated into literature by his own maternal grandfather. After one year of study in the United-­ States, Ashoke comes back to India  – his homeland  – to visit that grandfather. Nevertheless, the train in which he was travelling goes through a terrible derailment, and due to it, Ashoke has some and psychological physical after-effects. Wounded among injured people and corpses, he grips in his hands the novel “The Overcoat” by N. Gogol, which in a way ties him to life. Without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side, the baby’s birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half true. […]. As for a name, they have decided to let Ashima’s grandmother, who is past eighty now, who has named each of her other six great-grandchildren in the world, do the honors. […] And so Ashima and Ashoke have agreed to put off the decision of what to name the baby until a letter comes, ignoring the forms from the hospital about filing for a birth certificate.

After he married Ashima in an “arranged” marriage, Ashoke decides to go back to the United States to both families’ displeasure. Their first baby was born. The married couple wait for the letter from the maternal grandmother who has chosen the child’s name; however, she dies, and it happens that the letter she sent obviously got lost. In the Indian Bengali tradition, it is common that a baby receives a name a nickname – used by the relatives only- so, while waiting for the letter to arrive, the baby is named Gogol, and this nickname eventually becomes his official first name.

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Not only Gogol Ganguli have a pet name, but a last name turned first name. And so, it occurs to him that no one he knows in the world, in Russia or America or anywhere, shares his name. Not even the source of his namesake. […] I’m Nikhil, he says for the first time in his life.

 hile Becoming Famous, One Must Give Up One’s First Name, W as an Aerostat Pilot Would Dump Ballast… (Wilde 2006) This first name Gogol was getting him down so much so that once he became adult, he decides to take officially the name that his parents gave him when he entered school; up to then, he had rejected it: Nikhil, a Bengali name sounding however like the name of The Overcoat’s author! Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The namesake, mentioned here, is full of touching analysis about different feelings one can experience in a cross-cultural encounter. Ashima’s (Gogol or rather Nikhil’s mother) qualms in her community are particularly touching: in their private life, the couple lives as if they were in India, eating Indian food, celebrating Indian festivals, spending time only with Bengali people…: It’s not so much the pain, which she knows, somehow, she will survive. It’s the consequence: motherhood in a foreign land. […] she is terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare. […] For being a foreigner, Ashima is being to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy – a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding.

Thus, Gogol-Nikhil started to feel split between being American while at the same time being linked to his parents’ customs, which created in himself some ambivalent feelings. While thinking about his girlfriend, he notices that permanence was quite impossible to him: “He realizes that this is a place that will always be here for her. It makes it easy to imagine her past, and her future, to picture her growing old” (p. 156). “When they were born, men receive a first name then a surname that they either accomplish, or refute, erase, or modify” (Audeguy 2005). The foreigner knows about it better than anyone else.

Fictions, Decentering and Creativity Let us come back to the characters we have mentioned. Whenever they face strangeness during their events or encounters, in their interactions, all characters show an astonishment which will guide their actions. All of them experience in a way an

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initiatory journey in a social world (Lalla and Tina), in cultural worlds (Gogol-­ Nikhil and the characters in Patrick Chamoiseau’s novels), or in incongruous worlds (Alice). Those situations are similar to experiences that many managers go through today when facing their work team’s diversity, or the complexity or lack of recognition of their decisions. How to become this new subject that the event does require? Who will dominate and who will be under the other’s influence? Who is right or who is wrong? How to compromise with the other when one cannot even understand or when even words are no longer enough to express oneself?

“ If Your Face Is Crooked, Don’t Blame on the Looking Glass” (Gogol 1917) Those literary stories teach us about some events that accompany each of us while integrating a new firm or all along our professional career. Which pitfalls and hurdles do we encounter following the example of Alice when jumping from one square to another on the chessboard? One’s life is made of encounters, vagaries, unexpected events, mysteries… some of which unsettle us. Evasive replies, play-acting (“pretending” for example), firm assertions of one’s beliefs, risk of being sent back to one’s origins, to one’s physical appearance, to one’s visible or invisible disability. All those stories make it obvious the ambivalence of the difference, of the unexpected: they undermine us as much as they enrich us. When facing adversity, it seems that those characters develop a subject while wiping out themselves, taking new identities and acquiring a more “distanced” view than that of the others. As “self is an interpretation and can be subject to changes, to conversions” (P.  Ricoeur quoted by N.  Alter 2012), those characters constantly sway between rationality and emotion, between certainty (there cannot be two queens at the same time) and representation (why this foreign surname, Gogol?). By this oscillation, they are able to decipher and understand the situation, provided that they make this last effort: suspending one’s judgement. In other words, standing back, or taking more of an overview, an old reflex from the French philosopher, that of Montaigne, or Descartes or Pascal, but also further back in the time, that of Socrates strolling in Athens’ streets questioning his fellow citizens’ certainties, or that of Pyrrhon (365–275 B.C.) who was the first one to praise the suspension of judgement with the “epoche”. It could also be said about the “self” that it is almost always “mixed”. Let us then suggest here that this “métissage” is the combination of three elements: the difference (which makes the “métissage” noticeable), the mix (which consecrates it) and the mobility of the body (which is one of its conditions). Those literary texts remind us that when facing the powerful ones, the “métis” (i.e. a “cross-cultural hybrid person”) lacks mental representations because most of the time, the family story that should be written at many different levels –“in plurals”– is also lacking, a story

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that should be written from both sides of kinship, a story that cannot be written the same way as for the others… Going back “Homes” happens to be necessary when reaching a milestone, for example a marriage or a child’s birth. That is when the métis goes through this “re-connecting” work, and faces that challenge made to the reason and which is called “the nonsense”.

The Nonsense as Primary Condition for the Foreigner? Precisely, nonsense is not Lewis Carroll’s privilege. It can be easily found with Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco, Virginia Woolf but also with most of the surrealist authors and poets and in René Magritte’s paintings when he states: “this is not a pipe”. But the art of nonsense extensively cultivated by Lewis Carroll highlights those discrepancies and the author brings Alice to decenter herself by accepting the situation, by reinterpreting it and finally making it understandable. This attitude of a conscious astonishment could be used in the professional environment: why not, for instance, recreating deliberately some similar situations by dedicating time to create moments where we allow ourselves to hear what we do not want to hear? By using astonishment reports, coaching or “co-development”, and places to speak out in group? The firm gets liberated or rather deliberates…What is important here is to get this ability to question one’s certainties when rubbing the surface during the encounter with the Other. “If you had Alice’s magical power, which are the three points you would change in my management?” a manager could ask to his/her employees. Here, managing comes to play a new “game” that would make the former one lapsed. In a growing context of diversity and complexity, when time to act is decreasing while the number of persons to report to is increasing, the manager is often helpless. Encountering the Other is not a just a logical and rational event. Some space for the emotions, for imaginary, and even for dreams – which is part of the literary landscape  – has to be preserved: Alice’s dreams for example, as her game cards are nothing else but fallen leaves. But also, her imaginary: what if… those fallen leaves were real game cards. That reminds us of the phrase “think out of the box”! This notion of creative decentering has been mentioned in other areas than literary fiction: by the philosopher Plato in The Republic – when the man gets out of the cave and of its representations – or by the sociologist Ch. Argyris (Argyris and Schon 1978) when suggesting the “double loop learning”, that is questioning objectives when they have not been achieved.

 he Example of Creoleness as Frame of Thinking T the Multitude Creolisations are machines that bark differences (Dorsimond 2013).

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For the Foreigner, Facing Proudly the “Multiples of the Worlds” The creole conditions as well as the texts of those poets, playwrights and novelists allow us to clarify the status of culture and identities in the multiple of the world. How to apprehend some cultures that would claim to be part of something else than just a unique origin (an atavistic culture… with a founding myth, a genesis, and a legitimacy on a territory)? Some cultures that could think after something else than the traditional logic approach, that of the identity (in the sense of identical)? One can do it by resorting to “Diversality” advocated by Patrick Chamoiseau and by echoing another nice concept from Edouard Glissant, that of “rooted wandering” (Glissant 1999 [1990]). Diversality leads to a relation that results in new realities, and those ones are themselves called for the same dynamic to relate to other realities and so on…. The spreading of this network of relations can be limitless. Diversality is not a synthesis but an “open differentiation”, “in which a culture is related openly and actively, and is affected, infected, worried, modified, conditioned by the other one” (Peterson 1993). Creoleness and its “All-World” dynamic is a criticism of the Negritude, an ideological concept based over a fiction (the “negro”, the European colonist’s creation) and fostered by a topos (Motherland Africa). The question about Negritude then was that of an “I” which imposed itself as free within a stubborn resistance to oppression (Césaire 1956): how to escape from both the deportation of the population and from the master’s eye? Patrick Chamoiseau’s question, but also that of other authors from the French Caribbean Islands, is to know how to exist “worldwide as a community – French Martinique Island’s community – and not just from the perspective of Martinique Island, of my bell-tower, of my nation, of my language, of my culture and of my ancestors” (Chamoiseau and Larcher 2007). Chamoiseau ‘s aspiration refers to a population that resisted to a tyrannical order and that is wider than just the black humanity (because it has been made up of Africa, Europe, India and Asia at the same time), but mainly recognises itself in sharing a common fate, that of wandering which itself originates from paradoxes, cultural hybridation – Métissage – and even chaos itself. This “poetics of relation” – a life’s spiral figure representation – aims at avoiding three pitfalls: the historical alienation to French colonialism and its Western vocation for a coherent and closed system where thinking has to blend with a common essence; the mythical Africa and, finally a constantly threatening temptation to turn inward, towards a “Caribbean We”, generalizing creoleness and containing it within the Caribbean geographical boundaries (only). By using the word “Antillanité”, Edouard Glissant rises the vision of an “archipelagic” identity, that is, open to an All-Alterity, to an All-World where difference is not what separates us. Rather, it is the elementary particle of any kind of relation. “Relation, as I call it, with a capital R, does operate thanks to difference” recalls Edouard Glissant (2010). Comparing does not mean unifying (i.e. drawing a unity that must make a total), but rather multiplying the “schemes” with many different

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possible layouts. Differentiating leads to relating but mainly and ideally it leads to creating a dialogue. What is asserted here, following Edouard Glissant’s ideas, is a conception of culture as textuality, thus disapproving with any idea of primary culture, where cultures in variation originate from. His subject is “a subject that speaks to the “Multiple of the World”. One could consider cultures under the concept of an Idea. As we do in Western countries: considering them as being or not being. But here, thinking about the cultures and the diversity of the world means in fact being aware (by advance) of what individuals possess deep inside their life trajectories and that will inevitably be expressed and achieved. Here, culture is a maximum level of achievement. So, individuals have no choice but to submit to this need. Following this idea, if everything heads towards completion, the study of cultures must teach us more about this distance that separates the current form to the completed form (of culture). One could also think about the cultures as compared to a continuous flow: how has this flow been made up and how will it become something else? Here, considering cultures and the diversity of the world amounts to catch this transformation: “from something to something, from the other to the other which goes from one shape to one shape never from the shapeless to the shape. Culture is a process without a beginning nor an and, apparently identical and yet changing. A “rootlet-­ system” (Deleuze and Guattari 1980).

“Inappartenance” (Un-belonging) Each culture is animated by the knowledge of its own specificity, but this knowledge has no borders…because the constituents of a culture, even though they have been identified cannot be brought to the indivisibility of its primary elements” (Glissant 1990). This rhizomatic perspective that has been sketched out in this chapter refers to the nice notion of the artist’s “inappartenance” (un-belonging), more poetic than that of “deterritorialization”: –– “Un-belonging” is opposed as we have mentioned it to the “thought of a unique identity affiliated to one’s origin” (Dorsimond 2013) and that would claim to be universal just from its own postulates and its own categories (Césaire 1955); –– “Un-belonging” calls for liberating one’s imaginaries. It obliges to constantly question the framework of concepts we use in our thinking. If we take the example of the insularity concept, a concept created by the West, with their flags, their borders, their weapons. Patrick Chamoiseau writes that, indeed, “before the European and American colonizers arrive, those who were living in the Caribbean island, in Martinique… did not consider the sea as a wall, on the contrary, they saw it as a place for encounters” (Chamoiseau and Larcher 2007)

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–– “Un-belonging” echoes a “geography of the multiple” which is always crossed by an imaginary, by some imaginaries; this “somewhere else” to which those imaginaries refer to is partly always elusive and always absent; –– “Un-belonging” is this imbrication of spaces in which the artist’s identity always defines itself by a movement, a passage from here to there, drawing overall a dense mesh, bourgeoning however never completed; –– “Un-belonging” offers “a relationship to the place which is based on the principle of identity: the writer can recognise him/herself in those places, there is a dimension where emotions and memory echo but at the same time, un-belonging is also made up on the principle of foreignness as the writer always feels a gap “between those places and his (her) own place” (Ridon 2015a, b). In “Un-belonging”, it can be found this principle of interdependence between all the Earth’s living beings in which whatever affect some of them, inevitably have consequences on some others. Everybody’s freedom and responsibility are determined by the willing constraint of everyone’s deliberate actions. The authors and literary fictions quoted in this chapter highlight the idea that, from a managerial perspective, the manager has to have an “anamorphic view”. He (she) has to accept the ambiguity of the situations. The manager has to be able to step sideway and decenter himself enough so that a network of opportunities can emerge and be seen whereas at first, it was perceived as a set of obstacles. Within the team, the manager has to contribute to unveil a hidden reality. He must help to consider another perspective of the same reality by allocating differently the resources, the roles, time… thanks to those movements.

When Fictions Encounter Business… For those who practice management, those literature characters destined to wandering are enlightening because – by drawing an endless movement from one kind of strangeness to another – they prepare managers to the complex and the unforeseen part of events. Those characters demand us not to reduce reality to mere arithmetic. Those characters also invite us to a cross-cultural perspective, that is to join with intelligence some habits that are not ours. The characters presented in this chapter are all beings who are “in fragment”, and are willing to leave a “track”. And any traveller does know how difficult it is to leave one’s own mark when passing through a place, whether it is in the desert or even more in the seas since a navigation does not leave, a priori, any track on the water after its passage. So, for the traveller, all is a matter of “mental mapping”, of a “memory of the links” (Ridon 2015a, b). Travelling on “the tracks of” never really implies to make again and identically the first explorer’s same path, but rather to be part of a legacy. And, this legacy which consists in defining the whole possibilities of interpreting the world, can be called “Humanities”. We think that this is one of the most valuable legacy for managers nowadays: articulating the opposites,

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cultivating a critical ability, being autonomous in one’s judgement in order to navigate smartly within many fields or perspectives. “Although this “trace” is never meaningless, it does not impose a determined way to the one who will follow it, because it is always a sign of an absent object which has disappeared. So, it leaves room for interpretation” (Ridon 2015a, b). Also, the trace is inherent to the apparently ludicrous idea of a mosaic tessera that would be made up of pieces of papers, litters, metals, silk, fabric and any material that could finally be stuck or fragmented, and which, thanks to their baroque assembly, puts forth the impossibility to name the being embraced as a whole “once for all”: –– Alice and her world invite us to “think the wrong way round”, to be careful with our prejudices. For the manager, this could be for example, a suggestion to list up “the ways to fail” (how to miss something?) in order to then better understand how to succeed in it. This requires to be more imaginative by stepping through the looking glass. Freeing (physically) one’s movement amounts to free one’s thoughts (for instance, changing one’s seat at a meeting, walking along with an applicant during a job interview, moving, making drawings…). Finally, looking yourself in the mirror allows to find yourself again because we know that gestures activate thoughts! It is more worth travelling with hope than getting to the destination, wrote R.L Stevenson. What is a concern is not the way things really are and how they must be changed, but the way we would like them to be ideally. The more we make gestures and move, the more we can make our flow of thoughts smoother. –– The literary works of Patrick Chamoiseau, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amin Maalouf or Jean-Marie Le Clézio, by using different processes of “fusions”, call for a change of language and for a use of “analogies”. The metaphor is also shown as a constitutive element for movement. The manager can be inspired by it to practice the “conscious astonishment”, to change the emotional context of a situation and the scope from which it is experienced, thus collecting a new way to consider things by changing the expression mediums (words, images, videos, micro-­ conversation…). He/she can imagine that he/she is somebody else, in another firm, in another country, in a real or a fantastic world, or even put him/herself in the competing firm’s position; this will enable an efficient decentering to think about new solutions and on the whole to better explore change. Patrice Georget who has inspired us those ideas and words speaks about a possible celebration of “feeling the failure”, that is when a manager speaks out his errors during a meeting and traces (back) – to a trustful audience – a kind of genealogy of the causes for his/her failures and success. Finally, those “mobile” lives or lives of migration give us an – more in-depth – access to all the human lives’ reality: each constitutive element of our life is an element of meaning that is never the same. The unplanned excitement of the trajectories always leaves the door open for something that was neither thought about, nor wished. So those “mobile lives” tell about a hard truth: we truly discover ourselves only when facing difficulties. Freedom is learnt about within some form of anxiety.

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It is only when the “un-thought” is experienced that one starts thinking, like the sculptor becoming a real sculptor when he/she discovers a knot in the wood. The event gives rise to the thought the same way as the knot creates the artist. When one does no longer know what to think, then one discovers him/herself. When lower than low, one knows what he/she is worth. The authors of this article who are all involved in a way or in another to cross-­ cultural awareness training tend to think that their role is to train about how to doubt, to train about how to be suspicious about any kind of blind and conquering certainties. In this particular purpose, writers and poets are true allies. In a column entitled: “With literature, doubting is still made possible”, the German novelist Gila Lustiger wrote: “the real, the great [literature] is the one that shows us what is hardly noticeable, which offers us the most valuable gift: the freedom to doubt […] A book requires us to participate, to anticipate, to check and to complete what the author omits. It throws us in the whirl of imagination. And only imagination permits to break our stereotypes and the way we stigmatize the Other […] The writer does not have a more relevant perspective of the world; he simply has a biased look on things. He/she brings into the narrative the unnecessary: the colours, the sound, the qualms, the vague emotions and the indefinite sensation, all those wonderful odds and ends that make a human life”.7 A “biased look”, “the unnecessary”, doubting, decentering… If literature is so useful to the world, is it not precisely because it is not utilitarian? When addressing to the heart, to the emotion, to the inner driving forces and to the imaginary of the humans, the poet or the writer do not explicitly seek to contribute to the debates on the society’s problems. Whether it is J.M.G. Le Clézio or Lewis Carroll for example, they do not claim to do that. And yet, this is what they do using their own ways: by helping to think, by sowing doubts where mainstream ideas, (or Pensée unique), general media, the Academy… plant too many certainties. Many writers – for example Zola, Camus, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig… – had a determining influence on their contemporaries’ critical awareness, on their political and social thinking. They could have such an influence because, as recognized figures, their say weighed on such or such political battles. But their influence also come, or we shall say mostly come from the aesthetics of their works (novels or poetry); indeed, when they describe the reality in their shifted way, when they catch the reader’s attention with the beauty of a text, the rightness of an observation, the suspense of the plot, they blend this bias to the essence of a social reality or of a personal experience and thus bring the readers to ask themselves questions they would not ask themselves but also to doubt, to understand some of the world’s challenges, to help them to catch the uncommon complexity of cultural challenges that more and more managers but also increasingly any person from the business environment have been facing nowadays.

 http://www.liberation.fr/tribune/2003/02/14/avec-la-litterature-la-liberte-du-doute-est-encorepossible_430844

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Conclusion In this chapter, the authors that we have mentioned raise the question of identity and remind us that, for them, an identity is far from being monolithic. They insist by showing through their characters’ fates, life experiences, events and trips that this identity is rather made and shaped by a multiple social membership, by diverse cultural belongings, a trajectory in different “territories” and many interactions with the Other(s), however different this Other is. Particularly the concept of Diversality well recaps this need to take into consideration the importance of the difference as fully part of a relation. Also, those literary works show that thanks to their ability to sway between emotions and rationality, the characters have been able to better understand some new places, some new people and adapt themselves (their “subject”) to situations they had never experienced before or had never thought about nor anticipated. Although those experiences were harsh and painful (for example for Tanios and Lalla), they helped them to leave behind and undo their initial frame of thinking to recreate an enriched way of thinking, of being, of understanding and of perceiving. This is also what happens to Gogol when renaming himself again with his initial Bengali name. As for Alice, her constant astonishment and questioning helped her to give meaning to the meaningless encounters and events. We can draw lessons from those characters, their mobile lives and changing understanding of their world: –– how to combine and accept the multiple facets of one’s identity? –– How to better meet the Other? –– How to adapt and do with the unknown, the unplanned and unexpected? As we said earlier, with the growing constraints and fast changes resulting from globalisation and technological revolution, business and firms have increasingly been turning into a setting for more and more complex interactions and exchanges between people who communicate, think or work differently (for example, today three generational cultures with different cultural references and work values have increasingly been sharing the same workplace…): what if business was itself an “All-World”? What if a firm with its many departments, with its different job cultures inside, with its own technical and business language or an international firm with its many subsidiaries in different areas or countries were perceived and understood as an Archipelago? What if managers were helped (trained) to also develop an archipelagic identity along their (international?) mobility within their firm and all along their career path? The business environment has long been managed with useful and efficient rational management tools and ways of thinking: how to optimise time? How to limit and reduce the financial costs? How to reward fairly the most efficient team-­ members? Etc… Etc…

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The fictions we have quoted all remind us that we urgently need to reconsider and interpret our environment from different scopes, and widen the possibility to understand the world, including the business world: –– a project manager is more than the sum of his/her competencies and experiences mentioned on his/her CV and job description. For example, the full life trajectory that has led him/her to a position should be taken into account to understand him/ her. In fact, we are simply referring here to the human being he/she is. –– The growing number of processes implemented to manage at best a firm’s activities does make it more successful but also tends to develop some best practices which definitely lack flexibility when it comes to be “agile” and manage the unexpected and unplanned events: (an “efficient” employee may be described so when his/her performances are due to optimum process management…) –– Doubting is out of question in business: the implemented processes are aimed at reducing risks and reinforcing certainties at the highest. The most efficient it is, the least one has to think… In other words, and to conclude, this absolute certainty, the rational behaviour that the business environment generates does not allow room for what our authors promote: uncertainty, doubt, failures, but also as we have seen imagination and emotions. Yet, the cross-cultural perspective (as we have described it in this chapter) would allow decision-makers, managers and their teams to reconsider business with the unnecessary but yet so human part fictions provide: colours, sounds…vague emotions, indefinite sensations… Alice, Gogol, Tanios, Chamoiseau, Glissant, Lahiri… can definitely be of great support for today’s managers and business. Their (sensitive) humanity is an example of genuine and limitless relations that could be profitable to business today, that requires more and more ability to adapt, to change, to learn, to improve, to work cross-culturally… How (variously) else can we understand businesspeople?

Bibliography Alter, N. 2012. La force de la différence. Itinéraires de patrons atypiques. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Argyris, C., and D.A.  Schon. 1978. Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co. Audeguy, S. 2005. La théorie des nuages. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. English edition: Audeguy, S. 2008. The Theory of Clouds. Mariner Books. Ben Jelloum, T. 1999. Entretien avec Tahar Ben Jelloun. Lire, Paris, mars. Bernabé, J., P. Chamoiseau, and R. Confiant. 1989. Éloge de la Créolité – In Praise of Creoleness, English and French Edition. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Carroll, L. 2016 [1865]. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Macmillan Collector’s Library. ———. 2016 [1872] Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Macmillan Collector’s Library. Castoriadis, C., and P. Ricœur. 2016. Dialogue sur l’histoire et l’imaginaire social. Paris: Éditions de l’HESS. English edition: Castoriadis, C, and P Ricœur. 2017. Ricœur and Castoriadis in

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Discussion: On Human Creation, Historical Novelty, and the Social Imaginary. Rowman & Littlefield International. Césaire, A. 1956. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Paris: Éditions Présence Africaine. English edition: Césaire, A. 2001a Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. Wesleyan University Press. ———. 1955. Discours sur le Colonialisme, suivi de Discours sur la Négritude. Paris: Éditions Présence Africaine. English edition: Césaire, A. 2001b. Discourse on Colonialism. Monthly Review Press. Chamoiseau, P. 1992. Texaco. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. English edition: Chamoiseau, P. 1997. Texaco: A Novel. Vintage. ———. 1997. Écrire en pays dominé. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. ———. 1990. Une enfance créole, I. Paris: Éditions Hatier. English edition: Chamoiseau, P. 1999. Childhood. University of Nebraska Press. Chamoiseau, P., and S. Larcher. 2007. Les identités dans la totalité-monde. Cités 29: 121–134. Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1980. Mille Plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. English edition: Deleuze, G, and F. Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. Dorsimond, E. 2013. Comment Deleuze et Derrida voyagent dans la pensée glissantienne de la créolisation. Rue Descartes 2 (78): 34–47. Glissant, É. 2010. Imaginaire des langues. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. ———. 1990. Poétique de la Relation. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. English edition: Glissant, É. 1997. The Poetics of Relation. University of Michigan Press, 1997 [1990]. ———. 1997. Traité du tout-monde. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. English edition: Glissant, É. 1997. Mondialité: Or the Archipelagos of Edouard Glissant. Paris: Éditions Skira. Gogol, N. 1992 [1917]. The Overcoat and Other Short Stories. Dover Publications. ———. 1917. Revizor or The Inspector-General (a comedy in five acts). University of Michigan Library. Lahiri, J. 2004. The Namesake. Harper Perennial. Le Clézio, J.M.G. 1980. Désert. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. English edition: Le Clézio, J.M.G. 2010. Desert. Verba Mundi Books. Maalouf, A. 1993. Le Rocher de Tanios. Paris: Éditions Grasset. English edition: Maalouf, A. 1995. The Rock of Tanios, Time Warner Books UK. ———. 1998. Les identités meurtrières. Paris: Éditions Grasset. English edition: Maalouf A (2012) In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. Arcade. Montaigne (de), T. 2007. Tokyo c’est loin. Éditions Pocket. Peterson, M. 1993. Patrick Chamoiseau: l’imaginaire de la diversité. Nuit blanche 54: 44–47. Plato, The Republic. Ridon, J.-X. 2015a. Inappropriation et « diversalité » chez J.M.G.  Le Clézio. Irish Journal of French Studies 15: 7–24. Ridon J.-X (2015b) J.M.G.  Le Clézio et Édouard Glissant: pour une poétique de la trace. Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, Vol 19, N°2, 146–154. Virilio, P. 1995. La vitesse de libération. Paris: Éditions Galilée. Wilde, O. 2006. Nouveaux Essais de littérature et d’esthétique: 1886–1887. Éditions du Sandre. Pierre Robert Cloet is Associated Professor at the University Paris Nanterre (France). He is codirector of the Master Humanities and Management. After a scientific PhD, he worked during 20 years for an American based pharmaceutical company, as a member of the French steering committee. His fields of research are intercultural management, human resources, and organizational behavior. He published articles and papers on those topics and the book “L’Homme Mondialisé” together with Philippe Pierre. He is also teaching in several educational institutions, universities and Grandes Ecoles.  

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Alain Max Guénette is a former professor of the HES-SO (University of Applied Sciences and Arts  of Western Switzerland) in Psychosociology, Human Resources Management and Organization – and associate researcher at the CGS (Centre de Gestion Scientifique), École des Mines ParisTech. He first pursued a career in business before undertaking studies in philosophy and human sciences and enrolling in the academic world. His research themes are occupational health on the one hand and intercultural management and diversity on the other.  

Marie-Anne Mirabeau-Paquiry is a trainer and consultant in cross-cultural management. She trains managing executives on issues such as cultural awareness, international mobility, crosscultural communication, multicultural team, etc… She also teaches in different universities and business schools.  Her personal cultural experiences (Indian born French citizen), her advanced university degrees (she graduated in Languages and civilizations, then in Intercultural management) and her 20 year experiences as a trainer in many SMCs and global groups from different sectors have convinced her that firms can improve their management practices thanks to an additional cross-cultural perspective of their activities and relations.  

Philippe Pierre (www.philippepierre.com) is a doctor in sociology from the IEP of Paris, consultant and former HR director (Total and L’Oréal). Professor affiliated with Sciences Po Executive Education, he works as an expert with companies, associations, NGOs … His numerous publications and recent research deal with cultural identities in globalization, the socialization of mobile executives, learning organizations, courage managerial … He militates for a greater rapprochement between theoretical perspectives and dimensions of practice in a multicultural context.  

Michel Sauquet has spent professional life in the field of international and intercultural cooperation with extended stays in Africa and Latin America. He has worked for NGOs, ILO, Foundations, created a publishing house (Éditions Charles Léopold Mayer), and has specialized in intercultural issues, teaching in various French universities, including Sciences Po Paris. He is the author of 23 books, both fiction and non-fiction.  

Chapter 22

Stakeholder Theory and Narrative: Writing to Better Business Decisions Shady Cosgrove

Introduction In ‘Ending the So-Called Freidman-Freeman Debate’, R Edward Freeman states, it really doesn’t make any sense to talk about business without talking about ethics and … it doesn’t make any sense to talk about business or ethics without talking about human beings (Freeman 2008, 163).

Business executives can be better at their jobs and become stronger, more ethical leaders by engaging with the craft of narrative because narrative is, at its core, talking about human beings. In particular, I will argue that using a practice-based narrative approach to consider point-of-view can give business leaders key insights that will prove significant in navigating stakeholder interests, as outlined in R Edward Freeman’s work on stakeholder theory. First, I will establish key terms and concepts regarding stakeholder theory, before discussing parallels between narrative and business, and how they pertain to concepts of empathy, something critical to both fields. I will then advocate writing multiple point-of-view narratives as an empathetic strategy for navigating multiple stakeholder interests, paying particular attention to craft and discussing my own novel What the Ground Can’t Hold, told across five points-of-view. Through this analysis, I will pay attention to how understanding and enacting narrative craft inspired a deeper, more-empathetic engagement with contrasting points-of-view and highlight how this might be relevant to stakeholder theory. Then I will use a real-world example from the University of Wollongong to consider what this process might look in in practice. To be clear, I do not expect business executives to moonlight as novelists, but I do posit ways that creative writing could be used in university preparation workshops or professional development courses to help executives navigate the many perspectives with which they are faced. S. Cosgrove (*) University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_22

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Stakeholder Theory As Freeman and Phillips establish, stakeholder theory is a business managerial concept concerned with organizational strategy and ethics. The central idea is that an organization’s success is dependent on how well it manages the relationships with key groups such as customers, employees, suppliers, communities, financiers, and others that can affect the realization of its purpose. The manager’s job is to keep the support of all of these groups, balancing their interests, while making the organization a place where stakeholder interests can be maximized over time (Freeman and Phillips 2002, 333).

Stakeholder theory has been situated as a practical and/or pragmatic approach as opposed to a rarified theoretical one. It aims to be useful, giving managers tools to create value for stakeholders and tools for those stakeholders to better deal with managers, while also giving theorists a deeper understanding of ‘how value creation and trade take place’ (Freeman et al. 2015, 1). Importantly, stakeholder theory is concerned with impact (in particular, who is impacted by the business and the executive’s decisions), and this concern underpins my argument for using narrative as a means for managers to develop empathy with stakeholders. Earlier work by Freeman, Wicks and Parmar states that managers and entrepreneurs must ‘take into account the legitimate interests of those groups and individuals who can affect (or be affected by) their activities regardless of their business aims’ (Freeman et al. 2004, 365) and that successful business is about building strategies that ensure ‘suppliers, customers, employees, communities, managers, and shareholders all win continuously over time’. That is, stakeholder management is engaged with more than maximizing shareholder returns, and it is important for managers to remember that businesses are not isolated entities – they operate within complex social webs. Phillips, Freeman and Wicks posit the central tenet of the theory is that attention must be paid to the ‘interests and well-being of those who can assist or hinder the achievement of the organization’s objectives’ (Phillips et al. 2003, 481) and sometimes it is the interests and well-being of non-shareholders that proves key to maximizing equity shareholder wealth. That is, sometimes the best outcomes for shareholders are achieved by taking non-shareholder interests into account. As Freeman and Phillips articulate in ‘Stakeholder Theory: A Libertarian Defense’, corporations ‘need to understand the social effect of their actions’ and links need to be made between the social and economic effects of corporate action (Freeman and Phillips 2002, 332). They go on, drawing attention to the role of community: ‘communities are also a part of the agreement structure of business, since they provide air, water, schools, roads, protection from harm, and other so-called “public goods”’ (Freeman and Phillips 2002, 341). The important point here is that successful executives need to consider and balance many points of view, while keeping in mind their larger social contexts. Because of this grounding in social context, stakeholder theory is specifically and unapologetically concerned with ethics, conceived in terms that are ‘explicitly and unabashedly moral’ (Jones and Wicks 1999, 206). Phillips, Freeman and Wicks

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argue that stakeholder theory is different from other business models because it ‘addresses morals and values explicitly as a central feature of managing organizations’ (Phillips et al. 2003, 481). Freeman and Phillips also interrogate the narrative of ‘shareholder capitalism’, or ‘cowboy capitalism’, calling on scholars and businesses to consider changing the background conditions of the ‘standard story’. Such a method might ask how value creation and trade takes place in a world in which individuals have a complex psychology, where individuals and groups of individuals desire to be, and mostly are, responsible for the effects of their actions on others (good and bad), and where many are, or certainly ought to be, deeply skeptical of the view that the state looks out for their interests (Freeman and Phillips 2002, 332).

In this passage, Freeman and Phillips are calling for the story of business studies to be adapted to take into account the complexity of the human subject, something central to literature. Literature explores themes related to the human condition, and why people/characters act in the ways they do, that is, motive.

Business, Writing, Ethics and Morals Business, as understood using Stakeholder Theory, and writing share an emphasis on understanding interests, motives and the human condition. It is not surprising, then, that there is such opportunity in discussing narrative and business in light of how they negotiate ethics. In his essay ‘Narrative Ethics’ narratologist James Phelan states: Narrative ethics explores the intersections between the domain of stories and storytelling and that of moral values. Narrative ethics regards moral values as an integral part of stories and storytelling because narratives themselves implicitly or explicitly ask the question, “How should one think, judge, and act—as author, narrator, character, or audience—for the greater good?”’ (Phelan 2013, 1).

That is, narrative ethicists see questions of morality as integral to stories and the story-telling process because every narrative engages with the larger question: how should one think, judge or act for the greater good? This is not unlike the business decision-maker who must engage with the larger question of how to ethically conduct successful business. Stories usually operate with characters and events – people doing things or having things done to them – inviting the reader or writer to consider, ‘What might I have done in that situation?’ or ‘What was the right thing to do in that situation?’ Even technical narratological choices – like who is the focal character, what details do they notice, how is action narrated – are fruitful for considering the ethics of narrative. After all, as Phelan states: Narrative is not just an object to be interpreted and evaluated but also a way of interpreting and evaluating. To tell a story about an experience is to give that experience shape and meaning by setting it off from other experiences, placing it in the grooves of an intelligible plot, and judging its agents and events (Phelan 2008, 167).

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Understanding narrative and its capacity for evaluation resonates with Stakeholder Theory’s tenet of evaluating stakeholder interests. The question, ‘What story is being shaped, and how?’, is important in light of what the story means, who it matters to, the impact the story has, and who is impacted by it. These concerns are not different to those put forth by Freeman in his essay ‘Ending the so-called Freidman-­ Freeman Debate’ where he discusses the separation fallacy, saying ‘it’s not useful anymore to separate questions of business and questions of ethics … we would have a more useful ethics if we built into our normative ideals the need to understand how we create value and trade’ (Freeman 2008, 163). So how might using narrative practically impact the business executive? As Phelan reports, every narrative is contestable – there is always another way the story might have been told, and this knowledge gives us important information about the story tellers. He states: ‘Recognizing that every narrative is contestable entails also recognizing that tellers are likely to construct their tales at least partly in response to or anticipation of one or more possible alternatives’ (Phelan 2008, 168). That is, with any story, the version being told has been chosen at the exclusion of another. ‘Moreover, individual narratives themselves often signal which alternatives are most relevant and they can position themselves within that set in a variety of ways’ (Phelan 2008, 168). So the story does not just happen to be there, it has been constructed and it has been constructed in a particular way, demonstrating the priorities (unconscious or conscious) of the author. Business leaders can construct stories to help them understand a variety of perspectives, from staff to customers to community members. However it must be noted that the finished story is not a static entity to be dissected from an objective viewpoint. As reader response theory teaches us, the reader influences interpretation, and their readings can include ‘aspects of identity such as gender and class’ (Keen 2011, 295). This is important because the ‘pressures exerted by readers on the imagining and judging of fictional characters derive from the multiple intersecting axes of their subject positions’ (Keen 2011, 296). That is, who you are affects the way you read fictional characters. So the narrative you write may reveal your priorities and choices but the way that story is read is also affected by the multiple intersecting axes of the reader’s subject position. In the business context this would also mean that the business decision makers’ positionality must be considered when interpreting and acting on stakeholders’ interests. So how might engaging business decision makers in reading and writing trigger empathy for their stakeholders? Narrative ethicist Suzanne Keen states, ‘the opportunities for character identification afforded by novel reading may participate in the moral internalization and socialization that can transmute empathic responses into prosocial action’ (italics in original) (Keen 2011, 297). Literary critic Gary Saul Morson is more decided: ‘Readers practice empathy. And what one practices, one find easier to do and, eventually, does by habit’ (Morson 2013, 208). This project, however, is interested in how writing – in addition to reading – can facilitate empathy. Before we veer into that terrain, however, it is important to clarify what I mean by empathy and how this relates to narrative and stakeholder theory.

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Authorial Empathy and Stakeholder Theory The unifying tenet of my argument is the idea that empathy is important for the writer and the business executive, alike. Empathy is critical for writers trying to tell a convincing narrative from another point-of-view, and business executives as they engage with stakeholder perspectives. Empathetic understanding can assist the manager with navigating groups that can ‘affect or be affected by’ (Freeman 2008, 164) said manager because understanding relevant perspectives can illuminate what kinds of responses might be forthcoming when difficult decisions need to be made. Freeman calls on managers and organization members to consider the following questions when making decisions: ‘(1) If this decision is made, for whom is value is created and destroyed, who is harmed and benefited? (2) Whose rights were enabled or not? (3) What kind of person will I be if I make this decision this particular way?’ (Freeman 2008, 164). Considering these questions empathetically would mean the manager has a clearer sense of the subjectivities involved and what outcomes might be achieved. My argument here is that: developing authorial empathy can assist managers in the business context. But firstly, I adopt Elise Nykänen’s definition of authorial empathy: ‘The concept of “authorial empathy” [refers to] narrative imagination that guides an author’s writing practices, i.e. the choices of narrative techniques intended to evoke certain emotional responses in readers (Nykänen 2017, 297).’ Authorial empathy is demonstrated when the writer imagines themselves into their characters’ experiences to more fully engage with those character subjectivities. In other words, we become spontaneously open to parallel emotional experiences by mirroring responses to the fictional other or we attend to simulating, categorizing, modelling or otherwise understanding the character’s emotional experience (Nykänen 2017, 298).

Writer Amy Tan discusses this in relation to point of view: ‘Each person’s perspective is absolutely unique; my job is to unearth all the specific events and associations that form an individual consciousness’ (Tan 2017, 33). However, as hinted at above, the explicit connections between narrative and empathy are difficult to pinpoint. As Keen notes, there is no recipe or clear path for using novels to create Martha Nussbaum’s ‘good world citizens’. (We) still know much less than we realize about which techniques effectively invite concord of authors’ empathy and readers’ empathy in experiences of intense emotional fusion with the imaginary experiences of fictional beings, let alone how narrative empathy might be translated into real-world altruism (Keen 2011, 297).

Having said that, we do know that writing requires deep imaginative engagement and can act as a site of profound empathetic imagining. Writing pedagogue Eric Leake states: ‘Empathy is a powerful means of invention. Any writing assignment that asks a student to imagine the position of another, and to do so critically, is employing empathy’ (Leake 2016, 7). This notion, of using creative writing assignments as empathetic tools for professional development, is not new. It has been used in medical contexts (Hatem and Ferrara 2001; Shapiro et  al. 2006; Charon et  al.

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2016) and social work contexts (Gair 2012) over the last 15 years. It has also been used in business classes (Freeman et al. 2015), as will be discussed shortly. However, I posit here that narrative writing exercises can be useful to business studies students as well as fully fledged executives facing complex decision-making challenges.

 he Relevance of Narrative to Business Studies – Motive, T Conflict and Point of View As business theorist Laura Nash notes, ethicists often discuss the need for context in business case studies, but they limit this to historical facts or sociocultural factors, and it is important to ‘expand the types of narrative we construct around ethical issues in business’ (Nash 2002, 285). Or, understanding the characters and motivations implicit in business case studies is central to understanding the larger contexts. As Nash states, Who could not learn from the inner life of the state college basketball coach who recently confessed to having paid a player’s family $15,000 a year for two years despite the continued emphasis by the NCAA on its code of conduct? Why would a company with multi-­ million-­dollar penalties and loss of business due to unethical sales practices continue to be discovered repeatedly breaking the law four years later in its labor and safety compliance? (Nash 2002, 282).

Understanding motive is key to understanding how and why these business situations unfolded, and motive is a critical component in crafting a narrative. Narrative can contextualize and clarify motive, and motive is an important facet of business studies. Think of Nash’s comment, where she cites Michael Oakshott, Robert Coles and Howard Gardener: Neither pure business incompetence nor unbridled greed will explain any of these occurrences. We need to know the story … The importance of narrative as a moral medium for journeying from principle to context, from example to application [has been established]’ (Nash 2002, 283).

This focus on motive is also central to Freeman and Phillip’s work on the Principle of Complexity that acknowledges human beings as ‘complex psychological creatures capable of acting from many different values and points of view’ (Freeman and Phillips 2002, 343). In their article ‘Leveraging the Creative Arts in Business Ethics Teaching’, Freeman, Dunham, Fairchild and Parmar state: …business is a deeply human activity through which we create value and trade with one another. It is fundamentally a cooperative and collaborative activity that relies on understanding the particularity of human interests, needs, and emotions. It is much more than ‘the physics of money’. There are whole human beings involved in the delivery and reception of services, the building of organizations and institutions and the responsibilities for business education (Freeman et al. 2015, 520).

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The article documents a class where teachers used literature (both reading and writing) to help business students engage empathetically. The subject aim was to ‘create a conversation’ about The Great Gatsby, that offered future executives the chance to reflect on how the book’s themes might yield insight into their lives (Freeman et al. 2015, 520). As part of the subject, students wrote short stories to deeply engage with the text and explore the humanity of the characters (Freeman et  al. 2015, 520), imagining themselves as characters from the novel and writing from their chosen character’s point-of-view. In doing so, we hope to get the students practice [sic] their ability for perspective-taking and empathy and broaden their worldview and be sensitive to how very different people can live. Many business ethics courses rely on ethical dilemmas. While there are dilemmas presented in fiction, they are much more contextualized and rich, and therefore more realistic and more difficult to solve. They are not separated from the rest of the characters’ lives (Freeman et al. 2015, 520–521).

My question here is: what if this strategy of writing creative works, with an increased focus on point-of-view, was used in mapping actual business case studies? And what if there was an increased focus on narrative skill? What might this add to the experience? And finally, what might it look like if current executives used narrative as a strategy to map questions and concerns for their actual negotiations and decisions? These questions dovetail with Phelan’s comments regarding narrative: Together, narrative’s flexibility and its power to interpret point to a significant finding about the nature of narrative: every story is potentially contestable by multiple alternatives. If I can go from experience to narrative in multiple ways and with multiple interpretive purposes, then the way I choose to go can be countered by tellers who prefer different routes (Phelan 2008, 168).

So, every story can be told in different ways and due to the nature of writing and interpreting, any one version can be countered by another teller’s ‘different route’. This raises the question of how an understanding of narrative craft can assist with the writing of these multiple stakeholder perspectives and why this knowledge is important. To answer this, I draw on my experiences in writing the novel What the Ground Can’t Hold (Cosgrove 2013), henceforth referred to as WTGCH, and in particular the attention paid to its point-of-view schema. I will argue that the focus on craft, intended to make the narrative stronger, also increased my empathetic engagement with the characters.

Practicalities of Writing a Multiple Point-of-View Schema I have learned many lessons related to narrative craft and point-of-view from drafting WTGCH. This section provides an overview of the technical lessons learned and the following section will apply these lessons to a real-world business decision that took place at the University of Wollongong.

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The novel WTGCH follows a group of travelers, trapped in a refugio mountain cabin in the Andes, all of whom have links to Argentina’s Dirty War. It is a story of reconciliation, apology and family. At 88,000 words, the literary work spans five perspectives, each confined to one section. The term ‘point-of-view schema’ refers to how the narration is constructed in terms of perspective and lens. That is, whose perspectives do we have access to and how does that affect the structure of the novel? Because of my choices with regards to the point-of-view schema, many revisions were ultimately required for WTGCH, and the writing of the novel took 7  years to complete. To give perspective, my latest work-in-progress ‘A Quiet Proposal’ (86,000 words) took just over a year and a half to draft. So, what did I learn that might be of assistance to my colleagues in business studies? Firstly, the same material cannot be covered twice. Because my chosen perspectives all described events that took place during the same time period, and then extended the narrating time (please see Table 22.1 below) this meant I faced the difficulty of telling the beginning of the novel five times. The problem with this structure is that unless the reader receives new information with each telling, the story easily becomes boring. So the business executive who undertakes a stakeholder writing project with a multiple point-of-view schema may want to consider telling different parts of the story with varying points-of-view. This decision  – of what is narrated, in what order and by whom  – will demand thought on the part of the writer. One cannot simply narrate the same events, changing the name of the focal character, and be assured of a successful story. The writer must consider which events carry the most narrative weight, and design the telling of the story in accordance with that focal character’s perspective. This inevitably raises questions, such as: ‘what is at stake in this scene?’; ‘who is the most affected by the action taking place?’; and ‘where is the conflict situated?’ The author must show imaginative depth to answer these questions convincingly for the reader. And if the author does choose to illustrate the same scene from differing perspectives, they will need to show different material, defined by the witnessing perspective. That is, it may be ‘the same scene’ but it should be fresh to readers. The Table 22.1  What the Ground Can’t Hold point-ofview schema

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point-of-view should be such a substantial part of the story, with such attention to voice and detail, that the re-drafted work could read as another story entirely. Secondly, each point-of-view needs to notice different telling details. The kinds of detail that a focal character notices gives readers substantial information about socio-economic standing, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity and racial identity. In WTGCH, teenager Jack Meyers notices embarrassing things about his academic and geologist father, ‘His hair had been cut, probably by my mother, and there was a wispy bit she’d missed near his ear; it twitched as he cleared his throat and I just focused on that unruly piece of hair. The man looked ridiculous’ (Cosgrove 2013, 73), while cabin manager Pedro pays fastidious attention to how much food is left: ‘Hita wrote out the list – every candy bar and soft drink, exact measures of butter, milk and flour. I transferred everything to the cellar and locked it at night’ (Cosgrove 2013, 212). This idea of perspective informing observation also pertains to setting. Australian backpacker Emma sees the mountains as a frightening and beautiful place: The path disappeared about halfway along, into a clump of green-black treetops. The sun had disappeared and the sky was intensifying into a lilac color that was reflected in the snow. A tiny moon was hanging on the other edge of the horizon and I could feel the cold air in my chest (Cosgrove 2013, 27).

While Jack, cited above, is asked if he thinks the mountains are beautiful and thinks, It all looked the same to me but I shrugged, thinking of my father peering through the windscreen, pushing the sun visor back, and I had this weird pang of scorn and love for my dad because he was the kind of man who could be happy looking at a rock (Cosgrove 2013, 82).

In this example, even a comment about the mountains turns Jack’s focal perspective back to his father. This is because his character arc follows a coming-of-age story and family is central to his progression. Other characters respond in different ways – refugio manager Pedro Carimán sees the mountains as a site of escape from trauma and grief, and refugio visitor Wolfe Goldberg sees them as a place of reckoning. This differentiation is important because setting is a key component of narrative and works to ground the characters and the action. Frequently what a character notices about setting can give readers insight into the subjectivity of the character. Thirdly, characters conventionally follow character arcs  – they undergo some kind of change over the course of the story. Something happens to the character (plot) and this affects the character, changing them. Part of writing believable characters and character arcs is establishing a clear sense of motive. Authors frequently ask themselves: what is at stake for the character?; what could they lose?; what is the climax/the most important/most tense moment of the narrative for the character? Also important for discussions of character is voice: how do class, gender-­ identity, ethnicity, race and sexuality influence the tone of their section? It is worth noting here that considerable theoretical and creative work exists that is concerned with notions of voice. That is, who has a right to represent different voices and perspectives, and this is something I often discuss in my creative writing classes. While I support treading carefully in light of representation (see Cosgrove 2009), I also think important empathetic work can be done when we consciously try to imagine

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ourselves into Other perspectives. One key to doing this in a respectful way is to factor research time into the writing of story. If an author does not know about the lived experiences of the characters they are trying to represent, if they cannot access convincing detail, the story will lose credibility and the author runs the risk of perpetuating stereotypes and mistruths (for a more in depth discussion on this please see Cosgrove 2014, 2015). And approach here is critical. Take writer Angela Flournoy’s comment: It’s not about having a background that lines up with the characters you’re writing about … That’s not the responsibility of the fiction writer. Instead, you have the responsibility to be sympathetic––to have empathy. And the responsibility to be knowing––to understand, or at least desire to understand, the people you write about … you have to write something true by at least having a baseline of empathy before you start writing it (Flournoy 2017, 180–181).

The point here, taking us back to the section above, is that empathy is critical for matters of representation, but it is also important to the very craft of writing. When I found myself struggling with writing various points-of-view in WTGCH, it was often because I had not researched the character enough. For the business executive who finds it difficult to write a stakeholder perspective, it could well mean they need to conduct further research into understanding that point-of-view. In this respect, fiction writing becomes a critical litmus test for how thoroughly the manager understands stakeholder perspectives. For writer Don Delillo, it is through the researching process that he often finds and connects with his characters. In talking about his novel Libra, he states: There were several levels of research—fiction writer’s research … I went to New Orleans, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Miami and looked at houses and streets and hospitals, schools and libraries … and after a while the characters in my mind and in my notebooks came out into the world (Delillo 1993, 1).

Even for matters of detail, I encourage my students to commit time to research. If a student writes about a police officer, and their only experience with the police force is what they have seen on television, their representation will often be Hollywood-­centric and two-dimensional, affecting their reader’s capacity to believe the story. Considerable research can be undertaken online and through email interviews, but I encourage students to go to their local police station if a story is set there to log key setting details. I tell them to talk to community officers and tag along for jobs, if possible, to see what the experience is really like. As novelist Barbara Kingsolver states: ‘The difference between amateur and professional research is a willingness to back away from other people’s accounts of what is, and find your own. There is no “googlesmell”’ (Kingsolver 2014, 1). And the amount of research needed to write a convincing narrative is not small. Kingsolver goes on to say: If I want to remove you from your life and whisk you into a picnic on the banks of a river in Teotihuacán, here are some things I need to know: what grows there, what trees, what flowers, in that month of the year? What does it smell like, are there bees? … Passing on someone else’s account of these things, from reading about them, would likely render a flat, one-dimensional scene, no matter how I injected my own additions of plot and character.

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The sensory palette would be limited. I can only paint with all the colors if I’ve seen them for myself (Kingsolver 2014, 1).

This idea of research is also important to business studies, and cannot be perfunctory. You cannot understand your stakeholders if you do not understand the daily detail of their lives. However, this raises an interesting question: how does the executive know if they are succeeding in their empathetic research and writing? After all, the first consequence of a failure of empathy is a lack of awareness that one is failing. To this, I would posit the workshop experience – where critical readers engage with the creative work and offer feedback – could provide a useful site for the executive writer. That is, it is not enough to write a story and leave it in a desktop drawer. It must be workshopped by external readers, and advice taken into account during re-drafting. I take on board research and workshopping require time, and obviously it is not possible for every business executive to undertake them for every decision they face. However, it could certainly be done as an ‘out of office’ exercise to remind executives of the deep responsibilities they have and the many people who will be affected by their decisions, and in select cases, the time spent researching stakeholder perspectives and constructing stories would be well justified by the time saved in future, when said business decisions are implemented.

 o What Might This Look Like in Practice? Re-imagining S a Real-Life Business Decision Using a Multiple Point-of-­View-Schema Exercise The previous section detailed issues that were raised by my choice of a point-of-­ view schema when writing WTGCH. Now let us discuss how focusing on point-of-­ view and narrative can help with business decision-making. To this end, I will recount a business decision that was not well received by many stakeholders and then hypothesize how empathetic imagining of stakeholder interests and motivations might have impacted that decision and its outcomes. In late 2018, at the University of Wollongong, Vice-Chancellor Paul Wellings fast-tracked a controversial degree through the approvals process, bypassing the academic senate, and its associated scrutiny. The role of the academic senate is to ensure ‘academic quality assurance, monitoring of learning and teaching, research and research training, academic and research integrity and risk, educational innovations, and the student experience’ (UOW web site). Funded by the Ramsay Centre, the degree focused exclusively on ‘Western Civilisation’. This separate degree was housed within the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, which already covered the majority of material to be included in the new degree. Students were accepted via a separate admissions procedure, provided with a generous stipend, and taught by all-new staff in class sizes of no more than ten. This move led to staff and student protests, as well as legal challenges from the National Tertiary Education Union

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(Latifi 2019a, 1, b, 1; Hunter 2019, 1; Baker 2019, 1). The argument here is that if Vice-Chancellor Wellings had deeply imagined himself into multiple stakeholder perspectives that may have influenced the way the controversy played out, minimizing negative publicity and ensuing fallout. Let us walk through what a point-of-view narrative process could ‘do’ in this situation. Imagine that the Vice-Chancellor deeply imagined himself into a variety of affected perspectives. Firstly, which ones does he choose? Maybe the academic who is passionate about teaching and has watched class sizes double over the last decade. She now has tutorial sizes of 27 students and hears about an elite new degree that will offer class sizes of ten. Or perhaps the Vice-Chancellor chooses the perspective of the high-achieving high school student who is considering programs and universities? What if that student is a person of color and/or Indigenous? How might their identity influence their application decisions when the University of Wollongong offers a degree focused exclusively on ‘Western Civilisation’? Or perhaps the Vice-Chancellor focuses on the student who receives support that would not have been available without the degree? Maybe he chooses an academic within the Faculty who is sympathetic to the Ramsay principles and worries about the perceived left-wing bias of Humanities teaching? Certainly, the Vice-Chancellor would consider the university’s chief financial officer’s point of view and the impact that an additional 50 million dollars might make to the university’s financial position, especially in light of increasing financial pressures in the Australian tertiary sector and government cuts to university funding? Or the union president, who is concerned with academic transparency and freedom? Or the average Wollongong resident, unconnected to the degree, but who is notoriously unionized and Labour-leaning1? The Vice-Chancellor must first chose focal perspectives. For the sake of narrative conflict and in support of discerning good solutions to tense business problems, I would suggest ‘competing’ perspectives. Then the Vice-Chancellor must decide how to write these characters with believable arcs and motivations. To do that, he must research. Perhaps he attends classes taught by one of his academic staff. She has won national teaching awards: what is her pedagogical emphasis? Why does she love teaching? How did she end up at the University of Wollongong and how might she feel if she is forced to move offices to make way for a new ‘Western Civilisation’ classroom? Perhaps he interviews his chief financial officer, paying attention to his financial arguments as well as who he is as a character. What cadence does his voice follow? What car does he drive? What does he personally have to gain or lose from this deal? Perhaps the Vice-Chancellor scours online sites, reading discussions by current high school students who are assessing university options and speaks to first-year students who have recently made the decision to attend UOW. He needs to be clear on what is motivating each character. How have they ended up in this situation and what are they trying to achieve? He must decide what telling details will

1  The Labour Party is one of two dominant political parties in Australia, with a history connected to workers’ rights and unionism.

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give the reader a sense of the characters. If he chooses to write from the perspective of a first-year male student, does he live in the dorms? If so, does he attend meals during the rush or does he wait until most people have left the cafeteria? Have his parents attended university or is he the first generation to access tertiary education? These details are brainstorming fodder: not every detail about the character makes it onto the page, but the writer needs to have a strong sense of their characters’ backgrounds. The Vice-Chancellor must also consider setting: how does setting operate to inform the themes of the story? Just as the mountains were an important focal point for characters in WTGCH, how might his chosen characters see the escarpment that sits behind UOW? It has a rich Indigenous history, which makes it interesting in light of the Ramsay Centre debate. How does the town of Wollongong, with its unionized steelworks, sit as a backdrop for the University? And finally, what is the climax of the story and how does this impact on the chosen perspectives? That is, what happens? Perhaps he imagines the moment each character learns of the degree, perhaps he imagines what happens if another university wins the Ramsay bid instead of UOW.  Perhaps he imagines an altercation between protesters. Let me be clear  – the sections do not have to be long. They could each be 300 words, the length of a contemporary microfiction. However, it is through research, imagining, drafting and workshopping that the executive comes to a deeper relationship with their stakeholders. It is not enough to research and imagine what the stakeholders are thinking – important empathetic work is carried out through the actual writing. Of course, executives are busy. It might seem ridiculous to spend time researching and drafting stories when inboxes are overflowing and diaries are packed with meetings. However, I would argue that it is in their best financial interests to understand stakeholder perspectives and drafting narratives can help them do this in singular and empathetic ways. Think of the time that could be saved and the controversy avoided in the University of Wollongong scenario. Now, it may be that Vice-­ Chancellor Wellings does this narrative work, crafting a believable and exciting story that spans many perspectives, and still makes the decision to follow through with fast-tracking the degree. Fair enough. However I suspect one thing at minimum would be different: he would be less surprised at the outrage and indignation expressed by academics and staff members (Clarsen 2019, 1; Latifi 2019a, 1, b, 1) because he has imagined himself into their perspectives. This could potentially change the way the decision was framed and communicated, which in turn could change the way it was received.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have asked: what can narrative writing teach executives about the human dimensions of their decisions and the best ways of managing multiple stakeholder interests? Thinking about varied perspectives may be a difficult task, but this

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process can be aided through the use of fiction. In particular, training business managers to read and write works with multiple points-of-view can assist them as they grapple with multiple stakeholder perspectives. I also discussed how the writing of my novel, and paying attention to craft, informed my understanding of competing subjectivities, and how this might relate to understanding stakeholder positions. This led to my conclusion that executives could also use narrative, paying particular attention to craft, as a means of understanding the complexity of balancing varied perspectives, and as an example, I looked at the University of Wollongong’s fast-­ tracked ‘Western Civilisation’ degree. The point here is not that business executives need to moonlight as novelists – but that learning narrative skills (either in graduate school or planning days physically and temporally removed from the business site), after initial stakeholder research has been completed, could well give them key insights and empathetic imagining into stakeholder positions.

References Baker, Jordan. 2019. The $3.5 billion will, the instant millionaires … and what was left out. The Sydney Morning Herald, May 5, 2019. https://www.smh.com.au/education/the-­3-­5b-­will-­the-­ instant-­millionaires-­and-­what-­was-­left-­out-­20190510-­p51lws.html. Charon, Rita, Nellie Hermann, and Michael Devlin. 2016. Close Reading and Creative Writing in Clinical Education: Teaching Attention, Representation, and Affiliation. Academic Medicine 91, no. 3 (March): 345–350. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000000827. Clarsen, Georgine. 2019. Ramsay Centre: UOW fast-tracking to avoid scrutiny (Advocate 26 02). Advocate, July 26, 2019. http://www.nteu.org.au/article/ Ramsay-­Centre%3A-­UOW-­fast-­tracking-­to-­avoid-­scrutiny-­%28Advocate-­26-­02%29-­21460. Cosgrove, Shady. 2009. WRIT101: Ethics of representation for creative writers. Pedagogy  – Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 9 (1, Winter): 134–141. ———. 2013. What the Ground Can’t Hold. Sydney: Picador Australia. ———. 2014. Getting my hands dirty: Research and writing. TEXT Creative Writing as Research III 27 (October): 1–8. http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue27/Cosgrove.pdf. ———. 2015. Masturbating with Prostitutes: Research and the realist novel. In Minding the gap: Writing across thresholds and fault lines, ed. Tom Conroy and Gail Pittaway, 7–16. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars. Delillo, Don. 1993. The Art of Fiction No. 135. Interview by Adam Begley. The Paris Review, no. 128. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1887/ don-­delillo-­the-­art-­of-­fiction-­no-­135-­don-­delillo. Flournoy, Angela. 2017. A Place to Call My Own. In Light the Dark, ed. Joe Fassler, 179–184. New York: Penguin. Freeman, R. Edward. 2008. Ending the so-called Freidman-Freeman Debate. In Dialogue: Toward Superior Stakeholder Theory, eds. Bradley R. Agle, Thomas Donaldson, R. Edward Freeman, Michael C. Jensen, Ronald K. Mitchell, and Donna J. Wood. Business Ethics Quarterly 18, no. 2 (April): 153–190. JSTOR. Freeman, R. Edward, and Robert A. Phillips. 2002. Stakeholder Theory: A Libertarian Defense. Business Ethics Quarterly 12, no. 3 (July): 331–349. JSTOR. Freeman, R.  Edward, Andrew C.  Wicks, and Bidhan Parmar. 2004. Stakeholder Theory and ‘The Corporate Objective Revisited’. Organizational Science 15, no. 3 (May–June): 364–369. JSTOR.

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Freeman, R. Edward, Laura Dunham, Gregory Fairchild, and Bidhan Parmar. 2015. Leveraging the Creative Arts in Business Ethics Teaching. Journal of Business Ethics 131, no. 3 (October): 519–526. JSTOR. Gair, Susan. 2012. Haiku as a creative writing approach to explore empathy with social work students: A classroom-based inquiry. Social work: Journal of Poetry Therapy The Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, Research and Education 25 (2): 69–82. https://doi.org/10.108 0/08893675.2012.680717. Hatem, David, and Emily Ferrara. 2001. Becoming a doctor: Fostering humane caregivers through creative writing. Patient Education and Counseling 45 no. 1 (October): 13–22. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0738-­3991(01)00135-­5. Hunter, Fergus. 2019. Union launches court action to stop Wollongong University’s Ramsay degree. Sydney Morning Herald, April 10, 2019. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/ union-­launches-­court-­action-­to-­stop-­wollongong-­university-­s-­ramsay-­degree-­20190410-­ p51cxk.html. Jones, Thomas M., and A.C. Wicks. 1999. Convergent stakeholder theory. Academy of Management Review 24 (2): 206–221. Keen, Suzanne. 2011. Readers’ Temperaments and Fictional Character. New Literary History 42, no. 2 (Spring): 295–314. JSTOR. Kingsolver, Barbara. 2014. The Authorized Site. http://www.kingsolver.com/faq/about-­writing. html. Accessed 24 Sept 2014. Latifi, Agron. 2019a. Ramsay degree promotes racist view of white supremacy: Former UOW professor. Illawarra Mercury, May 17, 2019. https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/ story/6129837/uows-­ramsay-­degree-­promotes-­racist-­view-­says-­ex-­professor/. ———. 2019b. UOW Academic Senate rejects Ramsay Centre approval Illawarra Mercury. Illawarra Mercury, March 20, 2019. https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/5965228/ uow-­academic-­senate-­rejects-­ramsay-­centre-­approval/. Leake, Eric. 2016. Writing Pedagogies of Empathy: As Rhetoric and Disposition. Composition Forum 34(Summer). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1113428.pdf. Accessed 22 May 2019. Morson, Gary Saul. 2013. Prosaics and Other Provocations Empathy, Open Time, and the Novel. Boston: Academic Studies Press. JSTOR. Nash, Laura L. 2002. Intensive Care for Everyone’s Least Favorite Oxymoron: Narrative in Business Ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly 10 no. 1 (January): 277–290. JSTOR. Nykänen, Elise. 2017. Breaking the Ice, Freezing the Laughter Authorial Empathy, Reader Response, and the Kafkaesque Poetics of Guilt and Shame. In Writing Emotions: Theoretical Concepts and Selected Case Studies in Literature, ed. Ingeborg Jandl, Susanne Knaller, Sabine Schönfellner, and Gudrun Tockner. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. JSTOR. Phelan, James. 2008. Narratives in Contest; Or, Another Twist in the Narrative Turn. PMLA 123, no. 1 (January): 166–175. JSTOR. ———. 2013. Narrative Ethics. In The Living Handbook of Narratology, ed. Peter Hühn. Hamburg: Hamburg University. http://www.lhn.uni-­hamburg.de/article/narrative-­ethics. Accessed 2 Jan 2019. Phillips, Robert, R. Edward Freeman and Andrew C. Wicks. 2003. What Stakeholder Theory Is Not. Business Ethics Quarterly 13, no. 4 (October): 479–502. JSTOR. Shapiro, Johanna, Lloyd Rucker, John R. Boker, and Désirée Lie. 2006. Point-of-View Writing: A Method for Increasing Medical Students’ Empathy, Identification and Expression of Emotion, and Insight. Education for Health 19, no. 1 (April): 96–105. https://doi. org/10.1080/13576280500534776 Tan, Amy. 2017. Pixel by Pixel. In Light the Dark, ed. Joe Fassler, 179–184. New York: Penguin. University of Wollongong Web Site: https://www.uow.edu.au/about/governance/governance-­ structure/academic-­senate/. Accessed on 13 Sept 2019.

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Shady Cosgrove, Associate Professor, is a novelist and academic, with research interests in creative practice, prose fiction, ethics and narratology, and pedagogy. Her longer works include What the Ground Can’t Hold (Picador Australia 2013) and She Played Elvis (Allen and Unwin, 2009), and her short fiction has appeared in Southerly, Antipodes, Overland, and Best Australian Short Stories. Her critical work has appeared in New Writing, TEXT, Pedagogy and The Radiance of the Short Story. Her awards include receiving a Bundanon Trust International Residency and the Varuna House Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship. For more information, please see www.shadycosgrove.com.  

Chapter 23

How Could Henrik Ibsen’s Plays Contribute to Humanizing Business and Nurturing the Development of Ethical Leadership? Michel Dion

In his various plays, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) dealt with social, economic, and political issues, while adopting a philosophical viewpoint that could have connections with Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Nicolas Berdiaev (1874–1948) was particularly impressed by Ibsen’s ability to deal with the mix of personal interests (and rights) and collective welfare (Berdiaev 1963, 13). Nowadays, business ethics students could certainly gain from discussions about ethical dilemmas and conflicts, as they are involved in Henrik Ibsen’s plays (Brinkmann 2009). In this paper, we will deal with the way Ibsen represented various historically-based distortions (idealism, unbearable guilt, abuses of the will to power, moral corruption) of our being-free. From Ibsen’s perspective, both topics are applicable in business. Ibsen believed that free will could be safeguarded in spite of those dehumanizing phenomena. However, Ibsen considered that free will requires an attitude of strong criticism towards the existentiell/ontical forms of dehumanization. On the other hand, we will describe the existentiell remnants of our being-free. Ibsen mirrored our “being-wretched”, given our existentiell predicament. He also promoted the courage to be oneself and the courage to criticize the will-to-truth. We will see to what extent Ibsen’s philosophical viewpoints could nurture the development of ethical leadership.

M. Dion (*) École de Gestion, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_23

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 he Historically-Based Distortions of Being-Free: Idealism, T Unbearable Guilt, Moral Corruption, and the Abuses of the Will-to-Power Henrik Ibsen’s philosophical approach implies existentially-/ontologically-based human freedom: existing is being-free. Our being-free could be strongly undermined from two basic perspectives. On one hand, idealism and the unbearable guilt reduce the scope of individual freedom. On the other hand, being-free is threatened by moral corruption and the abuses of the will-to-power. Ibsen believed that free will can survive to such immoral conditioning factors.

Criticizing Idealism Kaufmann (1953, 234) rightly interpreted Ibsen’s anti-idealist thought, although he did not explain to what extent Ibsen’s critique of idealism could be quite close to Nietzsche’s philosophy. Ibsen believed that perceptions and interpretations produce given actions. Actions do not follow from the exercise of pure reason: “Nothing new ever happens. But whatever has happened never repeats itself, either. It’s the eye that transforms the action” (John Gabriel Borkman) (Ibsen 2001c, 381–382). Ibsen’s philosophical approach was much more Nietzschean than Kantian. Ibsen was realistic: some people believe that ideals should never be destroyed, since annihilating their ideals could deeply hurt their own soul (Ibsen 1988c, 216; 2001b, 75, 96). But Ibsen remained unconvinced that the claims of the ideal could always be morally right. Hypocrisy makes someone believe that the claims of the ideal could produce individual and collective transformation (Ibsen 1988c, 206, 209, 216, 223, 242, 247). Brustein (1962, 119) explained that Ibsen was so reluctant to give any worth to idealism that he accused any idealist to be “a hypocrite, a meddler, or a booby”. It is particularly true for bourgeois ideals (Theoharis 2000, 11). Ibsen opposed political ideologies (such as tyranny, anarchy, and self-justified bureaucracy) as well as business ideologies (more particularly, the “laissez-faire” economics). Ibsen acknowledged that people could neglect to hear the appeal of the ideal in given situations, while in other circumstances, they are unable to disregard it. Idealists are closely connected to the claims of their own ideal (Ibsen 1988c, 229, 241, 255, 260). How could business leaders express their ideological view without imposing their worldview on their followers? How could business ideologies avoid the trap of one-­ track thinking? Ethical leadership requires a critical view on any type of ideological thinking, since ideologies try to justify authority systems, and thus to strengthen the status quo and make it legitimate (Ricoeur 2005, 32–37). As managers and leaders, it is particularly hard to embrace an ideological mindset, if we are aware that ideologies do not coincide with reality as-it-is (ideology as distortion) and that they reinforce the impossibility to change all components of a given ideology (Ricoeur 2005, 231–234). The advanced capitalism has ideologically strengthened and justified the

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denial of human naturalness, the domination of human beings over Nature as well as over other human beings, and the practical impossibility to satisfy all human needs (Horkheimer and Adorno 2007, 68). The real trap of ideological thought is its propensity to transform itself into a totalitarian mindset. It is made possible when ideological indoctrination is widespread in the whole society: everybody has then to embrace a given ideological system that seems to explain all phenomena and events from a single premise (Arendt 1976, 438, 468, 471). Ibsen believed that people could live without any ideal (Ibsen 1957, 335), although being without any ideal could make them fall into despair. It is actually an existentiell/ontic possibility. Dreamless reality coud provoke existentially-based despair (Ibsen 2001c, 340, 381). In Kierkegaardian way, Ibsen then suggested that we should face the possibility of despair, since such possibility is existentially-­ based (Kierkegaard 1968, 175–179). However, Ibsen was convinced that idle dreams are useless (Ibsen 1964, 275). In Brand, Ibsen expressed how much ideals could be disconnected from daily life: “Chewing on the ideal won’t get you a square ideal and it won’t pay the rent. He who says otherwise doesn’t know what life is!” (Brand) (Ibsen 2016a, 98). How could business leaders refuse to pursue their own ideals without falling into existential despair? Pursuing our own ideal does not necessarily mean embracing an ideological thought. Refusing ideological thought is not denying any worth to ideals. However, ethical leaders will criticize any attempt to transform a given ideal into an ideological thought. As long as an ideal remains a “benchmarch for the logic of reality” rather than a set of particular behaviors (Mostovicz et al. 2009, 454), it will not become an ideological thought. Pursuing an ideal should imply to be open to others’ criticism and tolerant towards other ideals (without claiming to hold the absolute truth). Ideological thinking makes such openness and acceptance impossible. From an Ibsenian perspective, ethical leaders would: • criticize any ideological thinking as well as any attempt to transform a given ideal into an ideological thought: the breakthrough of an ideological thinking in the organizational setting could take different forms which are not always related to traditional economically-, politically-, or religiously-based ideological thinking. The way executives of a given organization strengthen corporate culture could sometimes give birth to an ideological way of thinking. It is particularly the case when executives create “quasi-religious writings” (their own autobiographies) and “quasi-religious time/space” (mergers and acquisitions), or when they provoke the absorption of private time into corporate time. Such quasi-­ religious thinking could open the way to a quasi-totalitarian absorption of individuals’ meaning of (private) life into the meaning of organizational life  – a phenomenon we could call “corporacentrism”. Although there is a slight risk to face such ideological thinking in the workplace, it should never be neglected, as a possibility. Ethical leaders should avoid such interpretative pitfall; • be open to others’ criticism and tolerant towards other ideals (without claiming to hold the absolute truth): ethical leaders are never prone to claim any absolute truth, since absolute truths build up an ideological way of thinking. Relativizing

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our own truths will rather help us to take open and honest discussion with others, regardless of their social, cultural, political, and even religious/spiritual roots. Everybody is responsible for the way dialogue with others is made possible, or impossible. Self-criticism is as much important for dialogical responsibility as the openness to be criticized by others. Our dialogical responsibility could be the basis of a sustainable hope towards a more humanized business world.

 riticizing the Unbearable Guilt Resulting C from an Absolutized Fate Ibsen actively promoted the respect for basic human rights, and more particularly the right of speech, including the right of dissension within the community (Ibsen 2001a, 163, 188; 2001b, 55; 2016b, 211). Ibsen considered human existence as “beautiful freedom” which can be distorted by various immoral ways (Ibsen 2001b, p.  62). Such beautiful freedom is the free will, the freedom of choice: our existentially-­based being-free (Ibsen 1961, 341; 1988b, 122; 1988c, 237; 2001c, 373; 2001d, 278, 280, 297–300, 305–306, 317, 319–321; 2008, 273, 324; 2016a, 53; 2016b, 227). However, Ibsen remained quite aware that the absoluteness of individual freedom is an illusion (Gjesdal 2010, 11). How could business leaders favour the respect of basic human rights, while considering that individual freedom is something quite relative? Basic human rights seem to be closely linked to a kind of moral universalism. However, since basic human rights must be applied in different jurisdictions and are not precisely defined (as to their behavioral expectations), they could be differently interpreted and applied by lawyers and judges in various countries. There is room for moral relativism in the way basic human rights are interpreted and applied. The coexistence of moral universalism and relativism unveils the existentiell/ontic limitations of individual freedom. Although basic human rights focus on universal (absolute) rights and liberties, their interpretation and application lead to a “relativized” notion of individual freedom. Human freedom could be “beautiful” freedom. But freedom could aim at moral and/or immoral purposes. Our conscience is basically free. That is why moral duties actually exist (Ibsen 2001b, 79, 105). Moral duties would not exist without our existentially-based being-free. Ibsen believed that the most horrible crime (and “unforgivable sin”) was “to kill the capacity to love somebody”. It is a twofold “murder”, since two souls have been “killed”: the “criminal’s soul” as well as the victim’s soul. Evil powers lie in our heart and mind (Ibsen 2001c, 369–370, 376, 406). Reducing our own capacity to love others hurts our being-free and threatens the universal requirement to acknowledge others as persons, and never as objects. Reducing others’ capacity to love someone actually has the same tragical outcomes. That is why we could be afraid of our own self (Ibsen 1961, 320). When love is subjected to social approval, then it is degenerating (Adorno 2010, 235). Killing our own heart is being tormented, hateful, and vengeful. Remorse, self-reproach and

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shame cannot redeem our “criminal” act, since “killing” one’s soul is unforgivable (Ibsen 1964, 241, 271). Remorse is not always morally right. People could have a morally-based sense of remorse (nobility) as well as an immoral sense of remorse (cowardice). When we feel painful “pangs of conscience” and are determined to cure our attitude and conduct of its own defaults, then we have noble sense of remorse. How could business leaders exercise their own freedom without being subjected to any immoral purpose? Ethics is linked to decision-making processes. Any decision could be moral, immoral, amoral, or morally neutral. It depends on the motives and consequences of such decision. More generally, it depends on our worldview, symbolic system (the system of symbols, beliefs, and meanings), and the way we define our responsibility towards others - since we live in-face-of-others (Levinas 1968, 9–10). We are not always aware of our thoughts, words, gestures, attitudes, and actions. We cannot clearly perceive how we should ethically behave in any situation (Mostovicz et al. 2011, 494). Human beings bear the same existentiell/ontic predicament. They could share the same need and desire to be redeemed and released from their guilt and remorse (Ibsen 1961, 340, 343). Human freedom chooses actions that could be moral, immoral, amoral, and even morally neutral. At every moment of our life, we choose to enhance given emotions, words, gestures, attitudes, and behaviors. Everybody must accept the burden of his/her choices, and thus the moral, immoral, amoral, or morally neutral import of his/her emotions, words, gestures, attitudes, and behaviors. How could business leaders grasp the universal (existentially-based) human predicament, while acknowledging the contextual conditioning factors? Not taking universal human predicament into account would imply to be subjected to various contexts, with conflicting characteristics and expectations (fallenness into radical relativism). Neglecting a contextual outlook on reality would mean that we deny the influence of philosophies, cultures, and religions/spiritualities (fallenness into radical universalism). Ethical leadership should neglect neither the universal (existentially-­based) conditioning factors of human predicament (such as guilt, suffering, and disease), nor the import of various decisive contexts. The way business leaders are endorsing moral relativism or universalism does not depend on the contents of their cultures (even for multicultural individuals), but rather on the inner structure of their cultural identity (Hrenyk et al. 2016, 71). Ibsen acknowledged that freedom cannot be isolated from fate. Every human being is being-free, while being occasionally subjected to “the guiding finger of fate”. Being-free is consciously exercising one’s freedom, while the influence of fate remains “inexorable and mysterious”. Is the influence of fate mysterious? If so, it can never be clarified. A mystery can ever be grasped. It transcends our perceptions. Unlike enigmas, mysteries can ever be rationally understood, since their amazing components cannot be apprehended. The function of mysteries is not to hinder criticism and dialogue. Rather, mysteries make objective (empirically knowable) realities part of the global picture. Without mysteries, all realities would be knowable, including the depths of human self. Mysteries could contribute to safeguard an open-mindedness towards empirically unknowable realities, only if they are not instrumentalized for social, cultural, political, and even religious/spiritual

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motives. Fate is one of those mysteries. Any claim to understand one’s fate would then be philosophically unfounded. Fate could be unavoidable. But unlike our existentially-­based freedom, our fate is unspeakable. When fate is too precisely defined and understood, it gives birth to an unbearable guilt. Being-free is following the path of free life (Ibsen 1988c, 179, 230). Defining existentially-based freedom is not possible without finding out the existential/ontological meaning of fate. Our being-free releases our thought from its inner contradictions (divided consciousness) and purifies our purposes and ends. Having the freedom of choice is “choosing from the depths of our own being”, that is, living out of our truths (Ibsen 1957, 299; 1964, 245; 2001d, 306). It is also taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences (Ibsen 1988c, 225; 2001d, 319). Forsaking our free will is killing our own soul (Ibsen 1964, 271). Bradbrook (1948, 43–45) rightly said that Ibsen has been influenced by Kierkegaardian philosophy. It seems to be particularly the case in Brand (Banks 2004, 187). Ibsen promoted not only free will, but the act of choosing ourselves. And that is a very important theme in Kierkegaardian philosophy (Kierkegaard 1992, 516–518). How could business leaders avoid the trap of an absolutized freedom without being absorbed by a growing fate? Fate could be understood in a religious way (monotheistic religions; Hinduism), a spiritual and non-theistic way (Confucianism and Buddhism), and even in a philosophical way (at least, philosophies of religion and culture). The way business leaders deal with the dualism between freedom and fate depends on the motives to focus on one or the other. Ethical leaders search for an equilibrium between human freedom and fate. Their basic openness to various ethical paradigms implies a strong will to avoid any restrictive interpretation of ethical norms’ contents and scope (Price 2000, 180). There are very different dimensions and styles of leadership as well as multiple ethical theories (philosophical, religious, and non-theistic spiritual theories). Some dimensions of given leadership theories could be compatible with specific ethical theories (Lawton and Páez 2015, 646). Fom an Ibsenian perspective, ethical leaders would: • find out an equilibrium between moral universalism and moral relativism: moral universalism and moral relativism evolve in the existentiell/ontical realm. They are not related to existential/ontological categories. However, while moral universalism could eventually address the existentiality of limit-situations (Karl Jaspers), it is not a sine qua non condition for its own moral positioning. Moral relativism is so focusing on the contexts that it does not bother with existential/ ontological categories. Ethical leaders could certainly take the requirements of moral universalism and the import of existentiell/ontic contexts into account. They could even extend their ethical reflection into the realm of existential/ontological categories, although such philosophical questioning is an unexpected road for business executives; • search for an equilibrium between freedom and fate: from an existential viewpoint, there is an interdependence between freedom and fate. There is no freedom without fate. There is no fate without freedom. Ethical leaders easily understand the import of human freedom, as it is applied in the organizational

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life. However, what is the meaning and scope of fate? Fate could be interpreted from a theistic perspective (as being linked to God’s Will), from an atheistic perspective (as mirroring the Buddhist/Hinduist law of karma, or the Confucian Decrees of Heaven), or from an agnostic perspective (as the whole set of natural conditioning factors). In each case, fate reduces the scope of human freedom. Ethical leaders address the issue of freedom/fate in a cross-cultural and interreligious dialogue with all stakeholders.

Opposing the Abuses of the Will-to-Power In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen was quite influenced by Nietzschean philosophy. Nietzsche believed that Ibsen’s philosophy cannot give birth to the will-to-power, since it strengthens the will-to-truth, and thus conventional morality. Ibsen was aware that power could spread oppression of masses (Ibsen 1965b, 37). In John Gabriel Borkman, when Borkman said, with pride, that he loves power, he asserted the power to be himself as well as the power to control others (Ibsen 2001b, 340, 380–382). Van Laan (2006, 289–290) saw here an explicit Nietzschean influence. Ibsen denounced the possibility that people become an instrument of domination and destruction (Ibsen 1965b, 57; 2001b, 340). In Nietzschean way, Ibsen referred to the will-to-power as “a great force in this world” (an historically-based power), although individual powers are existentially limited (Ibsen 1965b, 62–69; 2008, 321; 2016b, 260). The presence/absence of the will-to-power could explain success and failure (Ibsen 2001d, 270, 291, 306). Ibsen symbolized the will-to-power, when using the term “viking spirit”, or robust conscience (Ibsen 2008, 322–324, 339–340). Viking spirit is mainly Viking amorality, that is, the amoral will-to-power (Brustein 1962, 145). Ibsen believed that robust conscience favours life processes and virtues (Helland 2010, 60). Friedrich Nietzsche (1968, 52–54) strongly criticized Ibsen’s supposedly “robust idealism”. Nietzsche argued that the whole process of transforming human will into the will-to-power implies three steps. Firstly, the weakest ask for more social and economic justice. Those who are in power have to decide to what extent they will satisfy such social expectations. Secondly, the weakest become stronger, since they “get away from those in power”. Thirdly, the weakest urgently claim for basic human rights, so that there could be social, political, and even economic equilibrium of powers. Ibsen acknowledged that human beings are “not equal at all” in daily life (Ibsen 2016a, 131). In order to get the will-to-power, we must overcome those three preliminary steps. Nietzsche believed that Ibsen’s philosophy could not reach such ultimate purpose. How could business leaders fight against domination and destruction, while safeguarding the positive aspect of their will-to-­ power? Favouring life processes and virtues is the basis of every will-to-power, said Ibsen. If it is true, then any attempt of domination and destruction against people would be an individual/collective attack against life processes and virtues. The will-­ to-­power must ever use domination and destruction to put harm on life processes and virtues. It was the way Ibsen perceived a post-Nietzschean will-to-power,

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although he still favoured life processes and virtues. Ethical leadership could contribute to raise the level of job satisfaction (Sharif and Scandura 2014, 190), but also to improve employees’ well-being and life satisfaction (Yang 2014, 521). If CEO’s will-to-power allows him/her to reach such objectives, then they will safeguard the positive (humanizing) aspect of the will-to-power. In Ibsen’s perspective, anarchy and tyranny are clearly abuses of the will-to-­ power. Tyranny is the denial of the freedom of speech. But tyranny cannot annihilate our being-free, since freedom is an intrinsic component of human existence. Every existential/ontological category can ever be annihilated, since it is an integral part of human existence. But the expanse of power overwhelms our whole world (Ibsen 1965b, 37–38). However, freedom cannot be exercised without existentiell/ ontic limitations. Social life requires laws and rules (Ibsen 2016a, 132). Claiming the absoluteness of freedom could give birth to anarchy. Ibsen enhanced a “true democracy” (Ibsen 1957, 278) and wanted to avoid the traps of anarchism as political ideal. Ibsen criticized the various dimensions of any revolutionary spirit. The revolutionary spirit searches for happiness in the here-and-now (Ibsen 2001b, p. 63). Being concerned with the facts and looking at the future are two basic sterile attitudes. Extrapolations of the here-and-now (from the facts) and fears about our productive imagination (from our view on future) do not make possible to elaborate any theory (Adorno 2019, 19–21). They are certainly useless for the revolutionary spirit. The revolutionary spirit rather presupposes that happiness could be realized in the here-and-now. Radical social changes could annihilate traditional and conventional truths (Ibsen 1988b, 27, 116). The revolutionary spirit tries to release people from their existentiell/ontic estrangement without discussing any existential/ontological estrangement. The revolutionary spirit claims for its power of salvation, as radical liberation from human suffering. Ibsen defined the Nation in the following way: “(…) the People who have nothing and who are nothing, but who lie in chains” (Ibsen 1965b, 107). Ibsen believed in the powerful influence of the revolutionary spirit, although it cannot be subjected to political and administrative authorities that have to safeguard common good. However, Ibsen criticized the notion of “national interest” since it is quite impossible to really know the real and basic needs of any nation in the world (Ibsen 2016a, 71–72). The notion of national interest could be distorted in order to favour individual and/or group interests. Public authorities should develop a moral basis for their decision-making processes. Anarchy, tyranny and blind nationalism absolutize the will-to-power and forget the primacy of life processes and virtues. Ethical leadership implies not to deal with people who embrace such absolutized will-to-power. Ethical leaders are moral role models for their followers. They could contribute to reduce workplace deviance (Gok et  al. 2017, 271). If they absolutize their will-to-power, then they will make organizational members distort the contents and scope of empowerment as well as the ethical requirement of legal/regulatory compliance. Pursuing common good means accomplishing our own duties towards society. Most of the time, focusing on self-interest is contradicting common good (Ibsen 2001a, 127, 152, 158, 180, 187). Ibsen criticized economic liberalism, while promoting the equilibrium between the revolutionary spirit, the respect for basic human

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rights, and the search for common good. Searching for common good should ever endanger the “progress of humankind” (Ibsen 2016a, 72). The revolutionary spirit conveys an appeal to create our individual and collective future and to favour the progress of humankind. The progress of humankind mirrors the universal import of humankind only when basic human rights are applied in daily life, regardless of cultural, social, political, or religious/spiritual conditioning factors. Searching for common good implies that the meaning of common good is not crystal-clear: it has to be found in the interaction between the universal import of humankind and the specific components of a given context. Ethical leaders search for such equilibrium between those three thrusts of ethical decision-making. They will aim at an equilibrium between the revolutionary spirit, the respect for basic human rights, and the search for common good, while defining what ethical behavior is all about. The way Ibsen search for such paradigmatic balance shows to what extent he was concerned with ethical consistency. But ethical consistency between various principles (revolutionary spirit, respect for basic human rights, quest for common good, ethical behavior) can only be realized in connection with one’s system of symbols, beliefs, and values/virtues (system of meanings). The way an ethical paradigm is chosen by a given business leader (Caldwell et al. 2002) largely depends on his/her moral sensitiveness and symbolic system. Business leaders could perceive themselves as ethically behaving, while the contents of their self-perception is not shared by their followers (Kalshoven et al. 2016, 510). In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen denounced the “myth of the infallibility of the ruling class” and claimed for social justice. Such socially-based approach was counterbalanced by an emphasis on personal ethics: compassion for life, prudence, and moderation (Ibsen 2001a, 143, 159, 169, 185). The fight for individual human rights and liberties conveyed personal ethos that is compatible with individualism (Ibsen 2001a, 188, 203). Leck (2005, 143) considered that economic self-interest and personal ethics were two forms of individualism Ibsen has emphasized in An Enemy of the People. Stupidity is self-centeredness (Ibsen 1965a, 158, 161; 1965b, 60). Ibsen believed that prejudices are stupid, since they mirror an egocentric state of mind (Ibsen 1965b, 82). The absolutized self-interest is pure vanity (Ibsen 1965b, 63). In Brand, Ibsen summarized the way vanity is a universal phenomenon in the following way: “In the world’s looking-glass you don’t see what is, you see some other sight (…) into that same mirror of vanity and error” (Ibsen 2016a, 48). Ibsen seemed to disagree that masses (solid majority) could be the “guardian of tolerance and morality”. He rejected such fallacious reasoning that cannot historically explain the origin of corruption. Cultural conditioning factors cannot be the decisive explanatory pattern for corrupt practices (Ibsen 1988b, 129; 2001a, 196). If it were the case, then it would imply that culture intrinsically induces immoral thought and behavior. Losing morality is not a culturally-induced phenomenon, but rather the ultimate consequence of “ignorance, poverty, and ugliness in life”, said Ibsen (2001a, 197). Ibsen looked at morally-based personalities as having “the strongest principles” (Ibsen 1988a, 308, 321, 335). The weakest people favour unprincipled words, attitudes, and conducts (Ibsen 1988b, 88). Van Laan (2006, 286) suggested that such dualism (strongest/weakest) unveils a Nietzschean influence. Ethical leadership

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would imply the equilibrium between personal ethics (developing humility and altruism: Mahsud et  al. 2010, 565; Hassan et  al. 2013, 136) and universal ethos (favouring social justice). Ethical leadership requires a deep sense of humility (Caldwell et al. 2017). However, it does not mean that humility has the final word about ethical behavior. Being ethical also implies to be generous, non-violent, altruistic and compassionate, while fighting for social justice. Whether leaders focus on the depths of their self or on the best way to participate in the world, they could indirectly influence their in-role performance within their organization. It could be the case when business leaders actually show a very high level of self-control, and thus a basic continuity between their words and their deeds. From an Ibsenian perspective, ethical leaders would: • ever use domination and destruction to put harm on life processes and “biophilic” virtues: ethical leaders should promote virtues which enhance life processes. From a sustainable development perspective, biophilic virtues are not only connected to the protection of the environment and of nonhuman beings, but also to the best ways to improve public health. Biophilic virtues are often endorsed by ecocentric/biocentric activists and philosophers. However, their politically radical positioning cannot be applied in business life. A less radical approach of biophilic virtues could make sustainability (biophilic intent) and profitability (business intent) coexist. Deepening the meaning of biophilic virtues and their applicability in the organizational life is a moral duty for ethical leaders; • criticize anarchy, tyranny and blind nationalism as denying the primacy of life processes and virtues: anarchy is often considered as the absence of power rules and structures (that could give birth to social chaos and conflicts). As political ideology (see: Bakounin, Kropotkin), anarchy is supposedly the objective and attainable absence of centralized political power in a given society. But historically-­based processes of anarchy unveil the continuous fight against any subjective appearance of political power in all human activities. Anarchy is the idealized presence of the absence of power. Tyranny has systematized power abuse. Anarchy and tyranny deny any worth to life processes. Neither anarchy, nor tyranny could evoke any biophilic virtue. Too often, power abuses too often follow from blind nationalism. Only a totalitarian spirit could make nationalism blind; • aim at an equilibrium between the revolutionary spirit (focusing on social justice), the respect for basic human rights, and the search for common good: a revolutionary spirit tries to improve social justice. It acknowledges the primacy of basic human rights and deepens the meaning of common good in a given society. Basic human rights could be considered from a universalistic approach, since the notion of universal (existentiell/ontical) equality between all human beings is the unsurpassable meta-norm (or the “universal as already-given”). However, the process through which basic human rights have been defined is historically- and politically-based. Such process does not have any universal import. Basic human rights have not been the same in the Roman Empire, during

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the French Revolution, and in the present world situation. Any attempt to universalize basic human rights have to take such historical and political conditioning factors into account. The universal “has-to-be”. It is part of a whole process of becoming. The notion of common good can ever be universalized, since no meta-­ norm could play the role of such ultimate ground. The notion of common good varies from time to time, from country to country. Ethical leaders have to strengthen basic human rights in their organization, while taking those historical and political processes into account.

Opposing Moral Corruption Ibsen denounced the spirit of corruption (Ibsen 1965b, 37) as well as the “moral corruption”. Moral corruption implies that we are not aware of our moral guilt, regardless of our motives. Being morally corrupted implies that we do not have scruples or taboos. Confessing our guilt is a sine qua non condition for improving our personality (Ibsen 1965a, 165, 175, 179, 221). Ibsen described some “ghosts that haunt us”: remorse, self-reproach, and even “old dead doctrines and opinions and beliefs” (Ibsen 2001b, 76, 92, 104, 108). Being totally absorbed by remorse and self-reproach is being our own shadow, as if our being-free has lost its own original impetus (Ibsen 1964, 265). Living is being “a prey to anguish and remorse” (Ibsen 1961, 343). It does not mean that we have to be anxious and remorseful, as if anxiety and remorse would make an integral part of human existence, or even as universal fate. Ibsen believed that a guilt-laden conscience has to be healed. Otherwise, it could induce an unbearable burden, that is, the “acute inflammation of the conscience” (Ibsen 1988c, 210–213, 242). Ibsen called that phenomenon “the agony of regret and remorse” (Ibsen 1988c, 219), or the “agony of mind” (Ibsen 1957, 287). We must act for our conscience’s sake. However, being unable to feel any regret for our past life could show a sick conscience (Ibsen 1988c, 212, 219; 2016a, 80). Ethical leaders should ever being absorbed by remorse, or being unable to feel any remorse at all. Moral corruption cannot arise without one’s moral failings. Everybody has “some moral sense” that could be corrupted (Ibsen 1965a, 188, 228). Deceiving others, especially our friends, is deceiving ourselves (Ibsen 2001c, 363). In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen described corruption of mind, as it is fostered by conscious and unconscious processes (Eide 2009, 14). In many situations, responsibility has to be shared. Ibsen criticized moral corruption insofar as it refers to lies. Some people live by lies. But lies for one could be truths for someone else (Ibsen 2001a, 197, 204, 216). Ibsen condemned the worst forms of moral corruption, since it presupposes a mix of lies, cheating, and hypocrisy. In such situation, people live in “an atmosphere of lies”, with “the germs of evil”. Ibsen called such phenomenon “moral outcast”. Ibsen’s view of existentiell lies has given authenticity a crucial ideal for metaphysicians (Adorno 2010, 206). However, defining evil is not helpful to circumscribe the realm of the good. At the very least, not doing evil is rightly

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behaving (Ibsen 2016b, 245). Ethical leaders are not prone to lie and cheat. They are not hypocritical people, but rather humble individuals. Moral corruption poisons moral education, which is the ground of life itself (Ibsen 1965a, 179–180; 1988b, 147). Moral education could make possible for people to raise their moral consciousness. That is why moral corruption must be annihilated. The Pillars of Society promoted moral education, since modern society is morally corrupted (Neserius 1925, 28). In Brand, Ibsen explained that the absolutization of so-called “natural laws”, as it is the case in Kantianism, is meaningless. When it is religiously-based, such absolutization denies any worth to the “ghost of compromise” (Ibsen 2016a, 160). Ibsen made the point that we do not precisely know what the “all or nothing” alternative actually means (Ibsen 2016a, 66, 141, 147, 159). Ethical leadership implies to develop moral education in the organizational setting (ethical training sessions, values clarification activities). Moral education is basically an issue of emotions and sentiments as well as judgments about good and evil (Rousseau 1966, 364–384, 407–410). The institutionalization of ethics in the organizational culture depends on leaders’ self-perception (as being “ethical leaders”), on the way there are ethically behaving, and on their capacity to build up an ethical climate in the workplace. The more business leaders define themselves as ethical leaders, the more they are prone to institutionalize ethics in the organizational culture, and the more they positively consider their organization’s moral discourse (Huhtala et al. 2013, 260). The more ethical leaders are altruistic, honest, and trustworthy, the more they have the capacity to strengthen a sustainable and ethical organizational culture (Mayer et al. 2010, 13). The moral ethical leaders and their followers share the same values (as to their contents and scope), the more they could improve the efficacy of their moral role modeling (Lee et al. 2017, 50). From an Ibsenian perspective, ethical leaders would: • ever fall into the “agony of regret and remorse”: the “agony of regret and remorse” is the extremely painful situation in which an individual is totally absorbed by an excessive feeling of guilt. The individual becomes apathetic, since he/she considers his/her words, attitudes, and behaviors as being always reprehensible. He/she then abandons his/her freedom. This agony expresses a self-denying process through which the individual dehumanizes his/her own self. Ethical leaders should ever fall into such pitfall. They should help organizational members to avoid it at any cost; • ever lie, cheat, and be hypocritical: ethical leaders enhance honesty, fairness, truthfulness, and authenticity. Authenticity seems to be the ultimate basis for honesty, fairness, and truthfulness. Being authentic requires to be honest and fair as well as to say the truth. Honesty, fairness and truthfulness largely depend on authenticity. Authenticity is not a subproduct of honesty, fairness, and truthfulness. Authenticity needs honesty, fairness and truthfulness in order to be actualized in the organizational life; • develop moral education in the organizational setting: ethical leaders oppose the various forms of moral corruption. They are particularly concerned with ethical consciousness-raising activities that could reduce organizational members’

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p­ ropensity to participate in moral corruption. Ethical training and values clarification sessions could be helpful to develop one’s moral sensitiveness and to raise the level of ethical organizational behavior.

The Existentially-Based Remnants of Being-Free Idealism and the unbearable guilt, the abuses of the will to power and moral corruption have adversely affected the being-free of every human being. What is left from such being-free?

 he Wretched Social, Economic, and Political System: T The Courage to Be Oneself Existing is being subjected to life’s vicissitudes (Ibsen 1965a, 158; 1965b, 56). Ibsen talked about the “battle for existence” (Ibsen 1988c, 151). He defined absolute (or extreme) loneliness as “a shipwrecked man”. This is the state of mind and heart in which “no one to cry over, and no one to care for” (Ibsen 1965a, 208–209). Ibsen has probably borrowed the shipwreck metaphor from Kierkegaard (1974, 278). As dreadful experience, absolute loneliness could provoke a feeling of inner voidness (Ibsen 1961, 303, 353). Dread could be unconsciously kept, as an “abyss of dread” (Ibsen 2016a, 59, 79). But it has nothing to do with death as dreadful emptiness, or the “great Nothingness” (Ibsen 1957, 333). Absolute loneliness makes shipwrecked men “completely lost and empty” (Ibsen 1965a, 209). Shipwrecked people have lost their own self (Ibsen 1988c, 201; 2016a, 80). They have lost their hope (Ibsen 2016b, 296, 313). This is what Ibsen called the “wretched life” (Ibsen 1957, 336; 1964, 257; 1988a, 306). Wretched life is made of doubt and is free of existentially-­ based peace and security (Ibsen 1988b, 27, 29). Being-wretched is being absorbed by the incommensurable realm of uncertainties and doubts. From an interpersonal, social, cultural, political, or religious/spiritual viewpoint, a wretched life is much less peaceful than it could be. It also expresses that we have lost part of our existentiell/ontic security: our system of meanings, values, beliefs and symbols have been deeply and adversely affected. Ibsen criticized the whole social, political, and economic system as being “wretched” (Ibsen 1988b, 121). It has nothing to do with material poverty. Wretchedness rather comes from the destroyed basis of our inwardness. From a social, economic and political perspective, wretchedness implies the interconnectedness between one’s being-wretched and the institutional capacity to adequately respond to his/her tragic situation. The social, economic and political system becomes “wretched” when it is unable to rescue wretched people. It does not necessarily means that it has been the direct cause of one’s wretchedness. The social, economic and political system rather has the opportunity to rescue or to

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abandon wretched people. Not seizing this opportunity will clearly make the wretchedness of people much more difficult to endure. Everyone must fight to recover his/her peaceful mind and heart (Ibsen 1988b, 107, 127; 1988c, 252). Being peaceful implies to reduce the intensity and number of our desires and expectations. We must limit our desires to those things which are under our own control. Contentment is the way to get peaceful heart and mind. But it is not enough. Inner peace also implies the absence of hate, anger, jealousy and vengeance in our mind and heart (Ibsen 1961, 310, 313, 315). Being peaceful is even being free of extreme self-reproach and remorse (Ibsen 1957, 265). Ethical leaders are aware of their existentially-based loneliness. They try to help organizational members not to lose their selves and their hope, and not to fall into absolute doubt. Ibsen believed that being who-we-are is much more important than acquiring knowledge and renown. Unfortunately, people presuppose that they have access to an absolute knowledge and that knowledge provides the worth of their own being (Ibsen 1965b, 126). We cannot get a complete/systemic understanding of the world welive in (Ibsen 1965a, 228). Ibsen remained convinced that nobody knows nothing at all (Ibsen 1964, 228; 1965b, 32). Acquiring knowledge should ever be our ultimate end. Knowing our mind and heart is probably the most important thing to learn. Someone who knows his/her mind and heart is vulnerable neither to flattery, nor to threats of any kind (Ibsen 1965b, 38). Knowing our mind and heart could help us to get inner and relational peace. Ibsen acknowledged the continuous renewal of life (Ibsen 1957, 333). Life could be filled with beauty. Having beauty in our life implies that we have not fallen into any excess, whether it is an excessive thought, emotion, attitude, or behavior (Ibsen 1965b, 61, 103, 127, 131). However, beauty remains a cultural and social convention (Ibsen 2016b, 264). Nonetheless, any free and fearless action makes life beautiful. Ibsen believed that every human being feels “hunger for life”, that is, a deep passion for life. Being passionate for our own life could make us courageous, when facing existentiell/ontic issues (Ibsen 1988a, 317–319). Ibsen enhanced brave acts (Ibsen 2016a, 36, 124). Ibsen thus emphasized the “courage to challenge life” as well as the “courage to live life in our own way” (Ibsen 1988a, 342, 357; 1988c, 202). Fighting for our freedom implies the self-affirmation of our mind (Ibsen 1957, 331). Ibsen considered that our being-wretched is neither a necessity, nor a fate. Our being-wretched could be overcome through self-transcendence, that is, the free decision to get rid of our own limitations. But self-transcendence requires to annihilate self-doubt. Doubting about ourselves is what Ibsen called the “dreadful doubt”, that is, losing faith in ourselves (Ibsen 1988a, 320, 2001c, 364; 2008, 343; 2011, 31). Losing faith in ourselves makes us lose faith in others. We should have faith in our worldview, that is, faith in the way we perceive and interpret life itself (Ibsen 1957, 333, 338). Ethical leaders help organizational members to safeguard their faith in themselves as well as in others, regardless of their cultural, social, political, economic, or religious/spiritual status. In doing so, ethical leaders would avoid the trap of the “dreadful doubt” and show their existentiell/ontic courage to live with-­ others in the organizational setting. Confidence and trust are basic attituditional dimensions of ethical leadership.

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In Peer Gynt, Ibsen defined the “Gyntian self” (or “Gyntian Whole”) in a Nietzschean way: “that iron brigade of wishes, passions and desires, a massive flood that knows no shores, vortex of impulse, need and claim, the world that I entirely am” (Ibsen 2016b, 248, 250). The Gyntian self is characterized by moral relativism and appears as “the new man” (Ibsen 2016b, 280). It implies the annihilation of the Absolute Reason (Ibsen 2016b, 282–283). The Gyntian self could be compared to the Nietzschean notion of Overman, as a way to oppose Kantian rationalism. The Gyntian self is unable to tolerate the real burden of Kantian principles. Ibsen was much more influenced by Kierkegaard’s life-views (“moral reflections, stages on life’s way”) than by Kantian moral imperatives (Ibsen 2016b, 275). Ethical leaders would embrace moral relativism, while being aware of their own limitations. Who-I-am contributes to create others’ self. Ibsen called such phenomenon the “grand Selfhood”, or the “selfhood’s self” (Ibsen 2016b, 269, 283). Self-­transcendence is impossible without grasping the essence of our self. Our self is unveiled through our emotions, words, attitudes, and actions. Very often, there is discrepancy betweeen our thoughts/feelings and our actions. Every self is constantly changing. The process of creating personal identity is quite mysterious. I am not the individual I was (Ibsen 1965b, 60, 81, 126)  – my self would then be absolute Nonself -, and simultaneously, I am the same individual I was – my self would thus be absolute Self (Ibsen 2001b, 77; 2016b, 284). Ultimately, everybody could only say: “I am what I am” (Ibsen 2016b, 240, 257). Nobody belongs to a totality of impersonal beings (Ibsen 2016b, 322–323). Everybody is a mystery for others, that is, a stranger who can never be wholly known (Ibsen 1965a, 195, 232). The Other’s mystery (the mystery of others’ selfhood) lies in his/her radical otherness. We can ever appropriate the Other’s otherness as if it would be an empirically knowable object. We are even strangers to who-we-are, since our self is a mystery for-us (our inner mystery). The interconnectedness between the mystery of others’ selfhood (for-us) and our own inner mystery (for-others) makes communicational exchanges a deep and fascinating challenge. Self-identification implies strangeness, and thus the radical otherness of one’s self. Our own words imply some hidden meaning (Ibsen 1964, 243; 2008, 305). Conciously or not, speaking is hiding the unsaid. Ethical leaders acknowledge the radical otherness of any self as well as its changing nature. In doing so, they will set up activities in which organizational members could realize their own self and be more aware of it. Workplace would become the locus of self-­realization for every organizational member. People could have “faith in the real I”, although they are unable to feel the essence of their real I. As human beings, we have to become who-we-are. Being human is our existentially-based project (Ibsen 1965a, 210, 228). We are the project to become who-we-are. Being human is being oneself, at every moment of one’s life (Ibsen 2016b, 323). But we must authentically be who-we-presently-are and who-­ we-­would-like-to-be (Ibsen 1988b, 117). Authenticity is not existentially/ontologically considered here as a mode of being-in-the-world (Heidegger), but only as transparency, that is, congruence between on one hand, our thoughts, emotions and attitudes, and on the other hand, our deeds. This is the “walk the talk” principle. Existing is living in world of existentiell/ontic possibilities (Ibsen 1961, 328; 1964,

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288; 2001b, 89), that is, an endless set of possibilities-to-be. The greatest victory is the victory over ourselves, said Ibsen (1988c, 202; 2001b, 77). It implies the courage to think and to understand, while exercising our freedom and complying with our personal ethics (Ibsen 1988a, 288; 1988b, 77). However, we have to deal with conscious and unconscious processes (Ibsen 1964, 260; 2001c, 346, 405). Being ourselves could imply to refuse given perceptions of our own self, only because they do not fit with our self-image. We could pass blind judgments about our self as well as about others’ self (Ibsen 2001a, 132–133). But sometimes our “innermost consciousness” makes self-evident what we should consider to be true (Ibsen 1988c, 241; 2001c, 382). Ethical leaders know that human mind is led by conscious and unconscious processes. So, they will understand that any interpersonal conflict and ethical dilemma in the organizational life could imply conscious as well as unconscious motives. Ibsen believed in our being-present: we are the present, and the present belongs to us. That is the way Ibsen (1965b, 38) expressed the meaning of being-present in one’s existence. Nobody has any power over the future. Only the present can really be managed. So, we should ever be anxious about the future (Ibsen 1957, 336; 1965b, 48). Intuition learns us the real I, in spite of our psychological defence mechanisms. The real I can only be found in our being-present. The present-we-are is the locus of our powers and weaknesses. Nobody is perfect. Everybody makes mistakes (Ibsen 1965b, 39). Everybody tries to do the best (Ibsen 1965b, 57). So, how could we expiate our past mistakes? Only the present (our present and actual will) and the future (our projected will) could release us from such moral burden (Ibsen 1957, 304–305; 2001c, 387). Ethical leaders know that every person is presently who-he/ she-is and sets up conditions for becoming who-he/she-would-like-to-be. Ethical leaders have the capacity to discuss with people having various life experiences and backgrounds. In each case, ethical leaders will be confronted to “evolving selves”. Ethical leaders will have an internalized moral identity and have to be confronted to their followers’ internalized moral identity (Skubinn and Herzog 2016). From an Ibsenian perspective, ethical leaders would: • help organizational members not to lose their hope and not to fall into absolute doubt: the loss of our hope often gives birth to the loss of our meaning of life. When hope has disappeared, then future becomes meaningless. Human being projects the individual he/she would like to become. Without hope, self-­projection of our own self is impossible. Human being always defines who-he/she-would-­ like-to-be. Future plays a major role in our self-actualization, that is, our freedom to become who-we-are. Losing hope is lacking the set of possibilities-to-be where we choose the most relevant ones, hence our despair, as it is grounded on absolute doubt. Ethical leaders should help organizational members not to lose their hope, and thus not to fall into despair; • focus on the courage to live with-others in the organizational setting: a courageous action requires the risk to be hurt by any negative/disruptive consequence of this action. Living with-others is a “risky” positioning of our self. In given situations, we could be wrongly judged, denigrated, harassed, or otherwise

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d­ ehumanized. That is why living with-others could eventually be a courageous action. Ethical leaders could enhance such courage to live with-others in the organizational life; • acknowledge the radical otherness of every self as well as its changing nature: every self is radically different from other selves. Such radical otherness of every self is unsurpassable. Opening our mind/heart to radical otherness could help organizational members to deepen their understanding and compassion towards others and towards themselves. It will make possible to strengthen all forms of pluralism (cultural, ethnic, religious/spiritual, and so forth) as the various expressions of humankind. If ethical leaders really love humankind, then they must embrace all forms of pluralism which are present in the organizational life; • set up activities in which organizational members could realize themselves: workplace is not only where people are working and living together. It is also (or should be) the locus of self-realization for every organizational member. Ethical leaders should find an equilibrium between organizational goals and organizational members’ self-realization. An excessive emphasis on organizational goals could largely reduce the opportunities of self-realization for organizational members. An excessive emphasis on organizational members’ self-realization could adversely affect the potentiality to reach organizational goals.

Politics and Business: The Courage to Criticize the Will to Truth In Brand and Peer Gynt, Ibsen acknowledged that every creed is man-made, and thus impermanent. Every creed fulfills specific social needs. The real challenge is to know what “eternal truths” really mean (Ibsen 2016a, 17–18, 130–131; 2016b, 242). Dealing with eternal truths strongly asserts that there is an intrinsic connection between our soul and God. In believers’ perspective, we are “the abode of our selfhood-­in-God”. Eternal truths are then inherently linked to Divine destiny, original sin, and hereditary guilt (Ibsen 2016a, 41, 50). Ibsen criticized the way faith in God could annihilate free will. Faith in God could even provoke blind obedience to religious dogmas and beliefs. That is why faith and life should never be mixed (Ibsen 2016a, 132, 135, 143). Ethical leaders acknowledge that religion is man-­ made, and not a specific outcome of Divine Will. Religion responds to specific social needs and expectations. “The time is close when men won’t need to die in order to live like gods” (Ibsen 2011, 147). In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen insisted on the constant fight for truth, and thus showed a renewed outlook on the Nietzschean will-to-truth. Truth is represented as an issue of conscience. It could even be the main way to uncover the meanderings of self-consciousness. For anybody who has the will-to-truth, truth will continuously prevail, in a way or another (Ibsen 2001a, 164, 177). In The Pillars of Society, Ibsen envisioned a future world in which “truth becomes a settled habit in the life of the people” (Ibsen 1988b, 121). Ibsen philosophically fighted for truth and freedom (Ibsen 2001a, 203), since he always considered truth and freedom as the pillars of

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the community (Ibsen 1988b, 137). He did not accept Nietzsche’s critique of the will-to-truth, although he was not comfortable with the way truth is ideologically manipulated and distorted. Ethical leaders should criticize any distortion of the will-­ to-­truth, while safeguarding it from annihilation. They could distinguish the basic needs for a will-to-truth as well as its distorting expressions. Ibsen mentioned that people should ever be considered as objects, that is, tools for community life (Kant 1983, 47; Ibsen 1957, 328; 1988b, 117, 120). What is at stake is the moral foundation of the community. We are the guardians of collective morals. We have to safeguard the moral pillars of the community (Ibsen 1988b, 41, 44, 83, 101, 112, 128). Community has its own moral duties. In The Pillars of Society, Karsten Bernick believed that craving for power, influence and reputation is the ultimate guiding principle for his own actions. When Rörlund criticized bad conscience and argued that we are “on the threshold of a new era”, he also asserted that selflessness was an important component of the new morality. Ibsen dealt with the belief that individual needs (minority) must be sacrificed for the profit of the community (majority). Solidarity between self-sacrificing citizens is one of the strongest pillars of the community (Ibsen 1988b, 55–58, 71, 80, 119, 128–131). Self-sacrifice could be politically- as well as religiously-induced. In Brand, Ibsen criticized the way (Christian) religion required “to obey the unconditional demand for sacrifice”. The ultimate objective of such religiously-based self-sacrifice is to annihilate our “heart’s idolatry” (Ibsen 2016a, 110–111). Self-sacrifice is an outcome of existentiell/ontic courage (Ibsen 1988c, 245). It implies to get “fair profits for honest dealings” (Ibsen 2016a, 48). In Brand, Ibsen enhanced honesty, fairness, and good sense. He even criticized people who believes that greed could be “zeal-­ for-­good” (Ibsen 2016a, 98). Ibsen always perceived individualism as denying common good. Ethical leaders are honest, fair, and pragmatic people (Crews 2013; Engelbrecht et  al. 2017). They do not believe in an absolutized meaning of self-­ sacrifice, since self-sacrifice could be immorally conceived and put in practice. If truth and freedom are the pillars of the community, then self-sacrifice should ever reduce the worth of the will-to-truth and of our being-free. From an Ibsenian perspective, ethical leaders would: • be pragmatic people: being pragmatic is being primarily concerned with the feasibility of a project, and/or the applicability of an idea, value, or virtue in a given context. A pragmatic way of thinking takes the variability of contexts with the greatest seriousness. It focuses on the optimality of results, given the circumstances. It does not necessarily excludes any ideal. Rather, all ideals are always criticized in order to check their relevance and applicability in particular contexts; • ever assert an absolutized meaning of self-sacrifice: self-sacrifice is a vague notion that could be used to extremely foster employee commitment in the organizational life. An absolutized meaning of self-sacrifice is then set up by leaders and made mandatory for their followers. The notion of self-sacrifice should rather be an issue for open and honest discussion between executives and employees. If the meaning of self-sacrifice is one-sided, then it loses its attractiveness for organizational members.

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Conclusion Ibsen promoted more tolerance and mutual understanding among people (Ibsen 1965b, 126). Respect should be grounded on tolerance and wisdom (Ibsen 2011, 109). Ibsen believed that better mutual understanding could change the world as it is now. Better mutual understanding cannot be isolated from truthfulness and frankness. It is not compatible with any kind of deception (Ibsen 1988c, 221). Ibsen enhanced moderation as basic virtue, quite close to prudence (Ibsen 1988a, 331; 2001a, 145, 185). This is the moral tone that should prevail in politics as well as in business. What does it mean to fight for money and loving pleasure? Are business people really creating collective welfare? Ibsen was deeply convinced that business people must display exemplary behavior (Ibsen 1988b, 33, 44, 56). Loving pleasure is not immoral at all. Rather, human being “is made for pleasure” (Ibsen 2016b, 239). Ibsen believed that times are always changing, so that old problems need innovative solutions (Ibsen 1965b, 67). However, we cannot but acknowledge that historically-­based distortions of our being-free – whether it is idealism, the unbearable guilt, the abuses of the will to power, and moral corruption – are still with us today. Thankfully, human being has the courage to be himself/herself and the courage to criticize the will-to-truth, regardless of historically-based conditioning factors.

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Chapter 24

Poetry and Business: Thinking Beyond the Facts Clare Morgan

According to Dana Gioia, poet, businessman and former head of the US National Endowment for the Arts, “American poetry has defined business mainly by excluding it. Business does not exist in the world of poetry, and therefore by implication it has become everything that poetry is not – a world without imagination, enlightenment, or perception. It is the universe from which poetry is trying to escape” (Gioia 1992). The landscape of business has changed exponentially since Gioia wrote that. And even as far back as the 1990s, Gioia was as much wrong as he was right, in that a number of famous poets had, however improbably, amalgamated a successful business life with the apparently radically different activity of writing, reading, living, breathing, engaging with poetry in all the depth and breadth of complexity that entails. T. S. Eliot worked in a bank, Wallace Stevens turned down a faculty position at Harvard University because he didn’t want to give up his position as Vice President of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company (Coleman 2012). Gioia himself was a Stanford Business School graduate, and former General Foods executive. More recently, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft – one of the most successful turnarounds in history – claims to be an avid poetry reader. Poetry, he says, is good for business. Poetry is about essence. Compression and concision. You can’t get by these days without compression and concision. What do poetry and business have in common? ‘The best code is poetry’ (Drusch 2014). The late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., attested to being strongly influenced by the works of the Romantic poet William Blake (Rubin 2007). While business guru Jason Nanchun Jiang, founder and CEO of the multi-billion dollar Focus Media Holding, says his passion for reading and writing poetry has helped nurture innovation and is his “secret to success” (Jiang 2019).

C. Morgan (*) Kellogg College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_24

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These parallels between business and poetry, interesting though they are, can readily be dismissed as co-incidences, and a tiny minority interest in a world of wider, pervading indifference to any merits or effects poetry may offer. The fact that certain individuals have an affinity to poetry, or believe in its efficacy in the business world, albeit in rather general terms, has little to say to the possibility of poetry’s potential in relation to any identifiable and lasting benefits. And yet, conversations about the relevance of poetry to business have been taking place with increasing regularity and intensity over the past few decades. David Whyte’s The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America focused on using poetry as a means of exploring the relation between ‘soul life [and] work life’ (Whyte 1996). Researchers John F. Sherry, Jr. and John W. Schouten proposed that poetry might serve to tap into consumers’ inner worlds and therefore ‘contribute to the discourse on consumer behavior’ (Sherry and Shouten 2002), while Louise Grisoni asserted that poetry enables employees to access and discuss ‘emotions and emotional engagement with the organisation in a new and different – more accessible way’ (Grisoni 2007). Monika Kostera researched the relation of poetry as mediating between feelings and organising, believing that poetry can be used as a means of expressing the emotional complexities of managerial experience and proposing that “Its strength is that it does not ‘flatten out’ the domains of organizing or ‘translate them into rationality’” (Kostera 1997). Poetry, she therefore holds, can help us to a deeper understanding of organizational realities. It is notable that all these approaches appear to be focused in two main areas – the emotional or the psychological/therapeutic. The benefits are seen as being to do with revealing what is hidden in usual business discourse, or creating a bridge between the disparate entities of the employee and the organization – broadly or narrowly speaking – of which that employee is necessarily a part. Poetry therefore is more or less perceived as a benign adjunct to business activity, as it exists and continues, rather than as any potentially disruptive or revolutionary force. That business has utilized poetry in a number of ways to bolster the bottom line is undoubted. Throughout the early 2000s, poetry was often employed as a marketing tool. In March 2000, The New York Times ran an article on the use of poetry by marketing departments reporting that “American Airlines is the latest company to jump on the poetry bandwagon. In April, National Poetry Month, flight attendants on selected international flights will hand out 100,000 copies of a poetry anthology along with the peanuts” (Meredith 2000). Volkswagen put 40,000 copies of poetry books in the glove boxes of its new cars. Lancôme  paid for 15,000 copies of an anthology called “Great Love Poems”  given out on Valentine’s Day (Meredith 2000). In 2000, the recruitment agency Monster.com announced record breaking traffic spikes following the launch of its new advertising campaign during the broadcast of Super Bowl XXXIV. In the commercial, a young woman standing at an urban crossroads is ‘advised’ by a cast of characters as they walk past her. The advice is recited in the form of lines from Robert Frost’s poem, ‘The Road Not Taken’.  The final lines, delivered by an elementary school teacher and some of her students, suggest that the choices you take will make all the difference in your

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career. “Two roads diverged in a wood,/and I, I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference” (Pritchett 2014). An example of business’s attempts to use poets – as well as poetry – to help shore up the bottom line, or at least be seen to making some kind of effort to engage in the wider world of arts and humanities, is the attachment by the UK retail giant M&S of a British poet, Peter Sansom, as ‘poet in residence’ in one of their stores. How effective – or not – the initiative may have been is indicated by the national newspaper The Star running the following riff on William Wordsworth’s famous poem ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, to illustrate how it saw proceedings: ‘I wandered lonely through the crowd/At my local M&S/When all at once I saw a bard/Among the pants and vests’ (Kennedy 2000). As well as the direct-leverage use of poetry as a potent marketing tool, business has taken poetry into its HR/L&D activities along with other arts-oriented initiatives. Back in the 1990s the business guru Charles Handy noted a trend towards many more workshops and courses on how to stimulate creativity (Handy 1999). By 2007 John Fanning could assert that ‘business has never been shy of ransacking other disciplines for any insights they may have to offer, so it should come as no surprise that the humanities have now become a particular target’ (Fanning 2007). But ‘ransacking’ is the point at issue here. That business might try to plunder poetry for immediate gain – such as advertising or promotional uses, or even in the pursuit of that amorphous entity, ‘creativity’ – is one thing. A thoroughgoing willingness to engage with the detailed complexities and commensurate rewards of what poetry has to offer is quite another. The potential disruptiveness of poetry and the radical contribution it might be able to offer was recognized by a few, far sighted individuals and institutions. Lieutenant General James Lennox, Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point from 2001 to 2006, believed that poetry was of value in achieving good communications: “Those who can’t communicate can’t lead. Poetry, because it describes reality with force and concision, provides an essential tool for effective communication” (Lennox 2006). This belief led him to include poetry in the West Point syllabus and in 2016 the curriculum offered wide ranging poetry engagement via British, American, and World Literature courses, and a dedicated course focusing wholly on poetry. But Lennox goes even farther in his view of what poetry can offer. As well as enhancing the communication skills of students a.k.a. future military leaders, Lennox believes: “poetry confronts cadets with new ideas that challenge their worldview. […] In teaching cadets poetry, we teach them not what to think, but how to think”. These are radical words from a far-sighted proponent of forward-looking practices. But Lennox goes even beyond this in proposing a link between poetry and its benefits, and the very nature of leadership itself. ‘We may not produce a poet laureate at the United States Military Academy’, he says. “If, however, we develop graduates who can communicate clearly, think critically, and appreciate the world through different perspectives, we will provide the Army and the nation with better leaders”.

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Better leadership and new ways of thinking were precisely what was being called for in business throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century. The need for a change in mindset if you want to stay ahead in business was articulated in a variety of ways. As early as 2003, the Harvard Business Review featured an article which pointed up that although “companies are pouring increasingly more money into collecting and organizing information about the world in which they operate” there are strong limits to “objective analysis” in business situations (Sutcliffe and Weber 2003). Information overload generates a “selective focus of attention” and furthermore, “in the complex world in which most business leaders operate, information about the environment […] is seldom obvious in its implications. Executives therefore have no choice but to interpret and intuit the data they receive.” Having conducted a research project into these issues the authors conclude: “The task of leaders is to manage ambiguity and to mobilize action, not to store highly accurate knowledge about their environment. The more effective way to improve the performance of a company is to invest in how leaders shape their interpretive outlooks.” (my italics). This important point about ambiguity and interpretation was taken up by Hans Paul Bürkner, CEO of The Boston Consulting Group, in 2007: “In the current business environment there are no easy answers or simple solutions. It’s the rare problem that has only one dimension anymore; most have many dimensions with difficult trade offs and unclear second- and third-order implications. Instead of trying to ignore this complexity companies must confront it – indeed, embrace it – and leaders need to learn to cope with it” (Bürkner 2007). Suggestions that approaches and practices that were not fit for future purpose lay deeply embedded in the texture and thinking of business itself were already emerging. Some commentators believed that the fault line militating against the change needed for radical progress ran deep, existing at the heart of how business thought about and constructed itself. In an interview in the Harvard Business Review, James G. March reported that “The rhetoric of management requires managers to pretend that things are clear and everything is straightforward. Often they know managerial life is more ambiguous and contradictory, but they can’t say it. They see their role as relieving people of ambiguities and uncertainties” (Coutu 2006). March was one of the commentators already suggesting that poetry could make a difference in business thinking. Such suggestions, however, were often low key and efforts to implement them generally swamped by the exigencies of the bottom line. The comments of a senior partner in a firm of lawyers in the UK where a poetry initiative was undertaken with great success and received accolades from its participants, exemplifies the problem. When asked how successful he thought the project had been he replied, ‘“I am pretty sure no new work came in as a result of it” (Kennedy 2000). Research into the qualities of poetry that might work to counteract these tendencies existed but was as yet of a fairly general nature. The grand claims for poetry that began with Plato’s assertion of the poets (rhapsodes) being a danger to the well ordered running of the State through their ability to change peoples’ minds; continued with Shakespeare portraying the poet as an inventor par excellence when he

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suggested ‘the poet’s pen’ turns ‘things unknown … to shapes and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name’; progressed with Shelley, in his ‘Defence of Poetry’ rather more modestly claiming that poetry ‘awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought’ were not yet attracting the leverage that might make a business practitioner sit up and engage with poetry in a serious way. Circumstantial evidence of the role of literary-trained thinkers being able to think more flexibly did exist. Wolfgang Iser in his essay, ‘The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach’, proposes that reading literary texts fosters an ability to ask questions and make connections – an undoubtedly valuable attribute in the world of business. In reading literary texts, Iser says, “we look forward, we look back, we decide, we change our decisions, we form expectations, we are shocked by their non-fulfilment, we question, we use, we accept, we reject” (Iser 1974). Reuven Tsur describes some experiments he undertook to see whether how a person is trained to think makes a difference as to whether they use sharpener or leveller strategies and whether having been trained to work with poems enables someone to use different thinking strategies than if they were not. Tsur worked with groups of literary professionals and students as well as control groups of people who were not literary trained. Participants had to evaluate different versions of a poetry text, altered to display subtle variations of emphasis and patterning, and considering criteria such as simple-complex, static-dynamic, open-closed, emotional-­ unemotional. The differences perceived between the versions by the literary trained group were markedly greater than those without literary training. Tsur’s results indicated that the non-literary trained participants tended to level out the differences and lacked the ‘sharpening’ skills associated with those who had benefited from literary training (Tsur and Bradburn 2003). More directly applicable research into modes of thinking in the business environment, and the potential of poetry to contribute to positive changes, was conducted by Henley Management College in 2009. Research into the nature of conventional thinking capacities in business and the role of non-conventional thinking capacities that could handle ambiguity and uncertainty was conducted, and poetry workshops as part of this research programme were run in Knowledge Exchange forums, in businesses and in a government ministry. The research suggested that conventional thinking capacities in business situations tended to impose existing interpretive frames of reference on a problem, tended to reach single meaning using own value judgements, and tended to reject or ignore contradictory choices (McKenzie et al. 2009). In subsequent work with a UK government Ministry, three poetry workshops (each of two hours) were conducted weekly over a three week period. Participants were asked to give their reactions soon after the workshops, and to keep a reflective log for the month following the process. At the end of that month, they were interviewed in relation to their assessment of longer-term benefits, especially any changes to their own thinking capacities. Most participants said that they – and their thinking  – had gained from the process, using terms such as “opened up”. Sixty three percent reported specific value in terms of better acceptance of ambiguity, a

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greater appreciation of the importance of language, and recognition of multiple perspectives (McKenzie et al. 2010). The study concluded that engaging with poetry therefore seems to encourage ‘non-conventional’ thinking capacities which, in turn, encourages readers to suspend firm framing of problem space; to forestall judgement; to explore more interpretations; and to recognize, acknowledge and hold contradictory demands. The research argued that poetry could therefore contribute, via the development of non-­ conventional thinking capacities, to allowing more embracing choices that could satisfy more stakeholders and address needs for innovative approaches. The applicability, though, of poetry to the desired thinking styles of business practitioners, was generally insufficiently explicit, in terms of practical outcomes, to be taken on board by anyone other than the already converted. If Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, could say in a much quoted interview with the New York Times, that he preferred to hire poets, as they are ‘the original systems thinkers’ (Rubin 2007), or Dana Gioia assert that poetry stands at a vital intersection with business imperatives because ‘Poets [are able to] separate the superb ideas from the merely very good ones’ (Gioia 2007), still, potential roll out of poetry into business practice remained limited. What was the pay-off? How could such a seemingly esoteric and unrelated activity be shown to be relevant to bottom line considerations? To any considerations? Poetry is one thing, capitalism is another, as a business leader at a poetry workshop in Tokyo put it (Morgan 2010). Perhaps the sceptical voice in Tokyo was right. The point at issue here is perhaps that business leaders and practitioners have in general conflated ‘use’ with ‘value’ in cost-benefit terms that are difficult for the humanities, and for poetry particularly in the business realm, to navigate. As the UK lawyer said of the poetry initiative in his firm, “I am pretty sure no new work came in as a result of it”. In an environment that demands such directly quantifiable outcomes to a process that aims for qualitative change in the rather abstract arena of thinking processes, it is unlikely that assertions such as Iser’s, that literary engagement causes us to ‘“look forward … look back, … decide, … change our decisions, … form expectations, [be] shocked by their non-fulfilment, … question, … use, … accept, … reject” will cut much ice. Yet the need to bridge the yawning chasm between business and not only poetry but the humanities in general, has been pointed up by one of the most significant players on the global corporate stage. For many years Google had been putting a lot of effort into recruiting from the STEM side of tertiary education – they wanted the top scientists, engineers and so on as their movers and shakers, the stand-out leaders of the organization, the ideas-people. But in 2013, Google decided to take a close look at this way of doing things and assess the strategy. To this end they ran Project Oxygen, covering recruitment and its outcomes since 1998. This study showed that the STEM educated recruits were not, after all, at the core of the company’s success. ‘Soft’ skills rather than hard, science-based abilities were paramount. Dealing with complexity, engaging with others’ views and thinking critically were identified as the core skills and Google adjusted its recruitment accordingly (Strauss 2017).

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In 2016 a further study, Project Aristotle, built on these earlier findings. Aristotle showed that Google’s most successful teams, those that contributed the most to the company’s overall success, majored not on how high flying scientifically their participants were, but on how confident they were of being able to speak up and make mistakes without being penalized, and how well they could communicate. In other words making your voice heard and feeling valued and respected, along with good communication, were just as vital to company success – perhaps more so – than hard-data, ‘scientific’ skills (Strauss 2017). The growing sense that ‘more of the same’ will not do – for so long an undercurrent in the wider business conversations – is, as the twenty-first century progresses, turning from a dismissible whisper into a voice that has to be heard. The rise of tech and social media giants has created a tectonic shift in how business sees itself and how the world in general sees it. The 2008 financial crisis shook the confidence of the general pubic in the probity, efficacy and aims of businesses. AI has changed the face of the workplace, with a global shift in speed, focus and the kinds of knowledge and skills needed. Business has become more and more complex and fast paced.1 Operating as leader or manager in this environment requires very different capabilities from those required in the past. Rather than direct management and linear thinking, managers have to deal more and more with ambiguity and interpretation of reality to determine the right (mostly indirect) approach (Morgan 2019). And the kind of thinking skills needed in order to lead or manage in this changed environment are not just being mooted by business commentators and journalist-­ gurus. The potential ways forward were pointed up starkly in a recent statement by Apple CEO Tim Cook, who put the imperatives this way: ‘I’m not worried about artificial intelligence giving computers the ability to think like humans,’ he said. “I’m more concerned about people thinking like computers” (Cook 2019). Cook here is pointing to an issue that lies at the heart of any discussion of humanizing business. Business practitioners must be able to think, the implication is, in distinctly human – creative, idiosyncratic, speculative, flexible – ways. Not, that is, the linear thinking of a to b; not the closing down of alternatives in order to cut to the chase; not the ‘conventional’ thinking capacities identified by the Henley research – but in some other, radically different, and more truly innovative way. The potential nature of – and pressing need for – this different thinking is indicated in Jerry Useem’s Atlantic article ‘At Work: Experience is Falling out of Favour’. Projections indicate, Useem says, that within ten years, 70–90% of

1  The range and depth of this complexity was confirmed in recent studies by the Boston Consulting Group (Henderson Institute). These studies showed that complexity had multiplied sixfold since 1955, and the related complication facing decision makers had, in the last fifteen years, increased between 50% and 350%. Allied to this was a striking rise in volatility: only 44% of industry leaders had held their position for at least five years, down from 77% a half-century ago. More broadly, global uncertainty was at an all-time high, with the Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index riding above 250, having risen from an average of around 90 in the 2000s and 156 in the 2010s (Morgan 2019).

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workers will have moved from specialized to generalist roles in their jobs. According to Mary Jo King, the president of the National Résumé Writers’ Association, this means that the desired recruit will be ‘someone who can be all, do all, and pivot on a dime to solve any problem.’ In relation to thinking skills, this in turn suggests that ‘crystallized’ intelligence (the kind gained over years by incremental gaining of experience) is likely to cede importance to the ‘fluid intelligence’ of more adaptive, creative and agile modes (Useem 2019). The potential of poetry in terms of its contribution to developing this new thinking mode is strongly indicated by recent neuroscientific research outcomes. A UK study, “‘Shall I compare thee’: The neural basis of literary awareness, and its benefits to cognition”, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the neural and cognitive basis of literary awareness in a group participants. The study, which explored the capacity to process and derive meanings in complex poetic and prosaic texts, found that: “enhanced literary awareness is related to increased flexibility of internal models of meaning, enhanced interoceptive [emotional] awareness of change, and an enhanced capacity to reason about events” (O’Sullivan 2015). Poetry in particular stimulated areas of the brain that may be related to tolerance of uncertainty, and the study concluded: the sustained experience of reading poems might be expected to challenge rigid expectancies and fixed thoughts and to increase mental flexibility through the process of the reappraisal of meaning and the acceptance of fresh meanings (My italics) (Davis 2017). To poetry readers, practitioners, students or promotors, these claims will come as no surprise. As I have argued elsewhere, the nature of a poem – a kind of ‘meaning in motion’ that defies simple interpretation  – demands of its readers different responses from other forms of communication or utterance (Morgan et al. 2005). A poem is a distillation of thought, experience, emotion into a tightly controlled form which utilizes words, images, sound and rhythm patterns to create a complex set of meanings (and emotional resonances) that constantly form and re-form themselves. Its components take it beyond argument into a realm where expectations of a single, analysable meaning are deliberately questioned and subverted. All art does this, but poems do it in a particularly condensed and therefore intensive way. A poem is a puzzle with multiple, inexhaustible, co-existent – and interchangeable – ‘solutions’, each more or less dependent on the others for validity. A poem is not, as some commentators have wrongly asserted, a compressed story (Chang 2019). Poets do not simplify complex problems. They embrace, relish and capitalize on complexity while rendering it comprehensible – not in terms of a meaning, but of many meanings that co-exist and keep on doing so. This means that the desire for closure, which drives most business considerations, the desire for pursuing the shortest route between A and B, another dominant mode in business thinking – won’t get you anywhere at all when faced with a poem. The poem operates on many levels, bringing together as it does not only words set out in a (more or less) recognizable order, but adducing rhyme, rhythm, syntactical ambiguity, shape, emotional arc, contextual background, symbol, metaphor – the possibilities are rich and make for a challenging complexity in even the apparently ‘simple’ poem. A poem does not argue, ‘cut to the chase’, assert the validity of a

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position or deal in binary opposition. A poem does work dynamically, show ‘meaning’ as multivalent, hold oppositions in delicate balance, and go beyond logic. These qualities caused the language theorist Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) to assert that poetic language is ‘organized violence committed on ordinary speech’ (Jakobson 1980). In June 2019 Tim Cook adjured a group of graduating students to consider that the mindset generated by the increasing prevalence of algorithms is to be resisted – algorithms look backwards, to what has been, innovative thinking looks forwards, to what might be (Eadiccio 2019). In this context it might seem that what poetry has to offer would be eagerly snapped up by leaders and managers keen to take this advice on board, to avoid thinking ‘like computers’ and to develop the agile thinking capacity that would enable them and their colleagues to ‘turn on a dime’. In any organization, however, off the wall notions (i.e. ones we haven’t thought of yet) don’t get accepted lightly. Busy executives don’t want to know justification, they want to know application. Not input – the whys and wherefores – but outcome: what are the positive effects reading poetry can have in a business? Do participants undergo shifts in attitude that indicate identifiable outcomes in terms of an organization’s mindset development? Is there evidence that the ‘soft’ goals of confidence (and related creative contribution); job satisfaction and retention; and the inextricable elements of empathy, self-awareness and self-esteem, are being achieved? Recent data analysis of concrete outcomes from poetry workshops, as yet at an early stage and from a small numbers-base, has indicated certain distinct benefits as identified by participants2 Benefits identified included that working with poetry helps generate a high level of enthusiasm for and engagement in ‘thinking differently’, being ‘more flexible’, and feeling ‘more confident’. Responses emphasize the transferability of such thinking skills from poetry-discussion to the workplace environment and demonstrate the value of the poetry workshop process in team building and communication. There have also been strong indications of the value of the poetry-discussion process in terms of personal development, with the underlying knock-on potentials for job-satisfaction and retention. Early indications suggest therefore that progress has been made in bridging the gap between the perceived change in thinking practices that businesses have identified they need to enact, and the provision of poetry as a mechanism for addressing those needs. In Tim Cook’s words, poetry may help people avoid thinking like computers – may, in other words, help retain or generate that flexibility and agility of thinking and interpreting that is generally seen as a distinctly ‘human’ characteristic, as opposed to the non-human, machine mode. It seems likely that the associated effects of poetry reading on individuals  – confidence, team working ability, trust and so on, could equally be seen as factors contributing to a humane culture where the individual is valued and personal development (as well as company profit) is held at a premium. There’s an even deeper level, however, at which poetry can be of crucial use not only to business and individuals engaged in business, but to businesses and

 Unpublished research conducted by Clare Morgan June 2019.

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individuals as they engage with the wider society. The importance of poetry to maintaining the precision and efficacy of language – its ‘truth’, if you will – has long been acknowledged. The French poet Stefane Mallarmé believed the poetry could ‘endow/with a sense more pure the words of the tribe’ (Mallarmé 1957). T. S. Eliot, following him not quite faithfully, said that poetry can ‘purify the dialect of the tribe’ (Eliot 1994). The philosopher Martin Heidegger, in his essays ‘What are Poets for?’ (1971, 89–139) and ‘Language’ (1971, 187–208), posited that the language of great poetry can light the way to truth for humans caught in an era of technological dominance (Fell 2012). Very much later, Dana Gioia in his seminal essay ‘Can Poetry Matter?’ argued that poetry has a huge role to play in maintaining the essence of a free society. ‘Poetry’, Gioia says, ‘is the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning. A society whose intellectual leaders lose the skill to shape, appreciate, and understand the power of language will become the slaves of those who retain it – be they politicians, preachers, copywriters, or newscasters.’ (Gioia 1992). In our own time, right now, the rise of social media has caused a major shift in the way communication happens, moving away from ‘one to many’ (the classical mass media) towards a world of ‘many to many’. This has contributed to a crisis of truth, which has led in part to the fake news phenomenon. In this environment it is of fundamental importance to be able to interpret and deal, in a critical way, with the ‘messages’ coming across to you. Truth resides not in facts but in language. Sloganism and banal generalities are where ‘fake news’ has its best opportunity to thrive. Poetry  – with its insistence on a precision which works in tandem with a nexus of ambiguity, nuance and meaning-in-motion, can be a vital means of acquiring the skills to make informed judgements in a world of slippery imprecision and shifting obfuscation.3 As the late Anthony Hopwood, Dean of Oxford’s Said Business School, put it, ‘Language pre-empts and deforms ‘managing’ …[it]… can be used to deny the possibility of an alternative’ (Caulkin 2001). Our business leaders, executives, managers, need a handle on ‘truth’. Alongside adaptable thinking skills, the agility needed to ‘turn on a dime’, they need to be able to think critically and communicate clearly – to turn away from a ‘rhetoric of management’ that reinforces the status quo towards a new emphasis that refreshes public faith in what business stands for, while at the same time energizing day to day thinking and business practices to a new, creative edge. The indications are there that taking poetry on board can be a motor for this valuable development. Poetry is one thing, capitalism is another. The time to test the truth of that assertion is now. 3  The need for business leaders to think critically and communicate clearly is even more vital in the light of the Covid-19 crisis. An increased emphasis on the need for resiliance (rather than efficiency) will necessitate a greater degree of collaborative engagement in the common interest. This means embracing a significantly broader set of perspectives than may, so far, have habitually been the case. How individual companies  – subject to intense scrutiny of their social relevance and contribution – act and communicate will be vital to any future success (Lesser and Reeves 2020).

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References Bürkner, H.P. 2007. Foreword to Morgan, C. Seeing what is not  – Yet. The Boston Consulting Group, 2010 p.v. Caulkin, Simon. 2001. Too complicated for words. The Observer, 2 December 2001. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2001/dec/02/workandcareers.madeleinebunting. Accessed 1 Dec 2018. Chang, Rosalie. 2019. Where poetry meets business and entrepreneurship. In The Startup, 26 August 2019. Available at: https://medium.com/swlh/where-­poetry-­meets-­business-­and-­entre preneurship-­9ef932c8383f. Accessed 1 Sept 2019. Coleman, John. 2012. The benefits of poetry for professionals. Harvard Business Review, 27 November 2012. Available at: https://hbr.org/2012/11/the-­benefits-­of-­poetry-­for-­pro. Accessed 1 Sept 2019. Cook, Tim. 2019. [Online]. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/09/watch-­apple-­ceo-­tim-­ cook-­speaks-­at-­mit-­commencement.html. Accessed 1 July 2019. Coutu, Diane. 2006. Ideas as art. Harvard Business Review, October 2006, p. 82. Davis, P. 2017. Reading can improve mental flexibility. Neuroscience News 3: 2016. Available at: https://neurosciencenews.com/reading-­mental-­flexibility-­3787/. Accessed 1 June 2019. Drusch, Andrea. 2014. 10 things to know: Satya Nadella. Politico, 2 April 2014. Available at: https://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/satya-­nadella-­biography-­key-­facts-­career-­ background-­microsoft-­103106. Accessed 1 Feb 2019. Eadiccio, Lisa. 2019. Apple CEO Tim Cook urges college grads to ‘push back’ against algorithms that promote the ‘things you already know, believe, or like’ 18 May 2019 Available at: https:// www.businessinsider.com/tim-­cook-­commencement-­speech-­tulane-­urges-­grads-­to-­push-­ back-­2019-­5?r=US&IR=T. Accessed 2 June 2019. Eliot, T.S. 1994. Little gidding. II. Four quartets, 39. London: Faber and Faber. Fanning, J. 2007. What business can learn from the poetry of Thomas Kinsella. Irish Marketing Review, 19 (1, 2), 46. Available at: www.dit.ie/media/newsdocuments/2008/neweditiono-­ rishmarketingreview/05Fanning.pdf. Accessed 1 May 2019. Fell, A. 2012. Truth and being: Heidegger’s turn to poetry, p  5. [Online]. Available at: https:// digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1205&context=theses. Accessed 31 Jan 2020. Gioia, D. 1992. Can poetry matter?: Essays on poetry and American culture. [Online]. Available at: www.danagioia.net/essays/ebusiness.htm. Accessed 1 Dec 2018. ———. 2007. Dana Gioia on the close connection between business and poetry, May 2007. Online. Available at: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/dana-­gioia-­on-­the-­close-­ connection-­between-­business-­and-­poetry/. Accessed 1 July 2019. Grisoni, L. 2007. Cooking up a star: Flavouring organisational learning with poetry. In Proceedings of OLKC 2007 – “Learning fusion”, p. 341. Handy, Charles. 1999. The new alchemists. London: Hutchinson. Heidegger, Martin. 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought, transl. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row. Iser, W. 1974. The reading process: A phenomenological approach: The implied reader, 274–294. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Jakobson, R. 1980. A postscript to the discussion on grammar of poetry. Diacritics 10 (1): 21–35. Kennedy, Maev. 2000. Rhyme to go home. The Guardian, May 2000. Available at: https://www. theguardian.com/books/2000/mar/23/poetry.artsfeatures. Accessed 1 Sept 2019. Kostera, M. 1997. Personal performatives: Collecting poetical definitions of management. Organization 4 (3): 343. Lennox, Lt. Gen. William James Jr. 2006 Romance and reality. [Online]. Available at: www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/146660. Accessed 15 Dec 2018. Lesser, R., and M. Reeves. 2020. Leading out of adversity, 9 April 2020. https://www.bcg.com/ de-­de/publications/2020/business-­resilience-­lessons-­covid-­19.aspx. Accessed 14 May 2020.

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Mallarmé, Stéphane. 1957. Selected Poems, transl. C. F. MacIntyre, Berkeley: University of California Press. McKenzie, J., N. Woolf, C. van Winkelen, and C. Morgan. 2009. Cognition in strategic decision making: Model of non-conventional thinking capacities for complex situations. Management Decision 47 (2): 209–232. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740910938885. ISSN:0025-1747. ———. 2010. Unpublished research report provided to Ministry client. Meredith, R. 2000. The media business: Advertising; Marketing departments are turning to poets to help inspire their companies’ clientele. The New York Times, 21 March. Morgan, C. 2010. What poetry brings to business, 223. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 2019. Unpublished interview with Massimo Portincaso. Boston Consulting Group, July 2019. Morgan, C., K. Lange, and T. Buswick. 2005. Poetry in the boardroom: Thinking beyond the facts: A roundtable discussion among Clare Morgan, Kirsten Lange, Ted Buswick, and Nancy Healy. Journal of Business Strategy 26 (1): 34–40. Nanchun Jiang, Jason. 2019. Where poetry meets business. NYU Shanghai. [Online]. Available at: https://shanghai.nyu.edu/news/when-­poetry-­meets-­business. Accessed 1 Feb 2019. O’Sullivan. 2015. Abstract for “Shall I compare thee”: The neural basis of literary awareness, and its benefits to cognition by Noreen O’Sullivan, Philip Davis, Josie Billington, Victorina Gonzalez-Diaz, and Rhiannon Corcoran in Cortex. Published online August 2015. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.cortex.2015.08.014 Pritchett, Gillian. 2014. CRIS bulletin. De Gruyters Open, 2014/2, p. 54. Rubin, Harriet. 2007. C.E.O. libraries reveal keys to success. New York Times, 21 July 2007. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21libraries.html. Accessed 1 Feb 2019. Sherry, J.F., Jr., and J.W.  Schouten. 2002. A role for poetry in consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research 29: 218–234. Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems, translated with commentary by Henry Weinfield. London: University of California Press, 1994, 71. Selected poems CF Macintyre trans University of California Press 1957, 89. Strauss, Valerie. 2017. The surprising thing Google learned about its employees  – And what it means for today’s students. Washington Post, 20 December 2017. Available at: https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/answer-­sheet/wp/2017/12/20/the-­surprising-­thing-­google-­learned-­ about-­its-­employees-­and-­what-­it-­means-­for-­todays-­students/ Sutcliffe, Kathleen M., and Klaus Weber. 2003. The high cost of accurate knowledge. HBR, May 2003. Available at: https://hbr.org/2003/05/the-­high-­cost-­of-­accurate-­knowledge. Accessed 1 May 2019. Tsur, Reuven, and Beth Bradburn. 2003. An interview with Reuven Tsur. [Online]. Available at: http://www2.bc.edu/~richrad/lcb/fea/tsurin/tsurmain.html. Accessed Nov 2004. Useem, J. 2019. At work: Experience is falling out of favour. The Atlantic, June 2019 Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-­of-­work-­expertise-­ navy/590647/. Accessed 1 July 2019. Whyte, David. 1996. The heart aroused: Poetry and the preservation of the soul in corporate America. New York: Currency Doubleday. Reissue edition (June 1, 1996). Clare Morgan is a writer and educator, as well as founder of Oxford University’s creative writing degree. Her book, What Poetry Brings to Business (University of Michigan Press), developed in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, demonstrates how the creative energy, emotional power and communicative complexity of poetry relate directly to the practical needs for innovation and problem solving that face business leaders. Clare has run multi-language poetry workshops and ­presentations globally, sharing her expertise to help develop the flexible and resilient mindset needed for addressing the challenges companies face in a climate of increasing complexity and uncertainty.  

Chapter 25

A Theater Perspective on Humanizing Business Laura Dunham

To sum it up, the directing of a play is a turn of the hand, a turn of the mind and of the heart, a function of such sensitiveness that everything human can enter into it. No more, and no less. (Louis Jouvet, quoted in Cole and Chinoy 1976, 37)

In an increasingly complicated, interconnected but fractious world, and one in which the impact of business on society is increasingly prominent, critics have decried the narrowness of the perspectives and tools that business managers and leaders bring to complex decision contexts. Adding to a history of critique over the narrow economic calculus that dominates managerial decision-making is a rising concern over the dehumanizing aspects of the technologies brought to us by tech firms focused more on rapid scaling than the human impacts of the technology on offer. As Charles Handy put it in a recent talk at the Global Peter Drucker Forum, “We cannot let technology, however advanced, replace humanity with all its sensitivities, it’s appreciations of love, beauty and nature, its need for affection, sympathy and purpose, its hopes and fears, intuitions, imagination and leaps of faith. Technology, even AI, in all its possibilities, can never replicate these. We must not let the demands of economic man/woman dominate our fuller humanity” (Handy 2017). To address this problem, many have called for an increasing integration of the humanities into business education and practice. Donaldson and Freeman write, “The humanities are relevant to business precisely because … they force us to consider the depth and complexity of the people who are responsible for the success of businesses. They ask not to see people as motivated solely by economic goals but to view the problem of motivation as a complex process of how human beings achieve joint ends by working together” (Donaldson and Freeman 1994, vii). One source of inspiration for this project comes from the world of theater. While for many, theater and business would seem to have nothing in common, there are important parallels. Both comprise groups of individuals from multiple disciplines L. Dunham (*) Schulze School of Entrepreneurship, University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_25

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working together on goal-directed activities carried out under budget and time constraints. Both require leaders capable of articulating vision, setting goals, pulling together the right team, allocating resources effectively, guiding and monitoring performance and adjusting the elements to achieved the targeted results. Both require multidisciplinary teams capable of working collaboratively and creatively across functions to deliver the hoped-for results. Both require committed individuals with the right mix of skills and motivation to carry out their jobs effectively and efficiently. However, the underlying values, beliefs, approaches and techniques used in each domain diverge sharply. As Newkirk and Freeman put it, “Implicit in much of the management discussion is a mechanical, deterministic, positivistic view of business – a financial engine controlled by the machinery of scientific management” (Freeman and Newkirk 2009, 117). As such, managers seek to apply the laws and methods of science to pursue a narrowly construed value – economic return. The manager’s job is to direct the firm’s activity toward the most effective and efficient way to deliver financial return, applying theory rooted in a circumscribed, economic understanding of the human actors involved. As described by Freeman et al., “… in the language of economics, human beings are typically depicted as only caring about – and maximizing – their own self-interest… The drive to compete and win is the ultimate energizing force of business…” (Freeman et al. 2016, 136). The messy complexity of the human beings associated with these goals and practices is viewed as outside the scope of the firm’s focus, and more bane than boon to the tasks at hand. Theater, however, is unabashedly about the messy complexity of human beings and their relationships with each other. It seeks to expose and explore those very issues that Charles Handy fears could be driven out by technology and economics – beauty, love, fear, hope, aspiration, intuition, imagination. As an art not a science, it does not seek to apply theory toward the efficient achievement of one particular source of meaning; rather it seeks to create and express new meanings, new understandings, new values through the subjective and creative interpretation of human experience in all its dimensionality. As sharp as these differences are, there is a growing recognition that business must begin to address more meaning and value, beyond economic; that business practitioners must recognize their role in shaping human interactions and the values underlying those; that managers must think more richly about the human stakeholders impacted by their decisions and the moral and ethical consequences of those decisions; that businesses must become places where individuals join together to create and innovate. In short, business practitioners must begin to see themselves as engaging in both the art and science of value creation and trade, and through a process that is richly, messily human. In this paper, I explore the craft of theater and the kinds of insights it can confer on the craft of business leadership and management. In particular, I explore how the practices of best-in-class directors and actors can provide new understandings and useful approaches for humanizing business at three levels: the leader, the team, and the employee. I then connect these practices to the development of practical wisdom, a human capacity that can enrich and humanize the decision-making process within the field of business.

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Theater and the Art of Leadership In this section, I look at the ways business leaders and theater directors differ in core aspects of their jobs, in particular, in how they address their approach to articulating vision for their enterprises and building the right team to carry out that vision. As is true for the business leader, the job of the leader of a theatrical production – the director – begins with the need to form and articulate a vision, answering the questions: what is the purpose of this production, what is the meaning of this play, what are we trying to achieve in coming together? In her study of performing artists, Abfalter found that a strong sense of vision was vital to directorial success. As one actor put it, “I don’t respect directors who arrive, don’t have a concept or an artistic vision and just wait and see…” (Abfalter 2013, 301).The director’s vision for the play serves as the scaffolding within which the actors will carry out their own craft of bringing the characters to life, and thus provides the foundation for success. Similar to the business leader, the director draws vision from extensive review and analysis of key data. For the business leader, this can include a range of market and industry indicators, competitor analysis, company performance metrics, financial reports. For the theater director, this includes an examination of the language, plot structure, characters, setting and themes of the play. Where the two depart is in their response to this data. The business leader seeks to respond rationally to a range of, typically, quantitative data from which she hopes to predict the “objectively” best opportunity or strategy to pursue. In the data lies the answer, and the job of the business leader is to remove emotion or subjectivity from her thinking and instead to rationally assess the data correctly and grasp the correct decision. The theater director, on the other hand, immerses herself in qualitative information in order to develop an intensely personal and subjective understanding of potential meanings embedded within the play, and to create a new and vital interpretation of it. For the director, much of this insight comes from a deep and specific understanding of each character in the play. As Catron puts it, “Detailed examination of characters is the foundation for accurate directorial vision” (Catron 1989, 53). The director does not shy away from emotional engagement in this task. As she considers the characters, the director develops, in Catron’s words, “a concept about the meaning of their motivations, objectives, actions and relationships with each other; and a perception of how their experiences relate to [herself] specifically and humanity more generally. [Her] vision includes emotional response to the characters, perhaps a sympathetic response to one, delight in the foibles and eccentricities of another, fascination with the struggles of another, or respect for the integrity of another. The directorial concept is most frequently based on psychological insight into the characters and sensitivity to the unexpressed motivations for their speeches, silences, and actions” (Catron 1989, 53). Thus, a direct and deep focus on the human beings who populate the play, along with a complete embrace of emotion, subjective response, and intuition mark the process through which the theater director develops her vision. The director knows that creative insight and vivid inspiration

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spring from rich engagement with the particularities of the complex human beings under investigation in the play. The director then takes this rich engagement into the next task in their process, which is casting the right team, from actors through technical and other artistic staff. Getting the right team, and a team capable of carrying out the vision, is a crucial task for the business leader as well, but there are differences in the way the two leaders approach this task. Both look for talent, experience and skill. For the business leader, these elements are summed up in resumes and interviews that describe previous responsibilities and provide objective measures of success (such as budgets managed, sales growth achieved, profitability attained, etc.). The business leader looks for experience and skills that match the role to be filled. However, while these facts and objective data are meant to drive a rational hiring process, researchers have found that managers often default to implicit biases, and in particular, tend to hire those individuals culturally similar to themselves. As Rivera found in her study of hiring practices, “Concerns about shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about productivity alone” (Rivera 2012, 1000). Theater directors also look at experience and skills. They too look for a certain degree of match between actor and role. However, their process departs from a business leader’s process in several ways. First, best-in-class theater directors emphasize the importance of collaboration and place greater weight on an actor’s ability to work as part of a team. As critically acclaimed director Peter Brook puts it, “Now the first thing you look for in casting is decent people. A group can’t work together if you stupidly, artificially bring into it someone that you don’t really trust. … So you have to have people who share a wish to do honest work together” (Delgado and Heritage 1997, 45). Second, directors actively and explicitly seek to look beyond the resume credentials to fully grasp the individual actor’s unique personal qualities and characteristics. Although the director begins the casting process with a clear understanding of the role and its demands, best-in-class directors also recognize that a fully dimensional and effective performance is a blend of both directorial vision and the unique qualities of the actor. Directors thus aim to actively surface and challenge their implicit biases, in order to spark the potentially thrilling possibilities that happen in performance when they forego a more conventional choice and opt for the actor who defies expectations. And, of course, directors audition rather than simply interview. They put the actor into the shoes of the character and work with them on scenes and readings. Through this process, they can experience the working relationship with the actor, they can observe how the unique qualities of the actor color the role, they can see the spark of originality and imagination which with the actor imbues the character. The business leader and the theater director both set the stage (figuratively and literally, in this case) for the success of their enterprises. They each face similar tasks in that process, and in this section we have focused on vision and team selection. The theater director, however, allows herself to access her subjective response as she deeply considers the multi-dimensional people at the heart of her vision and

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ability to execute on that vision. She knows that vision rests on a deep grasp of the human beings involved in the enterprise.

Theater and the Art of Teamwork While the business leader and theater director have important roles to play beyond vision setting and team building, responsibility for success after this point increasingly lies in the hands of the team tasked with executing the vision. Much has been made in the business literature about the importance of team collaboration for the purposes of creativity and innovation, as well as the many challenges managers face in fostering collaboration in their organizations. Theater is an inherently collaborative task, requiring the full engagement, cooperation, co-ownership and coordination of all members of the team. As such, theater has an extensive range of practices that can provide new insights for this kind of work – “deep” trust; in-the-moment focus, active listening and authentic response; and generosity. While trust has been explored in the management literature, the concept takes on richer dimensionality within the context of theater. Within the management literature, trust between team members is seen to encourage cooperation and thus to build positive economic outcomes. In these contexts, trust is affected by a variety of factors including the perceived ability or competence of each party, their integrity (i.e., likelihood of doing what they say they will do) and benevolence (the perception of positive orientation toward each other) (Mayer et al. 1995). Within a theater company, these same factors also play an important role in establishing a baseline of trust. The difference is the greater depth of trust required by a theater company in order to create the conditions of true vulnerability that mark this kind of artistic collaboration. In his article on the potential for the arts to inspire better business practices, Anderson cites Piers Ibbotson, an experienced actor and director with the Royal Shakespeare company: “Within just a few days, notes Ibbotson, a director routinely takes a group of total strangers and bonds them into a team with shared trust that makes it possible for individuals to strip naked, literally or figuratively, in front of each other. The full ensemble, capable of collective improvisation and adjustment, takes a bit longer, but not much” (Anderson 2010). Noted theater director Declan Donnellan concurs, and prioritizes the building of trust within the company in the first stages of rehearsal: “We spend a lot of time in rehearsal trying to cure fear both by its symptoms and its cause. Its symptoms are division, separation and feeling that you are being judged, which means you start to judge …” (in Delgado and Heritage 1997, 87). Thus, before getting to the work of the play itself, great directors spend time working to alleviate or overcome the effects of fear and to build deep trust among the company members. Directors deploy various group exercises, warm-up exercises (both physical and emotional) and improvisations that break down the hidden barriers between the participants and foster openness, emotional connection, and a willingness to be vulnerable with each other.

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While this level of concern with the emotional connection and deep trust among business teams is rare, it mirrors the findings of research groups at Google that spent years trying to understand what makes a team successful. A key finding: “The researchers found that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together” (Bariso 2018). And the central ingredient in fostering great work was trust. Furthermore, Google found that teams that engaged in deeper levels of emotional empathy – sharing personal stories, worries and aspirations – built deeper levels of trust that in turn supported much greater and more effective collaboration. Trust sets the threshold conditions for great theatrical performance and enables the next practice that is critical to success: remaining in the moment and engaging in active listening and authentic response. It is this practice that forms the basis of live, rich, comprehensive collaboration. Too often in business what passes for collaboration is mere division of labor. Teams identify the tasks that need accomplishing, divvy out the work, and meet intermittently to combine their efforts, with occasional brainstorming sparking genuine and more deeply collaborative moments. In theater, the work only happens together. While director and actor each come to their sessions armed with their individual preparation, it is the work they do together – live and in the moment – that shapes the play in rehearsal and keeps it fresh and impactful in performance. In rehearsal this means intensely probing each scene. Together the director and actors explore the many possible meanings embedded within the text, considering and rehearsing each scene in a variety of ways. Through discussion and on their feet with scripts in hand, the company plays the scene with different underlying meanings and different character motivations, objectives and activities. As they actively listen and respond authentically to each other under each new circumstance, actors must let go of their preconceived notions in order to react honestly to what is happening in any given moment on stage. In doing so, the actors identify new learnings about their own characters as well as the larger potential meanings in the play. As these new insights emerge, the company tries the scene again, informed by these new understandings. It is through this fully immersed, live interaction marked by active listening and authentic response that the play emerges. Maintaining this live and immersive collaboration remains critical during performance, in order to maintain freshness and authenticity that brings the play to life for each audience. In order to accomplish this, everyone on stage must continue to remain fully involved, focused and in the moment. As award-winning director Peter Sellars puts it, “I create a structure in which the actors on stage are as surprised as the audience about what happens moment by moment, and where the performance is never the same any two nights in a row…. Again for me the point of theater is that it’s not ever fixed. It’s about how immediate can we get to how we feel about this at this minute? And one night the actor has a lot of emotion about something and the next night not. And so I ask the actors not to fake it. If a scene doesn’t go the way you want, it’s too bad, you have to just stay in it and figure out a way for that character to deal with whatever’s happening. And, meanwhile, that will then affect the

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scene two scenes from now. So when you next walk on, you’ll be walking on with everything that upset you two scenes ago” (Delgado and Heritage 1997, 227). It is this kind of pure, fully engaged, immersive collaboration that enables impactful performance. Whether as a precursor or a byproduct of this kind of work, the final element that is salient in great theater is the kind of generosity of spirit that enables participants to work together in this intensive engagement in order to find the larger truths of the play and bring something real and compelling to life. As Anderson puts it, “Forget the temperamental luvvie stereotypes, says lbbotson. In the rehearsal room, actors time and again show ‘bottomless patience, massive generosity and continual supportiveness as people work through new ideas’” (Anderson 2010). While it is tempting to assume that the world of great theater is populated by divas demanding the spotlight, it is actually the case that impactful storytelling on stage requires all actors to be willing to recede, to allow others to shine in order to maintain the integrity of the story. The result is an experience that is deeply uplifting for those involved. In the words of Donnellan, “You try to go forward with some sort of spirit of group generosity, and each of us tries to overcome our individual vanities to know that the whole of what we do is greater than the sum of our parts. That’s what’s so potentially moving and transcendental about theater: that when people gather in a room, something extraordinary can happen which isn’t entirely to do with them” (Delgado and Heritage 1997, 87–88). Given the growing attention paid to the need to foster a sense of meaning at work and to spark greater employee engagement and commitment within the business setting, the theater provides some insights into practices that appear to accomplish these challenging goals: deep trust; in-the moment focus, active listening and authentic response; and generosity. These three practices provide essential ingredients for effective and creative collaboration.

Theater and the Employee In the end, great theater requires the full commitment of actors willing to immerse themselves into characters and stories with which they can find a deep connection, despite stark differences between themselves and those whom they are expected to portray. It is through an act of “radical empathy” beyond anything expected within a business setting that actors are able to find the real humanity in each character they play and to bring honest life to that role. While the term “empathy” has become more familiar within a business setting, particularly among those trained in or involved with human-centered design, it remains a more narrow conception of empathy than that required for full and realistic characterizations on stage. While human-centered design engages practitioners in a search for the human needs that can lead to innovation, actors must intensely explore and comprehend the depths of their characters to a far greater degree. To animate performances that capture the many facets of the characters, actors must

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explore multiple layers of information and emotion. As Freeman et al. put it, this requires a set of imaginative, moral, emotional capacities that typically remain underdeveloped within a business context. “As managers we often seek to reduce complex phenomena to a few bullet points or a two-by-two matrix; as artists we must attempt the opposite, uncovering the many levels of complex phenomenon embedded in seemingly simple action. It is not enough to know that a character is angry; the reader, actor or director must uncover the envy, fear, insecurity, and/or other emotions, beliefs, motivations that drive and color that anger. And it is not enough to understand one character’s immense complexities; the artist must understand how each character contributes to overall, coherent meaning in the larger story” (Freeman et al. 2014, 524). As the actor explores their role, they must go one step beyond mere understanding, however richly empathetic that may be. They must take the further leap into connecting those understandings to themselves. They must look inside themselves and find the genuine emotion, beliefs, motivations, urges that they have discovered in their characters. They must acknowledge both the beauty and ugliness within themselves in order to bring those elements of the character to honest life before an audience. It is only through a journey of fearless self-examination and embrace of their own complicated humanity that the actor can bring the complicated humanity of another to full realization and achingly true life on stage. Radical empathy and honest connection spark creative insight and powerful performance. It allows the actor to bring their fullest self to the enterprise, and thus sparks growth and imbues meaning and worth to their work. As we become increasingly aware of the need within business to encourage greater empathy and creativity, the actor’s craft provides a compelling perspective on a set of practices that foster both.

Theater and the Development of Practical Wisdom While each of the practices outlined above can be deployed independently in order to impact leadership, teamwork or the individual within a business organization, as described above, they also work together to cultivate a set of sensibilities that can humanize our overall approach to business and business decision-making. In particular, as stated at the start of this chapter, these sensibilities can enhance the development of practical wisdom, a human capacity that can enrich and humanize the decision-making process within business. Practical wisdom has recently emerged as an area of interest among management scholars seeking to spark richer thinking around managerial decision-making and to build frameworks that better integrate the ethical and human dimensions along with the strategic and economic (e.g. Bachmann et al. 2018). While one particular conception of practical wisdom has yet to emerge as the dominant paradigm, Bachmann et al. (2018) have identified strong areas of overlap and similarity within the developing literature that link each of the schools of thought on the subject to each other.

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For the purposes of this paper, I will draw upon the account by Dunham et al. (2008) in describing the nature and components of practical wisdom. I will then in turn demonstrate how the capabilities cultivated by the practices described early in this paper can support the development and deployment of practical wisdom within the context of managerial decision-making. Dunham et al. define practical wisdom as “the capacity to understand and act upon what is both good and feasible for oneself and others in particular situations. The practically wise [manager] recognizes that each situation is unique, with its own complex interweaving of moral issues, claims and obligations. Choosing the right course of action in such situations, therefore, cannot be reduced to the application of a universal rule or principle. Rather, choosing wisely requires an acute grasp of the particular details of the situation, an understanding of the good that can be obtained under those circumstances and a commitment to practical action that achieves that good” (Dunham et al. 2008, 10). Such an approach to decision-making provides a stark contrast to the more narrow economic calculus that has dominated managerial decision-making in the past. And while it may seem a dauntingly complex and nuanced process of decision-­ making, Dunham et al. (2008) suggest it is a capability that can be cultivated through the deployment of a four practices: perception, deliberation, experimental action and reflection. In the remainder of this section, I will describe each of these operations and how the practices from theater can enrich and enhance each. Perception: In order to act with practical wisdom, the manager must come to each new decision context with the commitment and capacity to absorb and understand the full complexity of the situation. Practically wise managers must cultivate an acuity and sensitivity to the specific and unique features of each situation. They must “attend closely to a wide and complex array of details: to the particular persons and relationships involved in the situation (McVea and Freeman 2005); to those stakeholders’ wants, needs, values, and aspirations; to the potential good which can be constructed for all stakeholders in this setting and to the qualitative differences among the multiple values embedded within the means at her disposal. [Practical] wisdom requires both a fine discernment of the immediate details as well as the ability to connect those details to larger meanings – to identify what is both new and different about this situation as well as to link it with others one has experienced” (Dunham et al. 2008, 12). As we have seen earlier in the paper, the core practices of theater entail the kind of rich engagement with complex and human situations that serve as the foundation of practical wisdom. Whether as part of the director’s process of formulating and articulating vision, or in the team’s work together exploring the many possible meanings in a scene, or in the individual actor’s process for connecting with their character, theater requires a deep dive into the messily, complexly human. Digging deeply into the story of the play and into the character motivations, emotions, relationships, actions requires the development of an acute sensitivity to and willingness to grapple with the particular details as well as the confidence to imaginatively interpret those details and connect them to the larger meanings of the play. Theater

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requires its participants to develop the kind of discernment and perception that needs to become a key competency of managers who seek to act with practical wisdom. Deliberation: While the practically wise manager must cultivate an ability to read each new situation with sensitivity and imagination, that is only the starting point. Managers must also commit to engaging in a thoughtful and comprehensive process of deliberation that thoroughly airs all aspects of the problem, the stakeholders involved, the competing values at play, the potential consequences. “The task of the practically wise person then is to clearly discern the plurality of values among which she must choose and to grasp the distinctive nature of those values as embedded within each of her options. Then, despite the rich array of competing values, she must choose the option that most adequately addresses the situation or achieves the greatest harmony within the stakeholder environment” (Dunham et al. 2008, 15–16). One path for accomplishing this task is engaging in what Dewey called “dramatic rehearsal,” a process of through which the decision-maker carries out a series of imaginary experiments in order to more fully explore and understand the different modes of action available to him as well as the impacts of those actions. Like the members of a theater company exploring a play, the decision-maker paints for himself a vivid, emotionally-laden picture of each stakeholder, and then imagines their lives as impacted by each potential strategy under consideration. Like the members of the theater company, the decision-maker allows himself to interpret the scene multiple ways in order to consider multiple potential scenarios and meanings. It is only through this intense engagement that the decision-maker comes to understand in a full-blooded way what is really at stake in the decision. And it is only through such intense engagement that the decision-maker can truly discern and effectively formulate the choice that best addresses the situation and achieves the greatest harmony among stakeholders. As described earlier, the process of creating a stage performance is one of continual dramatic rehearsal. From the theater company’s process, business managers can learn the importance of pulling together the “company” of advisors engaged in helping shape key decisions. As with the theater company, getting the best result from this team requires the building of deep trust so that the team can engage in the kind of imaginative exploration of problems that will yield practically wise decisions. As in the theater, encouraging the team to work together in the moment, through active listening and authentic response, can enable the manage or team to fully air and understand all possible actions and implications of those actions. Permitting and supporting the team to engage in this kind of imaginative exercise on a regular basis builds the kinds of sensibilities necessary for cultivating practically wise deliberation. Experimental action and reflection: Given the complexities and continual changes in the business environment, practically wise managers understand that, despite careful discernment and deliberation, all decisions and actions must be subject to

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review and revision. The manager must continually scan a full range of indicators to assess the effectiveness of their decisions, both regarding firm performance in the market as well as in terms of impact on all stakeholders. Business plans are thus provisional and what matters is not how well we execute on those plans but on how well we use them as a springboard for learning. Learning requires reflection and the practically wise manager digs deep to gain the most from this learning: “Critical reflection requires the practically wise [manager] to regularly question her own assumptions, preferences and values; to be aware of the mental frameworks and schemas that govern her thinking processes; and to be willing to revise her interpretations of events and the meanings they hold for her” (Dunham et al. 2008, 17). This kind of flexibility of thought and action, and the critical reflection necessary to guide meaningful experimentation and learning, is deeply embedded in the practice of theater. Exploring a play, whether it is new or a restaging of a classic, requires a willingness to deeply explore the story, imagine and re-imagine its meanings, try new interpretations and respond authentically to what comes to life in that interpretation. Whether in rehearsal or in performance, that willingness to continue to probe the work and respond in an honest way to what is happening on the stage requires and builds a set of competencies around experimental action and critical reflection that is increasingly required in the business context.

Conclusion As we seek to address shortcomings in our approach to business decision-making, the theater provides both inspiration and practical insight into how humans can come together to accomplish creative work that embraces all that is complexly human. What may seem mysterious, “artsy” and foreign to business managers are actually practices that are straightforward and replicable. Theater is a craft and as such entails practices that can be imported into new contexts such as business to bring fresh insights and approaches to how we think about managing. In this paper, I have shared how the work of theater directors and actors can provide new understandings and useful approaches for humanizing business at three levels: the leader, the team, and the employee. I have sought to demonstrate linkages between these practices and practical wisdom, a human capacity that can help us overcome the narrowness of decision-making approaches in business that are increasingly inadequate in our complex world. As many have argued, it is time to infuse the teaching and practice of business with the humanities. The world of theater provides a deep well of applicable learnings and practices that can enrich the way we imagine and carry out business.

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References Abfalter, Dagmar. 2013. Authenticity and respect: Leading creative teams in the performing arts. Creativity & Innovation Management 22 (3): 295–306. Anderson, Julian. 2010. Performance! ‘Quiet. Men, working too hard in rooms that are too big, Reducing to figures What is the matter, what needs to be done’. Management Today, May 1, 2000. Updated 31 August 2010. https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/ performance-­quiet-­men-­working-­hard-­rooms-­toobig-­reducing-­figures-­matter-­needs-­done/ article/411951. Bachmann, Claudius, André Habisch, and Claus Dierksmeier. 2018. Practical wisdom: Management’s no longer forgotten virtue. Journal of Business Ethics 153 (1): 147–165. Bariso, Justin. 2018. Google spent years studying effective teams. This single quality contributed most to their success. Inc. Magazine, 7 January 2018. https://www.inc.com/justin-­bariso/ google-­spent-­years-­studying-­effective-­teams-­this-­single-­quality-­contributed-­most-­to-­their-­ success.html. Catron, Louis E. 1989. The director’s vision, play direction from analysis to production. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing. Cole, T., and Helen Krich Chinoy, eds. 1976. Directors on directing. Indianapolis: The Bobbs– Merrill Company, Inc. Delgado, Maria M., and P.P. Heritage, eds. 1997. In contact with the Gods? (Directors talk theatre). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Donaldson, T.J., and R.E.  Freeman, eds. 1994. Business as a humanity. New  York: Oxford University Press, Inc. Dunham, L.C., J.  McVea, and R.E.  Freeman. 2008. Entrepreneurial wisdom: Incorporating the ethical and strategic dimensions of entrepreneurial decision-making. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business 6 (1): 8–19. Freeman, R., and D.  Newkirk. 2009. Business as a human enterprise. In Rethinking business management: Examining the foundations of business education, ed. S. Gregg and J.R. Stoner, 139–143. Princeton: ISI. Freeman, R.E., L. Dunham, G. Fairchild, and B. Parmar. 2014. Leveraging the creative arts in business ethics teaching. Journal of Business Ethics 131 (3): 519–526. Freeman, R.E., B. Parmar, and K. Martin. 2016. Responsible capitalism: Creating value for stakeholders. In Re-imagining capitalism: Building a responsible, long-term model, ed. D. Barton, D. Horváth, and M. Kipping. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Handy, Charles. 2017. Humanity at a crossroads. Talk presented at 9th Global Peter Drucker Forum. https://www.druckerforum.org/blog/?p=1656. Mayer, Roger C., James H. Davis, and F. David Schoorman. 1995. An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review 20 (3): 709–734. McVea, J.F., and R.E. Freeman. 2005. A names-and-faces approach to stakeholder management: How focusing on stakeholders as individuals can bring ethics and entrepreneurial strategy together. Journal of Management Inquiry 14 (1): 57–69. Rivera, Lauren A. 2012. Hiring as cultural matching: The case of elite professional service firms. American Sociological Review 77 (6): 999–1022. Laura Dunham  is Best Buy Chair and Associate Dean of the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship within the Opus College of Business  at the University of  St. Thomas in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. As Associate Dean, Dr. Dunham leads the university’s efforts to spread entrepreneurial education across the university, through both curricular and co-curricular programming. She joined St. Thomas in 2003 from the University of Virginia, where she earned her Ph.D and M.B.A. from the Darden Graduate School of Business. She teaches undergraduate, graduate and executive programs on innovation and entrepreneurial strategy. Her research focuses on the managerial and ethical challenges involved in innovation and new business start-up and development. Before her doctoral studies, Dunham worked as a management consultant in the strategy division of Renaissance Worldwide, helping clients evaluate and develop new growth initiatives.

Chapter 26

Leveraging the Creative Arts in Business Ethics Teaching R. Edward Freeman, Laura Dunham, Gregory Fairchild, and Bidhan L. Parmar

Introduction For the last 20 years or so, we have been teaching business ethics using the creative arts. We believe that the creative arts offer a number of important leverage points to make a difference in the lives of our students. However, we also believe that such teaching embraces a rather different idea of business ethics and its possibilities. The purpose of this paper is to explain this different kind of teaching and to suggest that making some small changes to traditional business ethics courses via the creative arts can yield great benefits. In Literature and Theater Courses section we explain how two main courses that use the creative arts are structured. In Leverage Points section we articulate three main leverage points as we see them. In What the Students Tell Us section we share some of our students’ insights. In Leveraging Key Design Principles section we extract some principles from these courses and address their implications. Finally, in Conclusion section we argue that such teaching requires a different view of the field of business ethics, in line with the pragmatist tradition. As such, we need a new research agenda that comes from this way of teaching.

R. E. Freeman · G. Fairchild · B. L. Parmar (*) Darden School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Dunham Schulze School of Entrepreneurship, University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, MN, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_26

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Literature and Theater Courses In addition we have taught a course using music where the students, of widely varying musical ability and training, must learn to play music together and to create an original performance. We also use many additional experiential exercises that are oriented around getting the students to understand how meaning is created collaboratively in organizations. We believe that there are many more possibilities using the creative arts to teach business ethics, especially if we adopt a more pragmatist version of the discipline. We are also grateful to Jenny Mead and Randy Strawderman for their many contributions to these courses.

Medicine, law, and business are all deeply human professions. Yet, increasingly in today’s society, each depends on a substantial body of technical knowledge that requires mastery. Professional schools have to be on the cutting edge of this technical knowledge, and in large research universities, faculty must be committed to producing the next generation of such knowledge. However, it becomes crucial for both faculty and students not to lose the idea of ‘deeply human profession’ in the face of this technical knowledge. This has led to a real paradox for business schools. In recent years, we have witnessed a number of critiques of business schools, especially after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Pfeffer and Fong (2002) have suggested that management researchers and business schools misunderstand the nature of research, and that most of the so-called “technical knowledge” is not based on evidence. Mintzberg (2004) has argued that management is an art best understood at a later age through a process of apprenticeship and experiential learning. Freeman and Newkirk (2011) have suggested that these critiques miss the mark, since they misunderstand business. According to them, business is a deeply human activity through which we create value and trade with one another. It is fundamentally a cooperative and collaborative activity that relies on understanding the particularity of human interests, needs, and emotions. It is much more than ‘the physics of money’. There are whole human beings involved in the delivery and reception of services, the building of organizations and institutions, and the responsibilities for business education. Whole human beings have values, emotions, families, and otherwise complex lives. And whole human beings engage in authority and power relationships. There is substantial conflict and opportunities for self-dealing as well as cooperative behavior. We need to draw on the full palette of the humanities to understand the richness that is inherent in business. And we should draw especially on the creative arts such as literature, theater, music, and the like. For the last 20 years, we have referred to

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these disciplines to teach MBA students at the University of Virginia’s Darden School. Two main courses have generated a sustained interest from the students: (1) Business Ethics Through Literature (BEL) and (2) Leadership, Ethics and Theater (LET). In BEL, the students read novels and short stories. They meet in small dinner groups to discuss the week’s readings, and then come to class prepared to discuss the book or story. All of the teaching is done via Socratic questioning rather than lecture. The aim is to create a conversation about the book on its own terms, followed by an examination of how the book’s themes can yield insight into the lives of the students who are soon to be executives. It is crucial to get the students to examine the book in its own right, in order to develop their skills in analysis and judgment, rather than trying to glean answers to “how does this book apply to business?”. It is only by digging deeply into the texts that students can understand the humanity of the characters. If there is only a straightforward application of the book to business, the students run the risk of recapitulating the standard story of business, rather than questioning and critiquing it. In addition, there are a number of creative writing assignments. The final assignment is to write a short story, and the course concludes with a “fiction reading” of the students’ stories. Typical texts are Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues. All of these texts are filled with ethical questions. For instance, in Gatsby, a discussion of who if anyone in the book is heroic, leads to an examination of what the students intend to do after business school is over, and how their goals can become so single minded that they forget their “green lights” must be set within a societal and ethical context. They can see the particularity of the Gatsby–Daisy–Nick relationships, and the importance, as well as the barriers, to love. They ask whether Nick should help Gatsby with Daisy, and what is the role of monogamy in life. They begin to talk about and understand the role of purpose, the importance of real friendship, and the need to constantly question one’s authenticity. These same themes are present in Achebe even though the context is quite different. Okonkwo’s juxtaposition with the Christian missionaries illustrates one of the key ethical challenges of globalization. Moral relativism is a critical theme here, but Achebe brings it to life again through the particularity of the relationships in the village and between the villages. The arrival of the multinational outsiders, the Christian missionaries, changes the culture so much so that Okonkwo commits suicide, a taboo for the Ibo as well as the Christians. Things Fall Apart is simply the best text we have found to understand the moral complexities across culture, and the theoretical issues of moral relativism. In the Baldwin story, we find the conflicting forces of conformity and individuality in the characters of Sonny, the jazz musician, and his brother, the schoolteacher. Baldwin intimates how a sense of self needs a harmony between these forces, and the end of story introduces us to Creole, whose very name suggests such a harmony. The real world of race, drugs, and religion is a constant pressure on the characters in all of Baldwin’s work, and Sonny’s embracing of a musician’s life. The conversation where his brother says that people cannot always do what they want, and Sonny’s response that we should all do exactly what we want, engenders a real

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conversation among the students about their lives post-MBA.  They embrace the idea that their lives will be filled with moral issues, some of which may not be easy to solve, or not solvable at all. We ask the students to imagine themselves as Gatsby, as Nick, as Daisy, as Okonkwo, as Sonny and his brother, and to see the world from their eyes. In doing so, we hope to get the students practice their ability for perspective-taking and empathy and broaden their worldview and be sensitive to how very different people can live. Many business ethics courses rely on ethical dilemmas. While there are dilemmas presented in fiction, they are much more contextualized and rich, and therefore more realistic and more difficult to solve. They are not separated from the rest of the characters’ lives, as they so often are in business school dilemma cases. This focus on particularity makes the ethics conversations more about the students’ lives and less about moral theory. The students are encouraged to be on the “inside of the situation” rather than approach it as a spectator. In essence, these ethics conversations become what Dewey called “dramatic rehearsal” (Dewey 1957). The writing assignments give the students the idea that crafting a narrative is a creative process but one that draws on the student’s experience. Sharing their narratives with others in class is an experience in becoming vulnerable. It leads easily to the idea that the students will be crafting their own narrative when they graduate, and that such a narrative is likely to be influenced by context, relationships, and offers the chance to design one’s life. The second course that draws on the creative arts (LET) focuses on forming a theater troupe of the 25 students in the course. This class takes the students a step beyond the process of learning from theater, through reading, discussing, or reflecting on a play and its characters, to actually creating theater. The course not only invites them to richly imagine themselves as the key protagonists, but to actually become them, to find the authentic connection between themselves and character and to bring those characters—in all their complexity and contradictory messiness—to life. To add to the challenge, students must undertake this journey embedded in a context of other actors/students seeking to do the same, and all with the meta-goal of stitching these individual human stories into a cohesive whole, an overarching narrative that imbues each character’s story with meaning and purpose. The course is usually taught as a 1 week intensive where it is the only course that the students are taking.1 The students are told on Day One that the last day of the course will be a public performance of an original play that the students will write, direct, produce, and perform. The course begins with some acting exercises about becoming a character, believability, subtext, and creating stories. Guided through the exercises by a professional director, who is brought in as a full-time co-­instructor, the students are encouraged to begin opening up, drawing upon and sharing real experiences and emotions in the exercises and subsequent improvisations. Of equal importance, they are encouraged to listen and respond honestly to their colleagues 1  There is also a 6 week version of the course. The following website is a resource about the course, and there is a documentary that focuses on what the student experience is. See: http://it.darden. virginia.edu/leadershipandtheater/

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as they build scenes together. Once again, the idea of creating a narrative looms large in the course. Day Two consists of a monolog exercise, a directing workshop, and the beginnings of rehearsal for a set of one act plays. Students begin the task of analyzing and interpreting their scene or play. While discussion plays an important role, much of the work is done with actors and directors on their feet, script in hand, considering and trying multiple interpretations of a scene. Students probe deeply to understand character, motivations, relationships revealed through the scene. As new insights emerge, the students try the scene again, informed by these new understandings. Students are encouraged to stretch their thinking and consider multiple, often contradictory interpretations. Students learn the role of directorial and actor choices regarding the material—choices in terms of how to interpret the characters, actions, and themes of the play and then how to bring those understandings to life in honest performance. As they explore these options, students come to understand the importance of looking within to find their common experience with the many characters they play, in order to access real empathy and to spark genuine feeling and truthful portrayals. They also learn the importance of close listening to their partners onstage, to letting go of their preconceived notions in order to respond honestly to what is happening in any given moment on stage. The students perform these one act plays on Day Three. Each of the first 3 days have writing exercises, both “free writes” and an exercise where the students write a short play in 20 min. On Day Four, the students choose a theme to write scenes around, and writing commences. Now students are challenged to go beyond creating characters and believable interactions within the constraint of an existing narrative to actually crafting the narrative itself. At the end of the day, we have a reading of all the scenes and then pick some to perform the next day, and then set about trying to put the scenes into a context that makes a coherent whole. Day Five is rehearsal, dress rehearsal, technical rehearsal and a performance where the community is invited to attend. The performance, a culmination of the week’s work, takes students from the safety that has developed within the enclosure of the troupe, to putting all at risk before a group of their peers who haven’t shared the week’s experience. Now, the troupe must fall back on the work, the trust, the collaborative ethic that has developed over the week in order to overcome the vulnerability of sharing their most personal offerings—the ideas embedded in their narratives and the real emotions, motivations, quirks they must reveal through their characters. The final assignment is a reflections paper, where the students reflect on what they have learned about themselves and about leadership, ethics, and business. The ethics component of the learning may seem weak to some. While much of the dramatic and comedic material centers on questions of ethics, the learning is subtler. Bringing a character to authentic life is, at its core, a highly ethical enterprise requiring the actor to confer upon that character—no matter how small the role or how distant from the self conception of the actor—the dignity of understanding. With compassion, with empathy, the actor must find the worth, and more importantly, the personal connection to the individual they hope to bring to convincing life on the stage. Once again, the students confront the issues from the inside rather than

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as spectators, focusing again on Dewey’s “dramatic rehearsal”. The process of becoming a 25 person theater troupe is based on the ability of the students to collaborate, to trust, and to connect with each other on a very human level. In short, they are practicing ethics through the creative process. They must get over a sense of embarrassment that they have to expose their vulnerabilities during the week. They must learn to give and receive feedback in the directing process and to manage conflict and different opinions constructively. The bond of performing together creates a willingness to be open to experimentation and authenticity. We tend to think of theater as the land of the divas and big overstated emotions. However, truly great theater requires actors and directors to not only put aside their own egos but to also genuinely act with generosity toward each other. There are many lessons around leadership and ethics for the students. None can rely on “expertise” or “position”, so leadership is “leadership by choice” (Burns 1978). In addition, there is a moral component of leadership here. The pressure of a performance in front of their community members and friends is quite real. Without relying on expertise or position, the students must rely on judgment and trust. They must, as leaders, create a conversation amongst themselves that has meaning and that gives each person motive force. The shortened timeframe adds intensity to this pressure, and there are often interpersonal difficulties to be overcome. In short, the students experience each other as fully human, collaborating together to create a performance literally from nothing. In the moments after the performance, you can sense the feeling that they have done something extraordinary, which none of them could have imagined 5 days before. And it worked because there was mutual commitment, trust, authenticity, and much hard work. These ideas are the very basic stuff of ethics, and the students realize that they have formed a special bond with each other based on moral ideals.

Leverage Points Leverage points are the idea that relatively small changes can produce big results. And there are multiple levels on which they work. Adding courses like the ones we have described to a business school curriculum is a fairly small change that can produce significant results. But it is not necessary to add the whole courses. One can imagine a more traditional business ethics course around lectures and cases, which uses a few short stories, or a novel, or a play. For instance, adding Melville’s story, Bartleby the Scrivener, or Boll’s Action Must Be Taken, or any number of stories by Baldwin or Updike or Oates can expose students to these stories without having to make drastic changes to a course. Having the students read classic plays like Hamlet or No Exit, or more business-oriented plays like Glengarry Glen Ross and then perform some of the scenes can open their eyes to the richness of experience. We see these texts as leverage points for three main ideas.

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Connection to Self Even at our most experiential in case method, we typically ask students of business ethics to put themselves in the shoes of a case protagonist in order to assess a situation and determine a course of action around a business problem. But even at its best, a case study requires that we step only lightly into those shoes, just enough to grasp case data specific to the problem so that we might better wield our technical tools and skills. While we as instructors might seek to spark deeper reflection on the ethical and moral issues of the case, our understanding of the protagonist is often thin, archetypical, intellectual, centered on them as a business person operating within a narrow managerial context. And so our personal connection to the protagonist is often limited and the learning more centered on technical execution. But fully apprehending the ethical implications of a problem, and more importantly, fully committing to an ethical response requires a deeper engagement of the self. Literature and theater provide this opportunity. Exploring literature and creating theater requires we plunge much more deeply into questions of character, motivation, values, beliefs. We must understand the characters if we are to make sense of the larger narrative. But to understand those characters at the deepest level, we must be willing to plunge more deeply into an examination of ourselves. For, ultimately, carrying out rich literary analysis or creating a truthful portrayal on stage requires that we find the commonality between ourselves and the protagonist—that with empathy, compassion. And brutal self-awareness, we examine those elements of our own character, motivation, values, and belief that connect us to characters who, often, could not seem more different from us. Thus, through the power of narrative and the exercise of the kind of creative muscles involved in literary analysis and theater, we create a stronger connection between self and many other characters and situations. Such a personal connection is a critical leverage point for more fully engaging our students in the rich, nuanced, human problems facing the business practitioner and inspiring a more powerful moral response.

Connection to Complexity Similarly, it is through this process of literary analysis and character development that we confront students with the messy complexity of the contexts in which we as humans operate. One must delve far beyond the surface “case facts” to fully explore a piece of literature and create compelling, believable performance. Yet, it is the magic of great narrative that it makes this task less daunting, that it sparks curiosity, that it invites us—compels us even—to grapple with complexity. We must examine and reconcile multiple layers of narrative and subtext—digging deeply into motivations, relationships, actions, reactions, histories, themes—in order to make sense of a piece of literature and bring it to honest life on the stage. The willingness to

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immerse themselves in the mess, to appreciate the nuance, to search for the deeper meanings provides a critical leverage point for enriching the way our students come to analyze and respond to the complex problems they will address.

Connection to Each Other At the end of the day, this kind of pedagogical approach can only work if the students are willing to approach the materials with openness and a willingness to be vulnerable to each other. Whether it is sharing their own connection to a piece of literature, or listening to another’s short story, or building a scene together that requires honest emotion and response, students must learn to trust each other and participate together in generous collaboration. Each of these activities entail risk, yet by the end of the semester, we have regularly seen students joyfully take these risks together and come out the other side invigorated and affirmed by the process. They see their role in the collective differently and have new appreciation for the kinds of creativity and productivity they can engender through trust and collaboration. What the Students Tell Us The student comments are a selection from the last 10 years and range over both BEL and LET. Surprisingly there are very few negative comments

The transformations and learnings that occur are best understood in the words of the students. The following is typical of student comments about the courses: As one might expect, it is extremely hard to get twenty two type-A MBA students to do something together, but we did it. It was not because we had a great leader leading us. It was because we all were leaders leading each other. Theater helps you to see how and why we as human beings work well together and how to create a situation that will lead to the most creativity and productivity. Leadership…is about being part of a team; it’s not about giving orders, but about working together…to achieve a common objective. It was great to get out of the business school mindset of cases and non-fiction business books and read some fiction again. It made us talk about deeper issues than business issues and think about what we want out of our lives of careers and what responsibilities we have to our society. In these comments, the students suggest that authenticity and a more democratic idea of leadership organized around a purpose is in fact more effective than the

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traditional idea based on authority. A number of other students comment on the importance of trust and empathy and getting more in touch with their emotions: I quickly learned that when we remove our MBA hard-hats, we are able to develop a trust and understanding for each other that can significantly improve the dynamics of teamwork. The experience of becoming someone else taught me the importance of really putting yourself in someone else’s shoes in order to understand their motivations. Loved the opportunity to do some critical literary thinking. Crawling into another person’s mind gives each of us the chance to understand the actions, justifications, and motivations of other people, which in turn allows for an empathy we may not naturally have (I know I don’t). I loved the focus on our development as complete people who can talk and learn with their classmates in more than just a business and networking way. I think it’s important to recognize that we are not always business people and that there are more qualitative methods of evaluating problems and that people and feelings are a bigger part of the world than business school would lead us to believe.

In addition, the ideas of working together relatively free of ego, and pushing each other so that everyone challenges themselves and gives and expects authentic feedback from others add layers of complexity to the learning of the students. For instance, The most importance thing I will take away from the class…is an understanding of the power of work free of ego….I can count the times on one hand that I have been a part of a group whose purpose was clear and meaningful enough for the whole of the group to shove ego aside and be about the craft. I liked that it brought me out of my comfort zone. it’s important to have a different class experience like this while at Darden. I liked learning about literature and hearing classmates share their thoughts on things we read. I wasn’t enamored with all the materials we read but I thought all our discussions were interesting. I liked that our final assignment was writing a fiction short story, again it’s good because it got me out of my comfort zone. The participants of the class created an environment where feedback was not only accepted, it was expected.

It is very difficult to get students in a traditional classroom to viscerally feel the importance of shared leadership, collaboration based on trust, the power of ego, and the learning that is possible through authentic conversation and feedback. Yet the theater provides a venue where these traits are a necessity for success (Dunham and Freeman 2000).

Leveraging Key Design Principles From our experience with these methods and ideas, a number of key design principles have emerged that now find a central place in our teaching. We believe that these principles can themselves serve as leverage points to transform the way that we approach the teaching of business ethics.

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The Power of Narrative At the heart of humanity, in life and in literature, is the weaving together of the complex, messy lives of imperfect humans into a narrative that, at its best, reveals new insights—sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking—about how we should live. We humans are story tellers at heart. Nowhere is this clearer than in business. Understanding narrative through literary analysis, and building narrative as a writer, actor, or director, requires that we develop sensibilities and capabilities that are, in some ways, the reverse of those we seek to develop in other parts of the business school. As managers, we often seek to reduce complex phenomena to a few bullet points or a two-by-two matrix; as artists, we must attempt the opposite, uncovering the many levels of complex phenomenon embedded in seemingly simple action. It is not enough to know that a character is angry; the reader, actor, or director must uncover the envy, fear, insecurity, and/or other emotions, beliefs, motivations that drive and color that anger. And it is not enough to understand one character’s immense complexities; the artist must understand how each character contributes to the overall, coherent meaning in the larger story. Carrying out this complicated task requires that we help the student as artist to connect the characters and their journeys to their own narrative, to see the commonalities of experience, hope, dreams, despair, humor that link us personally to characters who could not seem more different from us. We have to confront our own truths in a deeper, richer way. We need to be willing to be vulnerable to ourselves and the other members of the class who are undertaking the same arduous task. And so, the very act of making these connections can make our own narrative a bit clearer and our linkages to others more compelling. This process involves intimate reflection and public sharing of how each of our journeys is simultaneously unique and yet common. These linkages become key as the student/artists try to pull the larger story together. Understanding my own character requires that I understand what it is I need and want from the other characters, how they have shaped me and my action, how their own narratives shape their response to me. I must elicit their narratives in order to understand my own, and I must respond in an honest and coherent way to what they throw my way. One small leverage point here to facilitate this awareness is through our readings of short fiction and writing exercises. For example, we might use Isaac Asimov’s Robot Dreams to illustrate how power is leveraged in the workplace. Asimov’s story has three characters: A boss, her subordinate and a robot (some argue that there are only two characters). The story is driven by dialog that illustrates how power and deference are shown in language. Following the reading of this story, we ask that students write a short story using dialog as the vehicle to illustrate relations—“to show, not tell” through what characters say and when they choose not to respond at all. Our students come to realize the extent of their reach into others’ lives—that their decisions have real and lasting influence on others.

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In theater rehearsal, as the director and the cast seek to make sense of the emerging narratives of characters and their interactions, the larger story becomes an act of collaborative sense making, a negotiated sense of meaning behind character, plot, emerging themes. Unlike other class projects, where students can divide and conquer—“you do this part, I’ll do that part, and we will meet before the day is due to put it all together”—this work can only happen live, as the troupe explores different interpretations and each actor responds to new actions and meanings. Another leverage point is one of our writing exercises that involves creating a description of a place everyone is familiar with—a student common area at our institution. We ask our students to share their descriptions with other members of the class. Appreciating the differences in shared experiences aids our students in understanding that meaning is simultaneously shared and personal. This is one of the key steps in managing in a diverse world. Many of our narratives feature broken, depressing, imperfect people in difficult situations (something like real life). Our characters are often written from the perspective of marginalized persons. The protagonists are difficult at first, because there is a tendency for much of the MBA curriculum to present lionized, world-­ striding masters of the universe. Because this notion of success is so strongly modeled within the business school world, some of our students have adapted a dominant mindset without critique. We hope that, by choosing narratives about those at the margins, our students can truly see the center. Often, early in the classes, students will comment on how “depressing”, “powerless” and “unhappy” some of the narratives make them feel. We ask them to consider that there are many who don’t expect that those feelings would be ones that they could escape.

Exercising the Creative Muscles Yet another leverage point is to approach teaching ethics by driving learning to the confluence of thinking/feeling/doing. While case studies activate rich thinking, literature and theater classes require the same intellectual interrogation, while also engaging the student in deeper feeling and emotion. The theater takes that even further by requiring the doing, asking students to physically embody the learnings of their intellectual and emotional explorations. Students must respond to the situation at hand using their repertoire of skills, emotions, and body language—they get immediate feedback from their classmates’ reactions and thus can learn about how they might have done things differently. They also learn by listening and watching each other, and bring new tools into their repertoire. It is this embodiment of the character and the narrative that is a source for insight.

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The Role of Attention Creating an authentic and believable moment on stage means responding in an honest way to what is actually happening. While the production is shaped through the process undergone in rehearsal, the ongoing performance requires a freshness that brings the play to vivid life for each audience. This requires that the actors are involved, focused, and ‘mindful’ at each moment. Rather than falling into habit, delivering lines and taking movement automatically, good actors seek to ‘stay in the moment’ and respond authentically to any subtle change that occurs on stage. We encourage students to ‘be in the moment’, staying present to what others are saying. In literature, this builds listening and conversational skills that can improve the understanding of the text and the self-understanding of the student. In theater, the artist must constantly be aware of everything happening on stage. All an actor has is the line that others give. So it is imperative to stay in the moment and “tell the story” regardless of dropped lines. Of course, there are multiple ways to deploy attention in writing and on stage. Students experiment with different ways to attending to the environment and each other, and learn the strengths and weaknesses of specific ways of paying attention.

Collaboration and Trust Theater and the performing arts often suffer from an image of a field dominated by egos and ‘divas.’ In fact, great theater only happens when a troupe of actors come together in a spirit of generosity toward each other, willing to put their own egos on hold, in order find the larger truths of the play and bring something real and compelling to life. Honest performances require actors to take risks sharing something personal of them; compelling scenes require that each actor shares the story and responds mindfully to each other. A troupe of actors can only do this successfully if they have built a level of trust and collaboration that allows them to take these risks in rehearsal and later in front of an audience. There is a similar necessity in sharing your writing with a small set of peers as you work through your story in progress, and in sharing the final product in a group read-through with all of your classmates. By sharing the work of writing, acting, and directing, students develop the ability to jointly author their work, and learn how to contribute in ways that benefit the group as well as themselves.

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Conclusion We have learned some substantial lessons from our work in leveraging the creative arts to teach business ethics. First of all, it is important to create a safe environment for students in order for them to work with the kind of openness and willingness to be vulnerable that is critical to making the class successful. The dinner parties are one vehicle we use in the literature class to build this sense of safety and trust. Small groups meeting over a meal can form the kinds of bonds that allow that trust to develop. In the theater class, we begin by sharing theater experiences, and with a conversation about why the students are taking the course. By acknowledging that some have stage fright or perceive themselves as not good at public speaking, we create a safer space for them. We then use acting exercises that slowly increase in the kinds of demands they make of students. And we acknowledge that good theater is honest, and that we are not a professional theater group. As teachers, we are constant cheerleaders and providers of feedback. The result is that the students can focus both on the craft of acting and writing as well as on the lessons learned. Students should address a mix of literature, some of which they can more easily relate to but much of which challenges them to empathize with people and situations that are difficult for them to access. The former helps build their confidence, while the latter do the important work of stretching them creatively and emotionally. In the theater course we do not let the students write about their experience in business school. We want them to reflect more broadly on their experiences in life. Third, we do not hesitate to get help from the professionals. We have often invited professional writers to class to discuss literature and their writing. In the theater class, we have greatly benefited from having a professional director co-teach the course, and to use former actors as resources. These kinds of exercises and assignments can be very foreign to a business school instructor, but over time, with help, they can become almost second nature. Fourth, we try and practice what we are trying to teach the students. We try to be in the moment at all times, and to be conscious of the underlying narratives that are being woven into the fabric of the course by teacher and students. We have come to see teaching itself as a performance art, and we believe that our teaching in non-­ creative arts settings has improved enormously because of our work in literature and theater. Finally, our experience with this teaching leads us to a kind of skepticism about much of the current thinking in business ethics, at least as the discipline is understood in the Anglo-Saxon and management theory world. Business ethics is based almost entirely on an analytical approach to ethics. The trifecta of theory (deontology, consequentialism, and virtue) has become an oligopolistic group that seems to us to be in need of substantial revision. Often we focus on issues or dilemmas, and then try to apply one or more of these theories or their surrogates to resolve the issue or dilemma. While there is nothing wrong with using cases and theory (in fact, we use them as well), they simply do not go far enough.

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We want to suggest that human experience, especially in business, is much more nuanced and more holistic. We bring a substantial and complex emotional, cognitive, and developmental palette to our lives as business persons. We see particularity and particular others (Benhabib 1992), not generalized and undifferentiated others. Thick descriptions abound. While there is room for Kant and thin descriptions and obligations to strangers in moral discourse, so too must we make room for the trust and compassion that exists (or not) in families and friendships. We must leave room for Sartre’s authenticity and Kierkegaard’s existential pain and Nietzsche’s critique of the meaningless life. We create meaning with each other in business. The very language that we use constructs what problems we are able to solve. The analytical language of most business discourse ensures that we will not be able to solve nuanced human problems. In addition to the dilemmas that require right–wrong judgments, we believe that ethics is best conceptualized as a conversation about how we describe and re-­ describe self, other and communities to live together and collaborate in making a better world. Using the creative arts to teach business ethics has given us a set of questions that engages us as researchers and scholars as well as teachers, for instance: (1) what are some alternative views of the connections between the self, others, and the community, and how is meaning constructed in these alternative views? (2) What would the discipline of business ethics be like, if we took as background disciplines the creative arts and humanities, rather than just philosophy and the social sciences? (3) How do complex emotions affect the construction of meaning and the solving of problems, and in particular, how are trust, collaboration, leadership, love, fear, and related concepts connected? The humanities, and especially the creative arts, offer a way to leverage the idea that business is a fully human institution in all of its complexity. We need to continuously connect business with our culture and our humanity, in order to connect with each other. We look forward to the evolution of the teaching and research in business ethics in this direction. Acknowledgements This is a reprint of an article previously publishing by Springer Science+business Media Dordrecht in the Journal of Business Ethics (2015) 131:519–526. DOI 10.1007/s10551-014-2479-y.

References Benhabib, S. 1992. Situating the self. In Gender, community, and postmodernism in contemporary ethics. New York: Routledge. Burns, J.M. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Dewey, J. 1957. Reconstruction in philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press. Dunham, L., and R.E.  Freeman. 2000. There is business like show business. Organizational Dynamics 29 (2): 108–122. Freeman, R.E., and D. Newkirk. 2011. Business school research: Some preliminary suggestions. In Business schools under fire: Humanistic management education as the way forward, ed.

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W. Amann, M. Pirson, C. Dierkmeier, E. Von Kimakowitz, and H. Spitzeck, 273–290. London: Palgrave. Mintzberg, H. 2004. Managers not MBAs: A hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Pfeffer, J., and C.T. Fong. 2002. The end of business schools? Less success than meets the eye. Academy of Management Learning and Education 1 (1): 78–95. R.  Edward Freeman  is University Professor, Elis and Signe Olsson Professor, Academic Director of the Institute for Business in Society, and Senior Fellow of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is best known for his award-winning book, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman, 1984; and reprinted by Cambridge University Press in 2010). His latest books are The Power of And with Kirsten Martin and Bidhan Parmar, Columbia University Press in 2020; The Cambridge Handbook of Stakeholder Theory with Jeffrey Harrison, Jay Barney and Robert Phillips, Cambridge University Press in 2019; Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility with Patricia Werhane and Sergiy Dmytriyev, Cambridge University Press in 2017, and Bridging the Values Gap with Ellen Auster, Berrett-­Koehler Publishers in 2015. He has received six honorary doctorates (Doctor Honoris Causa) from: Radboud University in the Netherlands; Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain; the Hanken School of Economics, and Tampere University in Finland; Sherbrooke University in Canada; and Leuphana University in Germany, for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics. Freeman has been Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Ethics, one of the leading journals in business ethics. He is a lifelong student of philosophy, martial arts and the blues. Freeman is a founding member of Red Goat Records (redgoatrecords.com) bringing the joy of original soul and rhythm and blues music into the twenty-first century. Laura Dunham  is Best Buy Chair and Associate Dean of the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship within the Opus College of Business. As Associate Dean, Dr. Dunham leads the university’s efforts to spread entrepreneurial education across the university, through both curricular and co-curricular programming. She joined St. Thomas in 2003 from the University of Virginia, where she earned her Ph.D and M.B.A. from the Darden Graduate School of Business. She teaches undergraduate, graduate and executive programs on innovation and entrepreneurial strategy. Her research focuses on the managerial and ethical challenges involved in innovation and new business start-up and development. Before her doctoral studies, Dunham worked as a management consultant in the strategy division of Renaissance Worldwide, helping clients evaluate and develop new growth initiatives. Gregory Fairchild  is the Isidore Horween Research Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and Associate Dean for Washington, D.C., area initiatives and Academic Director of public policy and entrepreneurship. Fairchild serves as an academic director for Darden’s Institute for Business in Society (IBiS). He teaches strategic management, entrepreneurship and ethics in Darden's MBA and Executive Education programs. His research is well known and he was recently the lead investigator studying business models and public policy issues in the field of community development finance, an initiative supported by a 3-year $850,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In addition to his teaching and research, he is a consultant to corporations, nonprofits and governmental agencies. Bidhan L. Parmar  is Associate Professor and the Shannon Smith Emerging Scholar in Business Administration at the Darden School of Business. Parmar’s research interests focus on how managers make sense of uncertainty and collaborate in ways that create value for stakeholders. His work helps executives better handle ambiguity in their decision-making. Parmar’s work has been published in Organization Science, Psychological Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,

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Organization Studies, Business & Society, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He has co-authored two books on stakeholder theory. Parmar is a fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics and the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Parmar is the Co-director of the Darden Experiential Leadership Development Lab, where students practice real world leadership skills in stressful and interpersonally sensitive situations.

Chapter 27

Humanizing Business: A Music Perspective Adrian Keevil

Introduction The Chinese philosopher Confucius believed that music was a both a metaphor for a harmonious society and was a means to promote cooperation. The impact of playing and listening to music had an effect of promoting peace and a shared collective identity (Huang 1963). This metaphor informed the design of some of the more important musical instruments of the era. In 1978, archaeologists in China discovered a collection of bells from the time of Confucius. Each bell was tuned to a different note; one bell was incapable of making music but played together they could produce a melody. The expense to engineer and forge these bells 2500 years ago would have been absurd (Mostel 1989). Their manufacturing precision was on par with modern capabilities, and most of the bells were still playable when they were discovered (Shen 1987). A prominent noble had chosen to be buried with these bells and a collection of other instruments, as a testament of the value that music played in the world of practical affairs. In the twenty-first century, music is valuable culturally. Perhaps more valuable than ever. However, the lessons we learn from playing music and the effects we get from listening to it are not consciously integrated into twenty-first century business practice. I think this is a missed opportunity because music can contribute more to business practice than we might appreciate. A useful side effect is that it could also help imbue business with some more humanity. Although it comes in many formats, fundamentally music is sound that conveys emotion (Montagu 2017). Throughout human history, music has been at the center of social connection. From sacred ceremonies, to celebrations, to battles, listening “Music produces a kind of pleasure that human nature cannot do without.” – Confucius A. Keevil (*) University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_27

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to music in groups has been an essential ingredient for group cohesion and transcending the self into a higher-order group identity. Dancing to samba music at Carnival in Rio. Multiple generations forgetting old differences as they dance at a wedding to Sister Sledge’s affirmational anthem “We are Family.” A jazz club with its windows open, spilling music into the streets of New Orleans. A stadium filled with people singing along with Bruce Springsteen. A culture group playing drums and dancing in Ghana. A rave at a club in Ibiza. In all its many forms, music bonds people together and makes them connected to something larger than the self. We sing in the shower, we sing at birthdays, we sing at churches and temples and synagogues. We sing at sporting events; we sing at weddings and funerals. Whether it is in a choir, as a soloist, in a band or as a spectator, when we experience music together, we become more bonded to and more trusting of others (Tarr Launay and Dunbar 2014). Singing or playing music in groups has beneficial effects on anxiety, depression, and mood (Reagon et al. 2016) and even enhances your immune system (Kreutx et al. 2004; Fancourt et al. 2016). Music doesn’t have to be played to get the benefit. Even just attending a concert can make us feel better and more bonded to the people around us (Fancourt and Williamson 2016). Whether it is experienced as a musician or as a listener, music has a unique power to connect to our souls as individuals and to form shared bonds with others. Our connection to music is deeply ingrained on our evolutionary psychology. Anthropologists studying fossilized skulls found that our Neanderthal and homo sapiens ancestors had the physical ability to sing starting about one million years ago. The earliest fossilized evidence that humans used instruments to make music are between 39,000 and 43,000 years old (Montagu 2017). There is evidence from cognitive science that music is more foundational to communication than language is (Brandt et al. 2012). As infants develop, they sing before they talk. For babies, music is a form of communication. Parents reciprocate this by cooing and singing lullabies. While music is not a central part of the program at work, the extant research on music and neuroscience suggests that music is not a diversion from practical life, or a fanciful pursuit. Music is a fundamental part of human communication and healthy brain function (Moore 2018). Music is directly linked with human flourishing (Croom 2012), and music can contribute meaningfully to business practice (Weick 1998). The only reason it would be absent from business is based on an outdated view of business as exclusively practical and devoid of emotion (Freeman et  al. 2011). We tend to admire people who play music; however, we tend to admire them as artists. If a businessperson plays music, we don’t generally see that as something that signals higher skill as a manager. This is because music is generally thought to be something distinct from work. We think of it is a hobby, or maybe a distraction, but generally not something that makes us better at our jobs. I think this is potentially a mistake. In many instances throughout human history this separation did not exist. Confucius taught that playing an instrument signified self-cultivation and governance skill (Huang 1963). Pythagoras taught that musical skill denoted mathematical skill (Jenkins 2010). Given how important music is to our humanity, this separation undoubtedly contributes to our sense of business and human life as

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separate. Therefore, to humanize business we should consider how to make music a part of business in an intentional way. The irony about this separation of music and business, however, is that it’s a false narrative. Given music’s importance to our psychology, it is inseparable from our selves. In the same ways that business and humanity are inseparable, music and business are as well. In a recent survey of 1005 workers, 94% of them reported listening to music sometimes at work, and 42% listening the entire workday (Cloud Cover Music 2018). But even if music is a part of work for many people, music is not generally thought to be a part of work, or a part of the job. It is an escape from work, or a haven from office commotion. We put on headphones and intentionally detach from what’s going on around us. We turn up the stereo in the car or put in earbuds on the bus to distance ourselves from work on our way home. Bringing music into work is not a new idea. Management research for the better part of twenty years has acknowledged that musical activities, like improvisation, are useful for managing in today’s business world, and that music makes people happier (Chanda and Levitin 2013) and can foster group identity and cooperation (Wiltermuth 2009; Reddish, Fischer and Bulbulia 2013; Stupacher et  al. 2017). Music can benefit individuals at work and the organization. This chapter explores how we can bring music into business so that business might become more purposely human. In the first part of the chapter I write about my experiences in music and business and how those two spheres have had considerable overlap in my life. I then highlight current research that shows music is connected to individual well-being and flourishing. It makes people happier; it is connected to group well-being and flourishing; it helps bring diverse people together to common purposes and enhances cooperation and shared intentionality. The second part of the chapter discusses some ways in which we can bring music into business practice and into business education. Music can be experienced as an individual and as a group, and it can be experienced as a listener or as a participant. Each of these combinations are important to consider because they serve different purposes. I recommend some ways that music can contribute to business, including some of the following: music as a metaphor for business; music as cultural artifact; fostering shared identity by getting people to listen to music together; musical improvisation as a metaphor for dealing with unpredictable outcomes; playing as a band to build individual and group connections.

 onnections Between Music and Business: Personal C Experiences and Observations My perspective for this chapter is oddly well-suited. I spend most of my time at a hedge fund called PlusTick Partners where I research and evaluate investments in companies. I am also a management scholar and teacher at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. I am also a guitar player and a singer. I have

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played in bands of all varieties and sung in A Capella groups in high school and college. I have performed rock shows to crowded clubs in New York and sung in crowded concert halls. I have pitched investment theses to rooms filled with investors and discussed management theory with rooms filled with students. Therefore, I am writing this chapter from the perspective of a musician, management academic, and as a business professional. Prior to researching and writing this chapter, I had always assumed that music and business were separate spheres of my life. But as I reflected on my past experiences, I realized how intertwined and mutually reinforcing music and business has been for me. In some ways, I cannot imagine one without the other. I am certain that music has made me a better professional. And I think that work has made me a better musician. I will go through a few examples that hopefully can make the point. The most obvious connection between playing an instrument or singing is that it takes a lot of practice to get any good. It takes practice independently, to play an instrument. That practice is tedious generally and occasionally frustrating. But you make progress, and that progress is immensely satisfying. It also takes practice to play with a group. Practicing with a group, doing endless runs through songs over and over tests your patience like almost nothing else I have done or experienced. But when you nail it, there is almost no better feeling of accomplishment. I think that experiencing prolonged tedium with illusive rewards can make someone better equipped to perform in a job that requires cooperation and diligence. But I think that experience isn’t unique to playing music. It can also be achieved through athletics, or theater for example. Any pursuit that involves self-sacrifice and some degree of suffering to progress forward. But playing music, I believe, contributes to business in ways that these other pursuits do not. My first band out of college I started with some friends I had made at work. We played for five years in various clubs and bars in New York City and developed a decent following. But at every show we played, there were always people from our office who would come to hear us and hang out. People from all levels of the company, who worked in various silos. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the social interaction between job functions, ages and locations was significantly higher than it would have been if not for the band. I made friendships with senior executives. Everyone who was there connected in a meaningful way that transcended hierarchy, background and the other things that typically interfere with people building meaningful connections in an organization. Those relationships led to advances in my career that without the band would never had happened. Most importantly, it was a lot of fun for everyone involved. When I started my MBA at the University of Virginia, I met Ed Freeman at some event for new students. He had heard from someone that I was a singer and a guitar player, and he invited me to come jam at his place over the weekend. What I learned later was that Ed organized and hosted a faculty and student band. He converted a significant portion of his house into a studio for the purpose, and we would gather there and play a few times a week. It was a motley crew of singers, instrument players and people hanging out. The band would perform at school functions and do the occasional gig around town. We even played a wedding for a couple of MBA

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students. What was so special about that Darden band was that the faculty and students in the band became close friends and remain so today almost fifteen years later. The band gave the students and faculty a means to transcend the traditional distance between professor and student. The only reason you form a band is to play songs that you can’t play alone. You join a band intentionally, and the people in the band – especially a good one – are all about creating a sound together that is better sounding and more emotionally powerful than someone can do alone, or that a group could do without coordination and shared intentionality. It’s the same reason people join organizations. Playing music with other people is great practice for the modern office. Even if the music isn’t improvisational, playing in a group requires a sense for what everyone else is doing. I as the rhythm guitar player have my space and my responsibility to the beat of the song, and how I play is completely dependent on what the others in the band play – keyboards, percussion, bass, guitars and drums – and how they play it. Playing in a band involves both art and science, free form, and structure. Without both of those it doesn’t work. Players of instruments need to be technically proficient at the instrument, but they can’t be too rigid. Some bands have leaders, and for others the leadership is distributed and shared. But a band must be thoughtfully coordinated. A song needs an arrangement and an organization to it. That structure is planned. Great bands deviate from the plan spontaneously, but they always come back to the form. But that form can never be too rigid or logical. If the playing and the structure is too rigid, it doesn’t work. But it does need to be coordinated and led in such a way to get the most out of the individual players, but the individual players need to buy into the idea that the group, or the song, is more important than themselves. Leading a band successfully requires someone to balance a constant tension between a group goal and individual contributions. There needs to be structure and rigidity, but there also needs to be fluidity. The band must adapt to change; to go into a direction that is working for the crowd, but also to pull it back at the right time. Legendary trumpet player and band leader Miles Davis put it this way: “[It] transcends the capacity of merely intellectual methods… The terms pertinent to it are ‘feeling,’ ‘judgment,’ ‘sense,’ ‘proportion,’ ‘balance,’ ‘appropriateness.’ It is a matter of art and it is aesthetic rather than logical.” Miles Davis didn’t say that. It was Chester Barnard writing about management in The Functions of the Executive (1938). But as someone who has spent many hours playing and leading bands, it easily could have been a legendary musician and band leader describing his craft. Ironically, or maybe not, a band is exactly how Barnard describes a business organization. It’s “a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons” (Barnard 1938, 81). Another important early management scholar, Mary Parker Follett wrote, “We should work always with the evolving situation and note what part our own activities have in that evolving situation” (Graham 1995, 85). Follett idea of working describes exactly what it takes to be a good band member. In truth, music is a part of business already. Just maybe not intentionally so. For much of the early twentieth century, managers were interested in the way that music could positively impact industrial workers (Jones 2005). The most iconic example

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the BBC’s radio show called, “Music while you Work” which was piped into factories where millions of people worked from 1940 to 1967. While music has largely left the industrial workplace, it is still a significant part of our interaction with business and brands as consumers. The strongest brands in the world spend millions on licensing music for their advertising because music connects the brand to an emotion. Starbucks realized the power of music to get people to want to buy coffee. Apple realized the power of music to connect people to a phone. Music is also a part of the modern office. Look around an open office plan and you’ll see most people working with earbuds. There are examples of successful managers are intentional about the intersection of their music and business lives. Roger McNamee is the founding partner and managing director of Elevation Partners, one of the more successful venture capital firms which is well-known for its early investment and backing of Facebook. Prior to founding Elevation Partners, McNamee founded and managed Silver Lake Partners, one of the largest and most successful private equity firms in the world. McNamee is also an active touring musician who has performed over 800 shows in two bands. For roger McNamee, music and business are similar realms. In a Wall Street Journal profile (Thompson 2015), McNamee said, “We run the band as if we’re a Silicon Valley start-up trying to invent something.” McNamee remembers the origin of his career in music as: When I was in college, I was in a really awesome band called Guff. I think we really had a real shot… We were a quartet and the guy who wrote the songs fell in love and ran away. I had been supporting myself through all of this and I had all these student loans and then, suddenly, the notion of going off and trying the band thing without our core songwriter just seemed really risky. So I went off and got a day job… What was weird is the fact that I was a musician turned out to be the key to it. I got involved in the personal computer industry when it was just starting out… We all listened to the same music, we all liked the same drugs, and at the trade shows and conferences people would bring instruments and we would have jam sessions…and I knew more songs than everybody else. (Chuckles) So I was sitting there paying with Paul Allen from Microsoft and the head of R & D from Apple, and I got to know all these people as musicians, and if you know somebody from playing music you know them a lot deeper than from just a conversation. I just…I was just really lucky. (Thompson 2015)

A few years ago, a colleague at a top-tier investment bank told me something surpsising. His firm had done a longitudinal study investigating the relationship between college major and success as an investment banker at this firm. The results surprised the firm’s management. By a significant margin, the college major most closely associated with success was not economics, finance, or mathematics. It was music. The most successful people navigating a job defined by quantitative skills in a competitive environment were musicians. Go figure. I found many other examples of music while researching this chapter which I have left out for parsimony. One general observation I can draw from these is that the idea that music and business are separate entities is true in terms of narrative but is maybe false in terms of practice. Business is a human endeavor and music is inexorably linked with our humanity. The thing that became obvious to me is that

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while music is a bigger part of business that we acknowledge, they are rarely connected intentionally.

Recommendations and Practical Implications In this section I will discuss some ways in which we can bring music into business intentionally. This is not meant to be a complete inventory, rather the hope is that it provides both an argument that bringing music into business is possible, and a spark of an idea for readers to think about ways to bring music into business – as employees, business owners and managers or as business school faculty and administration.

Music to Build Group Harmony and Bonding Businesses in the twenty-first century have become more diverse culturally, and, with globalization, many businesses are more international than they have been in the past. Teams today are expected to solve complex problems collectively, yet increasingly they are collaborating across multiple offices, often located in different countries. Paradoxically, the performance benefits of diversity in teams and groups are best leveraged when there is a strong collective team identity (van Veelen and Ufkes 2017; Aggarwal et al. 2019). Not surprisingly, many businesses struggle with how to leverage diversity and still build a collective group identity (Amaram 2007). How can businesses build strong collective identities for groups and teams when employees share different cultural backgrounds and are potentially physically separated from each other? How can we get people to leverage their individual identities and skills, yet also subsume individual objectives to achieve a group goal? We have been using music to build group identity probably as long as we have been on the earth in every sphere of social live, with the stark exception of business. The music industry today contractually requires recording country singers to collaborate with professional songwriters to cowrite songs. The challenge with this arrangement is that many talented singers have limited experience with songwriting. Professional songwriters take their craft seriously. As any songwriter will tell you, songwriting is a skill that is hones through years of practice. Also, performing and recording singers and writers sometimes have different music tastes. They often differ on what makes a song “good.” The singer might be interested in a song that enhances her brand, and the songwriter more interested in a song that is high quality in the eyes of her songwriting peers. In other words, the music industry pairs two people with different backgrounds and skill sets and potentially conflicting goals and expects the outcome to be better than it would be with either party working alone. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. But it has been a huge success. The act of

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co-writing a song as a process takes two people with different goals, skills and tastes and brings them together into a cohesive team (Skaggs 2019). Country music’s audience has grown consistently for the past five years, has become more racially and geographically diverse and has attracted more young people than ever before (CMA 2019). Perhaps the most significant example of the outcome is the hit song “Old Town Road.” Songwriting credits for the song are Lil Nas X (a teenaged singer from the U.S.), YoungKio (a teenaged dance producer from the Netherlands), Trent Reznor (a middle-aged industrial music artist and songwriter from the U.S.), Atticus Ross (a middle-aged songwriter from England) and Billy Ray Cyrus (a middle-aged country singer and songwriter from the U.S.). Arguably it would be hard to assemble a more diverse team to write a song. And this diversity produced what is objectively the most successful song in popular music history. “Old Town Road” holds the record for the most time at number one on the Billboard charts. The act of songwriting arguably is a powerful way to leverage diversity and create shared intentionality. Other ways teams can build a shared identity is through singing together. Singing in groups releases brain chemicals that aid in social bonding, mood enhancement and potentially other health benefits (Moss et al. 2018). Even just listening to music together releases chemicals that promote social bonding and a sense of shared identity (Fancourt and Williamon 2016). While music can bond groups together, it can also form the basis for ingroup and outgroup isolation (Brown et al. 2004). This suggests that unless managers intentionally find ways for teams to experience music together, it is likely that individual music tastes might be working against the team’s shared identity.

Music in the Office Music is already in most offices. It is a part of work for most people. A study examining users of the music streaming service Spotify found that 61% of people listen to music at work, and it makes them feel happier and more productive (Haake 2011). In-store music streaming company Cloud Cover Music found that 78% of people believe listening to music at work makes them more productive. There is debate from scholars as to whether music at work is productive, but there is no debating the fact that music is a part of the modern workplace. An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that surgeons tend to work more accurately while listening to music they like (Allen and Blascovich 1994). Kathleen Keeler and Jose Cortina (2018) explored if the kinds of music that people listen to work can influence their performance at work. They argue that “characteristics of music (i.e., musical key, tempo, complexity, volume) influence job performance through cognitive self-regulatory processes (i.e., executive functions)… and…this impacts various task performance outcomes” (Keeler and Cortina 2018, 447). Their research shows how things like tempo, major or minor key, musical complexity and dynamic variation can all shape the ways that

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music influences work performance in various settings. Think about the kind of music you might hear in a spa or a yoga studio compared to what you might hear at a bar or a gym. In one setting, the music is intended to be relaxing, in the other it is intended to be energizing. Businesses should be intentional about the role that music plays in the office. The trouble with listening to music individually is that while it can benefit the individual, it is not productive to bonding and social interaction. Also, the types of music that people listen to can be counterproductive to working. For example, listening to music can be productive for rote tasks, but it can impede performance in tasks that require learning. Offices arguably should have norms around what music people listen to, but this sort of intervention would probably engender resentment. Perhaps managers can help make employees aware of the influence of different types of music on productivity. Perhaps businesses could encourage employees to share playlists and music with each other, thereby creating meaningful connections even if the music isn’t experienced in a group.

Going to Concerts and Dancing A stream of research in psychology has explored the group and individual-level benefits of experiences where people move together. Referred to as synchrony (or instances when the movements or sensations of two or more people overlap in time and form), this literature frames a strong case for the value of groups moving together. Moving together with a group increases cooperation, social connection, positive perceptions of others and positive mood and moving together to music increases these effects (Stupacher et al. 2017). Businesses can sponsor groups or teams going to concerts or dancing together. The outcome would most likely impact shared group identity and affinity but also could increase employee retention and commitment.

Learning an Instrument Learning to read music and sing or play an instrument is a challenging experience that leads to emotional rewards through a sense of accomplishment and mastery. It allows people to set and progress towards goals. Playing music in a group with other musicians requires the individual to sublimate the self and to cooperate with others. The act of improvisation, or jamming, is not only immensely enjoyable but also builds the skills that make managers more successful in the modern era. All these skills are useful in the modern workplace and could contribute to employees being happier and more productive, and could contribute to cognitive ability (Schneider et al. 2018).

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Recent research has shown that learning an instrument can have significant cognitive benefits. Neuropsychologists have recently argued that playing a musical instrument is unique in its ability to draw cognitive connections in the brain, particularly when it comes to memory (Loveday 2016). In the same way that many companies sponsor employees to take courses, companies could offer to reimburse employees for lessons. It might even make sense to let employees take time during the workday to have a lesson in the office.

Music Classes as Core to Professional Development One place that perpetuates the myth that business and humanity are separate realms is the modern business school. Business schools are structured to experiment with and hone courses and immersion experiences that improve management education. Despite what we know about flourishing and what our colleagues have written about connecting music and management skill, music is absent from MBA curricula. If music is to make a meaningful contribution to business, getting it into the MBA curriculum is a good place to start. An outmoded idea that quantitative facts are facts and qualitative ideas are sentiment permeates business schools. This value distinction is false, but for those who disagree they can still accept that music is as rigorous as any quantitative exercise. It has been seen that way since the origins of the fact value dichotomy. The classical education, framed in the Middle Ages based on Ancient Greek and Roman curricula, consisted of two parts. One part was the trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the language arts) and the other was the quadrivium consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quantitative arts). To be clear, the trivium/quadrivium separation is probably where we got the idea that words are sentimental, and numbers are more “serious.” To the monks in the Middle Ages who conceived of the classical education  - and invented the qualitative/quantitative dichotomy  - music was a quantitative skill. There really is not a good argument against music being part of the modern MBA curriculum, and it will make our students better managers and happier people. Medical schools have also recently recognized the need to bring music into their curricula. Faced with a similar issue to business, medical school professionals knew the power of music but had a hard time getting students who were highly focused on medical careers to care. Doctors care about healing. So, to get through to the medical curriculum community, a group of researchers conducted a study in which they exposed medical students in situations where they could witness the healing power of music firsthand. The students kept diaries of their experiences, finding that: …Music…[promoted] health, even in seriously diseased people. Music affected people’s identity and emotions. Through the medium of structure and harmony, it provided a means of self-expression that adapted to whatever condition people were in. Music was a communication medium, which could make people feel less isolated. Immersion in music could change negative states of mind to more positive ones. A transport metaphor was commonly

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used; music ‘taking people to better places.’ Exercising control by becoming physically involved in music enhanced diseased people’s self-esteem. Music was able to bring the spiritual, mental, and physical elements of their lives into balance, to the benefit of their wellbeing. (McLellan et al. 2013, 167)

The results of the intervention were that the students were receptive to the relevance of music to the medical school curriculum, and to the future of their medical careers. One recent paper examining the role of music in medical school curriculum concluded, “Doctors and medical students could learn various lessons from jazz music performance and jazz musicians” (van Ark and Wijen-Meijer 2019, 201).

I mprovisation and Musical Performance Part of Professional Development As I wrote earlier, the idea of music contributing to management is not new. Significantly influential academic articles published in top management journals have for over twenty years identified the link between the skills required for playing improvisational music and skills that make for successful management. For example, in 1998 Mary Jo Hatch hosted a session at the Academy of Management meeting that comprised of a series of papers comparing jazz music to management. In her introduction to the paper presentations she said: If you look at the list of characteristics that are associated with the 21st century organization, you find concepts like flexible, adaptable, responsive to the environment, loose boundaries, minimal hierarchy. When you look at the list for a second, if you're interested in jazz, you recognize that all of those ideas could as easily be associated with a jazz band as a 21st century organization. (Hatch 1998a,b, 556)

In a subsequently published paper that further developed this metaphor, Hatch (1999, 75) wrote, “I use the case of…improvisational jazz performance, as a perhaps unlikely, but nonetheless valuable metaphor for the purpose of describing organizational structure.” Karl Weick, one of the most influential management scholars, wrote, “Musicians listen to one another to make it work and to shut out distractions and to build something mutually, all of which would be just fine if managers did more of it” (Hatch and Weick 1998). Weick’s (1998) paper on jazz as a mindset for organizational analysis has over 1500 citations. Management scholar Frank Barrett’s (1998) paper on improvisation in jazz and organizations argued that jazz improvising was “an example of designed for maximizing learning and innovation” (Barrett 1998, 605). Barrett’s paper has also been highly influential, with over 900 citations in subsequently published papers. Management scholars Christine Moorman and Anne Miner (1998) wrote a paper summarizing the extant research on improvisation in management and attempted to give the concept of improvisation as metaphor a defined construct as “improvisation occurs when composition and execution converge in time” (Moorman and Miner 1998, 698). This paper also has been highly influential, with over 1500 citations in subsequently published

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articles. Nic Beech and Charlotte Gilmore published an excellent edited volume titles Organising Music: Theory, Practice, Performance (2015). The point is that for many years, published management research has recognized that improvisational skills and other skills learned from playing music can contribute meaningfully to management practice. How can we integrate improvisational music techniques into business school curricula? For many years, Ed Freeman at the University of Virginia ran a course in which students with no prior musical experience would pick up instruments, form a band with people in the class and perform songs in public. Another approach could be to require a class on improvisational technique taught by a professor of music.

 usic Can Both Celebrate Individual Cultures and Build M a Collective Identity In Ghana, the term “culture” is a word used to describe a traditional form of drumming often accompanied with dance. These songs are performed by “culture groups.” These groups were originally formed when members of different tribes in rural Ghana migrated into Accra and Kumansi for work. The individuals from their tribes wanted to preserve their cultural heritage and music and dance were foundational aspects of tribal identity. But in a culturally diverse setting, members of various tribes started playing together. They each maintained their own heritage, and the result was new form of music and dance that embodied all of them. These groups provided Ghanaian tribes a means of celebrating their individual heritage while also joining a larger group identity (Howard 2018; Dor 2005). One of the significant issues that bushiness schools (and businesses) struggle with is how to get people from diverse backgrounds to bond and form relationships. In the US, we do our best to recruit classes from all over the world, but we often fall short of the intention behind that international diversity. Thrust into a new environment with people they don’t know, people tend to gravitate towards others with similar backgrounds. When you share culture, it makes it easier to bond with new people. You start from a common place; you have something to talk about that is easy and familiar. In a business school setting, language barriers are not an issue. The challenge is cultural barriers, which are much more difficult to transcend without shared experiences or intervention. After two years, students have shared experiences. But, how much more meaningful could those relationships be if students could transcend cultural barriers early in the program? Music is foundational to culture as much or even more than language. It communicates culture in a direct way. We can use music as part of the curriculum to help people transcend cultural barriers. My senior year of college I took a class on music in American literature. In the beginning of the first session, the professor handed us each a note card and asked us to write down our favorite and least favorite genre of music. The favorite for me was

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hard, and I debated. The least favorite was an easy answer. I’m from New York City and there’s only one genre that we didn’t hear much of growing up – country music. At the end of the class, she gave us our first paper assignment: write on the historical and cultural significance of an album in the genre that you wrote on the note card. I had a minor panic attack because I didn’t know where to start. One of my roommates told me to write about Bob Dylan’s album “Nashville Skyline,” which Dylan recorded in Nashville, Tennessee – the epicenter of country music. I figured it was a sort-of cheap way to get around the requirement. Dylan isn’t country, right? I hours of time reading about the making of that album and listening to every track carefully. What I found floored me. Dylan wasn’t country, but he made a country album. Dylan’s picture may have been on the album, but from the get-go it was clear that he was the supporting act. The opening track is a duet with the country legend Johnny Cash. Cash also wrote the liner notes. This was a symbolic endorsement that signaled to country music fans, “It’s cool, he’s with me.” Dylan recruited some of the best session musicians in country music for the album, and it was clear that he defers to them throughout. He quit smoking prior to the recording sessions so his voice would sound better. Bob Dylan was the fourth-largest selling musical artist in the 1960s. He had sold over ten million albums before cutting Nashville Skyline. Dylan’s respect for country as a genre and for Nashville as an institution bordered on hero worship. To see the guy who brought electric guitars to the Newport Folk festival demure to a room full of session players floored me. The experience changed me fundamentally and opened my eyes to what I now know to be one of the most layered and complex forms of music in the world. My lack of appreciation for country was founded on ignorance. Ever since then I have loved and appreciated country music. I play in a band that does a lot of country. But most importantly, country music has helped me build friendships with people who grew up in places where country is more likely to be in the middle of the FM dial. If I hadn’t had that experience in college, where someone forced me to engage with a foreign genre, I wonder if I would have connected with these people in the same way. There are many ways we can conceive of doing something similar for incoming MBA cohorts. An interventional approach to sharing culture through music could be an effective way for students from different backgrounds to bond more quickly with students from different backgrounds, sharing culture with each other in a common language. While getting a similar program into a corporate setting might be more difficult, there seems to be sufficient evidence of its value to make the case persuasive that it would be worth the investment.

Conclusion Music is a core part of humanity. Music is already a part of business, although not in an intentional way. People might listen to music at work, but it is rare for music to be used in the ways that it has been used throughout human history as a social

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bonding mechanism. This seems like a wasted opportunity. Unfortunately, the ways we use music in social life are probably held back by a stigma of not being “work-­ related” in most office settings. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1955) wrote, “Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done, but turned out wrong, can be done again.” Bringing music intentionally into work could have a profound impact on the way that we view work by making it more a part of normal human social life. Playing music in a can provide useful skills for modern management. We know that music – playing and listening to it in groups particularly – can make people feel more fulfilled. It can help foster a culture of sharing and cooperation. Learning an instrument can make people more satisfied emotionally. It can strengthen cognition and make them more creative. Music is not a panacea and it could have both bonding and isolating effects, so that is why I use the word intentional. Finally, given that business schools devise the management curricula, it seems like one way to start to overcome the misinformed idea that music doesn’t belong in business is to start to bring it into the business school curriculum. I can testify to the positive impact it had on me and the people I have played with over the years. It has been a part of the curriculum at the Darden School (officially and unofficially) for at least fifteen years thanks to Ed Freeman. But there is an opportunity to make it part of the core curriculum. It will not cost much, and the students will enjoy it. We might even find that it helps individuals from diverse backgrounds share their cultural experiences and form bonds that transcend their individual differences and help to build a collective identity. I wonder if there is anything more important than this.

References Aggarwal, Ishani, Marieke Catharine Schilpzand, Luis L.  Martins, and Marco Molinaro. 2019. Team cognitive versatility: managing cognitive diversity in teams. Academy of Management Proceedings 2019 (1): 16111. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2019.16111abstract. Allen, Karen, and Jim Blascovich. 1994. Effects of music on cardiovascular reactivity among surgeons. JAMA 272 (11): 882–884. Amaram, Donatus I. 2007. Cultural diversity: Implications for workplace management. Journal of Diversity Management 2 (4): 1–6. Barnard, Chester I. 1938. The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Barrett, Frank J. 1998. Coda—Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organizations: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science 9 (5): 605–622. Beech, Nic, and Charlotte Gilmore, eds. 2015. Organising music: Theory, practice, performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brandt, Anthony, Molly Gebrian, and L. Robert Slevc. 2012. Music and early language acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology 3 (327): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00327. Brown, S., M. Martinez, D. Hodges, P. Fox, and L. Parsons. 2004. The song system of the human brain. Cognitive Brain Research 20: 363–375. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2004.03.016. Chanda, Mona Lisa, and Daniel J. Levitin. 2013. The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (4): 179–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.02.007.

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Cloud Cover Music. 2018. Are you listening? https://cloudcovermusic.com/ music-­at-­work-­research. Country Music Association. 2019. The Country Listener Audience. https://www.cmaworld.com/ wp-­content/uploads/2019/11/CMA_2019CMC_Aud101web-­1.pdf Croom, Adam M. 2012. Music, neuroscience, and the psychology of well-being: A précis. Frontiers in Psychology 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00393 Dor, George Worlasi Kwasi. 2005. Uses of indigenous music genres in Ghanaian choral art music; perspectives from the works of Amu, Blege, and Dor. Ethnomusicology 49 (3): 441–475. Fancourt, Daisy, Aaron Williamon, Livia A. Carvalho, Andrew Steptoe, Rosie Dow, and Ian Lewis. 2016. Singing modulates mood, stress, cortisol, cytokine and neuropeptide activity in cancer patients and carers. Ecancermedicalscience 10: 631. Freeman, R. Edward, Adrian Keevil, and Lauren Purnell. 2011. Poor people and the politics of capitalism. Business & Professional Ethics Journal 30 (3/4): 179–194. Graham, Pauline, ed. 1995. Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of management. Washington, DC: Beard Books. Haake, Anneli B. 2011. Individual music listening in workplace settings: An exploratory survey of offices in the UK. Musicae Scientiae 15 (1): 107–129. Hatch, Mary Jo. 1998a. Jazz as a metaphor for organizing in the 21st century. Organization Science 9 (5): 556–557. ———. 1998b. Exploring the empty spaces of organizing: How improvisational jazz helps re-­ describe organizational structure. Organization Studies 20 (1): 75–100. ———. 1999. Exploring the empty spaces of organizing: How improvisational jazz helps redescribe organizational structure. Organization Studies 20 (1): 75–100. Hatch, Mary Jo, and Karl E. Weick. 1998. Critics’ corner critical resistance to the jazz metaphor. Organization Science 9 (5): 600–604. Howard, Karen. 2018. Expressing culture: Teaching and learning music of Ghana, West Africa. General Music Today 32 (1): 26–29. Huang, Sui-Chi. 1963. Musical art in early Confucian philosophy. Philosophy East 13 (1): 49–60. Jenkins, Chadwick. 2010. Tuning the soul: Pythagoras and music. In The Pythagorean theorem: The story of its power and beauty, by Alfred A.  Posamentier, 185–201. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Jones, Keith. 2005. Music in factories: A twentieth-century technique for control of the productive self. Social & Cultural Geography 6 (5): 723–744. Keeler, Kathleen, and Jose Cortina. 2018. Working to the beat: A self-regulatory framework linking music characteristics to job performance. Academy of Management Review 45 (2): 447–471. Kreutz, Gunter, Stephan Bongard, Sonja Rohrmann, Volker Hodapp, and Dorothee Grebe. 2004. Effects of choir singing or listening on secretory immunoglobulin A, cortisol, and emotional state. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 27 (6): 623–635. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1955. Tristes Tropiques. (1973 English translation by John and Doreen Weightman) New York: Atheneum. Loveday, Catherine. 2016. Music and cognition. In An introduction to applied cognitive psychology, ed. David Groome and Michael Eysenck, 307–327. New York: Routledge. McLellan, Lucy, Emma McLachlan, Laurence Perkins, and Tim Dornan. 2013. Music and health. Phenomenological investigation of a medical humanity. Advances in Health Sciences Education 18 (2): 167–179. Montagu, Jeremy. 2017. How music and instruments began: A brief overview of the origin and entire development of music, from its earliest stages. Frontiers in Sociology 2. https://doi. org/10.3389/fsoc.2017.00008. Moore, K.S. 2018. Neurologic foundations of music-based interventions. In Music therapy: Research and evidence-based practice, ed. O. S. Yinger, 15–27. Elsevier. https://doi. org/10.1016/B978-0-323-48560-9.00002-4. Moorman, Christine, and Anne S. Miner. 1998. Organizational improvisation and organizational memory. Academy of Management Review 23 (4): 698–723.

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Moss, Hilary, Julie Lynch, and Jesse O’Donoghue. 2018. Exploring the perceived health benefits of singing in a choir: an international cross-sectional mixed-methods study. Perspectives in Public Health 138 (3): 160–168. Mostel, Raphael. 1989. Music From the Time of Confucius. New York Times, April 9, 1989, section 2, page 6. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/09/arts/music-­from-­the-­time-­of-­confucius.html Reagon, Carly, Nichola Gale, Stephanie Enright, Mala Mann, and Robert van Dursen. 2016. A mixed-method systematic review to investigate the effect of group singing on health related quality of life. Complementary Therapies in Medicine 27 (August): 1–11. Reddish, Paul, Ronald Fischer, and Joseph Bulbulia. 2013. Let’s dance together: Synchrony, shared intentionality and cooperation. PLoS One 8 (8): e71182. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071182. Schneider, Catherine E., Elizabeth G. Hunter, and Shoshana H. Bardach. 2018. Potential cognitive benefits from playing music among cognitively intact older adults: A scoping review. Journal of Applied Gerontology 38 (27): 07334648177511. Shen, Sinyan. 1987. Acoustics of Ancient Chinese Bells, Scientific American, April, 1987. https:// www.scientificamerican.com/article/acoustics-­of-­ancient-­chinese-­bells/ Skaggs, Rachel. 2019. Harmonizing small-group cohesion and status in creative collaborations: How songwriters facilitate and manipulate the cowriting process. Social Psychology Quarterly 82 (4): 367–385. Stupacher, Jan, Guilherme Wood, and Matthias Witte. 2017. Synchrony and sympathy: Social Entrainment with music compared to a metronome. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain 27 (3): 158–166. Tarr, Bronwyn, Jacques Launay, and Robin I. Dunbar. 2014. Music and social bonding: “Self-other” merging and neurohormonal mechanisms. Frontiers of Social Psychology 30 (September). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01096. Thompson, W.F. 2015. Music, thought, and feeling: Understanding the psychology of music (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Thomson, Rex. 2015. In-depth with Roger McNamee, the tech investor who shaped the music business. Live for Live Music Saturday, September 26th, 2015. https://liveforlivemusic.com/ features/in-­depth-­with-­roger-­mcnamee-­the-­tech-­billionaire-­who-­shaped-­the-­music-­business/. van Ark, Allard E., and Marjo Wijnen-Meijer. 2019. Doctor Jazz: Lessons that medical professionals can learn from jazz musicians. Medical Teacher 41 (2): 201–206. van Veelen, Ruth, and Elze G.  Ufkes. 2017. Teaming up or down? A multisource study on the role of team identification and learning in the team diversity–performance link. Group & Organization Management 44 (1): 38–71. Weick, Karl E. 1998. Introductory essay—improvisation as a mindset for organizational analysis. Organization Science 9 (5): 543–555. Wiltermuth, Scott S., and Chip Heath. 2009. Synchrony and cooperation. Psychological Science 20 (1): 1–5. Adrian Keevil  is a Managing Partner for PlusTick Partners, where he is responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and managing investments for an investment fund. He teaches the core MBA courses in strategy, and business ethics at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. His academic research is focused on understanding stakeholder behaviors. His work has appeared in numerous peer reviewed journals, book chapters and conference presentations. He is a Senior Fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics and a section editor for Journal of Business Ethics. His band Dear Heavy was a contender on the New York scene in the late 1990s. In college, he was a member of the Yale Whiffenpoofs and the Baker’s Dozen, two A Capella groups. Currently he holds down a regular gig playing rhythm guitar in Ed Freeman’s band and co-writes the occasional song. He received an MBA and PhD from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and a BA from Yale.

Chapter 28

The Humanizing Potential of Paintings and Their Relevance to Business Practice Daryl Koehn

Art—specifically painting—is potentially humanizing if we understand “humanization” as the process of realizing and refining the perceptual, intellectual, and emotional capabilities of men and women in ways that are relevant to ethics and politics and to various forms of human endeavor, including the practice of business. Paintings can be said to humanize us in a multitude of ways. Through the close examination of both older and modern paintings, I argue that paintings can: 1) cultivate our observational skills, which are needed for ethically assessing situations and issues, including those arising in business; 2) suggest important new ethical ideas or standards relevant to current and future business practices; 3) challenge us to rethink long-held assumptions, including some that are current in business; 4) pose provocative ethical questions relevant to human activity in all sectors; 5) make our abstract concepts, including ethical notions such as justice, liberty, and kindness more concrete; 6) reveal aspects of the human unconscious at play in human interactions; and 7) stimulate empathy for hidden sufferers, including for those who work in business. I will take up each of these potentialities of painting in the listed order.

D. Koehn (*) Department of Philosophy, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_28

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Cultivation of Observational Skills1 To act ethically and in a genuinely humane fashion, we need to pay close attention to what is going on around, as well as inside, us. The best art invites and sustains scrutiny. It piques our interest and then reveals more and more as we engage with it. Two paintings on the theme of deception serve to illustrate what I mean. Georges de La Tour’s The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds (Fig. 28.1) shows an oblivious young aristocrat surrounded by friends of the moment. The woman in the center wears a poker face but her eyes speak volumes. They signal that it is time to start the scam. The serving girl seeks to distract distracts the young man by generously offering him wine (and cleavage). She will reach in front of the man to her right, shielding him from view as he pulls out the illicit cards. The painting as a whole offers insight into how people are cheated. Our gullibility and naïveté lead us to put too much faith in the rules of the game. Trusting in rules, we fail to attend to how the game is actually being played. La Tour offers us a kind of systems view. Men, women, host, servant, fellow guest—all may be part of a setup designed to take advantage of the unwary. So we should not become too fixated on the behavior of single individuals, a salutary caution for business ethics students. La Tour, with his famous lighting technique, brings everything out into the open. It is as if he is saying, “All will be revealed if only you keep your wits about you and

Fig. 28.1  George de La Tour, The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds {{PD-US}} 1  Select portions of  this section appeared previously in  Daryl Koehn, Ethics, Morality, and  Art in  the  Classroom: Positive and  Negative Relations, Journal of  Business Ethics Education 7:213–232 (2010).

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open your eyes wide.” The painting virtually summons us to pay attention. The older woman looks at the serving girl who looks at the cheater with the cards who looks outside the picture at the viewer, inviting us to be in on the deception. La Tour’s painting reminds us that we cannot act ethically if we rely extensively upon moral rules and norms and upon what we have been told about how the world operates. We need the insights that come only from experience enriched by reflection and by close monitoring of human behavior. This enrichment occurs only when we approach life in an open and attentive way. In that respect, art like La Tour’s asks us not to be obsessed with particular goals but rather to observe in an open-ended way without any concrete or particular end in sight. Again, there is a lesson here for students and teachers of business ethics: Instead of rushing to judgment, we need to spend time evaluating just what is really going on in a particular case. Caravaggio’s The Cardsharps (Fig. 28.2) is perhaps even more ethically illuminating than La Tour’s painting on the same theme. Again we have a card game in which a young man, absorbed in his hand, is about to be cheated. The older man to the youth’s left (i.e., on the boy’s “sinister” side) is signaling to his partner on his left either which cards their “mark” has or which cards should be played by the partner. Only one of his eyes is visible, giving him a rather menacing, piratical look. The youthful partner across the table reaches for a secreted card. So far, so good. But as befits a master painter, Caravaggio invites us to cast a second look at the action. A more sustained gaze reveals the older man’s hidden left hand, rests close to his partner’s dagger. Is a double-cross in the making? Will the one-eyed man seize the dagger and accuse his partner of trying to cheat the inattentive player? Are we witnessing the cheating of a cheat? If so, to what end?

Fig. 28.2  Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Cardsharps {{PD-US}}

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Through skillful composition, Caravaggio directs our attention to what he wants the viewer to see initially. If we rest easy with our first glance, we likely will congratulate ourselves on possessing the perspicacity the younger card player clearly lacks. We will pride ourselves on perceiving that the moral prohibitions against lying and cheating are about to be violated. But, like any good con, Caravaggio is simultaneously working several angles. If we are going to refine our ethical discernment, we must, Caravaggio suggests, learn to suspend our feelings of moral righteousness and direct our focus to that which retreats into the shadows. Every illumination hides at the same time as it reveals. Caravaggio shows us that moral judgments are tricky. Although we may have perceived some aspect of the whole, a single perception and judgment does not reveal everything that is relevant to the situation at hand. La Tour adopted Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, using it to awaken the inner eye resident in every man and woman. However, in the process of simplifying, La Tour sacrificed something of his teacher’s complex vision. Caravaggio, in my view, does a better job of putting the ethical and moral into conversation with each other. Morality looks for violations; ethics asks us to live with the questions: “What is going on here?” and “Have we correctly perceived the truth?” One might say that morality concerns itself with issues of legitimate governance, while ethics focuses more on awareness. Art can help to educate our eye (and other sense organs) so that we can become more adept at simply perceiving. Learning to play close attention to what is before one’s very eyes is a key skill in business. While there is value in one’s initial gut impression (Gladwell 2007), the situations we encounter frequently are complex. They merit a second and careful look. Successful investors know that it pays to drill down into a firm’s financial statements. Potential problems with receivables, for example, may not be apparent if one only casts a cursory glance over relevant documents. As many major ethics scandals have shown, the devil is in the detail—e.g., the footnotes of disclosures. Traders understand that they need to know what new laws are coming into effect, where shortages of raw materials are appearing, who is possibly fomenting unrest in a given country. These happenings move markets, and consequently, need to be attended to by businesspeople who want to thrive in a fast-paced, complicated world.

Introduce Provocative New Ethical Ideas Often works of art both express ethical standards and suggest new norms or ideas. Although Dante was steeped in Christian morality, his Inferno (Part One of The Divine Comedy) subtly challenges key elements of that morality. Christianity tends to construe wickedness or evil as intentional or malicious wrongdoing. Dante, however, suggests that being wicked or sinful is less a matter of malice and more a matter of a faulty understanding, which leads an individual to become trapped in repetitive behaviors that produce suffering. That is why in so many regions of hell sinners are condemned to move ceaselessly in a circle.

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Everyone in hell suffers from a defect in intellect (Dante 1890). Take the case of the lustful. In the first circle of hell, Dante encounters Paolo Malatesta and Francesca de Rimini. The great Dante engraver Gustave Doré depicts the two sinners as follows (Fig. 28.3). The two lovers (murdered by Francesca’s jealous husband) are jointly blown hither and thither by a kind of passionate wind. The various lovers and couples are being driven in a clockwise direction across the frame. It is a though these human beings have lost the ability to initiate their own actions. Having mistakenly given themselves over to lust, that passion controls them rather than the reverse. Doré depicts the two lovers as fused. They are lost in each other, unable to see or care for anything else in the world or to perceive themselves and their condition accurately. They are not, however, happy. Dante describes how their lust arose. Francesca, the wife of Giovanni Malatesta, meets with her husband’s brother Paolo, her tutor. Together they begin to read a book detailing the legend of King Arthur. When they get to the part where Lancelot and Guinevere indulge in an adulterous kiss, Paolo and Francesca similarly fall into each other’s arms. So, for Dante, lust is not merely an inordinate craving for sexual pleasure. It is not even an established habit of inordinate craving. Rather lust is the giving over of one’s agency to a partner, who like oneself, is in thrall to an image without realizing that his or her beloved is merely an image. Lust is thus an unconscious divorcing of

Fig. 28.3  Gustave Doré, The Divine Comedy, Plate 18 {{PD-US}}

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oneself from reality. Doré is able brilliantly to capture this essence of lust, for, in his painting, it is an image who gazes upon another image. As a viewer who is aware that the painting is an image—in this case, a painted image of the verbal image from Dante’s Inferno—we are in a position to step back and to reflect on what we are seeing. Unlike the imaged Francesca and Paolo, we can discern more clearly the exact nature of the sin—in this case, the sin of lust. If so, then, Doré’s painting, by grounding us more firmly in reality, can even be said to foster virtue. Of course, we must internalize the insight, but art makes it possible for us to do so. Paintings can be productively used in a business ethics class to push students to think more deeply about why certain behaviors or sins are so evil and destructive. Moreover, art can lead students to look beyond merely conventional understandings of wrongdoing—e.g., that lust is bad because the lustful treat persons as means to sexual gratification rather than as ends in themselves. Students can come to see that wrongdoing is bad for the erring agents themselves as well since it damages their connection with reality. To take another sin perhaps more closely implicated in business practice—greed. Dante portrays the insatiable desire to acquire wealth—money to be spent or saved—as a pushing of heavy stones or weights with one’s chest in an endless circle. The spenders move on one half of the circle, the hoarders the other. The two groups smash their weights into each other. At the moment of collision, the hoarders yell at the spenders, “Why do you squander?”; the spenders return the favor, screaming “Why do you hoard?”. Each group thinks it is better than the other, thereby failing to grasp that hoarding and spending represent two sides of the same coin. Thus it is no accident that the two groups are virtually indistinguishable. The point is clear in Doré’s engraving: the viewer cannot discern which are hoarders and which are spenders. In addition, Doré (Fig. 28.4) nicely captures the way in these sinners’ greed has become their sole focus. They see nothing of the larger world; their greed has shrunk their field of vision to their “stone”. They do not even see any of their fellow travelers. Nor do they perceive the futility of their efforts. For, as Virgil explains to Dante, Fortune continually shifts human beings’ assets among nations and peoples in unpredictable and unfathomable ways. In other words, the hoarders and spenders have failed to reflect upon and consider the effects of fortune upon their lives. In a sense, they resemble the lustful who have allowed their passion to overpower their reason. In other way, they are ethically worse and suffer more than the Paolos and Francescas of the world because these hoarders and spenders have not merely failed to use their intellect. They have adopted a flawed plan or principle—namely, to spend time and energy pursuing material things that ultimately are disposed of by Fortune and thus do not fall within their control. The genuinely radical Dantean notion (captured in these Doré engravings) is that we do not need to pray or to wait for divine punishment in order to see justice done in the world. The Dantean hell is a place of perfect justice (Dante 1890). All sinners get exactly what is their due because their sins are their punishment. These sins reflect and embody some illusion to which the sinners are unwittingly committed.

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Fig. 28.4  Gustave Doré, Punishment of the Avaricious and the Prodigal {{PD-US}}

This illusion reduces their agency while at the same time inflicting a suffering that they cannot ameliorate precisely because they do not understand that they are in the grip of this illusion.

Challenge Us to Rethink Long-Held Assumptions Malcolm Gladwell (2013) recounts the well-known Biblical story of David and Goliath. On the standard interpretation, David is the young Israelite underdog. He has only a slingshot with which to fell the gigantic and well-armed Philistine Goliath. But Gladwell, echoing the recent research of many academic scholars, points out that, in fact, David is in the stronger position for a variety of reasons. First, the fact that Goliath is led on to the field by an attendant, prompting modern scholars to hypothesize that Goliath suffered from vision problems caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland, a tumor that led to Goliath’s giantism. Second, since David is not wearing armor, he can move very quickly. Modern calculations suggest that David could have taken his stance, loaded his sling, and hit Goliath in less than second; the rock coming off of his sling would have had the stopping power of a modern handgun (Gladwell 2013). Third, David catches Goliath by surprise, Goliath is expecting to fight a heavy infantry warrior armed to the hilt. David sticks with what he knows from his life as a shepherd—how to kill wild animals as a projectile warrior (Fig. 28.5).

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Fig. 28.5 Osmar Schindler, David und Goliath {{PD-US}}

When examined closely, this Osmar Schindler lithograph depicting the encounter between David and Goliath intimates what Gladwell explicitly contends— namely, that David is in the superior position. Notice how David is already starting to swing his weapon. Goliath either does not see the threat or hubristically ignores it. In either case, Schindler’s David has a clear shot at Goliath’s unprotected upper body, throat and face. In fact, the laughing Goliath seems off balance and looks as though he is already teetering backwards—a suggestion that he will prove to be the loser, not the victor. As in the Biblical account, Goliath has an assistant armor bearer, perhaps because this giant is visually challenged and needs someone to guide him onto the field. In any case, Goliath has chosen not to use the shield. He clearly expects that David will come forward and engage him in hand to hand combat. David, however, keeps his distance. He places himself at nice advantage on the raised stone and assumes his slinging stance. Schindler’s Goliath, like Gladwell’s, literally does not know what is about to hit him. The gigantic Goliath simply assumes that his large size and the fighting methods he has used in the past will again carry the day. In business, too, a larger size is often assumed to be an advantage. Larger markets with more participants are able to sustain a greater variety of goods. The

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product space is more crowded, so profit margins generally go down over time. Realizing as much, firms may opt to become larger in order to realize economies of scale with a view to being able to at least break even. Since larger firms typically can spread research and development costs of a more product lines, process innovation is fostered within bigger corporations (Desmet and Parente 2010). Developments in information technology have enabled larger corporations to become more responsive to customers and nimble in their response to market changes (Lawler 1997). On the other hand, a number of studies have shown that, in business, large corporations are often at a significant disadvantage. Consider the case of mutual funds: “Bloated portfolios are harder to manage; there are fewer places for the new cash, forcing the manager to either hold on to it, or deploy it in less-attractive investments. Neither is good for shareholders.” (Strauss 2014, 45). The 2008 financial crisis raised concerns about banks that have become so large that the market can no longer discipline them. A recent survey of buyers found that, during times of economic hardship, small suppliers may be preferable to larger ones. Small suppliers, like David, are small but more agile. They may also be more responsive and be more focused on their customers (Kanter 2008). So the question of whether bigger operations and more products requires a nuanced answer. Despite the fact that CEOs consistently talk about increased growth, the image of David and Goliath should give us pause. Sometimes size itself can become an obstacle to acting and responding well to stakeholders and to changing circumstances. As long as Goliath could fight the way he had battled in the past, David did not stand a chance. But David refused to engage on Goliath’s terms. Painters and paintings have the power of portraying things, relations, and facts that we have believed to be true in a new way. That new depiction can shake us up and cause us to re-evaluate beliefs that may be little more than prejudices.

Pose Provocative Ethical Questions Paintings are frequently profoundly ambiguous in a way that philosophical arguments typically are not. The “arts …celebrate imagination, multiple perspectives, and the importance of personal interpretation” (Eisner 1992, 594). So paintings can be said to be ethical in rather a special sense. They help viewers to mold their own sensibilities and to develop their faculties, and they invite us to converse with others as well as with ourselves: Ideally, ethical behavior results when people publicly struggle with difficult questions, excavating differing views and stances and creating formats in which to work toward resolutions and common ground … Ethical inquiry is a way of creating the proverbial town meeting in which voices are raised so that the struggle can be heard. This image helps researchers to focus on the process of ethical inquiry, not simply on its outcomes. The guiding assumption behind this image is the fuller the process, the more open-ended and unbounded the conversation, and, therefore, the greater the chorus of voices and the richer the outcome (Kahn 1990, 314).

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Fig. 28.6  Jan Steen, The Merry Family {{PD-US}}

Jan Steen’s The Merry Family is a wonderful example of an ambiguous painting that poses some provocative questions and invites viewers to discuss with others what exactly they are seeing (Fig. 28.6). The painting is often interpreted as a moralistic warning against lax parenting. In the painting, the elders are drinking and making merry as musicians play around the table. The mother is prominently situated in the painting’s center, showing a fair amount of cleavage, which the painter provocatively highlights with the beam of light coming in from the window. The youngsters appear to be unsupervised. The young fellow in the window is enjoying a pipe of tobacco. In the foreground, the daughter is pouring wine for the very young son. In general, the scene seems somewhat chaotic and unsanitary. Utensils and drinking vessels are on the floor; a dog is begging at the table. But the import of the painting is not as clear as one might initially suppose. In the first place, the family appears to be genuinely happy. They are sharing in an innocent past time of making music. The children are not out on the street; and the elders are not brawling or frequenting a whorehouse. The overall scene could thus be read as an endorsement of the arts: The family that plays music together stays together. Indeed, the paper in the upper right corner proclaims the Dutch proverb “As the old sing, so the children pipe”. Although the proverb can certainly be read as a judgment on bad parenting, it can equally be interpreted more neutrally or even positively as an observation on the lasting power of parental examples. Moreover, Steen sometimes used his own family members as live models. Would he have asked his own sons and daughters to act viciously or in a debauched way, thereby putting their

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welfare at risk? Is it not equally likely that he was inviting them to share in the exciting and engaging process of producing art? The simple fact that Steen does not answer these questions, but simply visually poses them, means, at a minimum, that he thought we could think for ourselves. If so, then habituation itself may not be as controlling as the Dutch proverb suggests. Thought can interrupt and challenge habits of action and thought, an optimistic insight relevant to business ethics education and corporate ethics program alike. If our past experience is not destiny, then the painting slyly undermines its own moralizing.

Expand Our Ethical Concepts and Make Them Concrete The fine arts, including painting, have the wonderful ability to expand our concepts. To understand what I mean by this claim, I will draw upon Kant’s notion of an aesthetic idea. In effect, aesthetic ideas indirectly present what cannot be presented directly (the idea of freedom, as opposed to the concept of a chair, for example). To take Kant’s own example: “Jupiter’s eagle with the lightening in its claws” expands the idea of God’s majesty by presenting it aesthetically. What Kant calls the “logical” attributes of an object, in this God, would be those in virtue of which it fulfills a concept, in this case majesty. Jupiter’s eagle…by contrast is a metaphorical expression of those same attributes, thought which we are encouraged to envisage God’s majesty in the light of the thoughts provoked by Jupiter’s eagle, thereby opening up a rich seam of associations (Costello 2007).

So a painting can enlarge our thinking because it presents ideas that our intuition cannot entertain because these ideas lack a direct sensible form. Kant puts the point this way: [A]esthetic attributes … prompt the imagination to spread over a multitude of kindred presentations that arouse more thought than can be expressed in a concept determined by words. These aesthetic attributes yield an aesthetic idea … its proper function is to quicken the mind by opening up for it a view into an immense realm of kindred presentations (Kant 1987, 183–184).

To illustrate Kant’s aesthetic idea, let us think about Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (Fig.  28.7). Delacroix paints the woman Marianne as the embodiment of the spirit of liberty. We see her clambering over the barracks, stepping on the bodies of fallen souls who gave their lives for the sake of freedom. Her upright posture conveys the dignity of the human spirit that desires to be free. Her forward movement suggests that liberty will prevail in the long run. However, we may have to fight repeatedly to secure liberty. Liberty extends to men and women, to the young and old alike, all of who appear in Delacroix’s painting. So liberty seems to have deep connections with equality as well. In Kantian terms, the painting of liberty brings together and unites all of these aspects into one aesthetic idea of liberty.

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Fig. 28.7  Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People {{PD-US}}

In this respect, fine art can function not only to expand our thinking but also to make abstract concepts of liberty, beauty, welfare, etc. more sensual and thus more concrete. However, it can simultaneously stimulate us to consider more troubling or darker aspects of abstract ideas. As we scrutinize Delacroix’s painting, we discover that the spirit of liberty is not unduly concerned about the individuality of the dead who are underfoot. They appear primarily as sacrificial bodies, not as individual persons. Her forward motion intimates as well a connection between our modern notion of liberty and movements, which can be dangerous for a variety of reasons (Arendt 1951). So a painting such as Delacroix’s can also prompt us to think more carefully and deeply about possible differences between liberty and license. All of these elements of an expanded and concretized aesthetic idea of liberty could and should be considered if we want to maintain that the free market promotes liberty or that employees and other stakeholders are able to act freely within a given economic system.

Reveal Aspects of Our Unconscious In some cases, painters may unwittingly disclose some dimensions of their character and thinking. Like slips of the tongue, such disclosures can be extremely revealing of how the human unconscious sometimes operates. Take a close look at Nathan

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Greene’s The Senior Partner (2019) at http://www.nathangreene.com/product_ print/147/33. Greene self-identifies as a Christian painter and promotes his painting as follows: This painting acknowledges the importance of involving Christ in the professional arena. In this striking image, Jesus is introduced as The Senior Partner. Displaying this piece ­prominently in your business will convey your Christian principles and values to your business associates, customers, and staff (Greene 2019).

Here two businessmen have apparently begun to establish a relationship. Or perhaps they have just sealed a lucrative deal. The presence of Jesus standing behind the man on the right presumably signifies that this man is a person of unimpeachable integrity. When the man on the left reaches out to shake hands, he is shown shaking the hand of Jesus! In other words, Jesus and the businessman on the right on one and the same persons. The painting may strike some viewers as bordering on blasphemy. Unlike Christ, no human being is free from sin. Sometimes we are “in” integrity and sometimes we are “out” of it. By conflating Christ and the dealmaker, the painter, in effect, turns one type of individual—the self-identifying Christian businessman—into God. Other viewers may perceive the painting as unwittingly comical. To act as a person of integrity is extremely difficult. Yet the painting suggests that we can easily identify people of integrity simply by checking whether they profess themselves to be Christian. As long as we think we are following God’s directives, we, too, can know we are ethically good. Indeed, the painter Greene’s website cites Proverbs 3: 6: “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths”. The painting’s sales tagline continues: “Displaying this piece prominently in your business will convey your Christian principles and values to your business associates, customers, and staff” (Greene 2019). Would that worldly affairs were always so simple. Integrity (if it is a virtue) is hard because we are so prone to sin, often unconsciously. Integrity matters precisely because we are sinners, yet that is what the painting denies by deifying the businessman on the right. The painting thus seems naively incongruous, giving it a farcical tinge. Indeed, the painting inadvertently reveals precisely the extent of our unconscious sinning. The fact that the very white Christ-figure is positioned behind the darker skinned businessman suggests that those aspects of us—our dark or unconscious feelings or beliefs that have not yet been brought to light—are either secretly controlling or, at least, influencing our choices. The white customer may feel that he can trust his dark counterpart only insofar as he is really interacting with another white man—i.e., Jesus. Notice that the white customer shakes Christ’s hand, not that of the actual, real, present human being in the room. And, in fact, it is not uncommon in business for customers or employees to prefer to interact with those who are like them. Male customers may not come right out and say that they want to deal only with other men, but they may hint as much. At some level, we may feel that others are more trustworthy when they are apparently or superficially akin to us—in religion, race, gender, etc. Thus, it is not surprising to find that artists, too, embody and portray our unacknowledged and unconscious prejudices, biases, etc. One of the

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uncommented upon strengths of art works is that these made objects can capture our potential biases and put them on the canvas for us to see, ponder, and explore at our leisure. Art enables us to conduct this exploration at our leisure and in a non-­ confrontational way. We can then bring what we learn back to the classroom, workplace, and public space.

Stimulate Empathy Among Persons Paintings have the ability to foreground hidden suffering, thereby inviting us (as citizens, stakeholders, and fellow business practitioners) to consider in a more empathic fashion the untoward effects of business and economic activity on our fellow human beings (Fig. 28.8). It is fashionable in some circles to rail against capitalists and those who have chosen to work in business enterprises. Yet Peter Ravn’s recent series of paintings of businessmen remind us that even apparently successful “suits” may be despondent, frustrated, depressed. Ravn does not give the viewer any back story for his images. But it does not take much imagination to perceive the despair in this subject. The white line suggests a path to success, but this man has left the path, perhaps by choice or under pressure. He has literally “hit a wall”. His worn shoes attest to a past history of effort, striving, motion. He’s pushing off with his left foot and has his left shoulder to the wall. It seems, though, that he can go no further. Yet he has come to

Fig. 28.8  Peter Ravn, The Stop, 2018. Oil on canvas. 80 × 80 cm. (Photo: Dorte Krogh)

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a literal and metaphorical stop—in his career and in his life as well. His hanging head suggests that he is giving up. Of course, I am not claiming that every businessperson is depressed. I am suggesting rather that paintings (and fine art in general) are able to stimulate our empathy at a gut level, taking us out of the realm of abstraction and asking us to contemplate the particular case at hand. It is often easy to hate abstract stereotypes. It is far more difficult to demonize the face, body, and physical look of a particular individual.

Conclusion With few exceptions (Boas 1968; Koehn 2010; Michaelson 2016; Brinkmann 2017), business ethicists and businesspeople alike have largely ignored the various significant ways in which the fine arts, particularly painting, can promote more ethically sound behavior. The arts can do so in a variety of ways. One major way is through the humanization of the person. As we have seen, paintings can refine and actualize human capabilities by 1) cultivating our observational skills, which are needed for ethically assessing situations and issues, including those arising in business; 2) suggesting important new ethical ideas or standards relevant to current and future business practices; 3) challenging us to rethink long-held assumptions, some of which underlie current business practices; 4) posing provocative ethical questions; 5) making our abstract concepts, including ethical notions such as justice, liberty, and kindness more concrete; 6) revealing aspects of the human unconscious that are operative in various practices, including those of business; and 7) stimulating empathy for hidden sufferers Although not every painting has one or more of these humanizing powers, many do possess such powers. Consequently, business ethicists should consider incorporating paintings into ethics courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Of course, pedagogy that draws upon the fine arts has its limits. Some students are unrepentant haters of business who dismiss all businesspeople as greedy capitalists. These students are not likely to be moved by, say, a portrait of a businessman in despair. In other cases, individuals are too obsessed with career success or too distracted by quotidian matters to devote time to contemplating paintings. But that is just to say that no book, painting, piece of music, poem, or instruction in general can reach those who have no interest in learning about the human condition. For those who do have such an interest, paintings offer a rich vein of instruction. Not only pedagogues but businesses themselves could productively enlarge their sense of ethics. Instead of concentrating exclusively on compliance, rules, and value statements, businesses could easily supplement these foci by drawing upon the arts. Paintings could be brought into in-house ethics instruction and training. Leaders could even show the occasional work of art as part of business presentations. Doing so could hardly hurt and might well serve to engage employees at a more visceral — and dare one say it? — human level.

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References Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Schocken. Boas, George. 1968. Art, morals, and the teaching of art. Journal of Aesthetic Education 2 (3): 93–104. Brinkmann, Johannes. 2017. Nathan the Wise. Journal of Business Ethics Education 14: 179–198. Costello, Diarmuid. 2007. Greenberg’s Kant and the fate of aesthetics in contemporary art theory. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2): 217–228. Dante, Alighieri. 1890. Dante Alighieri’s inferno from the original by Dante Alighieri and illustrated with the designs of Gustave Doré. New York: Cassell Publishing Company. Desmet, Klaus, and Stephen Parente. 2010. Bigger is better: Market size, demand elasticity, and innovation. International Economic Review 51 (2): 319–333. Eisner, Elliot. 1992. The misunderstood role of the arts in human development. The Phi Delta Kappan 73 (8): 591–595. Gladwell, Malcolm. 2007. Blink. New York: Back Bay Books. ———. 2013. David and Goliath: Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling giants. New York: Little, Brown and Co. Greene, Nathan. 2019. The senior partner. http://www.nathangreene.com/product_print/147/33 Kahn, W. 1990. Toward an agenda for business ethics research. The Academy of Management Review 15 (2): 311–328. Kant, Immanuel. 1987 Critique of judgment. Trans. Werner Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co. Kanter, John. 2008. Bigger is not always better. Supply Management 13 (18): 11. Koehn, Daryl. 2010. Ethics, morality and art in the classroom: Positive and negative relations. Journal of Business Ethics Education 7: 213–232. Lawler, Edward E., III. 1997. Rethinking organization size. Organizational Dynamics 26: 24–35. Michaelson, Christopher. 2016. A novel approach to business ethics education: Exploring how to live and work in the 21st century. Academy of Management Learning & Education 15 (3): 588–606. Ravn, Peter. 2018. The stop. Image permission obtained directly from artist. Strauss, Lawrence. 2014. When bigger is not always better. Barron's 94 (24): 45. Daryl Koehn is the Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Managing Director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics (IBPE) at DePaul University in Chicago. She has published widely in the fields of ethics, political theory, and corporate governance. Her monographs include The Ground of Professional Ethics; The Nature of Evil; Rethinking Feminist Ethics; Local Insights, Global Ethics; anLiving with the Dragon: Thinking and Acting Ethically in a World of Unintended Consequences, and Toward a New (Old) Theory of Responsibility. Edited volumes include Corporate Governance: Ethics across the Board; Ethics and Aesthetics in Business Ethics; and Business, Corporate Governance and Civil Society (Professor Lu Xiaohe, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences as primary editor) In addition, she has published scores of articles in the Harvard Business Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics and numerous other journals. She consults regularly with major corporations and has served on a major corporation’s compliance committee. As one of the first women Rhodes Scholars, she has been profiled in Time and Life magazines.  

Chapter 29

Unfolding Business and Stakeholder Relationships: The Heuristic Drawing Process Tool Elisabet Garriga

Introduction Businesses spend a great deal of time and resources to communicate and engage with stakeholders, usually through formal and informal communication channels. Workshops, focus groups, events, presentations, and meetings are some of the day-to-day interactions through which businesses relate with their stakeholders. As a result, businesses maintain different types of relationships with their stakeholders; some of them, more sporadic and intermittent, others more frequent and stable, and all of them move in a spectrum from antagonistic to more collaborative. In fact, the range of stakeholder relationships varies greatly, and no business has a unique uniform type of relationship within a stakeholder group or with all its stakeholder groups. Precisely, in order to be able to create value, businesses must be able deal with a wide spectrum of stakeholder relationships. Stakeholder engagement is the process by which the company, through its activities, manages to nurture a positive attitude amongst its stakeholders (Greenwood 2007). There has been a great deal of theoretical, as well as, empirical research into the stakeholder engagement field. Most of this research has focused on describing stakeholder or business attributes, whilst very little research has centered on the attributes of the relationship (Greenwood 2007). The most widely used methodology in such research is the case study, using interviews or focus groups and a variety of data collecting techniques including surveys or questionnaires. Quantitative studies are also popular and show whether, and to what degree, a relationship exists between two or more variables within a sample, showing correlations/ causality between such variables; usually the company’s actions and stakeholder engagement results (Winkler et al. 2019). E. Garriga (*) Strategy, Leadership, People Department, EADA Business School, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_29

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According to Freeman et al. (2017), the content of the stakeholder’s engagement processes and activities depends on the problem that it aims to solve. Which is this problem? Formulating the problem/s and their causes is a task all on its own in stakeholder engagement. Why? Because sometimes unconscious and emotional aspects exist that are not always obvious to the members of the relationship (to both business and stakeholders) while identifying and formulating problems. In addition, most of the time problems are formulated poorly by the business or by the stakeholders; or are taken for granted. Despite the abundant stakeholder engagement research, few studies have focused on the process of defining and formulating problems in business and stakeholder relationships. Freeman and Greenwood (2020) have argued that in order to introduce new research questions, we also need to come up with new methodologies. This is precisely the objective of this chapter, to present the Heuristic Drawing Process Tool (hereafter HDPT) that aims to identify, in a relational way, the problems and aspects that need to be improved on in a business and stakeholder relationship, as well as the solutions, whilst acknowledging the diversity and multidimensionality of business and stakeholder relationships. The new tool is based on a pragmatism approach on language, communication, and knowledge, which relies mainly on both images (drawings/ pictorial representations of the relationships) and words (generating new narratives through the descriptions of these images/ drawings). This procedure enables the parties to talk about the relationship with a new vocabulary, and, it introduces a new type of dialogue and conversations, encouraging participants to share ideas that result in a joint engagement action reached through consensus to create a common purpose, thus, improving the business and stakeholder connections. This procedure brings out all types of emotional and unconscious aspects that are often hidden and censored. The structure of the chapter is the following. First, we will present a brief review of the stakeholder engagement literature and we outline how this tool fits in, as well as, the tool’s philosophical approach. We will explain the heuristic drawing process tool in detail and apply it in three stakeholder relationships and in two different companies. In the last phase, we will briefly discuss the findings and future research.

Stakeholder Engagement There is an abundance of research on stakeholder engagement (Passetti et al. 2019; Winkler et al. 2019; Freeman et al. 2017). On one hand, one stream reflects a business case approach (Archel et  al. 2011; Georgakopoulos and Thomson 2008; Gallhofer et al. 2015) dominated by the achievement of company interests and realized through rhetorical communication (Tregidga et  al. 2014) using a top–down approach to engagement. In these cases, the interests and perspectives of stakeholders are only marginally considered (Unerman and Bennett 2004). On the other hand, the other stream of research (Passetti et  al. 2019) reflects the stakeholder case, which it considers the stakeholder perspective as essential for a rich and

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comprehensive understanding of the relationship (Laplume et al. 2008) where the language and the heterogeneity of discourse matter (Brown and Dillars 2013) and where is debate, in which the stakeholders involved can express their differences, conflicts and divergences without the fear of being penalized. In such an approach, stakeholder engagement becomes a process of consultation, dialogue and exchange processes with stakeholders for mutual benefit. Freeman et al. (2017) have argued that the type, the content and the result of these processes depends on the problem that stakeholder engagement is trying to solve. However, we consider that the definition and formulation of the problem is itself a task (and on several occasions, quite a complex task) that requires a multi-step process, which at the same time entails and facilitates the solution process. We propose a tool, the HDPT that enables to identify and formulate the problems in the relationship between a business and its stakeholders, as well as the solution (a joint engagement action). Among the different types of stakeholder engagement tools, the tool we propose, the HDPT, is rooted in the pragmatism approach of Dewey (1934), Rorty (1989, 1991a) and Davidson (2001a, b, 2004, 2005) and was inspired from Preziosa’s (2016) method of intervention. The pragmatism approach to knowledge, communication and language has strongly influenced the purpose and the design of the tool and its application. The HDPT is based on the following three core pragmatist ideas, which underlie the purpose and design of the tool: First, there is not only “single/unique” way or the “right” way (adequate way) to describe the business and stakeholder relationship. In the first chapter of his book, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Rorty (1989) breaks completely with the notion of language having a representative role, something that can be “adequate” or “inadequate” to the world. First, he postulates the “linguistic turn” whereby language is a tool created by humans to deal with the world; and there is no other way to deal with the world than through language. The great deductable conclusion of the “linguistic turn,” in his view, is that the truth is only attributable to our propositions about the world, a property of linguistic entities and these propositions are part of human languages, and these are human creations. Therefore, our languages are facts that are built, not found. That means that we can create new vocabularies and new lexicon that replace the old vocabulary and lexicons. Rorty (1989) assesses that “intellectual life matters precisely because we can offer descriptions and re-­ descriptions of what we humans do, which allows us to liver better” (1989, p. 24). If this is the case, the main human faculty is imagination that allows us to discover and design possible worlds, and build new words and vocabularies rather than the reason: “What the romantics expressed in stating that imagination, and not reason, is the fundamental human faculty was the discovery that the main instrument of cultural change is the talent of speaking differently rather than the talent of arguing well” Rorty (1989, p.28). The superiority of the reason (Plato and Kant’s vision of human beings as divided between the realms of reason and passion, which are opposed to each other, whereby the rational part is placed in a commanding position, and desires and sentiments are to be controlled, disciplined or expelled) is

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rejected by the pragmatist approach. Rorty (1989) attempts to re-establish the central role that emotions had played in the early Enlightenment. Second, the new narratives and vocabularies describe and re-describe experiences, emotions, and feelings. Drawing on both Darwin and James, Dewey (1934, 1894, 1895) rejects the supposition that emotions are comprised of states or processes only physically located within the individual subject, and more specifically within the subject’s brain. Instead, Dewey argues that emotions are made up of both internal (neural and physiological activity, phenomenal properties, cognitive judgments) and external processes (expressive behavior, ongoing ‘transactions’ with the surrounding environment). In Dewey, emotions are coming through tension. When a salient issue blocks behavior, emotion is aroused when one is not able to adapt adequately to a situation (conflict, what to do?). Emotions mark the inhibition of habits and announces the phase of re-adjustment that is the tension between the object and the response. All these aspects are composite parts of emotions: what Dewey terms the ‘concrete whole’ of experience. For Dewey, the concept of experience is a key concept a “starting point and terminal point, as setting problems and as testing proposed solutions” because “things—anything, everything, in the ordinary or non-technical use of the term ‘thing’—are what they are experienced as” (1895: 158). Rorty (1991b) emphasized the discourse with a linguistic turn over the Dewey’s concrete whole experience concept, stressing the importance of new vocabularies and narratives for describing emotions and feelings. In this regard, Rorty has assessed that Freud provided a richer vocabulary to talk about emotions; as unconscious, instinctual origins, cathexes, physic energies, and describing emotions by pleasant and unpleasant. Third, what matters to the new narratives and new vocabularies is their usefulness that is their contribution to business and stakeholders to live better, bringing out social hope and freedom in their relationships. In this sense, we argue that the new vocabulary is useful as long as it throws light on the solution of the main problems in the business-stakeholder relationships with new projects (freedom) and hope for creating more value (all types of value: not only economic or social value) which allows them to live better. In this sense, Rorty (1989) has explained that we need to replace the idea of “truth”, as the goal of inquiry, with the goals of “hope” and “freedom.” This is not an easy task, because businesses allocate a lot of resources (time and effort) to defining their mission, vision and values, with a specific “standard” vocabulary and narratives that in some cases are used rhetorically and instrumentally (transmitted Top-Down to stakeholders). Consequently, the mission and vision’ vocabulary are often imposed words that could not have meaning for the stakeholders. The HDPT works to unfold the business-stakeholder relationship by generating new vocabulary and narratives that matters and have a meaning to them.

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The HDPT The HDPT consists of a heuristic process, which has three main objectives: The first objective is to formulate problems and aspects that are not working or aspects that need to be improved in the business and stakeholder relationship. The HDPT generates new narratives that unfold all the following dimensions of such problems: 1. New words and expressions. The, relaxed, playful atmosphere of the HDPT has the advantage that it encourages participants to introduce a wide range of expressions and vocabulary about the relationship, about the business and about the stakeholder, which other types of tools and contexts do not facilitate. The result are new types of narrative talking about the relationship and its problems. 2. Emotions and feelings. Participants in the HDPT express their emotions, to bring out both pleasant (joy or esprit de corps) and unpleasant (frustration or anxiety) emotions and feelings about the relationship without the fear of being censored (either by drawing it or by talking about it). 3. Unconscious motives. Unconscious motives are a powerful force in defining ourselves, and this is the case for stakeholders, whether these stakeholders are employees, customers or suppliers. Since Freud, bringing unconscious motives to light has been important for us in order to understand why one sees the world and acts as one does. Unfolding business and stakeholder relationships could lead business and stakeholders to surprises and novelty. Participants in the HDPT share conversations on topics which could have never been jointly discussed openly. It discovers pleasant emotions (and aspects to be proud of) but also unpleasant emotions, which stakeholders do not feel comfortable with. The second objective is to solve the problem or to improve the relationship by engaging participants to commit themselves to a specific objective or goal, and to the corresponding mutually agreed action plan. The HDTP, explicitly and implicitly engages the business and the stakeholders to talk about the aspirations they all have. They do not just speak about what the relationship is but also focus on talking about what the relationship wants to become. The tool’s third and final objective is to create greater connection with the stakeholders. The tool constitutes an opportunity to discover new ways to connect with stakeholders other than by listening, answering, or asking in formal or informal communication channels (meetings, questions, interviews, focus groups). The HDPT allows us to unfold the relationship, usually in a cathartic process (unfolding negative emotions and the unconscious motives) and a consequence of this is that it creates greater connection. In the workshop, especially in the reading phase, the emphasis is not only on finding the words but also on the processes of inquiry associated with the conversations concerning what is going on and what we can do to improve it (solutions).

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Phases of the HDPT The HDPT consists of a workshop, divided up to four main phases: the preparation phase, the drawings phase, the reading phase and finally, the synthesis and engagement phase. The workshop is made up of the participants (business and stakeholders) and the facilitator. The main role of the facilitator is to explain the instructions (and to answer questions), to control the timing (all the phases), to facilitate the reading of the drawings and to ask questions about the posters (in depth), and finally to help to engage participants to come up with a solution (action plan).

The Preparation Phase On this initial phase, the facilitator explains all the guidelines and instructions of the workshop to the participants (the main phases, the instructions for the drawings, the guidelines for the readings, the rules for recording the narratives, the rules for synthesis and the facilitator role itself). In this phase, the timing of each stage is settled, and the expected result of the workshop is also explained. The participants are then divided at random into teams, which must all be the same size. For instance, a company wants to work on the company-supplier relationship. It has 16 suppliers. In this case, the logical thing is to form four groups of four participants. During this stage, the participants received the necessary materials and space: A1 sized sheets, colored markers, colored paper, yellow, red, blue, scissors, glue, a pencil, pen and eraser and four large tables where the teams can draw comfortably.

The Drawing Phase A drawing task is assigned to each team. It can be different to or the same as that of the other groups. There are three main relationships that can be drawn. For instance, if they are employees What does the link/relationship between Me-the Company look like? What does the relationship with the other employees look like? “Me with the other employees” What does the link with other stakeholders look like? “Me with other stakeholders: customers”

The number and type of questions are selected based on the available time and the status of the relationship.

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The instructions given to the participants for the drawings are as follows: (a) Freedom to draw. Once the team has been assigned a task, for example, to draw the Me-company relationship, each participant freely chooses how many images he or she want to draw. Then they put them together, discuss them as a team, and agree on which images, what objects they are going to draw, and who is going to draw them. All the participants can draw part of the collage/poster or just one or two participants. It’s up to the participants to decide this among themselves. (b) Restrictions in the drawings. They cannot use words, logos, numbers, or mathematical signs in the drawing. The purpose of this rule is not to take shortcuts, because they are widely used signs in society. The instructions are that if the idea of an arrow arises in the group in order to indicate an address, they must replace the arrow with a drawing that represents the idea. These instructions have been very effective in eliciting deeper and more interesting drawings that give rise to wider interpretations. All the ideas, concepts, feelings the participants want to represent must be expressed by drawings. (c) The Participant’s Drawing. The content of the drawing may be agreed on, but not always. It must not be the result of voting. All the members of the team who want to represent something in the drawing must be represented regardless of whether their ideas are common to all or divergent, different or opposite to other members’ ideas. All the drawing proposals of all the members of the group must be included. No member of the team can censor ideas or images. Censorship is not allowed. In addition, it may also happen that there is someone who does not want to contribute anything and just wants to observe; observers should not be censored either. Once all this has been clarified, the participants can begin to draw the “poster” (drawing) about the relationship they were asked to draw. They are free to express their opinion concerning themselves and the relationships without being censored by others. The business-employee relationship is depicted depending on how the business relationship is drawn. For example, if the company is depicted as a concentration camp or an orchard, then two different ideas of the relationship with the company are being narrated.

Reading Phase: Generating Narratives Once the drawing phase is completed, the posters are exhibited on the walls or on the available whiteboards. The reading process is carried out in front of the images and lasts approximately 15–20 minutes per poster. The reading is the process “by which participant’s share what they see” depicted “on the poster about the relationship that the group was asked to draw”. This is when the participants generate narratives about the relationships. They can express themselves and can generate metaphors from reading the drawings to explain, for example, how things work in that specific relationship in that specific company.

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There are no right or wrong, correct, or incorrect readings of the drawings. The first reading is not done by the same group that draws the poster but by another group. This rule is very important. If there are four teams A, B, C, D, in the workshop, therefore, there are four posters, one from each group, A, B, C, D. If we start with group A, the members of the other groups read what they think the poster drawn by group A says about the relationship. This exercise is not about guessing what group A meant in its depiction of the relationship but to express what the drawing says to them personally about the relationship. At the end of all the readings, group A explains what their own poster was meant to transmit. This form of reading facilitates the emergence of metaphors and narratives where the different readings of the participants are combined. In the reading projects, the ideas and feelings experienced by each participant in the relationship, their own ideas, assumptions and beliefs, are playfully attributed to the drawings made by others and they are motivated, aroused, elicited by these drawings. Teams B, C and D interpret drawing’s Team A completing A’s projections with their own projections, adding meanings that A perhaps did not even imagine. Each poster receives at least two main successive readings in this order: first, by a team/participants who did not draw the poster and then by the same team that drew the poster. During the reading and interpretation process, everyone is completely free to express themselves. There are no right or wrong words or expressions. The Facilitator in the reading phase has five main roles: 1. To ask questions to prompt participants to move the reading forward and get the group moving if it is stuck or scattered. For example, team A may begin to be defensive about the readings of the other groups, or if the other groups begin discussing about the correct/right reading since there is no right/correct reading. The facilitator may also ask questions about the ambiguity or the contradictions of the different readings of the drawing, so as not to interrupt the projections of all the people who want to express themselves. 2. To ask questions about how people view themselves or the relationship or the others on the poster, for example. After having read different ideas about the relationship you can ask: Where is the me in this drawing, or where is the company? The participant could answer ... the me is in the hands or the me is not there and only the company appears ... or the company is the tree and we are the fruits. 3. To ask about the feelings and emotions, about how participants feel in front of the drawing. This question leads to deeper answers such as harshness, fear, and anxiety. 4. To ask about what is not there. The facilitator may also ask about things that are included as well as things that are not included and the reason why they have not been included. 5. Finally, to ask about the problems or aspects to be improved in the relationship. The facilitator, after asking about one self, the relationship, the feelings and what is not there, should explicitly ask about what isn’t working if this hasn’t come up naturally, which it usually does, in the reading phase.

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The Synthesis and Engagement Phase The facilitator also takes notes of the readings during the workshop on what is being said by the participants as it is taking place. This could also be recorded. All their expressions, phrases, jokes, interpretations, metaphors and any figures of speech that refer to the drawn relationship must be recorded literally. The facilitator can identify meaningful expressions. The positive or negative reactions can be an indicator that one of the participants expressed an interpretive key of the mindset about the relationship. The words that they use in the readings to describe these situations are as important as the features of the relationship: whether it is collaborative, mutual help, crushing, protection, or interdependence. In most cases, the facilitator can identify meaningful phrases based on their experience; both positive and negative. Concerning the negative aspects, the facilitator should ask about the underlying causes of the negative aspects that the participants mention. The main task in this phase is to engage in a solution that usually comes naturally from the readings and it is expressed in the same terms, words and expressions as the readings. If not, the facilitator should ask questions to help and to guide the participants to find a solution. The solution must be agreed: the goal or objective and the actions to be implemented. This also comes naturally after a dialogue and discussion about the problems. Here the participants can also consider the cost-benefit analysis of the several alternative plan options (the participants may consider several alternatives). To complete the circle a follow up questionnaire should be sent to the participants six months after the HDPT.  Questions about the implementation solution plan, the communication skills and the value created should be included.

Research Setting The HDPT was applied in two main companies, the Chemical company SA and the consulting IT SA Company in Barcelona (Spain). In the Chemical company, we focus on two relationships: the relationship between business and suppliers, and that between business and employees. In the consulting IT Company, the relationship between business and employees was the relationship analyzed. CHEMICAL Company S.A (hereafter Chemical SA) was founded in 1944  in Barcelona and its economic activity is the commercialization and distribution of chemical products that range from basic industrial products or commodities to highly sophisticated specialties. Its chemical product portfolio includes over 7000 references from 860 suppliers around the world, which address the needs and chemical requirements of more than 7200 customers, with sales exceeding 600,000 tons and a turnover in the order of 900 Million Euros). The company complied with all the legal quality, safety and environmental regulations and standards. It had also signed the Global Compact and took part in all kinds of events in the social responsibility sector and was considered a pioneer in engaging ethical and social

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responsibility programs. It had its own communication channel (Intranet) where it published all its sustainability and social responsibility initiatives and actions. The HDPT was applied to two important stakeholders: suppliers and employees. In general, the company allocates a great amount of resources and time to improving the quality of its products through supply chain operations. As far as Chemical SA’s suppliers were concerned, there had been a management change and the company wanted to know how suppliers felt about this. As regards its relations with its employees, a trade union had been recently set up (the management had noticed a certain amount of discontent and they wanted to find out why). Two workshops were run in 2019, one with employees and the other with suppliers. The suppliers’ workshop was attended by 20 suppliers from Spain and the employee’s workshop had 35 employees. The workshops were one-day workshops from 9:00 to 14:00 and were held in the Chemical SA offices. The participants were asked to draw the relationship between the company and themselves. CONSULTING IT SA (hereafter Consulting IT) is located in Barcelona and has more than 15 years of experience in computer systems administration, network installation, terminal and device maintenance, and technical support (IT). The company is specialized in corrective and evolutionary computer maintenance services, minimizing crashes in customers’ computer systems and incidents in their hardware equipment, and contributing to the productivity and efficiency of employees in customer companies. It is well-known for its technological innovations in the industry, some of which it is patented. These technological innovations are offered to its customers at a much lower cost than those of competitors, offering them a reliable technology partner providing turnkey solutions to everything related to computer science, networks and telecommunications. The employees, the consultants, have a higher educational level (PhDs and masters) than the average in the industry as well as high expertise. The workshop was run in 2019 with 23 employees. The workshops were one-day workshops from 9:00 to 14:00 and were held in the Consulting IT offices. The participants were asked to draw the relationship between the company and themselves.

Findings Chemical SA The Business and Supplier Relationship The HDPT was applied to 20 suppliers of Chemical SA. The supplier’s profile was the following: male, 35–45 years old, from all over Spain, from their company’s commercial department (three suppliers were from a big company (MNC), the others were from medium sized companies). All the suppliers carry out commercial operations in their respective companies and all of them had been suppliers of Chemical SA for at least 5 years (average range from 5 to 15 years). The Head of the supply chain department and the managing director of the manufacturing plant

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of Chemical S.A. were also present in the workshop (but only in the synthesis and commitment phase). Drawings Phase The suppliers were grouped into four main groups, consisting of five suppliers each. Four main posters were drawn by the four teams. Posters A, B, C and D.

Fig. 29.1  Poster A

Fig. 29.2  Poster D

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Readings Phase The readings of the posters: Team B read Team A’s poster. Team A read C’s poster, Team C read D’s poster and Team D read B’s poster. Afterwards, each team read its own poster. In posters A, B, C, the suppliers described the relationship with the company as “a tree that grows and bears fruit for those who water it”. The choice of the tree seems related to the type of company a Chemical SA (in a chemical reaction, substances (elements and/or compounds) called reactants are changed into other substances (compounds and/or elements) called products). The drawings depicted people taking care of the tree (watering and cultivating it): The suppliers see themselves as people that take care of the tree in order for it to bear fruit. The tree is the company understood as something that is alive, a living organism related to the environment, and dynamic: it is something that expands, that progresses, that maintains, and it is sustainable. The relationship between the suppliers and the company is seen as a “dynamic, nurturing relationship, which suppliers need to take care of too”. However, suppliers mentioned that this relationship needs “water (as money) and fertilizers (as innovation) that requires an investment of suppliers’ time and effort. Some of the people in the poster appear “sweating”. All the suppliers expressed that Chemical SA was very demanding, and this was stressful on some occasions. The fruit was referred to Chemical SA products; and the suppliers referred the fruit as something profitable for customers, as something that could benefit the customers. An important point here is that suppliers displayed relational thinking when they explained in the poster the connection between them and both Chemical SA as well as its customers in the poster, by showing that their products were profitable to the Chemical Customers. But, “If the fertilizer is poisonous, there will be poisoned fruits” meaning if “your products were bad quality, the products will hurt customers”. One of the posters shows two mobiles (one that is working and the other that is broken), which points out some communication problems. The suppliers explained that the telephone is the regular channel of communication when problems arise. Consequently, “the telephone also helps the tree to grow. It also helps the company to grow. That is the reason why it appears in the poster”. However, when a problem arises, the supplier and Chemical SA call each other, and the solution is usually discussed and reached through a phone- call. However, one of the two mobiles was drawn broken. One team explained “in some cases, the dialogue (or even the communication) with the company is difficult, and the conversation ends up being unilateral; Chemical Company takes unilateral decisions (not negotiated decisions) about transportation, and service delivery. That’s why I think that the phone is broken, which may mean that the communication is broken”. One member of the team explained “this is sometimes frustrating; we feel frustrated. We are upset or annoyed as a result of being unable to change their attitude or reach a negotiated deal.”. The team that drew the poster mentioned that sometimes Chemical employees do not offer feasible and negotiated solutions to problems. It is either take it or leave it. Suppliers also mentioned that sometimes

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it is difficult to get in touch with the “right” employee in the chemical company: they felt they were wasting both time and resources; so they felt frustrated. Poster D was the most different poster from the other three. Team C read poster D. The way they understood the relationship with Chemical SA, the trees and the river was really interesting and controversial. The river (water), was located in the middle of the drawing dividing the two levels (the results: the trees) and the weighing scale (how to distribute the results and burdens). The river is what divides the two levels, which was read as “The money was causing some division. The company has not been fair, and that’s the reason why the weighing scale is unbalanced”. The description of the river, where water flows (which was read as money), which helps the trees to grow (fruits) and, also supplies the water fountain. Water is understood as a necessary supply as is money; it is dynamic and is food for plants, trees and allows life around it. Why was the weighing scale unbalanced? The suppliers provided an explanation and examples: that “the unbalanced weighing scale referred to cases of incidents such as delays in transportation (transportation was outsourced). In such cases, Chemical SA punishes/charges to the suppliers by discounting an amount that is never the same (sometimes it is small and sometimes bigger, and most of the time this is in the Chemical SA’s favor)”. Team D felt that the distribution of these amounts “was not equal among the suppliers, that they considered it unfair” and that it created again frustration and then an angry response to it. The team considered that the unfairness and frustration were “negative” or “unpleasant” feelings. Some of them acknowledged that they had reacted to the unfairness situation by looking for another customer (a replacement for Chemical SA) or by raising the price of their products to Chemical SA. Synthesis and Engagement Phase Based on the readings, the participants formulated problems of communication (frustration) and of fairness in dealing with Chemical SA. In this phase, they focused on finding solutions through a conversation and dialogue using the same vocabulary: so the terms they used were “we need to fix the telephone” and “we need to balance the weighing scale”. Through dialogue, the suppliers and the company agreed and drew up the following plan: The company committed itself to setting up a separate phone number (like an emergency line) exclusively for suppliers when they have problems/incidents (concerning quality, delivery dates, transportation services or warranties) to facilitate quick communication and speedy solutions. In addition, each supplier will be assigned to a specific Chemical SA employee for easy identification and control of such incidents. Furthermore, when looking for fair equality solutions to these problems, they agreed to balance the extra burden/cost according to the degree of responsibility in the incident and to control for suppliers’ approval with a questionnaire (which also measures the overall supplier’s satisfaction). The suppliers have agreed to notify all incidences when they affect the product deadlines as quickly as possible (the head of operations at Chemical SA expressed discontent about delays in reporting certain problems; which caused chemical and

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economic losses and could have been avoided with faster communication). To avoid this, a separate telephone line and email address have been set up for suppliers to report potential incidents. Internally, the Chemical SA operations department sets up a database/ casuistry of the most frequent problems as well as the solutions to ensure that all suppliers are treated equally, in the same way, always. The suppliers mentioned that they felt some relief because the company was doing something that could work to remediate the negative situation; at least “we felt that the company has listened to us, with an open mind ….and we have worked together towards an agreed solution”. One member of the team said: “Time will tell if the workshop has been successful or not, but I felt alleviated, we did something to change the situation with Chemical SA”. The Business and Employee Relationship The participants in the workshop were all employees at the chemical manufacturing plant in Barcelona. The 35 employees were all young male employees aged 23–28 and they had been working for the company for 3–9 years. Their level of studies was technical and professional. They were divided into 6 teams, A, B, C, D, E and F. Reading Phase The readings of the posters: Team B read poster A, Team A read poster C, Team C read poster D, Team D read poster E, team E read poster F, and team F read poster A. Afterwards each team read its own poster.

Fig. 29.3  Poster D

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Fig. 29.4  Poster A

The company-employee relationship was described through as a circular path depicting a clock and a compass. In the reading, they pointed out that “we understand the relationship as circular, we are going round on the same track and towards the same place, we always repeat the same path we don’t move forward; it is repetitive; we are always in the same place”. In other readings, the wheels, and the tires were read as being repetitive and, in some cases, tedious (lack of adventure; nothing new; monotonous). Team C read poster D and mentioned that is was boring “there is nothing extraordinary in our work. We always do the same things”. The circle appears in all the posters, the employees worked in the manufacturing plant, in a production line process that is clearly a repetitive process where employees are always at the same workstation. The times and resources of the production process are determined precisely by both the clock and restrictions in raw materials. However, the relationship between employees is good; in poster A, team F showed that they had a very good time, a good atmosphere, that they enjoyed their time together as if they were on a carrousel. It was noteworthy to mention that this fun interaction was on a carrousel (also circular, which goes round and round without stopping). “You can get dizzy from so much going round and round, in some cases sick, in the same way as people who are bored, feel weariness and may feel like vomiting. This means that you have to be careful with the number of times you get on the carrousel (this has to be spaced out over a period of time)”. Team B’s reading pointed out the oppressive time management in the factory and the role of the compass. The employees felt that they were disoriented and they needed the compass “the path was not easy to find”, referring to their place in the factory, and pointed out that sometimes it was difficult to find where they were going. Employees perceived their future with uncertainty. As a final assessment, they mentioned that they had a sense that it was impossible to get promoted (no

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future) and that they felt that they were always going back to the same place and the same routine. The team C reading also pointed out that strategic plans (future) were not communicated to them. Team C’s explained the poster “the clock and the time are important for the productivity ratio”. This is what “the company” care about “at the end of the day, if we are productive”. All the teams’ readings understood that production has a predefined cycle with standardized behavior that enables the factory to obtain a predictable result. It is this regular dynamic of the production process which generates the expected final product. What provoked the biggest reaction from the other teams was when Team A read the poster C depicting big nuts and screws and a hammer pressing them (the boss) “if productivity goals were not reached (because of the clock), the boss will punish them. The reading provoked a silence among the other teams. This team saw the factory as wall without windows (some of the readings like mentioned it was like a prison) where the big wall prevents people from getting out of the factory. Team C read their poster, explaining that employees work for the company to earn a living (income) that enabled them to buy a car, a house, food or other goods. Furthermore, thanks to this comment, they all agree that they were working for the Chemical SA in order to obtain a salary to get an income and to be able to buy things that they really need and like. In two of the posters, the people appeared with a cloud coming out of their mouth. This was referred to the fact that workers were now able to speak up thanks to the presence of the union. The union gives strength and gives people the opportunity to talk (to express themselves) in the factory. This was qualified as very desirable. Synthesis and Engagement Phase Based on the readings, employees reported tediousness and dissatisfaction due to the repetitive and boring nature of the jobs in the factory. Another problem that came out of the readings was the lack of communication with the boss about the factory’s strategic plans, which also brought out anxiety and uncertainty about the future. Consequently, in this phase, they looked for solutions through discussion and dialogue employing the same vocabulary that was used in the reading phase.-The terms they used were “we need to escape from the clock and the compass” and “we need to fix the clock problem”. Several ideas came out through the dialogue between the employees and Chemical SA: they agreed on a solution to introduce “learning time” during the employee’s daily-day activities for them to learn new knowledge/skills to speak English (the new corporate language) and learn skills in Robotics (new robots were about to arrive to the factory). All this aim to breakdown the boredom of the employees by introducing a variety of the tasks (the learning abilities and skills) in the employee’s everyday workload in order to empower them. These new tasks were also useful for both Chemical SA and for the employees themselves (more employable). Workers felt that they could be involved in their job design; and they were expressing excitement and enthusiasm about starting the new tasks (English and Robotics) and hope for the near future. They felt that things could change.

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The workshop can also be used to build on positive feelings. In the workshop, employees expressed a team spirit and the good rapport among them, both the chemical SA and employee decided to organize a small soccer league to have fun outside of working hours, which can improve the informal communication between managers and employees. So, they have opportunities to work together towards a shared -objective (such as to win the match/to score a goal/to win the league).This will be an opportunity for teamwork and to get to know each other in another context outside work. The managers expressed that: “It is another way to communicate”.

 he CONSULTING IT Company: Its Relationship T with Employees The HDPT was applied to 23 employees. All of them were engineers with 1–5 years’ experience. They were from different hierarchical levels on the organizational chart. These employees were aged 28–45 and were all men except for two women. All of them had a degree in IT, telecommunications or systems engineering (all of them had higher education qualifications with PhDs and Masters). Drawing Phase The readings of the poster: Team B read poster A, Team A read poster C, Team C read poster D, Team D read poster B.

Fig. 29.5  Poster A

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Fig. 29.6  Poster D

Reading Phase In this case, the company was drawn as a puzzle, where each employee contributes with their own piece (expertise) that is a building block. The company is made up of all these pieces, these building blocks, all this expertise and knowledge. Therefore, the employee relationship with the company was described as fitting into an expertise puzzle, which one has to fit into (which also means that the pieces cannot overlap). The company-employee relationship is characterized by the crucial aspect of “to fit in” with the others, to be accepted by others and therefore have your own space. A person’s position cannot overlap with the position of other employees (no two employees have the same expertise). The fitting in aspect was emphasized in all the team readings. The team B reading to poster A was that it is key for the employee to become irreplaceable (each person is a piece). “This is the only way to prosper inside this firm. Being a piece of the puzzle is what gives you money and enables you to buy other things with it (the woman with the shopping bag)”. The employees feel a little bit isolated concerning the rest of their colleagues because each piece only interacts with the adjacent pieces (closed pieces in the puzzle), which means that they only work with those employees whose expertise fits in with theirs “We work with the adjacent pieces. The result is that you always end up working with the same two or three employees”. This generated dissatisfaction and discontent between employees. In their readings, the employees expressed their desire for greater collaboration and connection amongst themselves (and to share knowledge and expertise). One team C read the poster D saying “we need to be able to work with the other pieces of the puzzle: not only the ones that we fit in with; maybe by rearranging the pieces

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or changing the design of the pieces. Then we will have another puzzle bigger than the one we have now” This points to the need for greater interdependence with the rest of employees, that can promote greater innovation and the company’s expansion. At the same time, it shows awareness of the larger collage with all the others (the importance of the whole). Most of the teams also drew a lights in their drawings (some of them above the puzzle), and Team B reading described them as the ideas and innovation that are required in an industry “Ideas and new technological innovations are important without them will be out of the market”. In the poster, some lights are turn on and some of them are turn off and groups of persons are around them. This means for the team being a team is important for generating innovations. The team B drew antennas and waves in their drawings, related to the type of product that consulting IT offers to customers. Team A, B and C drew real money (notes) in all the posters. There were no images or symbols of money as there were in other drawings because in this IT consultancy employees receive large cash bonuses for meeting sales targets, and this is well-accepted in the company and in the industry. One of the teams said, “We work to meet customer satisfaction and objectives. We receive bonuses, which are paid in cash (how, how much and when the bonuses are handed out is an accepted practice). Lately they have been hefty”. Some of employees (those who were senior consultants) were surprised about the employee’s readings because they did not give a hierarchical interpretation of the people around the lights. The location of the people was based on the degree of sophistication of the expertise/knowledge and not on the organization’s formal hierarchy. Therefore, for the employees the organization was perceived in horizontal and democratic terms, based on merit. Synthesis and Engagement Phase The employees engaged to make their expertise and knowledge available to Consulting IT by setting up a knowledge management system repository (database of expertise). All the employees will contribute to the management system and have access to it. They also decided to promote innovation and cross-sectional expertise. Consultants will be assigned based on the potential learning from the team consultant. The main idea here was to give consultants the opportunity to learn from each other in specific projects; the projects selected for this should have adequate objectives and make sense from the learning standpoint. They felt excitement about the projects because they were more challenging and enriching. Consultants also expressed hope expecting that their careers would be moving forward as they were completing new and difficult task projects. The human resources department also considered setting up a team building activity once every four months to create informal new bonds among employees and managers (a team building activity was organized two days later).

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Discussion Chemical SA is well known for its quality system in the industry as well as for its supplier management policies and sustainability programs. Consulting IT has reputation for its technological innovation. Both companies were making profits and were undergoing geographical expansion. They also implemented the principles of the Global Compact and are committed to some of the Millennium Development Goals. Furthermore, they located high up in various industry competitiveness rakings. The HDPT facilitated a new approach to stakeholder engagement; through drawings the new narratives and new vocabulary describing these drawings were used to describe the relationship between, a) the Chemical SA and its suppliers “with nurturing and of taking care of the tree” and its employees “The idea of moving around in circles” b) the Consulting IT relationship with its employees with “the fitting into a puzzle”. In both cases, the new vocabulary allowed them to talk about their problems but also to find solutions: a) The Chemical SA with suppliers “Fix the phone, fix the unbalanced weight” and employees: “Stop the clock and fix the compass” b) The Consulting IT with employees “Change the orientation of the pieces (make another puzzle)” . These narratives and vocabularies brought to light the problems and areas for improvement. Not only did it encourage dialogue and conversation but also the expression of emotions such as boredom (Chemical employees) and frustration (Chemical employees) and dissatisfaction (employees) were surfaced, as well as problems such as unfairness (chemical SA), or social isolation (Consulting IT). These unpleasant emotions were expressed by the participants in their readings of their drawings. In the last phase of the HDPT, all participants were engaged on an action plan to improve and solve the identified problems. The Chemical SA relationship with: a) Suppliers: A new emergency phone line, a repository of problems and solutions, a questionnaire for suppliers b) Employees: New job design with the introduction of English and Robotics courses, a soccer team (managers and employees). The Consulting IT with employees: A repository of expertise/knowledge, a redesigned team projects policy and a team building activity once every six months. Just after this phase, the participants felt some alleviation and relief because they were reaching an agreed solution with the companies that could remediate the identified problems. However, participants were also expectant about the results “Time and facts will tell if the workshop has been successful or not”. Nevertheless, in all three cases, participants expressed hope and optimism with the agreed action plan. The HDPT helped to treat each business and stakeholder relationship as different. For example, in Chemical SA: the vocabulary describing the relationships with employees (moving around in circles) and suppliers (nurturing a tree) were completely distinct and unique. In fact, this result challenged the models that treat all stakeholders of a firm as the same type; for instance, community sharing or equally matching (Bridoux and Stoelhrst 2016).

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This research could add to the existing stakeholder literature that define stakeholder relationships based on attributes. In most cases, the relationships between business and stakeholders are described as transactional or relational relationships (Bosse et al. 2009; Harrison et al. 2010; Jones and Phelps 2013a, b), or are based on relational theory models (Fiske 1991, 1992, 2004, 2012) such as community sharing, authority ranking, market pricing or equally matching (Bridoux and Stoelhrst 2016). These attributes can be considered as too simple or too rigid because business and stakeholder relationships are more complex and multidimensional. In these relationships, emotions and feelings play an important role which must be considered. The role of emotions and feelings has not adequately been addressed in stakeholder theory. So, the HDTP will add new criteria based on emotions and feelings to the existing stakeholder relationships literature as well as more flexibility in using such criteria to provide a richer and more complete map of business and stakeholder relationships. The HDPT was only applied to small group of employees and suppliers in Chemical SA or small group of employees in Consulting IT. It will be remarkably interesting to extend and repeat the workshop with the rest of employees, customers and suppliers of Chemical SA and Consulting IT. For instance, to check for differences in the narratives and vocabularies and the problems identified (the same, different a variation) in each stakeholder group. Therefore, further research should focus on a company and all the types of stakeholders (employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders, NGO’s) and carry out several workshops within each stakeholder group, grouping them according to the frequency of contact, or to the type of relationship, more antagonistic or collaborative. To measure the impact of the HDPT, a questionnaire was delivered after 2 months at Chemical SA. Two main results were found: (a) The use of the vocabulary, narratives, and metaphors in informal communications. The responses to the questionnaire showed that the suppliers and employees in their informal meetings and chats were using the same vocabulary and narratives found in the HDPT workshop. However, no results were found in the formal written communications channels (Has the business incorporated them in their formal written communications? To what extent?) (b) The value created. The HTPD brought three types of value in the supplier-­ business relationship: economic, emotional, and relational. The Chemical SA mentioned that problems with the deadlines went down (reducing the economic loss) and less stressful and unpleasant relationship with suppliers (emotional gains; positive) and trust has increased (relational gains). The three types of value were created at the same time and interconnected to each other because, without reducing the economic loss (economic gains) and the other two gains, the emotional (less stressful relationship and more pleasant) and relational (trust) could not have been achieved and vice versa.

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Future research could also focus on: (a) The use of the vocabulary, narratives, and metaphors in the formal written communications (Has the business incorporated them in their formal written communications? To what extent?). (b) The emotional attributes for business-stakeholder relationships. What are the most common emotions and feelings in business and stakeholder relationships? Which are the main attributes for mapping the stakeholder relationships? (c) The value created. Deepen how the agreed solution/action plan has created value for both the business and stakeholders (measuring what type of value, for whom and how much) is a future area of research. What kind of value? (d) The dynamics in other business-stakeholder relationships after the workshop. Has it had an impact on the evolution of the other stakeholder relationships? What kind of evolution?

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, we have explained one stakeholder engagement tool, the HDPT, its objectives and phases, which we then applied in two companies, Chemical SA and Consulting IT, in three business and stakeholder relationships. This tool allowed the emergence of new vocabularies and narratives that included multiple stakeholder voices in a new dialogue, which formulated and identified problems and brought out joint engagement plan in both companies. Can the HDPT promote social hope and social progress among business and stakeholder relationships? Yes, in the two companies, the HDPT helped figure out and engage with an action plan that aimed to solve the main formulated problems. Then, Consulting IT started new projects (repository of expertise and knowledge, new practice for form consulting teams) with its employees and Chemical SA started projects (a new communication channels, emergency line and a questionnaire) with its suppliers and new activities (learning English and Robotics) with its employees. All these projects open more and better opportunities to collaborate for both business and their stakeholders. Consequently, the HDPT brought out more value (economic, relational, and emotional) and new vocabulary to describe solutions open up to more opportunities to collaborate (freedom) in the future. The HDPT also opens a wide range of research opportunities for value creation in business-stakeholder relationships. Both business and stakeholders now are solving problems faster and with more value live better (social hope). This brings us back to Dewey’s and Rorty’s tenet that the intellectual’s task is to produce descriptions and narratives that allow us to live better and bring social hope. Furthermore, the tool has created in both companies a nurturing context for stakeholders’ speaking voice and provide a stakeholder perspective from now on. The tool prompted both business and stakeholders to become poetic organizations

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(Auster and Freeman 2013) because it helped them to cultivate and develop conversations to describe and re-describe their relationships.

References Archel, Pablo, Javier Husillos, and Crawford Spence. 2011. The institutionalization of unaccountability: Loading the dice of corporate social responsibility discourse. Accounting, Organizations and Society 36 (6): 327–343. Auster, Ellen, and R. Edward Freeman. 2013. Values and poetic organizations: Beyond value fit toward values through conversation. Journal of Business Ethics 113 (1): 39–49. Bosse, Douglas, Robert Phillips, and Jeffrey Harrison. 2009. Stakeholders, reciprocity, and firm performance. Strategic Management Journal 30: 447–456. Bridoux, Flore, and J.W. Stoelhorst. 2016. Stakeholder relationships and social welfare: A behavioral theory of contributions to joint value creation. The Academy of Management Review 41 (2): 229–251. Brown, Judy, and Jesse Dillard. 2013. Critical accounting and communicative action: On the limits of consensual deliberation. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 24 (3): 176–190. Davidson, Donaldson. 2001a. Subjective, intersubjective, objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001b. Essays on actions and events. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2004. Problems of Rationality: Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005. Truth, language, and history. Philosophical essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1894. The theory of emotion. (II) Emotional attitudes. Psychological Review 1: 553–569. ———. 1895. The theory of emotion. (2) The significance of emotions. Psychological Review 2: 13–32. Dewey, J. 1934. Art as experience. New York: Minton, Balch & Company. Fiske, Alan Page. 1991. Structures of social life: The four elementary forms of human relations. New York: Free Press. ———. 1992. The four elemental forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review 99: 689–723. ———. 2004. Relational models theory 2.0. In Relational models theory: A contemporary overview: 3–25, ed. N. Haslam. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ———. 2012. Metarelational models: Configurations of social relationships. European Journal of Social Psychology 42: 2–18. Freeman, R.  Edward, and Michelle Greenwood. 2020. Deepening methods in business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 161 (1): 1–3. Freeman, R. Edward, Kujala Johanna, and Sachs Sybille. 2017. Stakeholder engagement: Clinical research cases. Springer. Gallhofer, Sonja, Jim Haslam, and Akira Yonekura. 2015. Accounting as differentiated universal for emancipatory praxis: accounting delineation and mobilisation for emancipation(s) recognizing democracy and difference. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 28 (5): 846–874. Georgakopoulos, George, and Ian Thomson. 2008. Social reporting, engagements, controversies and conflict in an arena context. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 21 (8): 1116–1143. Greenwood, Michelle. 2007. Stakeholder Engagement: Beyond the Myth of Corporate Responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics 74 (4): 315–327. Harrison, Jeffrey, Douglas Bosse, and Robert Phillips. 2010. Managing for stakeholders, stakeholder utility functions, and competitive advantage. Strategic Management Journal 31: 58–74.

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Jones, Thomas, and William Felps. 2013a. Shareholder wealth maximization and social welfare: A utilitarian critique. Business Ethics Quarterly 23: 207–238. ———. 2013b. Stakeholder happiness enhancement: A neo-utilitarian objective for the modern corporation. Business Ethics Quarterly 23: 349–379. Laplume, Andre, K. Saurav Sonpar, and Remy Litz. 2008. Stakeholder theory: Reviewing a theory that moves us. Journal of Management 34 (6): 1152–1189. Passetti, E., L.  Bianchi, M.  Battaglia, and M.  Frey. 2019. When democratic principles are not enough: Tensions and temporalities of dialogic stakeholder engagement. Journal of Business Ethics 155 (1): 173–190. Preziosa, M. 2016. La mentalidad compartida en la empresa. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Teseo. Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991a. Objectivity, relativism, and truth: Philosophical papers. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991b. Essays on Heidegger and others: Philosophical papers. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tregidga, H., M. Milneb, and K. Kearinsa. 2014. (Re)presenting sustainable organizations accounting. Organizations and Society 39 (6): 477–494. Unerman, Jeffrey, and Mark Bennett. 2004. Increased stakeholder dialogue and the internet: Towards greater corporate accountability or reinforcing capitalist hegemony? Accounting. Organizations and Society 29 (7): 685–707. Winkler, Anne-Laure P., Jill A.  Brown, and David L.  Finegold. 2019. Employees as conduits for effective stakeholder engagement: An example from B corporations. Journal of Business Ethics 160 (4): 913–936. Elisabet Garriga is Associate Professor at EADA Business School (Barcelona, Spain) at the Strategy, Leadership and People Department and Director of the Corporate Sustainability Impact. Phd at IESE Business School. She publishes on Corporate Social Responsibility, Stakeholder Theory, Social Business, and Networks. She acted as project leader in several projects for United Nations for Development Program, United Nations Global Compact, Yunus Social Business Center Barcelona and European Union, among others. She has developed TVIM, the software that measures social performance for Social Business, NGO’s and CSR programs.  

Chapter 30

Creating a Documentary About Corporations: A Filmmaker’s Perspective Paul Wagner

I had never really thought much about business. For most of my life, I’ve run a small filmmaking company. But I always joked that I was a very good filmmaker and a very bad businessman. So, I was caught off-guard when the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia asked me to make a feature-length documentary about corporations. My first film, Harmonize!, was about the folklore and traditions of American families. My most recent film, Black in Blue, is about the four African American football players who broke the color line in the Southeastern Conference in the 1960s. Almost all of the 40-some films in between have been rooted in the humanities  – history, folklore, religion, politics, art, and cultural studies. So….. corporations?! For lefty, creative types like me, there is an easy assumption about corporations – they’re bad. Another easy assumption is that a school of business will insist that they are good. Happily, once I met my collaborators on the film, I saw that things were not so simplistic. Professor Bidhan (Bobby) Parmar and Senior Researcher Jenny Mead held informed, nuanced, and clear-eyed views about business. This film would not be a puff-piece. I was happy about that. But I was also concerned: I always take a deep dive into the subject matter of a film before I begin to write, produce, and direct, and this was a subject I knew nothing about. Moreover, although produced for a school of business, the film was intended for a general, not necessarily business-oriented, audience. In other words, it had to be

P. Wagner (*) Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker, American Focus, Charlottesville, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_30

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effective with people who didn’t really know anything about business…people like me. To bolster their confidence in me, and my confidence in myself, I assured Jenny and Bobby that my lack of knowledge about business was not a problem but an advantage! But the truly great realization was that I would not have to leave my field of interest, the humanities, to make this movie. My collaborators made it clear that this was to be a film about human beings – their ethics, history, politics, and culture. And not only would the film be about humans, it would assert, as its core theme, that business itself should be “about” human beings. Trusting that I was now on firm ground, I dove into a months-long process of learning, reading, watching, talking, and listening about the subject of corporations. I started thinking about the storytelling techniques and rhetorical devices we might employ to make our arguments. And I watched some of the previously produced documentaries about economics and corporations. I liked Commanding Heights, the three-part series on PBS based on the book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, for the way that it cast the story as a twentieth century battle between two ideologies  – market-based vs. government-planned economies. I did not like The Corporation, a very popular and widely viewed documentary about corporations. Like many good documentary films, it’s an advocacy piece that is probably largely accurate in the stories it tells about corporations. But The Corporation tells only negative stories. I mentioned above the “easy” assumption about corporations held by many of us on the left, and this film certainly takes that easy way out. I came away from those viewings with two creative commitments for our project: 1. We would avoid the over-riding ideological slant of The Corporation and make a film that acknowledged both the corrupt behavior of corporations and Wall Street and their potential for good. 2. We would adopt the creative strategy of Commanding Heights by structuring the film as a battle between two ideologies, replacing the clash of market-based vs. government-planned economies with the battle we were interested in – between the widely-held Maximizing Shareholder Value theory and the Stakeholder theory, first described in the 1980s by Darden ethics professor R. Edward Freeman. If, after watching our completed documentary, I showed you the first draft of the outline for the film, you might not recognize it as the basis for the film. A documentary film-in-process has a life of its own, it grows organically. But even early on, there were certain elements that seemed necessary to tell our story. First, we would feature stories about corporations that embraced Stakeholder principals, as well as corporations that found themselves enmeshed in scandals driven by a single-minded focus on profit. Second, there would be a segment about the history of the Maximizing Shareholder Value concept and an examination of how it has played out in corporate governance over the last 40  years. Third, we would consider the moral aspects of capitalism as imagined by Adam Smith. Fourth, we would consider the politics of corporate purpose and its connection to the

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functioning of a democratic society. And finally, there would be interviews with scholars and business people weighing in on all of the above. My co-producers Bobby Parmar and Jenny Mead are paid by a business school to prepare young people for jobs in the corporate world; but they had no compunction about highlighting the worst sorts of corporate scandals. After filming our interviews with scholars and business people, and halfway through the process of editing the film, we decided to open the film with a montage of scandals. The thinking was that we would start the film where most people are – they often assume the worst about corporations  – and establish immediately that this would not be a simple-­ minded, pro-corporation propaganda piece. We found compelling news clips about the soaring cost of EpiPens, Volkswagen emissions, Wells Fargo fake credit card accounts, Valeant pharmaceutical price hikes, the BP oil spill, and the infamous Enron scandal. To give depth to this litany, we sought an interviewee who could talk about business scandals with the insight and outrage that they deserve. We decided on a journalist who had written powerful investigative stories, Bethany McLean, the author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, about Enron, and several other pieces about Valeant’s pricing and the mortgage crisis that led to the 2008 recession. As a storytelling structure, it made sense to start with a journalist working in the accessible, pop-cultural milieu and look at scandal-ridden companies. Later in the film, we would hear more from scholars and business people, and see the stories about ethical companies. As my education in business evolved, I was fascinated to learn about the origins of the Shareholder Value theory in the 1976 paper by Michael Jensen and William Meckling. It was an obscure, complicated, analytical paper that no one, initially, would publish. But it became one of the most widely cited academic articles of the last fifty years. And it radically transformed the world of business far beyond academia. This, to me, was fascinating: suddenly, all sorts of things that corporations and their CEOs did made a lot of sense. To take just one example – I had always wondered why CEO salaries had ballooned relative to the earnings of other employees over the last few decades. Now I saw several reasons why. The use of stock options, a logical innovation based on the Jensen-Meckling paper and reinforced by federal legislation in the early 1990s, drove CEOs to make decisions based on their own self-interest, to often ignore the welfare of employees and suppliers, to focus almost exclusively on the short term value of the stock price, and to take inordinate risks that jeopardized the security of their own company and their community, including the natural environment. I used these “plot points” to build our segment in the film about the 40-year history of Shareholder Value. In fact, we were able to make the concepts specific and pertinent to our story by tracking down the stock-based income of the CEOs who led the companies we documented in the opening corporate scandals scene. These examples made a powerful connection between the emergence of Shareholder Value thinking and the descent of companies into destructive behavior. But the most important storytelling element we needed for this Shareholder Value history segment was an interview with the authors of the 1976 article. William

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Meckling had died years ago, but Michael Jensen was still alive, semi-retired and living in Florida. Fortunately, he agreed to an interview. More than that, the man who invented the concept of Maximizing Shareholder Value stated that he now completely disavowed his own invention. One of the great tropes in any form of storytelling, from the campfire to the cinema, is the “reversal”: the plot surprise that contradicts the expectations of the audience. Michael Jensen actually turned to the camera and said: “Maximizing Shareholder Value is a stupid idea! Stop it!” As soon as it came out of his mouth, I thought to myself: that is going to make one heck of a climax to the scene in the film about the history of Shareholder Value. If finding scandals to spotlight in the opening of the film was easy, finding “good” companies to feature was a challenge. Of course, there are many great businesses out there, but getting them to open themselves up to a filmmaker’s depiction of their company, having no control over that depiction, is a daunting matter. We made it clear to prospective companies that they would have to co-operate with our filming process and make their CEO and other employees available for interviews with no limits on questions, and that they would have no control over how the footage was edited or how the company was depicted in the final film. The only thing we could assure them was that, based on our research, we believed them to be an ethically-managed company and we wanted to feature them for that reason. Our plan was to profile a range of company types: a small start-up, a mid-sized national company, and a very large international corporation. Among those three, we hoped also to find a range of product types and company histories that played out our various themes of interest. One central theme of the film, that the Stakeholder approach represents a superior model for company management, was nicely represented by a company we were already very familiar with: The Container Store (TCS). Professor Ed Freeman would be one of our key interviewees in the film, and he was a friend and longstanding advisor to Kip Tindall, the CEO of The Container Store. Freeman’s Stakeholder model emphasizes a CEO’s obligations to all of a company’s stakeholders: employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and the community and natural environment. TCS, which sells home storage products, has one of the lowest employee turnover rates in retail (a sector known for high turnover) and maintains close working relationships with suppliers. So, in addition to interviewing Kip Tindall, we also interviewed a group of their employees and one of their key suppliers. Do pro-company statements from a small group of employees and a supplier “prove” that TCS is an ethical company employing Stakeholder principals? No. But we believed, for a number of reasons, that TCS was a company sincerely committed to ethical principles. As part of telling that story, we interviewed a few stakeholders to represent the many. This is a storytelling trope we’ve all seen many, many times. Let’s say a journalist wants to write about how a new healthcare policy has cost millions of Americans billions of dollars. Their story starts, “One week after taking her 8-year-old son to the emergency room to set a broken wrist sustained in a soccer game, Marie Garcia opened the financial statement from the hospital listing the charges. Her hands began to tremble.” Are we sure that Ms. Garcia’s experience is

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typical? Isn’t it a distortion to use the experience of one person to represent millions of people? Maybe her experience isn’t typical or representative, but Marie Garcia’s story brings the issue to life because we relate to her as a human being. In our film, a supplier describes how his company committed financing to the development of a plastic closet storage box for TCS without the benefit of a written contract, “We did it on a hug and a handshake.” Later, Kip Tindall comments on that kind of trusting relationship, “What a cool way to do business. The universe conspires to assist you. It’s easier to be successful when people are conspiring to assist you, than when they’re lying awake at night trying to figure out how to get back at you.” Featuring The Container Store, with over 90 stores nationwide and over 5000 employees, nicely addressed our need for a mid-sized company. For the small start-up, we considered and met with several companies with which we had contacts, but nothing seemed to be panning out. But in one of many team brainstorming sessions, I mentioned that my daughter’s boyfriend had worked a couple of years ago for a small lobster roll shop in New York’s East Village and had loved the company. Jenny Mead recalled that she had recently eaten a great-tasting lobster roll in Washington, DC from the same company – Luke’s Lobster. Starting with this hunch, we did a few days of due-diligence research on the company and ended up cold-calling Luke Holden, the CEO, and Ben Conniff, the president of the company. They agreed to be filmed: we had found our Brooklyn-headquartered, millennial-managed start-up chain of six lobster roll stores in New  York, Philadelphia, and Washington. One of our optimistic observations about the Stakeholder approach is that it seems to excite the interest of young entrepreneurs like Holden and Conniff. In fact, as they learned more about what we meant by a “Stakeholder” company, the two pointed out that this was exactly how they had always run their company, without ever actually using that term. In the film, we featured Luke’s Lobster’s quirky company culture and the two leaders’ commitment to sustainable fishing practices as not uncommon features of millennial-led companies. Moreover, in the process of editing the film, we found a nice parallelism with two other now-not-so-young entrepreneurs, John Mackey and Walter Robb of Whole Foods Market. We had never scripted it this way, but by intercutting the interview comments of Mackey and Robb about entrepreneurship with shots of Holden and Conniff on the subway to a new Luke’s Lobster store in Hoboken, New Jersey, we were able to suggest how a commitment to Stakeholder principles could lead to business success. In fact, by the time we finished the documentary a couple of years after filming with Luke’s Lobster, they had expanded from six to 41 stores, including operations in Japan and Taiwan. Perhaps the biggest challenge we faced was finding a large, international corporation willing to participate in the film. Luke’s Lobster could imagine that the publicity generated by their appearance in our documentary might boost their public profile. A big corporation would have no such incentive. A growing number of large companies today tout their conscious company culture and their sustainability initiatives. But as we considered several for presentation in the film, we found some to be less virtuous than they presented themselves to be.

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Others were fine companies, but unwilling to surrender control of the story we would tell about them. In one of our meetings, Bobby mentioned a junior executive with Eastman, a $10 billion international chemical company based in Kingsport, Tennessee, who had lauded the company’s sustainability record and might be willing to make a pitch to Eastman on our behalf. The up-and-coming executive had been an excellent student of Bobby’s at Darden, so he had earned trust in both directions: we could trust what he said about the company and the company could trust what he said about our Darden team. After considerable back and forth, Eastman agreed to participate in the film. Their decision, of course, had to be made at the highest level of the company – by CEO Mark Costa. New as I was to the world of the corporate C-suite, it took me a while to fully appreciate the bravery of Costa’s decision. Mark Costa talked openly about the environmental and safety challenges faced by a chemical company operating a massive industrial site on a river in Tennessee. He touted the Energy Star awards won by the company and asserted that the water the company put back in the river was cleaner than what it took out. But he also related the sobering story of a 1960 explosion at the plant that killed 16 workers. “In fact, there are places where you can still see the shrapnel marks on the walls from that explosion. And we don’t repair those marks, we keep them there in place. Because it’s a reminder of the incredible responsibility that we have.” Costa was especially articulate, and personal, talking about the pressure that Wall Street puts on companies to focus on the short term and to pursue questionable strategies such as stock buybacks. On these issues, he joined several other business leaders interviewed in the film – John Mackey and Walter Robb, Kip Tindall, Tom Gardner of The Motley Fool, and Jim Sinegal of Costco Warehouse – in explaining how the goals of a CEO sometimes diverge from those of the shareholders, and how important it is for the leaders of publicly-traded companies to, as Sinegal puts it, “get the shareholders they deserve….shareholders who share your view in the long-­ term interests of the company.” It was very helpful to us as storytellers to be able to show how CEOs are caught in the crossfire between the Maximizing Shareholder Value theory and the Stakeholder theory. With the addition of Eastman, we fulfilled our plan to feature three companies that demonstrated the effectiveness of Ed Freeman’s Stakeholder model. But as we went into the editing of the film, the story of a fourth Stakeholder company emerged in a historical context. In our interview with business management scholar and writer Jim Collins, he emphasized the importance of corporate purpose and used the example of America’s first great Silicon Valley tech company, Hewlett Packard, founded in the 1930s. As we edited the various scenes of the film, we found other points at which we could weave in the HP story to show how they exemplified Stakeholder concepts and how such practices had been a not-uncommon fixture of mid-twentieth century, pre-­ Maximizing Shareholder Value companies. This is one of the joys of documentary film editing: sometimes the best story elements simply present themselves, in ways you could never have scripted. Happily, the Hewlett Packard company held a trove of archival materials allowing us to

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vividly illustrate their history as a company concerned with the welfare of their stakeholders. As Bill Hewlett says in a film clip from the 1950s: “If you want a key point, it was that we respected the people. We don’t want a hire and fire type of operation. Our success is going to be dependent upon how well these people do their job.” I admitted above that I knew virtually nothing about business or capitalism when I started work on the film. The one quote about capitalism I did know was the famous one from Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations: “It’s not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interests.” And I thought I knew what it meant: in a capitalistic system, greed is, indeed, good! In editing the film, we used a big handful of Hollywood movie clips, from the “greed” clip in “Wall Street” to a scene from the animated “Monsters Inc.,” to illustrate how widely this view of capitalism is assumed to be true. What a surprise for me to learn, and what fun to drop into the film, the fact that Adam Smith thought that a book he wrote 17  years before “Wealth of Nations,” called “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” was much more important. That’s where the Father of Capitalism contradicts everything I thought I knew: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.” Yet again, we were able to use the old “reversal” trick in our storytelling. But perhaps the most exciting reversal in the film comes in the segment examining the political debate around the proper purpose of a corporation. We secured interviews with Robert Reich, the liberal University of California, Berkeley professor and pundit, and Arthur Brooks, then president of the conservative Enterprise Institute in Washington. Fancifully imagining a split screen in the finished film, framing a debate between them about capitalism, I filmed Reich on the left looking camera right and Brooks on the right looking camera left. Getting them to disagree was the easy part. But my big dream, based on my reading of their books and articles, was to get them to agree about the value of the Stakeholder model. It turned out to be easier, and better, than I had imagined: Reich: “Truly….you will do better…. if you are sensitive to your employees, and the environment, and your communities, and other stakeholders.” Brooks: “The best organizations, the best societies, the best run companies....they think what everybody needs. That’s what’s going on in good organizations, and we say no, no, no, forget everybody else except shareholders. Well, that’s just an unbalanced type of opinion….it actually doesn’t really represent what people want to do in human society and it doesn’t represent what’s going on in the best corporations.”

The subject matter content of the story, developed in the research and pre-­ production phases and organized in the editing, is crucial in a documentary. But a filmmaker’s stylistic choices also play an important, if less evident, role. What about, for example, the gender of the narrator? Perhaps 90% of documentaries have a male narrator. But is that the best choice for a film about business in which so many of the on-camera “characters” are male? We decided on a woman, actress Tara Bast, as our “voice.”

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And what about the musical score for the film? Could we subtly enhance the notion that our film celebrates the humanity of companies? How about utilizing a composer, Ben Sollee, known for his innovative use of the cello – the string instrument whose pitch range is most closely aligned with that of the human (both male and female) voice? Perhaps the most exciting visual elements in the film are a series of animations created by Jonah Tobias to illustrate the Stakeholder model. Ed Freeman, in his books and articles, presents it as a simple donut-shaped diagram with “The Firm” in the middle, surrounded by five sectors representing employees, customers, suppliers, financiers, and communities. Our plan was to use this basic diagram as many as four times throughout the film to illustrate concepts related to the Stakeholder model. So, we needed a visual approach that was conceptually flexible, visually interesting, and meaningful as a storytelling metaphor. Jonah and I talked and talked until we were blue in the face, but finally we came upon a concept that we hoped would be exciting and effective: we would represent the Stakeholder model as a sort of clockwork toy, a mechanical wonder whose moving parts illustrated the way the components of a well-run company worked in concert together. In the finished film, Jonah’s delightful wooden antique, enhanced by a suite of audio “foleys” (custom-made sound effects), brings Ed Freeman’s model vividly to life. Finally, what about the title of our film? I try not to obsess about it, but a documentary’s title is something you’ll be living with for years, sharing the film with different audiences, repeating the words and hearing them repeated many times. You want to find something that is genuinely catchy or even poetic, but something that is also true to the core themes of your film. How about Fishing with Dynamite? Bobby, Jenny, and I heard the phrase used by Professor Lynn Stout, one of our key interviewees. But it was our cinematographer, Eric Hurt, who first picked up on it as a possible title. Eric wasn’t so focused on the themes of the film as he was on the catchiness of the phrase. And he was right. But the more I thought about it, I also felt it embodied the right message about the film. Earlier in our research and story development, we had tried out titles like Beyond the Bottom Line or Taking Care of Business. These were fine, optimistic phrases that emphasized the positive side of our story – pointing out how business could be a force for good in the world. But as we wrapped up the interviews and moved into the editing, I wondered if our message might have more power if we tapped into the darker side of the story. As noted above, most people start with that darker view of corporations anyway. Why not bring them into the film’s argument by suggesting that we were engaged in a battle of powerful forces and confronting a crisis that had to be urgently addressed. As you may know, “fishing with dynamite” is actually a thing that fishermen around the world sometimes do: they throw an explosive into a lake, stun large numbers of fish, and use nets to haul them out. It works great: you catch a lot of fish very quickly. But the life cycle of the fish and the ecology of the lake are utterly destroyed.

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Lynn Stout, in a class for Darden and UVA Law School students, used it as a metaphor for Maximizing Shareholder Value: “We’re basically ‘fishing with dynamite.’ Only in this case, we’re investing with dynamite, to make companies get that share price up in the short-term, with the long-term effect that we’ve got fewer and fewer fish in our nets.” Our friend Lynn Stout died a couple of years after we interviewed her, so using her phrase as our title became a nice way to remember her and her contribution to our work. To cement the connection between an obscure fishing practice and the dysfunctional management of corporations, we devised one more animation scene that would establish the Fishing with Dynamite title at the beginning of the film. Jonah Tobias depicts three mechanical Wall Street shareholder characters – on the lam, as it were, from the clockwork toy Stakeholder model – throwing dynamite into a lake and rendering a massive stream of fish, each emblazoned with a little dollar sign. All the while the animated shareholders sing the old R&B song: “The best things in life are free. But you can give ‘em to the birds and bees. I want money!” It’s a darkly humorous introduction to the central dilemma of the film: we all want to tell ourselves that there’s nothing wrong with being greedy. It’s just business, after all. It’s not how we’d act in real life where we claim to care about our family, our community, our democracy. But hopefully, by the time the film is over, it will be impossible for the viewer to escape the obvious: we’ll never be at peace if we continue to hollow out our humanity, spending eight hours at work every day fishing with dynamite. After over five years of collaboration, Bobby, Jenny, and I completed Fishing with Dynamite and premiered it at the Virginia Film Festival in the fall of 2019. My job as a business sector storyteller was over. I moved on to other film projects and other sectors of the humanities. But millions of other people – scholars, young entrepreneurs, established business leaders, employees, customers, suppliers, and shareholders  – are still very much engaged in that great battle raging in the boardrooms of large corporations, behind the storefronts of small businesses, and on the trading floors of world markets. It falls now to them to tell their own stories about how to humanize business, to embrace the inherently human values observed by Adam Smith 200 years ago and prove that they are relevant and necessary today, if we are to save the soul of the American corporation. Paul Wagner is an Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning independent filmmaker, whose documentaries on subjects in the humanities have premiered at the Sundance, Toronto, Telluride, and Rotterdam film festivals; received multiple grants of support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities; and been broadcast widely on PBS. His theatrically-released Windhorse was the first digitally shot and edited dramatic feature and received awards for Best US Feature and Best Director at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Wagner also teaches screenwriting and film directing at the University of Virginia.  

Part III

Historical, Management, and Organization Studies Perspectives on Humanizing Business

Chapter 31

Using (and Misusing) Historical Texts to Humanize Commerce: Evidence from Smith, Marx, and Spencer Patricia H. Werhane and Allison L. Elias

The tendency to appropriate artifacts from the past in order to bolster the beliefs of the present is omnipresent in today’s political climate. Those who oppose government regulation and support free enterprise have advanced their agendas by leveraging the novels of philosopher Ayn Rand and misreading of Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer (Burns 2009). On the other hand, many critics of capitalism who hold for-­ profit corporations culpable for social ills deploy Marxism and socialism to argue that increased state intervention or even the abolishment of free enterprise will benefit global well-being. To justify opinions about how we should solve current political, economic, and social problems, today’s journalists, scholars, policymakers, and business executives often use and misuse historical texts in ways not readily apparent to nonspecialists. Yet the fact that this type of use and misuse occurs is unsurprising to those who study the philosophy of history. While we tend to think about history as a body of objective knowledge, and thus perceive historical texts as fixed truths, in reality, each generation of scholars is tasked with constructing their own beliefs about what happened in the past. According to philosopher R.G. Collingwood who emphasizes the importance of human agency in the researching, writing, and digesting of history, “every new generation must rewrite history in its own way” (1946, 248). That the appropriation of the past reflects the concerns and logic of the present is both necessary to and inevitable in the historian’s craft. But in what way does the creation and recreation of history result in lost and distorted knowledge? This essay examines the use and misuse of past texts about commerce, showing the changing interpretation and shifting appropriation of the writings of three key economic thinkers. The historical discipline allows for the P. H. Werhane (*) DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. L. Elias Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_31

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feeding of unbridled subjectivity while pushing forward objective standards of conduct. On the one hand, historical methodology predicts that dominant beliefs about the past will arise to support political positioning. On the other hand, historical methodology mandates the use of primary source texts as required proof to verify any narrative. By insisting on the use of primary sources, the historical discipline tries to temper misrepresentations of the past, allowing for the discovery of less prevalent historically grounded truths. The fluid boundary between past and present as well as the art and science of crafting a historical narrative reveals the paradoxical nature of the historical discipline. Public mistrust in capitalism has resulted in both the use and misuse of past texts about commerce. Humanizing business is not a new venture. A number of well-­ known political economists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had that idea in mind when they developed their economic theories. In this chapter, we will focus on three political economists, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Herbert Spencer, each of whom still plays a significant role in economic thinking today. For Smith, Marx, and Spencer, humanizing business was part of what commerce was and still is about. Over time, however, the writings of these prolific theorists have been reduced, by both scholars and in popular consumption, to simplistic, even politically motivated, axioms. To remedy this type of essentialism, we must remember that these theorists produced numerous texts beyond what would become their best-known mantras. We draw upon the contributions of intellectual historians to explain the trajectories of Smith, Marx, and Spencer’s writings in economic thought. “Men and women are narrative animals”: they use storytelling to make sense of their own experiences and to understand the larger community around them (Moore 2005, 46). This narrative quest to make meaning of the world—and one’s place in it—results in each generation looking to the past to better digest the conditions of the present. Reexamining historical texts from these three prominent thinkers reveals that present concerns about the free market have shaped our understanding of economic thinking. Our chapter acknowledges the strengths and weaknesses of the “two orthodoxies” used to study past texts. While the textualists and the contextualists have merit when approaching ways to make meaning of historical writing, according to intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, philosophical errors afflict the reasoning of both positions (1969). Thus, we draw upon both, attending to text and context, for humanizing commerce requires a rereading (a larger collection of) original texts as well as acknowledging broader contextual perspectives that result in some texts outlasting others. Why some texts, and even some ideas within them, gained currency over time, became popularly appropriated to bolster certain interests, and others lapsed into oblivion, can only be explained by looking to larger historical forces. A text’s legacy is shaped by contextual factors at the moment of its creation, as well as the political, social, economic, cultural, and legal influences at play for generations afterward. We attempt to rehabilitate the dehumanized nature of commerce by turning to a fuller body of work from these three theorists. Best known as the father of industrialization and free enterprise, Adam Smith would have been surprised that the topic of humanizing business was of great interest today. Smith argued that humans comprised business; that commerce by

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definition is about individuals working and trading; and markets are created by, and exist only because of, human beings. Smith’s concept of the impartial spectator as the arbitrator of moral behavior, his implicit agreement with theorist John Locke that all human beings have basic rights, his admonitions that greed is bad for markets, and his thesis that without justice no society (and thus no market economy) can exist or exist very well for very long provides the contemporary reader with ammunition to critique any dehumanizing processes in today’s economies (Smith [1759] 1976). The second political economist, Karl Marx, is best known for his critique of capitalism. A closer look at that critique reveals his worry about the dehumanization of capitalism, particularly workers as commodities rather than human beings with basic rights. Moreover, in his book Capital, Marx recognized the inherent dangers that arise from the worship of money for its own sake. We saw the consequences of the leveraging of money, and bundling it as a commodity, in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis and its aftermath. Thus, Marx, in an odd way, is the father of corporate social responsibility (CSR), since Marx has had to respond to his criticisms with various labor protections and financial reforms (Marx [1844] 1964). Finally, Herbert Spencer, the nineteenth-century Social Darwinist, may seem alien to the discussion of humanizing business, since he argues at length that the best form of political economy is what we might call radical libertarianism today. With each individual left alone to pursue her interests without restraint or regulation, this form of libertarianism would allow for the survival of the fittest, and the benign neglect of those with limited capacity to compete on the free market. Yet in one of his last writings, Spencer was highly critical of hierarchical organizations akin to military structuring and defended “flat” organizations where each manager, employee, or laborer has equal rights and an equal voice in the goals and direction of the organization. This form of humanizing organizations, rarely seen today in the few employee-owned companies, suggests a radical organizational reform that indeed would prove humanizing (Spencer 1886, III). Thus, Spencer’s body of work often is reduced to his extreme libertarianism, divorced from his other writings. Intellectual historians acknowledge that the entire body of work from a single author, as well as the ways in which various authors’ texts interact with one another, can provide important context when interpreting any singular theory (LaCapra 1980, 268). We shall conclude that despite Smith’s fame as the father of the industrial revolution and free enterprise, the humanizing dimension of his writings is often ignored. Similarly, almost no one remembers or quotes Herbert Spencer’s critiques of hierarchies, and his proposal that social progress through commerce can occur only if we reorganize companies democratically. However, it is Marx, the strongest critic of capitalism, whose writings have had the greatest influence on humanizing business. Marx’s criticisms have become mainstream and not as easy to dismiss. Forms of free enterprise that ignore his admonitions about the treatment of labor face public criticism and even rebuke, as seen by the growing popularity of businesses that prioritize social and environmental responsibility. And his arguments about financial markets as having the potential to create houses of cards were evident in the 2008

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fiscal crisis when the leveraging and re-leveraging of bundled subprime mortgages collapsed. The “weakest card,” so to speak, was pulled out of the house. Humanizing commerce has had a long history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that has shaped our views of business today. A careful examination of the use and misuse of these three important political economists at various historical moments provides us with new insights into how commerce is inescapably human.

Adam Smith1 Adam Smith, the famous eighteen-century political economist and moral philosopher, had much to say about humanizing commerce; indeed, we shall argue, he probably could not imagine the moral efficacy of a commerce that dehumanized business. We will focus on four aspects of Smith’s thinking that support this conclusion and that are as important today as they were in the eighteenth century for the project of humanizing commerce: defense of basic rights and his principle of justice; his notion of the impartial spectator as conscience, arbitrator, and source of entrepreneurial creativity; his theory of labor (which Marx will critique); and his early acknowledgement of managerial agency problems. Finally, we will mention briefly the dehumanization of his famous expression, the “invisible hand.” Underlying these ideas is a very basic assumption about interdependence: human beings exist and thrive only when living in societies.

The Inevitable Sociality of Human Beings Although Smith has often been read as an eighteenth century, enlightenment individualist, in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he argues, “It is thus that man, who can subsist only in society, was fitted by nature to that situation for which he is made. All the members of human society stand in need of each other’s assistance and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries” (Smith 1759, 100). That theme of our mutual dependence and interdependence is echoed in his book on political economy, The Wealth of Nations when he contends that we all have a certain propensity in human nature “… to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another” (Smith 1776, 59). We are naturally social and most of us take advantage of that tendency to interact with others through trade. This underlying idea is what Bevan and Werhane (2014) have called elsewhere “the inexorable sociality of moral agency.” But how does this assumption, that, inherently, human beings’ tendency toward sociability cohere with what is often read as Smith’s preoccupation with individual

1  Parts of this Adam Smith section are to be reprinted in Philosophy of Management, edited by C. Needham, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer,2020, forthcoming.

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self-interest, particularly in commerce? That misreading of Smith comes from a misunderstanding of what Smith meant by “interests” and “self-interest.” Although the implications of “interests” and “self-interest” has been misappropriated over time to bolster views that the pursuit of self-interest will alternately promote or undermine societal progress, in TMS, Smith carefully argues: Since all my interests and concerns emanate from my self, there is a trivial but important sense in which all interests are self-interests, that is, I as the subject of all my interests, although the objects of these interests may well be others. A second set of interests is in myself as the object as well as the subject of those interests or what some call “self love.” But that self love is not necessarily immoral. The self-contained prudent person is not necessarily immoral or evil so long as her self-interests in herself do not harm others, and indeed, we often admire people who are cautious and prudent in their behavior even though they seem disinterested in others. Thirdly, often my interests are overlapping—an interest in helping others maybe because it pleases me, or because it is fun or challenging or what I think is “the right thing to do,” but that is still an interest of my self.

Indeed, it is impossible to be purely selfless in one’s actions, according to this view. Smith further elaborates his view of “interests” in economic exchanges as he describes in the famous quotation: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. (Smith [1776] 1976, 2)

There is a reciprocity of respect in this behavior among people living in a community where the merchant is equally dependent on customers, as the customers are dependent on the quality of the bread, meat, and beer for general well-being. There is a mutual and entirely interdependent set of self-interests imbedded in these relationships. One has to remember that the butcher, baker, and brewer are neighbors and have to live together, thus compete fairly so that no single proprietor takes unfair advantage of the others. That Smith’s writings arguably have been misinterpreted, such that “interest” has a connotation of advancing the well-being of a single individual only, is unsurprising given what we know about the life of historical texts. A broader context, or changing economic, political, social, and/or cultural conditions, shapes the reception of any historical text, including the interpretation of the author’s intent. Indeed, we cannot rely only on the author’s intent, lest we fall prey to a form of an “intentional fallacy” (Wimsatt & Beardsley 1946). Historian and philosopher Quentin Skinner, noted for his contributions to contextual hermeneutics, contends that consideration of an author’s intent must account for the way that the text influences others. The meaning of language emerges not just from a single author but also from those who digest the text as part of their complex social environment (Skinner 1969). The overwhelming tendency to read Smith’s “interests” as a benefit for one at the expense of another is telling of the nature of the broader environments into which Smith’s writings have appeared. Some historical actors have interpreted and reinterpreted Smith in ways that bolster their views of the corrupt nature of certain economic and commercial conditions.

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Justice The interdependence in the merchant community of the butcher, brewer, and the baker brings us to a critical point: Smith argues in the TMS, and later in the WN— the idea of justice as the most basic virtue and the grounds for a rule of law. It is a basic principle, perhaps the most significant principle in Smith’s thinking. He writes: In the race for wealth, and honours, and preferments, he may run as hard as he can, strain every nerve and every muscle, in order to outstrip all his competitors. But if he should justle, or throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at an end. It is a violation of fair play, which they cannot admit of. (Smith 1759, 120)

In this passage, Smith adapts Locke and Pufendorf’s theory of natural rights, and he defends the principle that every person has rights to her own person, to her property, and her reputation. Such” Perfect rights are those which we have a title to demand and if refused to compel an other to perform” (Smith [1762–1764] 1978, 9). Justice is one of these “perfect” or natural rights entitled to human beings by reason of each person’s existence. It is both a negative principle proscribing any harm toward another and a positive quality of engaging in reciprocal fair play. He reinforces the positive quality of this reciprocity by analogizing justice with societal well-being: Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence (kindness and benevolence or altruism) but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it. Justice is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice of society. (Smith 1759, 141)

Thus, justice is both the most basic individual virtue, and it should serve as the grounding for any rule of law. Smith supports this thesis in the WN where he contends, “Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.” ([1776] 1976, 533; our italics). These laws of justice are critical to commerce, because, as Smith asserts, “Commerce and manufactures can seldom flourish along in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice” ([1776] 1976, 710). If we agree with Smith on this very simple but powerful idea about the importance of justice in sustaining commerce, then humanizing commerce depends on this notion of fairness. Interestingly, this historic thesis is reflected in the recent adaption, in 2010, by the United Nations in their Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (the Ruggie Principles). In brief, these principles state: These [voluntary] Guiding Principles are grounded in the recognition of (a) States’ existing obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights and fundamental freedoms; (b) The role of business enterprises as specialized organs of society performing specialized functions, required to comply with all applicable laws and to respect human rights. (UN Guiding Principles, 2011, 1)

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A universal adaption of these principles would surely contribute to a more humanly friendly global commerce.

The Impartial Spectator Smith’s idea of the impartial spectator is one of the most important and underrated potential contributions to twenty-first thinking. Smith introduces the concept of the impartial spectator as follows: We begin, upon this account, to examine our own passions and conduct, and to consider how these must appear to them [others] … We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behavior, and endeavor to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us. This is the only looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct. (Smith 1759, 150)

Smith is describing here the human ability to reflect, to step back metaphorically from a situation and study ourselves, our behavior, our histories, our cognitive and situational constraints, and even our theories about the self. This is what Adam Smith (and others) call taking a “spectator” perspective, and Smith argued that this “natural” characteristic of human nature is the source of conscience.2 This spectator phenomenon or epiphenomenon allows us not only to study ourselves and our histories but also to critique the behavior of others. Also, it is the source of moral judgments, those principles to which the preponderance of society would, from an impartial mode, agree are admirable behaviors. This idea of the impartial spectator comes from Smith’s argument that we are inexorably social, as described above. We cannot escape each other, and because of the spectator phenomenon, which, in principle, is universal (although Smith would be reluctant to make that generalization) we are constantly judging each other and creating moral rules. More importantly, because each of us can step back and evaluate ourselves, we can also redirect our judgments and behavior. Thus, this spectator’s perspective is the source of making choices and directing our lives and the direction of our organizations, albeit the constraints and often not propitiously. In contemporary management thinking, the spectator phenomenon accounts for what is often referred to as “institutional entrepreneurship” (Garud et al., 2007), or the ability of managers to turn around an organization, or redirect its culture, its goals, and its activities. The impartial spectator serves as an explanatory medium that can account for individual and organizational creative capabilities to reimagine the direction of human and institutional behavior. When we/others create adaptable mechanisms to deal propitiously and dynamically with the ever changing global political economies, we are utilizing the impartial spectator worldview.

2  Note that Smith’s idea of an impartial spectator is not to be equated with a “view from nowhere.” Smith never claimed that human beings could be perfectly impartial nor completely.

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Labor, Laboring, and Free Labor Smith is well known for his labor theory of value (with its origins in John Locke). This thesis holds that human labor input creates value, and the division, organization, and mechanization of labor creates, or can create, exponential value through mass production. What is less cited is his claim that while the right to liberty is a natural right (Smith [1776] 1976), it is an abstract idea for most, only realized when laborers are freed from serfdom and allowed to select their employments. The property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property (Smith [1776] 1976, I.x.c.12).

The laborer or worker has inviolable rights to her person and her dexterity and productivity. In a slave economy, slaves and their productivity are not separated but measured as a unit. Thus, slaves are treated as objects (like contemporary robots who have no independent human existence). However, freed from serfdom productivity, meaning one’s work and what one’s work can produce, can be “sold” (without selling oneself) in employment. This separation of the laborer from her laboring and what she produces, Smith argues, is the source of the eighteenth-century idea of liberty. Dehumanizing workers by treating them as just that … workers, not human beings, a practice still occurring in the twenty-first century, is a dimension of a dehumanized commerce. Smith sees the division and specialization of labor as the basis for economic freedom, growth, and well-being. Despite these very positive conclusions, however, there appear to be inconsistencies in Smith’s treatment of these phenomena. In Book I of WN, Smith writes about the benefits of the division of labor, but in Book V, Smith writes: In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently one or two… . The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become … His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues.3

Smith’s fairly inadequate answer to this “stupidity and ignorance” is universal education (of boys) through the eighth grade so that they can, in their leisure time, read and learn to think independently of their work. It will be Mar who picks up on this theme and uses it as a wedge to defend the humanizing of the workplace.

 Ibid., 50.

3

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Agency Theory At the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were few companies, and those were all “joint-stock” companies. Joint-stock companies are the predecessors of the modern corporation. However, they differ in at least three ways. First, joint-stock companies were owned by shareholders, and if there were economic issues the owners were responsible for its debts as well as its profitability. In these companies, there were few “managers” who had no ownership: owners and managers usually had similar incentives. Second, joint-stock companies were chartered by nations (while today U.S. corporations are chartered by states) with limited life. Third, in every charter of these companies, there was a provision that the company would engage in some philanthropic or social project to benefit some part of society. Smith was highly critical of these companies—in particular, the East India Company, which had virtually taken over what is now India. Moreover, despite his defense of free markets, Smith was not a purist, nor was he naïve about agency problems. He writes, The trade of a joint stock company is always managed by a court of directors… . The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own… . Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company (Smith [1776] 1976, 574).

Thus, early on Smith recognizes the problems raised by agency theory, and his critique hints the dehumanization of the workplace, a theme later picked up by Herbert Spencer, as we shall see.

The Invisible Hand The “invisible hand,” an expression Smith uses exactly once in the WN (and once in the TMS) has created volumes of commentary the reader should explore for herself. About the invisible hand, Smith writes, Every individual [in commerce]… intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends his own gain, and he is, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention… … By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. (WN 1776, 477, 349)

What Smith had in mind was a very simple idea. Market exchanges in a free, competitive economy can create value for one or both parties in the exchange as a result of multitude exchanges. But there is no real “hand.” Rather, the invisible hand is the result of market activities that can produce positive outcomes. This is probably obvious. But we would suggest a cautionary note, that is, one must be careful to

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dehumanize markets. Industrial economists have a tendency to speak of markets, such as the New York Stock Exchange, as if it were a person, reacting and making choices on the basis of economic and political news, other markets, etc. But there is no “stock market” as such. All markets are the outcome of multitudes of trades and exchanges, each of which may or may not be a reaction to economic information. There is no real stock market as a “hand” in any political economy. On a macro level, Smith argues that the ideal political economy is one that protects its citizens, creates conditions for well-being, including economic growth, and provides public services in the context of personal liberty, protection of rights, and enforcement of laws of justice (Smith [1776] 1976). This is hardly a “night watchman” theory of the political economy, a position sometimes traced to Smith. A viable political economy cannot exist for long without justice, and it cannot prosper without economic development in the form of free commerce. Thus, in the Smithian well-functioning political economy, ethics (as prudence and personal fairness), economics (the enhancement of economic well-being of each citizen) and politics (in the form of protection of rights and commutative justice through the laws and guardians of the system) are all interrelated, inseparable, and necessary for a well-­ functioning, just, humanized political economy. What can be concluded from this reading of Smith is that the “popular view” of Smith creates a questionable paradigm and is not the only way to think about politics, economics, and ethics. Just as one set of political economists, in particular, neo-classical economic theory, appealed to Smith for some ground for their conclusions, so too, we can appeal to Smith to tell another story about commerce and free enterprise. This story might include: questioning the range and scope of rational choice theory and agency theory, pointing to the normative aspects of positive and welfare economics, raising questions about the alleged autonomy of markets (e.g., the “market for corporate control”), and exploring what kinds of stories one can tell about free enterprise if ethics, economics, and politics cannot be neatly compartmentalized. The new cultural history (Hunt 1989) can offer a perspective about how and why certain popular views of Smith have emerged. Historian Roger Chartier contends, “… it seems necessary to place the notion of appropriation at the center of a cultural historical approach” (1995, 89). The making of a popular view of any text involves construction of meaning, even if the meaning was “possibly foreign to that originally intended” (1995, 90). Chartier elevates those who read texts for themselves: active readers make meaning, participating in an “inventive and creative” act. Yet he criticizes those who merely accept a text’s meaning passively. Chartier quotes Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life ([1980] 1984) to condemn “consumption,” meaning those who use cultural products to conform to a dominant order. Here we glean that popular consumption of Smith’s invisible hand could be a lazy way to communicate one’s views or transmit culture. Returning to Smith’s original body of work is important to uncover less popular interpretations of his writings. Thus, those who truly read original texts are participants in the “the production of meaning,” which allows historical texts to exist “full of possibility” throughout time and space (1995, 4).

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Karl Marx “The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”

  —Marx and Engels; Jenkins. The nineteenth-century radical political economist, Karl Marx (1818–1883), is well-known for his form of historical materialism, his disagreements with Adam Smith’s version of a labor theory of value, and more famously for his relentless criticism of capitalism. He concludes that having sowed its own seeds of destruction, capitalism will evolve into socialism, eventually leading to a form of anarchical communism. To analyze all of Marx’s nuanced arguments is well beyond the scope of this chapter. We will focus on two themes: the alienation of labor, which dehumanizes workers in a free enterprise system, and one of his most salient critiques of capitalism: the worship of money for its own sake which, when leveraged, will create a “house of cards.” Marx’s arguments concerning the alienation of labor, we will conclude, is the forerunner of inspiring labor reforms (still ongoing). Concerning the worship of money, his analyses of leveraged capital, still present challenges for capitalism today.

Smith and Marx Marx was an avid student of Adam Smith, particularly in his work, The Wealth of Nations. Two of Marx’s principles can be traced to Smith’s WN. In Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (1859) elaborating on what we labelled earlier as the “inexorable sociality” of human individuals and our mutual dependence on each other, Marx writes, “It is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence, but on the contrary it is their social existence which determines their consciousness” (Marx 1859; rpt Easton 1959, 11). Elaborating on that point from a historical determinist point of view Marx argues, “In the social production of their subsistence men enter into determined and necessary relations with each other which are independent of their wills—production relations which correspond to a definite state of development of their material productive forces. The sum of these production-­ relations forms the economic structure of society” (10). Further, he adds that it is these economic production-relations that form the basis of any society from which political, legal, and even aesthetic structures and ideas develop. Thus, not only are we inexorably interdependent but also economic life is the basis upon which human culture, mores, and political relations evolve. And from economic life, an economically sound society with art, music, literature and even sports, can develop (See Grundrisse 1858 draft; see also Gould 1978, Chapter One).4

4  “. . . new higher relations of production [e.g., art, history, literature] never appear before the material conditions of their existence are matured in the womb of the old society itself” (11).

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Marx, having read the WN carefully, also adapts Smith’s claim that industrialization, coupled with the free movement of labor and capital, are necessary conditions for economic development. Feudal and agricultural economies fail to provide decent standards of living for most constituents (see McCloskey 2006), Introduction on that point). It is only through industrialization, with its mechanization of labor and its mass production of goods and services, which produces enough jobs and capital to provide economic largesse for a society (see Capital, Book I in particular for this argument). However, as we shall outline below, industrialized free enterprise, or what Marx calls “capitalism,” has what he would consider fatal flaws that, according to Marx’s theory of historical inevitability, will ultimately bring about its failure. Two of the reasons for this eventual failure (and there are others for Marx) are the alienation of labor in free markets and the fetish glorification of money.

The Alienation of Labor Marx, following Smith (and derived from Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, [1689] 2017), recognized that the industrial revolution depended on private property, capital (for investment in factories), and free labor, meaning the ability for workers to choose and change jobs, and to get paid for their productivity (Marx 1844, 120). Smith, as we noted earlier, concluded that the freeing of labor from serfdom or slavery introduced workers to the idea of liberty by allowing them to sell their capabilities and productivity without selling themselves. Marx disagreed with that conclusion. Marx’s disagreement with Smith about the nature of free labor begins with his definition of human beings. He writes, “[F]ree conscious activity is the species-­ character of man…. [and] labor is the life activity…. The object of labor [productivity] is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life” (Marx 1844, 127). In other words, as human beings, we consciously identify ourselves and our life’s activity with our work: what each worker produces with her labor is part of her identification, and how she defines herself as an individual human being relative to others. However, in a capitalist system, each human must sell her productivity in order to survive. As a result, humans, therefore, must alienate part of themselves. Marx contends that it could not be otherwise in a capitalist economy—that alienation is unavoidable but unacceptable. Moreover, humans who function as wage laborers can never be paid fully for their work contributions. Otherwise, a company would fail if were to pay its workers fully for what they were producing. Even for companies with low-profit margins, many expenses (i.e., a company’s overhead, the cost of materials for production) preclude private enterprises from possibly paying each worker fully for her contribution. Work, then, becomes a means for humans to survive, not an end in itself. Recognizing this arrangement as an unavoidable economic fact in a capitalist economy, Marx considers this wage phenomenon to be a secondary form of alienation: each worker is not compensated fully for her contribution to

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the operation and flourishing of the company. Then, he outlines a third form of alienation: the fruits of each workers’ efforts are not owned by the worker. What each worker produces belongs to the owner or the company. The final product that the company owns results from the labor of many workers: an automobile, for instance, exemplifies many workers’ efforts on an assembly line. Yet another form of alienation is each worker from her fellow workers. This alienation arises from the fact that each worker is replaceable by another worker. Workers are simply means for the company, and thus the economy, to flourish. In the context of the company, workers are valued for their productivity and not for their character as human beings. The problem is, of course, that workers are human beings despite this alienation. Finally, Marx argues that, ordinarily, capitalists try to pay workers as little as she can get away with. Thus, he contends, as owners get richer the laborer gets poorer (Marx 1844, 134; and see Grundrisse, 1858 draft). At the end of Capital Part III Marx concludes: In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite. (958–9)

Marx’s ideal would be a form of anarchical communism; whereby, industries are controlled by workers and each is remunerated according to need. In a capitalist economy, this sort of arrangement is impossible to achieve, according to Marx. Marx’s idea of alienation, and his warning about the inevitable demise of capitalism, has allowed for humans to make adjustments to the nature of the employment relationships. Many throughout history have relied on Marx’s “alienation” language to temper the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. Since the onset of the industrial revolution in the United States, activists and policymakers have sought to improve working conditions. Numerous labor historians have documented the individual and collective efforts of humans to resist alienation.5 Some include owners as advocates for labor rights, but often contend that employers’ efforts to improve working 5  For instance, see a rich body of work by labor historians including Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (New York: The New Press, 1999); David Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University

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conditions, known in some eras as “welfare capitalism,” are actually motivated by a quest for higher profits for the company (Brandes 1976). So industrialist Henry Ford’s institution of a “five-dollar day” empowered laborers by raising their pay. But in addition, Ford’s wage increases also could have been intended to undermine labor union strength, reduce turnover rates, and provide laborers with enough excess capital to buy a Model T! While debates about employers’ motivations are beyond the scope of this chapter, we will summarize this discussion of alienation by saying that Marx’s theory raised awareness of workers’ plights. As a result, some argue that over time we find gradual improvements in working conditions in more advanced capitalist forms (e.g., anti-child labor laws, minimum wages).6Certain nineteenthand twentieth-century labor reforms arose as antidotes to Marx’s admonitions about labor alienation.

The House of Cards A second contribution to twenty-first century free enterprise is Marx’s realization, which he outlines in Part III of, Capital, that markets and money can create a “house of cards.” This occurrence is because, he writes, “In an advanced capitalist economy, in order to raise capital for an industry shares are sold. Those shares represent the value of the company in question.” However, these shares are then traded as commodities creating a duplication of the same investment, or what Marx labels as “fictitious capital.” Because “the capital value of this security (share) is still pure illusion…. the capital does not exist twice over, once as capital value of the ownership titles, the shares, and then again as the capital actually invested [as a commodity] …” (Capital, III, 597). Worse still, according to Marx, there is often triplication of fictitious capital through the creation of the credit system and bank loans that leverage the same capital a third time (601). This triple leveraging can create a domino effect throughout the system if there is a failure anywhere in the system. What Marx foresaw was the market collapse of 2008 where subprime mortgage loans were bundled and then resold, sometimes two or three times over. When the borrowers failed to honor their mortgage commitments, which happened because these were subprime loans to begin with, that pulled the bottom card out of the financial “house,” and we suffered market failure. Marx saw this phenomenon primarily as a result of the worship and fetish of money. In fact, his ideal political economy would be moneyless. Today, we are not going to succumb to that temptation, because without currencies and global trading, an extension of the expansion of capitalism could not function. But Marx viewed the global market for money as a commodity as another form of fictitious capital press, 1979); Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), and others. 6  Others may argue that the rise in subcontracting and the use of independent contractors offers strong evidence against an improvement in labor conditions for many workers.

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that itself could collapse. Thus, Marx’s analysis of markets and market failure is a good reminder to take care of lending and leveraging money and market shares, and money, all of which could occur again in overheated markets and questionable lending strategies, all of which hurt both the lenders and borrowers.

Marx’s Contributions What is interesting is that despite Smith’s humanistic development of a free enterprise political economy, and as we will see, Spencer’s defense of the ideal of democratically managed companies, it is Marx, known as the bête noir of capitalism, that has been the most instrumental is humanizing commerce. One cannot ignore his analysis of the alienation(s) of labor, and the history of labor reform is a series of responses to that analysis. Today we are still debating the role of money in free enterprise, particularly in CEO pay and in market leveraging of shares and capital. While most of the planet has not given up the idea of capitalism in various forms, there are ongoing movements to improve labor conditions and pay, and to contextualize free enterprise to fit local customs and social mores. While these two phenomena are “works in progress,” It is to Marx we owe the debt of focusing our attention to truly humanizing commerce in all its dimensions.

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer was a well-known British nineteenth-century radical liberal, sociologist, and political philosopher. He is often called the father and founder of Social Darwinism. In nineteenth-century Europe, evolutionary theory was not the monopoly of Charles Darwin but was part of speculative thinking of the time. It was Darwin who gave biological proof for a theory of biological evolution, but the theory, albeit unproved, predates the voyage of the Beagle and the 1859 publication of the Origin of the Species. Spencer was one of its most articulate proponents, and it was Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the term, “survival of the fittest.” Spencer depends on Lamark rather than Darwin for the basis of his system, and a number of his books and essays were published before Darwin’s work came out. Spencer is a systemic thinker who conceives the universe, in all its diversity, as constructed from one set of principles, in his case, the principles of evolution. He calls this set of principles and his depiction of this system as the “System of Synthetic Philosophy” (e.g., Spencer 1862). Spencer notes that we find the universe evolving from a simple homogenous mass to a highly complex solar and galactic system. Similarly, biological evolution begins with simple single-cell amoebae and evolves to a collection of increasingly complex organisms where those species that can best adapt to changing environmental and global conditions survive. The weak, less fit, and least flexible die off. (Spencer 1851, 408).

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This process is neither simple nor linear. As new species evolve, others devolve, and with each iteration, the fittest individuals, the most adaptable to changing environmental, social, and economic conditions in each species, survive the increasing complexification of their surroundings and the increasing interdependence. This spontaneous process of evolution and devolution is exhibited in the law of the survival of the fittest. The law is the survival of the fittest…. [T]he law is not the survival of the “better” or the “stronger,” if we give to those words anything like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under conditions under which they are placed … (Spencer 1872, I, 379–380)

The principles of evolution apply to all phenomena including human beings and their social interactions. The evolution of individuals in their social and political relationships, and of cultures, societies, and social systems is as much a part of the evolutionary process as are biological and natural phenomena. Spencer analogizes society to an organism and traces the history of humankind as an evolutionary process from simple informal arrangements between hunters and gatherers to hierarchical military or military-like political systems, then, ideally, to more complex political and economic systems. Private enterprise introduces the notion of economic liberty as well as industrialization, and eventually, the idea of democratic political development. Like natural evolution, these social processes are spontaneous unless tampered with, and like natural evolution, these processes are not linear; there are periods of devolution, as well, when particular societies revert to simpler social, political, and economic arrangements (Spencer 1857, 8–62). Spencer claims that a society that is independent—that is allowed to evolve in its own way—is most likely to develop its own survival and adaptability mechanisms in so that it is immoral to interfere with this process. Spencer writes: [t]o interfere with this process [of spontaneous evolution] by producing premature development in any particular direction is inevitably to disturb the true balance of organization by causing somewhere else a corresponding atrophy. (Spencer 1851, 290–291)

Spencer’s synthetic philosophy appears holistic, and he often uses the term “social organism” to refer to society or societies. Nevertheless, Spencer is a methodological individualist. The primary unit out of which social organisms are made up is the individual human being. Societies evolve, they develop complex interrelationships, and they affect and are affected by individual relationships. But societies are merely aggregates, albeit complicated aggregates, often constructed out of impossibly complicated interrelationships. It is the individual, in this case, the individual human being, that is the basic unit and at the core of Spencer’s synthetic system. It is, of course, difficult to envision how the principles of evolution drive the social evolution of societies that are merely aggregates of individuals, and Spencer does not fully answer that criticism. Despite this problem, Spencer never relinquishes his individualism to general principles of social evolutionary theory (Simon 1960, 294–299). In Social Statics and in other political writings, Spencer applies his synthetic system with its evolutionary principles to individual human development. Spencer

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parallels individual development to natural development and social development, adding one more factor. Like every organism, according to Spencer, we seek our own pleasure or happiness and try to avoid pain. However, the evolution of the human being entails the development of complex mental abilities. Along with this mental development, we have developed a notion of free will, thus we are able to direct our own individual destinies. If particular societies should be left alone to evolve or devolve as they are fit, so too, the individual, who makes up the basic unit of any society, should be left alone to develop her resources and strengths. This conclusion is based upon what Spencer calls the “Law of Equal Freedom,” stated as, “… every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man (Spencer 1851, 35), [or,] Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man” (Spencer 1892, II, 46).

The natural right not to be interfered with allows, but does not require, the right to pursue one’s own ends (Doherty and Gray 1993, 484). If left alone, some of us will develop, mature, and contribute; others will atrophy or wither away. Thus, the most adaptable, both physically and mentally, will and should survive and flourish. As a result of noninterference, a collection of the fittest individuals will create the fittest society. This is not quite radical individualism, because Spencer recognizes that as complex highly differentiated individuals, we live in and must work within social structures. This is always a struggle because we have not yet reached a stage in evolution where private and social interests perfectly coincide. Spencer adopts Lamark’s theory that, along with inherited characteristics, human beings passed on acquired traits as well. So, children of smart, strong, adaptable parents will inherit those traits. However, children of a lazy or slothful person would most likely inherit those traits as well as parental biological characteristics. Thus, if those of us less able to adapt reproduce, we will add to the number of devolving individuals, and eventually affect the development of society. Future generations will suffer both because capital was deflected from productive means to help those who could not help themselves, and because future generations will have to deal with increasingly large numbers of individuals who are incapable. Thus, that society will eventually devolve (Spencer 1851, 59–65). At the same time, Spencer claims that private charity is fine so long as the donors selectively choose deserving poor as their recipients. The result of noninterference and personal altruism will result so that the most fit will survive, achieve, and reproduce resulting in a society of strong, adaptable, entrepreneurs and a healthy industrial and technical economy (Spencer 1851, 278–363; [1884], 1982, 31–70). Given his night watchman theory and strong criticism of any form of socialism, Spencer does not envision his ideal industrial state to be that of late-nineteenth-­ century England. This is not merely because of active governmental and legislative processes that were in place nor the existence of complicated governmental bureaucracies that mimicked military structures. More importantly, Spencer sees industries, and in particular the joint-stock company that was to become the modern corporation, as iterations of earlier military hierarchies. Democratic practices are

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nonexistent in joint-stock companies, and the mix of monarchy and hierarchical bureaucracy better describes a military form of governance that precedes democratic industrialization in the social evolutionary process. Worse, Spencer argues, the British factory system depreciates the worker’s ability to think for herself: The wage-earning factory-hand does, indeed, exemplify entirely free labour, in so far that, making contracts at will and able to break them after short notice, he is free to engage with whomsoever he pleases and where he pleases. But this liberty amounts in practice to little more than the ability to exchange one slavery for another; since, fit only for his particular occupation, he has rarely an opportunity of doing anything more than decide in what mill he will pass the greater part of his dreary day. The coercion of circumstances often bears more hardly on him than the coercion of a master does on one in bondage (Spencer 1896, III, part 8, 516).

Spencer concludes that we have not yet reached a high stage of social development. If evolutionary development includes the individual right not to be interfered with or coerced, the next stage will be that of cooperative communal enterprises governed by worker committees with democratic decision-making, and where pay is assigned according to ability and difficulty, and profits are shared among the workers. Each worker will cooperate with the others, productivity will increase, and individuals will actually exercise their natural liberty at work (Spencer 1896, III, part 8, 504–509, 559–563). The influence of Spencer is subtle, because almost no one reads or refers to him anymore, yet they are clearly important. Spencer’s theory of social evolution has had an enormous influence on the social sciences as a framework to describe social development and devolution. Social Darwinism is often equated, wrongly, with genocide, but correctly with the argument that a welfare state is immoral, that it encourages poverty, and that it is unfair to tax those who can support themselves and must bear the burden of those who cannot. Spencer’s critique of bureaucracies is still apt today in describing government or large organizations. North American individualism surely has its roots in Spencer’s thought. Along with this individualism, Spencer is sometimes attributed with what is sometimes called “Cowboy Capitalism”—that the best society is one in which each of us, on our own horse, so to speak, works for her own ends. How Spencer came to symbolize Cowboy Capitalism can be understood by the human tendency to force directionality upon our narratives of the past. History is both descriptive and prescriptive, and any historical inquiry is likely to be functional with an eye to the present (Hook SSRC 1946). Historical narratives embody not just outside truths but also the time and place of the author (Cronon 2013), as humans try to make sense of themselves and their environments. Our stories tend to have a “bias for explanation” (Megill 1989) when looking to past texts to make sense of the present. Historical writing helps us to explain our present surroundings, not just to recount what happened in the past. In this way, examinations of historical texts involve social and intellectual criticism, and not just “mere description,” according to historian Allan Megill (1989). In Historical Knowledge, Historical Error, Megill asks, “Does narrative have a cognitive value of its own?” The answer, he explains, is both yes and no (2007, 63). On the one hand, narrative weaves together a body of

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relationships, such as past economic thought with present economic conditions, presenting them as a single whole. The narrative form allows us to see the possibility or presuppose the way the world might be different from our own experience (White 1973; Mink 1966). On the other hand, narrative always needs justification, pulling in outside evidence to defend its trajectory. In this way, narrative cannot stand alone as its “own gauge of truth” (Megill 2007, 64). We see Spencer’s writings woven into narratives about present economic conditions. Echoes of Spencer are reverberated by those who decry welfare, worry about regulation and government involvement in business, and question taxation. The theme that taxation is a form of slavery and that those who work should not have to bear the burden of those who do not is reiterated today. Arguments abound that government interference and regulation only deflect economic development and destroy incentives. Even though a pure Spencerian laissez-faire political economy has never been established, the “night watchman” idea is not dead, and indeed, is celebrated by leading intellectual libertarians. What is less celebrated is the humanistic dimension of Spencer’s critique of industrial hierarchies. Like Smith, he decries the joint-stock company but for different reasons. Spencer’s idea is that cooperative self-managed industrial enterprises best exemplify true evolutionary social progress and equal respect for each individual working in those enterprises. Spencer is suggesting a truly revolutionary form of self-management that he decouples from socialism and Marxism. Nevertheless, that dimension of humanism challenges organizations today to rethink their management practices, many of which remain in the nineteenth-century framework Spencer decries.

Conclusion The essays in this volume demonstrate that people—their feelings, experiences, and interactions with one another—comprise the essence of business. Any type of commerce has human activity, human motivations, and human values at its core. In this chapter, we have argued that people are at the heart of past ideas about commerce as well as present interpretations of economic theory. Key economic thinkers have been appropriated (Marx) and misappropriated (Smith and Spencer) to make normative claims about business. In the case of Marx, present actors do rely on his theories for political aims, but often they are, we would argue, proper uses of his writing. Instead of misunderstanding him, academics, policymakers, and practitioners have relied on Marx to inspire a movement to more fully integrate business and society. Those pushing for greater “corporate responsibility” rely on Marx as a warning against the effects of unbridled capitalism. Business models that neglect the good of the community, as well as leaders who focus on shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders, could allow for the fulfilment of Marx’s omens. More often, Smith and Spencer, on the other hand, have been misappropriated wrongly, in our opinion. Scholars and the general public draw on select axioms

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from Smith and Spencer to argue that business is devoid, or should be devoid, of human feeling. Whereas they more accurately deploy Marx, academics and laypersons have misrepresented the intent of these two theorists. Their body of work has been essentialized to support political aims. Certain phrases and texts have been used to justify normative claims and forward generalizations about business. Yet the use and misuse of Smith, Marx, and Spencer is fully human. History is constituted by human actions (Collingwood 1946), and examining any text, including texts from the past, involves human bias. Any person, informed or not, seeking to make sense of past texts inserts her own bias into her interpretation of the past. The assumption that history can be written in a way that is objective, and free from human error, is wrongheaded. Although there is, inevitably, a component of subjectivity inherent in any historical account, those interpreting the past must strive for competence and humility about their own human limitations. Historian and philosopher R.G. Collingwood insisted that historians of philosophy not only should assess whether past authors were right but also whether what they said was true. According to Collingwood, philosophers and historians should not ask separate sets of questions but, instead, must ask “the truth question” about philosophy (Fear 2017). Historian and philosopher Quentin Skinner agrees that when reading the great thinkers of the past, “we must learn to do our own thinking for ourselves” (1969, 52). “Doing the thinking for ourselves” requires that we attend to issues of both text and context when digesting economic thought. In favor of the importance of context, are those who have argued that understanding any text requires looking to the broader environment from which it was constructed (Tully 1988). Any theory is best understood not in isolation but, instead, with an acknowledgement of the contemporary linguistic and societal constraints to which its author was subject (Pocock 1985). Such constraints exist at any moment in time, shaping both the choice and conceptualization of subject matter, as well as the way in which future generations appropriate and interpret the writing of the past. According to sociologist William H. Sewell, “Historians tend to explain things not by subsuming them under a general or ‘covering’ law but by relating them to their context” (2005, 10). Yet to what extent is a particular “context” university, objective, or fixed? Some question whether broader contexts (from which texts have emerged) are unstable, and, like texts themselves, thus just as subject to interpretation and reinterpretation by successive generations (Jay 2011). Determining “what is inside and what is outside of texts” is a difficulty encountered by those interpreting historical documents (LaCapra 1980, 247). This chapter turns to Smith, Marx, and Spencer to encourage all of those who are “consuming” past economic ideas to consider a fuller body of their texts as well as the past and present context into which their theories have appeared. Moving toward a more active type of “production” (de Certeau 1980; Chartier 1995) enriches the potential agency of all humans to “reenact” (Collingwood 1946) history and shape their own destinies.

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References Bevan, David, and Patricia Werhane. 2014. The inexorable sociality of moral agency. Journal of Business Ethics 127, no. 127 (2 (Winter)): 327–334. Brandes, Stuart D. 1976. American welfare capitalism, 1880–1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burns, Jennifer. 2009. Goddess of the market: Ayn Rand and the American right. New  York: Oxford University Press. Eastman, Max, ed. 1959. Capital and other writings. New York: Modern Library. Chartier, Roger. 1995. Forms and meanings: Texts, performances, and audiences. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Collingwood, R. G. (1946) 1993. The idea of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cronon, William. 2013. “Storytelling.” Presidential Address Delivered at the 127th Annual. Certeau, Michel de. (1980) 1984. The practice of everyday life, translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Doherty, Gary, and Tim Gray. 1993. Herbert Spencer and the relationship between economic and political liberty. History of Political Thought 14 (3 (Autumn)): 475–490. Fear, Christopher. 2017. ‘Was he right?’: R. G. Collingwood’s rapprochement between philosophy and history. Journal of the Philosophy of History 11 (3 (Autumn)): 408–424. Garud, Raghu, Cynthia Hardy, and Steve Maguire. 2007. Institutional entrepreneurship as embedded agency: An introduction to the special issue. Organization Studies 28 (7 (Summer)): 957–969. Gould, Carol. 1978. Marx’s social ontology. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Hook, Sidney. 1946. “Theory and Practice in Historical Study.” Quoted in T. McDonald. 1996. The historic turn in the human sciences, Introduction 1–16. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Hunt, Lynn, ed. 1989. The new cultural history. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Jay, Martin. 2011. Historical explanation and the event: Reflections on the limits of contextualization. New Literary History 42 (4 (Autumn)): 557–571. LaCapra, Dominick. 1980. Rethinking intellectual history and Reading texts. History and Theory 19 (3 (Autumn)): 245–276. Locke, J. (1689) 2017. Second treatise on government, edited by J.  Bennett. London: Penguin Classics. Marx, Karl. (1844) 1964. Early writings: Economic and philosophical manuscript, translated by T. B. Bottomore. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. (1858) 1980. Grundrisse, edited and translated by David McLellan. New  York: Harper & Row. ———. (1859) 1932, 1959. “Critique of Political Economy.” Translated by Max Eastman in Eastman, Max. Capital: The Communist Manifesto and other Writings. New  York: Modern Library. McCloskey, D. 2006. The bourgeois virtues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Megill, Allan. 1989. Recounting the past: ‘Description,’ explanation, and narrative in historiography. The American Historical Review 94 (3 (Summer)): 627–653. ———. 2007. Historical knowledge, historical error. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mink, Louis. 1966. The autonomy of historical understanding. History and Theory 5 (1): 24–47. Moore, Geoff. 2005. Humanizing business: A modern virtue ethics approach. Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (2 (Spring)): 237–255. Pocock, J.G.A. 1985. Virtue, commerce, and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sewell, William H. 2005. The logics of history: Social theory and social transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Simon, Walter M. 1960. Herbert Spencer and the ‘Social Organism. Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (2 (Spring)): 294–299.

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Skinner, Quentin. 1969. Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas. History and Theory 8 (1): 3–53. Smith, Adam. (1759) 1976. The theory of moral sentiments (TMS), edited by A. L. Macfie and D. D. Raphael. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. (1762–1764) 1978. Lectures on jurisprudence [A] and [B]. (LJ) Ed. R.  L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. (1776) 1976. The wealth of nations (WN), edited by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner. New York: Oxford University Press. Spencer, Herbert. 1851. Social statics. London: John Chapman. ———. 1857. “Progress: Its Law and Cause.” Reprinted in Essays, vol. I: 1–59. ———. 1862. First principles. London: Williams and Norgate. ———. 1872. “Mr. Martineau on Evolution.” Reprinted in Essays. II: 371–388. ———. (1884) 1982. Man versus the state Indianapolis: Liberty Classics. ———. 1886. “The Factors of Organic Evolution.” Reprinted in Essays. I: 389–466. ———. 1892. The principles of ethics. Vol. 3 volumes. London: Williams and Norgate. ———. 1896. The principles of sociology. Vol. 3 volumes. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Tully, James, ed. 1988. Meaning and context: Quentin Skinner and his critics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. White, Hayden. 1973. Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University. Wimsatt, W.K., Jr., and M.C. Beardsley. 1946. The intentional fallacy. The Sewanee Review 54 (3 (Summer)): 468–488. Patricia H. Werhane,  Professor Emerita, was formerly the Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics at Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. She was then Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics and director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics and is now a Professor Emerita at De Paul. She is a senior fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at Darden, adjunct professor at the University of Illinois Gies College of Business and a Fellow for the Center for Professional Responsibility in Business and Society. Werhane was a visiting Rockefeller Fellow at Dartmouth College, Arthur Andersen Fellow at Cambridge University and Erskine Visiting Fellow, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ. She is the author or editor of over 30 books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Currently she is the co-producer of an Emmy award-winning documentary television series, Big Questions aired on Chicago Illinois Channel 11’s second channel, PRIME.  Werhane began her career at Loyola University Chicago as Wirtenberger Chair of Business Ethics. Allison L. Elias  is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer in Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research investigates historical and contemporary issues of gender and diversity in organizations, with a particular focus on the ways that social movements become translated into corporate policies and practices. Her forthcoming book (Columbia University Press), at the intersection history, gender, and management studies, charts the trajectory of modern feminism at work by tracing the changing nature of secretarial work from the 1960s to the present.

Chapter 32

A Historical Perspective on Entrepreneurship and Business Humanization: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Álvaro J. Moreno

Academic research connecting entrepreneurship and business humanization is practically nonexistent. However, there has been an increased interest in research at the intersection of entrepreneurship and ethics over the last two decades (Harris et al. 2009). According to these authors, the academic research linking entrepreneurship and ethics can be classified into one of three primary areas of inquiry: entrepreneurial ethics, social entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship and society. This chapter falls into the third category. It reconstructs the history of ideas about the entrepreneur in the economic literature since the eighteenth century. As an area of scholarly inquiry, entrepreneurship and business humanization takes a macro perspective, studying the impact of entrepreneurs and their ventures on society. There is a large body of research on the connections between entrepreneurship, economic development and social welfare, primarily in the economics literature, and this chapter aims at comprehensively review the most salient work on this area connecting the entrepreneur and the humanization of business. In short, it looks into that body of literature for the different forms through which the entrepreneur has been understood as a creator of value, the central criterion of entrepreneurship. Through the ideas of Cantillon, Say, Schumpeter, Kirzner and Lavoie, among others, it becomes evident that entrepreneurs create value for society, with the creation of wealth that happens in the process playing the role of just a means to this end. It is inherently difficult to measure social value creation, though, but the ideas about the entrepreneur throughout time allows us to unveil how this process occurs. Schumpeter (1934) posits that entrepreneurship is the driving market force for “creative destruction,” altering the existing economic structure by replacing the old equilibrium with a new one through innovation, making change endogenous in a historical context. The process of “creative destruction” necessarily affects the evolution of ethical and societal elements, giving a central role to the entrepreneur Á. J. Moreno (*) Universidad de la Sabana, Bogota, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_32

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regarding society’s ethical demands (Etzioni 1987). On the other hand entrepreneurship is viewed as a primary mode of economic development, both theoretically (North 2005) and empirically (Hirschman 1958). Finally, and more to the point, it has been established that the economic decisions made by entrepreneurs are akin to personal realizations (High 2006, 3).

The Entrepreneur Through Time and Space The idea of entrepreneurship can be traced back centuries. In the English language, the term has assumed different meanings over time, and has been conceptualized to represent diverse constructs, both theoretically and practically, even before the word was borrowed from French. To understand the evolution of the idea of entrepreneurship, it is important to look carefully at the historical roots that had led to the development of the concept as an academic domain, as well as the events that have marked the entrepreneur as a social actor throughout the years. The interaction of theory and practice has shaped the conception of the entrepreneur. The following pages explore a salient characteristic of entrepreneurship over that interaction, its contribution to humanizing business. People have been motivated to create and to market the productive results of their initiatives since the early days of human history. With it, society at large has benefited and has been able to reach its current level of wellbeing and complexity. It is now well documented that entrepreneurial activity exists at least since early in the period of recorded history, when Mesopotamian society was able to produce a surplus thanks to the confluence of its rivers and rich soils, in addition to the trade they had to develop to compensate for their scarcity in the stone, metal and lumber they needed to build their weapons and palaces (Hudson 2010; Wunsch 2010). For instance, according to Goody (1987, 54–55), “in Mesopotamia, the first written word appears to be that of the merchant and the accountant.” For the purposes of this chapter, however, we are going to limit the analysis of the entrepreneur as the subject of study among the western economics academic literature. A careful reading of the nuances the term entrepreneurship elicits over that scholarship, unveils how humane entrepreneurship has been regarded as over time. For obvious reasons, an entrepreneur’s activity is difficult to dissociate from his personal human qualities, rendering entrepreneurship a humane activity par excellence. It would be, by definition, almost impossible to separate the humane features from the entrepreneur’s essence. However, one way to look at how entrepreneurship can be regarded as an activity that humanizes business, is to establish when and how the entrepreneur started to be understood in the academic literature as a subject capable of creating social value rather than just personal wealth, similarly to how business ethics and social entrepreneurship scholarship conceive it (Harris et  al. 2009; Dees 2001). The very existence of entrepreneurs creates social value. Entrepreneurs affect people through the volume and quality of the goods they produce when taking

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advantage of opportunities they create in response to economic, political, social and technological changes. Entrepreneurs are the ones who create new products and discover new markets, disturbing established producers and expanding consumers’ possibilities frontiers. In short, as stated by Baumol (2010, ix), “the practical utilization of inventions and their indispensable contribution to economic growth … will be well below the levels they might otherwise have achieved without the intervention of entrepreneurs.” But it was not until a few centuries before the Industrial Revolution that some societies started to praise merchants and financiers, notably in Florence and Antwerp (Landes et al. 2010). Meanwhile, Western entrepreneurship and technological progress created a Great Divergence between Europe and other regions of the world, most notably with China in the Middle Ages (see, for instance: North and Thomas 1973; Pomeranz 2000; Allen 2009; Hoffman 2015; McCloskey 2016; Mokyr 2017). On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, along with the end of the American Civil War came a golden era for entrepreneurs, favored by the “significant upward mobility that many were able to achieve,” and reinforced by a positive public opinion about them: “Americans have always admired entrepreneurs, but during the years 1865-1920 this attitude was more intense than at virtually any other time in U.S. history” (Lamoreaux 2010, 391).

The Entrepreneur as a Subject of Intellectual Inquiry When reconstructing the history of the ideas about the entrepreneur, it is possible to assess how humane this social individual has been assumed by intellectuals and scholars over the years. It was in the wake of the Industrial Revolution that such an inquiry began, but entrepreneurship would need to wait until the early twentieth century to be understood as a humane activity, thanks to the twist on the understanding of the role of the entrepreneur in the economy that started with the theoretical building blocks exposed by Joseph Schumpeter. It is at that time that the entrepreneur started to be conceived as the agent of change in the economy, and as such, he embodied the most humane feature of the economics realm. After Schumpeter, it is to the Austrian economics tradition that we owe further conceptualizations about the entrepreneur that makes him more and more humane. The entrepreneur, the person playing the role of decision-making in the economy, is the individual who leads “human action” (von Mises 1949). As such, entrepreneurs have always existed. Still, it was not until the twelfth century that entreprendre, from the etymology of the word entrepreneur in French, appears (Littré 1873–1874).1 Undertake, its straight English translation, is more narrowly 1  The most general meaning of the term according to Littré is “se mettre à faire une chose,” that is, put oneself to do something. Entrepreneur, on its part, according to this dictionary appears for the first time during the fifteenth century, and its general meaning is “celui, celle qui entreprend quelque chose,” the one who undertakes something.

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defined than its French counterpart: “take by stealth, entrap seize on” (Oxford English Dictionary 2002, 3432). It is also much older, it superseded the Old English forms underfọ̄n and underniman, which carried the same meanings before it (Middle English Dictionary 2001). Undertaker was used in English as early as the sixteenth century, to designate a particular individual, “a person who undertook to hold crown lands in Ireland” (Oxford English Dictionary 2002, 3432). By the beginning of the seventeenth century entrepreneur appears for the first time in French, to designate a contractor of public—mainly great architectural—works “whose activity definitely implied risk-bearing (which at that time was equivalent with uncertainty-­bearing)” (Hoselitz 1960, 235). As its equivalent in French, and also by the beginning of the seventeenth century, undertaker was used to designate a government contractor. However, in the course of the first half of the seventeenth century, “gradually the emphasis on the contract or quasi-contract relationship with the government in which an undertaker found himself lost ground and more weight was placed on the circumstance that an undertaker was involved in a risky project from which an uncertain profit may be derived” (Hoselitz 1960, 241–242). In this respect, undertaker was equivalent to the word projector, which at the time was also tied to risk and uncertainty, although by the eighteenth century was used predominantly to designate an innovator. At par with undertaker, adventurer was also used in English since the fifteenth century on, popularized by its use by the London based company Merchant Adventurers.2 This was the third term used in English to designate what an entrepreneur meant in French by the eighteenth century. The word adventurer “was applied in the fifteenth century to merchants operating at some risk, and in the seventeenth century to land speculators, farmers, and those who directed certain public works projects. However, during the eighteenth century, the term adventurer gradually gave way to the more general term undertaker” (Hébert and Link 1988, 45). The first English text to use the word entrepreneur, at that time in its French original form, is most probably John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, published for the first time in 1848.3 However, the first academic use of the word by an economist was much earlier, in the 1730s, by the French Richard Cantillon. For Cantillon (1952 [1755]), an entrepreneur is someone who bears uncertainty, someone who buys at a certain cost and sells at an uncertain price.4 In the early nineteenth century, Jean-Baptiste Say further popularized the academic usage of the French 2  Hoselitz (1960, 240) references the definition of adventurer in Johnson (1755), quoting: “He that seeks occasion of hazard; he that puts himself in the hands of chance.” Apparently the word enjoyed some popularity anew thanks to the translation of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Traité d’économie politique in 1821, in which Charles R. Prinsep preferred it to the term undertaker because the latter was, as he explained in 1827 in his Third Edition of the Traité, “already appropriated to a limited sense,” quoted in Hoselitz (1960, 240). 3  Hébert and Link (1988, 54) note that in a footnote in Chap. xv of Book ii, Mill expresses the superiority of the French term to adequately convey the desired economic meaning, while disfavoring those writing in English because they are compelled to use the less accurate ‘undertaker.’ 4  It is worth mentioning that uncertainty was not fully understood until the publication of Frank Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty and Profit in 1921.

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word, after claiming that the entrepreneur is the central figure in the economy, whose role is to be the intermediary between producers and consumers in order to create value, by moving resources out of less productive uses and into more productive ones (Say 1803). As noted before, Mill used the French word in an English book by mid-1800s, and he borrowed it to refer to a person who assumes both the risk and the management of a business enterprise (Mill 2008 [1848]). In doing so, Mill provided a clearer distinction than Cantillon and Say between an entrepreneur and other business owners who assume financial risks but whom not necessarily participate in the management of the firm.

The Entrepreneur Takes Central Stage As mentioned above, it was not until Schumpeter that entrepreneurship acquired a more prominent role in the economics discipline, as the mechanism for economic development, through innovation. As such, the entrepreneur became the person in charge of upsetting the equilibrium (Schumpeter 1934). Soon afterwards, the entrepreneur turn out to be the one who kept “the capitalist engine in motion” (Schumpeter 1950, 32). For Schumpeter, entrepreneurship relates directly with innovation. He argues that “the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on” (Schumpeter 1950, 132). According to this theory, entrepreneurial activity “is primarily responsible for the recurrent ‘prosperities’ that revolutionize the economic organism and the recurrent ‘recessions’ that are due to the disequilibrating impact of the new products or methods” (Schumpeter 1950, 132). From Schumpeter onwards, the knowledge about “the most colorful figure in the capitalist process” has only grown (Schumpeter 1954, 554). For Dees (2001), “the Say-Schumpeter tradition that identifies entrepreneurs as the catalysts and innovators behind economic progress has served as the foundation for the contemporary use of this concept,” which elicit the most humane of its facets. Or, as Hoselitz (1960, 254) puts it, “only after it had been shown by Schumpeter that the entrepreneur was not the guardian of economic equilibrium but the disturber of equilibrium was a new and fruitful development of entrepreneurial theory possible.” Schumpeter established a direct relationship between entrepreneurship and economic change. In fact, in Schumpeter’s theory the entrepreneur is the sole responsible for change in the economy: “The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates” (Schumpeter 1950, 83). Other contemporaries of Schumpeter also recognized the entrepreneur’s role on economic

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development. John Maynard Keynes related the creation of income to the entrepreneur (Keynes 1937, 220). Ronald Coase referred to the entrepreneur as the one who directed production (Coase 1937, 388). The theory of economic growth that ensued from this development economics tradition, however, removed the entrepreneur altogether from its theoretical constructs.5 One important exemption in the latter line of thought was made by Albert O.  Hirschman, a contemporary of Robert Solow, who stressed the distinction between economic growth and economic development (Hirschman 1958). Hirschman established that “among the proximate causes of economic development, the supply of entrepreneurial and managerial abilities … occupies in official documents a position of pre-eminence at least equal to that of capital” (Hirschman 1958, 1). For him, entrepreneurial and managerial abilities are the resources that showed the largest feedback effects on the available stock of itself: “these are resources that increase directly with and through use (much as the ability to play the piano or to speak a foreign language improves with exercise) while more indirect effects similar to those characteristic of capital are also at work” (Hirschman 1958, 7). Over the second half of the twentieth century entrepreneurship scholars continued building upon these conceptualizations, up to the point that the distinctive domain of entrepreneurship was far from clear. By century’s end, Sankaran Venkataraman aptly synthesized entrepreneurship as a scholarly field that “seeks to understand how opportunities to bring into existence ‘future’ goods and services are discovered, created, and exploited, by whom, and with what consequences” (Venkataraman 1997, 120, emphasis in the original). It is important, however, to realize that entrepreneurship per se does not directly translates into prosperity for all. Besides the fact that entrepreneurship brings with it winners and losers during the frequent processes of creative destruction associated with it (Schumpeter 1950), there are different kinds of entrepreneurship. With the help of the entrepreneurship taxonomy developed by Baumol (1990), it is possible to establish the kind of entrepreneurial activity that would best fit into a categorization of humane entrepreneurship, that is, productive entrepreneurship. Baumol (1990) distinguishes productive entrepreneurship from two other types of

5  The cornerstone growth theory in economics was developed by Robert Solow, who stated that production was a function of physical capital and human labor. According to this theory “technical change,” the motive behind higher levels of output, was exogenous (Solow 1956). It wasn’t until the 1980s that growth models included both technology, as an endogenous feature of investments in research and development, and investments in human capital (Grossman and Helpman 1991). Modern growth theory, as it is known, additionally takes into consideration the role of institutions and government. Because of its emphasis on market imperfections, and the consequent need for institutional corrections, modern growth theory integrates the market and the government in a framework that allows to think about real-world problems. As a result, these set of models introduced increasing returns to scale, in contrast to the decreasing ones assumed by endogenous growth theories, offering a mechanism for the engine of growth. Nevertheless, both exogenous and endogenous growth models, while useful in accounting for the causes of sustained growth, fail to explain the sources of such growth.

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entrepreneurship: unproductive and destructive. The first form applies to those enterprising individuals who contribute to the growth of the economy mainly through innovation. Unproductive entrepreneurs relate to individuals who contribute little or nothing to economic growth because their novel endeavors are oriented towards processes of rent seeking or lobbying. Destructive entrepreneurs refers to those who employ new approaches to criminal and other socially damaging activities. More recently, Douglass North has led the quest for “understanding the process of economic change.” Acknowledging that “the economic paradigm—neo-classical theory—was not created to explain the process of economic change,” North focuses his study of the process on human action (North 2005, vii). He closely ties the latter with economic development because, for him, “the key to improving economic performance, is the deliberate effort of human beings to control their environment” (North 2005, 1). Economic change, according to this theory, is continually occurring thanks to the existence and interaction of entrepreneurs, “as entrepreneurs enact policies to improve their competitive position … in a never-ending process of change” (North 2005, 3). In short, North seeks to understand how cultural belief shapes our knowledge, how we learn, and how the learning process shapes institutional and economic change.

The Austrian Economics Tradition Schumpeter was not alone on his quest to decipher the nuances of the entrepreneur. A whole school of thought continued this tradition, in what it is called the Austrian school. Since the beginning, prominent intellectuals such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises joined Schumpeter. Mises, as mentioned before, defined economics as the study of human action. In doing so, Mises gave the entrepreneur the leading role on the economy because for him the entrepreneurial process is at the core of market activity. Human action, according to this view, is regarded as “purposeful behavior,” the kind of behavior that would make change happen due to the fact that “action is change” (von Mises 1949, 249). This tradition continued to be put forward by one of the most prominent Mises’s disciples, Israel Kirzner, who was in turn significantly influenced by Hayek. For Kirzner, the essence of the entrepreneur was his ability to be alert to perceived profit opportunities, even if only to act as an arbitrageur, through a creative act of discovery (Kirzner 1979; Kirzner 1985). Kirzner adopted Mises’s conception of the market as an entrepreneurial process—an interpretive approach—and combined it with Hayek’s vision of the market as a place that produces a learning process—an evolutionary approach. Similar to the Schumpeterian view, for Kirzner (1979) entrepreneurs recognize the profit opportunities in existing disequilibria, moving the economy toward new equilibria. A case in point regarding the role of the entrepreneur in humanizing business within the tradition of Austrian Economics can be found in the ideas of Don Lavoie,

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a student of Kirzner. Lavoie regarded economics as an interpretive science, as opposed to a physical science, in the same vein of Deirdre McCloskey’s conception of economics as “social self-understanding … as remarkable as anthropology or history” (McCloskey 1998, xxi). Lavoie argued that the economic decisions made by entrepreneurs were akin to personal realizations due to the fact that markets “were a means of helping individual persons realize their dreams and lead richer lives” (High 2006: 3). Lavoie thought of the Austrian school of economics as a philosophy of science, in that it connected the interpretive and the evolutionary approaches, something it has been doing since the original works of Carl Menger, the founder of the school (Menger 1892). In the words of Lavoie: “Interpretive ideas arise from the humanities, and the approach is strongest in fields such as anthropology, philosophy, literary criticism, and history. Evolutionary thinking arises in the field of biology and is strongest in fields that see themselves as scientific as opposed to humanistic, such as computer science and ecology,” he wrote, adding that “I believe that in the work of philosophical hermeneutics can be found the kind of unifying framework which permits the school to retain both its interpretive and its evolutionary ideas” (Lavoie 1993, 2, quoted in High 2006, 4). This needed to be so because, for Lavoie, the market was a hermeneutical process of communication and interpretation of the actions intended by entrepreneurs in their pursuits of individual goals (Lavoie 1990, 1). In doing so, he extended the ideas of the Kirznerian entrepreneur, immersing him in a linguistic word to properly understand him, because in such a world the entrepreneur’s role is to look for profit opportunities by making sense of the meanings of the texts of the market and adding his own commentary. The entrepreneur is henceforth seen as an interpreter of market texts (Lavoie 2006, 251). Reflecting on Lavoie’s work, Deirdre McCloskey accredited that “he ventured on great, hopeful projects, such as bringing the humanities to economics, seriously,” and she furthermore asserted that “Austrian economists have been telling the rest of us all along that the economic scientist cannot expect to outguess the businessperson. We have to listen to the mystery of entrepreneurship” (McCloskey 2006, 175–176). “We both felt that Austrian economics is the natural home for a humanistic approach to the economy,” she wrote, before proclaiming that “Don [Lavoie] believed, as I do, that capitalism is … humble” (McCloskey 2006, 176).

Concluding Remarks From Mill through Menger to Mises and Schumpeter, most great figures in entrepreneurship scholarship have produced work that is more closely tied to philosophy, especially ethics and epistemology, history and sociology. Moreover, as Don Lavoie argued, entrepreneurship is not only a matter of alertness. When an entrepreneur perceives things that others have unnoticed, he is reading aspects of the complex system of economic activity others have not interpreted, rendering economics the

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hermeneutics of the market: “Markets are an extension of language, and they work through concrete acts of articulation, whether oral, written or electronic. You could say that markets simply add whole new kinds of texts, prices, profits, contracts, advertising, and so on, to the conversation” (Lavoie 2006, 257). As we have seen, the entrepreneur encapsulates the essence of human decision making in economics, giving him the role of the agent of change in the economy, and granting him the most humane role of the whole economics domain. An interpretive economics, on the other hand, challenges economists to rethink the starting point of economic analysis when considering entrepreneurial decision making a creative process. The Austrian school contends that it is chiefly our ability to coordinate with one another that enables us to be entrepreneurial, and that ability depends on our capabilities for mutual orientation. This school also identifies the entrepreneurial process as the key factor in the improvement of our objective standards of living, through economic development, that is, the creation of real wealth. In the same way scientific knowledge is arrived at by the conjunction of myriad scholars looking for the truth, economic knowledge is arrived at by a community of entrepreneurs looking for profit through new combinations introduced into economic life, given their creation, discovery and exploitation of inexistent future goods and services in the market, rendering economic life evermore humane. It is through the interpretations of the market that the entrepreneur’s decision-making process takes place, rather than assuming perfect knowledge as the neoclassical economists do, giving humans a humane role, as opposed to that of mere calculators of utility—something machines could do better.

References Allen, Robert C. 2009. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baumol, William J. 1990. Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive. Journal of Political Economy 98 (5): 893–921. ———. 2010. Preface: The Entrepreneur in History. In The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, ed. David S.  Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, ix–xiii. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cantillon, Richard. 1952 [1755]. Essai sur la nature du commerce en général. Paris: Institut national d’études démographiques. Coase, Ronald H. 1937. The Nature of the Firm. Economica 4 (16): 386–405. Dees, J. Gregory. 2001. The Meaning of “Social Entrepreneurship.” Comments and suggestions from the Social Entrepreneurship Funders Working Group. Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. Fuqua School of Business: Duke University. Reformatted and revised. https://entrepreneurship.duke.edu/news-­i tem/the-­m eaning-­o f-­s ocial-­e ntrepreneurship/. Accessed on 2 Oct 2019. Etzioni, Amitai. 1987. Entrepreneurship, Adaptation, and Legitimation: A Macro-Behavioral Perspective. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 8: 175–189. Goody, Jack. 1987. The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. New  York: Cambridge University Press.

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Grossman, Gene M., and Elhanan Helpman. 1991. Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harris, Jared D., Harry J. Sapienza, and Norman E. Bowie. 2009. Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing 24: 407–418. Hébert, Robert F., and Albert N.  Link. 1988. The Entrepreneur: Mainstream Views & Radical Critiques. 2nd ed. New York: Praeger. High, Jack. 2006. Humane Economics: An Introduction to the Work of Don Lavoie. In Humane Economics: Essays in Honor of Don Lavoie, ed. Jack High, 3–26. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Hirschman, Albert O. 1958. The Strategy of Economic Development. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hoffman, Philip T. 2015. Why did Europe Conquer the World? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hoselitz, Bert F. 1960. The Early History of Entrepreneurial Theory. In Essays in Economic Thought: Aristotle to Marshall, ed. Joseph J.  Spengler and William R.  Allen, 234–257. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company. Hudson, Michael. 2010. Entrepreneurs: From the Near Eastern Takeoff to the Roman Empire. In The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, ed. David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, 8–39. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Johnson, Samuel. 1755. A Dictionary of the English Language. London: W. Strahan. Keynes, John M. 1937. The General Theory of Employment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 51 (2): 209–223. Kirzner, Israel M. 1979. Perception, Opportunity, and Profit: Studies in the Theory of Entrepreneurship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1985. Discovery and the Capitalist Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lamoreaux, Naomi R. 2010. Entrepreneurship in the United States, 1865-1920. In The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, ed. David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, 367–400. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Landes, David S., Joel Mokyr, and William J.  Baumol. 2010. The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lavoie, Don. 1990. Economics and Hermeneutics. London: Routledge. ———. 1993. Statement of My Research. Unpublished manuscript. Fairfax: George Mason University. ———. 2006. Subjective Orientation and Objective Wealth: Entrepreneurship and the Convergence of Groupware and Hypertext Capabilities. In Humane Economics: Essays in Honor of Don Lavoie, ed. Jack High, 249–304. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Littré, Émile. 1873–1874. Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris: L. Hachette. Electronic version created by François Gannaz, available at http://www.littre.org. Accessed on 2 Oct 2019. McCloskey, Deirdre N. 1998. The Rhetoric of Economics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, Second Edition. ———. 2006. Humility and truth in Economics. In Humane Economics: Essays in Honor of Don Lavoie, ed. Jack High, 173–177. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. ———. 2016. Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Menger, Carl. 1892. On the Origins of Money. The Economic Journal 2 (6): 239–255. Middle English Dictionary. 2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Final update 4 April 2019. Electronic version, available at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/. Accessed on 2 Oct 2019. Mill, John S. 2008 [1848]. Principles of Political Economy and Chapters on Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press. Mokyr, Joel. 2017. A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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North, Douglass C. 2005. Understanding the Process of Economic Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press. North, Douglass C., and Robert P. Thomas. 1973. The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. New York: Cambridge University Press. Oxford English Dictionary. 2002. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: On Historical Principles. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Say, Jean-Baptiste. 1803. Traité d’économie politique. Paris: Déterville. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1934. The Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1950. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. 3rd ed. New York: Harper Perennial. ———. 1954. History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. Solow, Robert M. 1956. A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 70 (1): 65–94. Venkataraman, Sankaran. 1997. The Distinctive Domain of Entrepreneurship Research. In Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth, ed. Jerome A. Katz and Robert H. Brockhaus, vol. 3, 119–138. Greenwich: JAI Press. von Mises, Ludwig. 1949. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. New Haven: Yale University Press. Wunsch, Cornelia. 2010. Neo-Babylonian Entrepreneurs. In The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, ed. David S.  Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, 40–61. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Álvaro J. Moreno is professor of Strategy and Economics at Inalde Business School, Universidad de la Sabana, in Colombia. He is Doctor of Philosophy from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, with emphasis in entrepreneurship. At Darden Álvaro conducted research on entrepreneurship history in Colombia during the nineteenth century, in particular on the development of the sugar cane industry. Previously, he was a Resident Fellow at the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami, an associate researcher of the Colombian Private Council on Competitiveness. He also serves as a Collaborator of Oxford Analytica and Latin Trade.  

Chapter 33

Why We Need Humanities in Business: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Ambiguity Santiago Mejia and A-J Aronstein

Introduction In recent years, humanists have been busy trying to put out a fire in their own house—a fire that many blame business (in part) for starting. As Northeastern University History Professor Benjamin Schmidt argued last year in The Atlantic, Almost every humanities field has seen a rapid drop in majors: History is down about 45 percent from its 2007 peak, while the number of English majors has fallen by nearly half since the late 1990s. Declines have hit almost every field in the humanities […], they have not stabilized with the economic recovery, and they appear to reflect a new set of student priorities. (Schmidt 2018)

Schmidt finds that these declines are consistent across gender and racial groupings and are even more pronounced in elite liberal arts institutions, typically perceived to be a kind of humanistic inner sanctum—the place where, even if everything else failed, the humanities resistance would live on. You can probably guess where all the humanities majors went. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the most popular undergraduate major in the United States—by a very wide margin—is business (NCES 2017). Berkeley English Professor Scott Saul observes, “For the last two decades, roughly one out of eight college students majored in the humanities. By comparison, business now attracts almost one in four students” (Saul 2013). Some explain this by the dawn of a culture “eager for ‘useful knowledge’ and technical mastery but increasingly indifferent to memory and allergic to tradition” (Douthat

S. Mejia (*) Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] A-J Aronstein Barnard College, New York, NY, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_33

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2018). A second group blame current economic factors, such as the Great Recession or high student debt, for swinging student interest away from the humanities, and toward what might seem like more sensible majors with more stable long-term job prospects.1 In the conservative commentariat, those disdainful of the humanities, blame the humanists themselves for “pursuing postmodernist obscurantism in their scholarship and prose” that alienate students by their failure to provide clear answers to their questions (Douthat 2018) or end up leading them to relativistic positions where truth loses its grip. In one reading of this situation, the antipathy between the humanities and business represents an à la mode rework of C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” argument. Snow described a fundamental (and, he believed, counterproductive) split between the humanities and the sciences that had its historical roots in the scientific revolution (Snow 1959). In what follows we will argue that this debate, which pits humanities against business is misguided, much to the detriment of both humanities and business. A proper business education and a proper business practice cannot (and should not) be separated from the humanistic endeavors. There are, as we will show, essential dimensions of business practice that need to be approached from a humanistic perspective—approaches that need to be taught more intentionally in business schools. Our argument represents an effort to show that the humanities and their approach are not, and should not be, foreign to business. This entails recognizing the important value that a humanistic approach has for business while also recognizing the limits on what can be “humanized” in business. To make this case, we have to clarify what it means to humanize a field in the first place—and why humanities disciplines would play this role for business. We suggest that a relationship between the humanities and business built around mutual respect for each other’s methodologies will restrict the ability of both sides to claim certainty of their worldviews. And in this, we argue that humanizing business does not merely entail a set of precepts or lessons that the humanities can gift to business (and here, we mean empathy, ethics, critical thinking, and writing—the kinds of skills that these kinds of arguments very often suggest are the sole province of the humanities). Instead, what the humanities bring to the field of business concerns a staunch commitment to ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty.

1  STEM fields often win resource battles with humanities departments because they ostensibly offer more marketable skills to undergraduate students. But as Cathy Davidson notes in The New Education, “there is no evidence that STEM training leads to faster or higher career advancement, job security, or job satisfaction” (Davidson 2017). In other words, to develop STEM skills, “without any grounding in interpretive and critical thinking skills may get you a first job, but it won’t get you promoted.” And when compared to all other majors, including business, the 2018 State of the Humanities report shows that, “With respect to perceived well-being […] humanities majors are quite similar to graduates from other fields” (AAAS 2018). Common assumptions about why students need to major in STEM and business do not necessary withstand long term scrutiny. In this fashion, students are trading away the possibilities afforded by a broad-based education in the humanities in exchange for benefits that often do not materialize.

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 hat We Talk About When We Talk About W “Humanizing Business” The term “humanizing business” may be interpreted in a variety of ways. For instance, it can be taken as an invitation to make business more humane, for instance by being explicitly aimed to promote central notions for human beings such as dignity (Pirson 2017) or flourishing (Sison and Fontrodona 2012; Hartman 1996; Solomon 2010). This is not how we intend to use the term. We aim to discuss the place, within business, for the distinctive approach of disciplines that are often grouped under the label “humanities,” which encompasses fields as diverse as literature, film studies, gender studies, philosophy, history, and religious studies. It is frequently and vehemently argued that the value of the humanities arises from their capacity to cultivate critical thinking, improve writing and argumentation skills, develop empathy, and enhance our civic awareness  (Nussbaum 2010). Defenders of the humanities along these lines propose such arguments in an attempt to convince audiences of humanistic value in terms recognizable to the marketplace—that the humanities “can be vocational” (Stross 2017). To us, this approach stands as a weak account of the value of the humanistic endeavor. While the humanities certainly cultivate these skills, it seems parochial for humanists to think that such skills are the exclusive province of their fields. It is uncharitable for humanists to think that good scientists and good engineers are not trained to have them. As Gianpiero Pentrigliere suggests, to say that the humanities merely make us better critical thinkers, or writers, or simply better observers of human phenomena, does not necessarily inspire the troops to major in French. “When we turn to [the humanities] for tips, but not for trouble,” Petriglieri writes, “the value of the humanities is lost. Their power is dimmed when we do not allow them to offer critiques, metaphors, and winding roads that counterbalance instrumental prescriptions, methods, and short cuts” (Pentrigliere 2019). We agree with Petriglieri. His use of “trouble” especially entices us. It is suggestive of the humanities’ propensity to cause mischief, stir things up, and make somewhat of a mess. In the context of humanistic scholarship, the best work typically proliferates new possible meanings, opens up possible avenues for interpretation, and questions ideas previously accepted as truth—even when (perhaps especially when) that questioning process entails the wholesale disruption of well-established paradigms. Put differently: the productive messes that the humanities seek to make are a core feature, not a bug. Comfort in contingency, irreducible complexity, ambiguity, and play are—in terms that the humanities lay out for themselves—measures by which we evaluate humanity. Ambiguity is at the heart of human enterprise, and the humanities are distinct from other fields in deriving their value from building homes on ambiguous terrain. When we argue that the humanities should humanize business, we are arguing for this definition of injecting humanity into enterprise. The richest and most interesting aesthetic objects beguile critics and everyday readers alike, precisely because they evade finality and motivate a continuous series

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of questions that begin, “Yes, that may be so, but what if…?” Humanists luxuriate in ambiguity, which is also to say that they are always seeking the next set of possibilities. They thrive in the brambly, tangled, complex terrain of endless arguments—but not due to the idleness of which they are often accused of espousing. A desire to seek out this always-contestable ground sets humanists apart from their colleagues in STEM fields and in business alike, where methodological rules and practices orient investigation and production toward objectively provable and repeatable results. Certainty, repeatability, and smooth operation (what is mistakenly taken to be the currency of business enterprise) induce discomfort in humanists. They serve—counterintuitively to those accustomed to the pursuit of empirically-provable objective results, where the confirmation of hypotheses verifies the value of an experiment—as the best indication of rich terrain for more investigation. For the humanist, firm conviction induces a shiver of suspicion, maybe a cold sweat, definitely some eye-rolling. Final verdicts and last words become primary targets for new disruptions and shake-ups. Recent scholarship about the nature and purpose of humanistic work, driven by the latest iteration of “humanities-in-crisis” rhetoric that we described above, often attempts to produce a soundbite-worthy definition of the humanities. These definitions aim to delineate the borders of humanistic provinces, define them in contradistinction to STEM fields (Strauss 2017), name their broad purpose (Ober 2019), articulate the specific usefulness of humanistic methodological tools (Bradley 2018), and in general pin down the reasons that they are special among intellectual disciplines. It seems likely that the impulse to create these definitions comes from the exigency in popular spheres to be snappy, saleable, and convincing—three traits that humanists famously and often self-deprecatingly lack when set against their colleagues in the business school. Scholars want to arm each other with weapons that they can quickly deploy to defend the humanities in terms recognizable outside the confines of their own fields (Jaschik 2017). But true to humanists’ skepticism about certainty, such definitions unfailingly include caveats and purposefully vague language that invites contestation and what ifs. Indeed, the most convincing definitions describe a kind of absurdity in attempting to describe the humanities in such short snippets. They point to something indelibly ambiguous and complex about humanistic scholarship, and it is exactly this assertion that comes to represent the common denominator of the definitions. Take the first line of Helen Small’s The Value of the Humanities, a book that taxonomizes the different arguments for the purpose of the humanities over time, but that opens with a kind of disclaimer about the project: The humanities study the meaning-making practices of human culture, past and present, focusing on interpretation and critical evaluation, primarily in terms of the individual response and with an ineliminable element of subjectivity (23).

From the outset, Small works to establish the terms of the debate for her reader, while at the same time building into these terms an “ineliminable element of subjectivity.” She shares first principles that, in their very articulation, undermine the very

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notion of absoluteness in shared principles. Such is the nature of the contradiction at the center of humanities scholarship that one has to accept, if one wants even to begin a conversation about the importance of humanistic disciplines. Ambiguity is the price of doing business with humanists about their core commitments. In a similarly capacious justification of the value of the humanities, Geoffrey Galt Harpham alludes to ambiguity and subjectivity, and his definition again seems to reflect the need for openness to multiple interpretations. He defines the work of the humanities in the opening chapter of The Humanities and the Dream of America: The scholarly study of documents and artifacts produced by human beings in the past enables us to see the world from different points of view so that we may better understand ourselves (5).

Harpham’s definition differs from Small’s in its insistence on the historical nature of humanistic scholarship, perhaps reflecting a desire to throw at least some limits around the objects that are open to analysis. Still, Harpham’s definition mirrors Small’s in its implicit insistence on subjectivity. For Harpham, the capacity to integrate different points of view does not result in objective or final understanding. Rather, humanistic work enables us to “better understand ourselves.” At first, it can certainly appear that his wording implies notions of progress in the humanities—the idea that we’re always improving, somehow, by integrating more and different perspectives. But better, in his definition, seems more properly read as an allusion to the absence of a perfect knowledge. The search for a better understanding implicitly obviates the possibility of a best understanding. Harpham’s definition pits humanistic knowledge against the idea of ultimate, final, or complete end. Far from being the enemy of the best, the better represents the end of humanistic inquiry as he defines it. These two definitions build into book-length arguments about the value of humanistic scholarship that diverge in their particular scope. Small investigates several of the most popular accounts of why the humanities matter—their public usefulness, their potential for producing happiness, their essentialness for democracy, and for their own sake. She is driven by the specific problem of funding for the humanities in Britain. By contrast, Harpham aims to think through the humanities in the particular context of American democracy, arguing that they have played (and should continue to play) a substantial role in the shaping ideas about citizenship in the United States. The divergence of these arguments represents just two of many different ways that scholars have taken the question of why the humanities matter. What we want to amplify, and what seems most important to the question of humanizing business, is that the subjectivity, complexity, and ambiguity upon which they insist constitutes the common denominator of humanistic value, or what it means to humanize. This feature of the humanities is not historically new; indeed, one can trace it back more than two thousand years to the ancient Greek world. It was emphasized by what one may consider one of the figures most central to Western humanism: Socrates. Socrates’ life was distinctive, not only for his unwavering search for

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answers concerning the nature of human excellence, but also—and perhaps more importantly—for the fact that this search did not bear the kinds of tangible fruit that critics of the humanities expect all disciplines to produce (Mejia 2020). He acknowledged that, despite his search for answers, he lacked knowledge of what is noble and good. But, and here is where Socrates’ position shows the critics to be mistaken, his acknowledgement of his own ignorance was considered by the Gods as a supreme form of wisdom (“no one is wiser than Socrates,” the Oracle at Delphos famously proclaimed). Socrates was wise, not merely because he explicitly acknowledged his own ignorance, but because he could lead any of his interlocutors to recognize their own as well. He recognized that every one of them was unable to provide a sound account of the nature of human excellence or what is most important for human beings (Plato 1997, 17–36). The humanities provide us with a unique way to approach questions and equip us with particular capabilities to address them. Progress in the natural and social sciences is measured by a capacity to provide effective answers to empirical questions, which allow us to accumulate more and more facts. Scientists add to the edifice that others have built, stacking new bricks on them. Whoever comes to the humanities expecting that it will offer similarly clear-cut responses will be disappointed. But whoever expects the humanities to offer such responses is also  misguided. The humanist aims to respond to fundamental questions about our social and natural reality. But these are difficult and thorny questions that seldom allow for effective answers. While the sciences offer clear-cut responses to their questions, the humanities tend to highlight complexity, unearth the different presuppositions that are being tacitly taken for granted, and underscore the conceptual difficulties of potential answers. As such, the humanities help us to see that fundamental questions about our social and natural environment are complex and ambiguous. In doing so, they develop our capacity to recognize, confront, and live with complex questions that are of fundamental importance but to which we cannot respond satisfactorily.

Why Business Should Be Humanized So why should business be humanized in the sense we are proposing? Why should business practitioners cultivate and actively pursue rigorous ambiguity of the kind that humanists practice? This is a typical humanistic question, one that will prompt a diversity of answers, not all of them concordant, answers that provoke and elucidate different wrinkles and perspectives on the question, including, as humanists typically do, an inquiry into the questioner and her motives. This, of course, will cause trouble: the offer of humanizing business will destabilize, introduce doubt, make a mess. Allow us to focus on one these answers, which in itself elucidates why it is not possible to offer a simple, straightforward response to the question of why business should be humanized. This answer arises from the kind of work that scholars do in

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moral philosophy. Business brings together human beings to contribute to, partake from, and benefit in it. Businesses, in other words, are organizations constituted by humans and which are ultimately meant to serve humans. Because humans are involved in a diversity of ways in a business organization, organizational decisions will inevitably bring with them a host of sometimes difficult, ethical questions, concerning the role and place that these humans should have. Kenneth Goodpaster observes that an important moral failure in business managers has to do with “teleopathy,” the approach exemplified by an individual who, “values certain limited objectives as supremely action-guiding, to the relative exclusion not only of larger ends, but also of moral considerations about means, obligations, and duties. It is the unbalanced pursuit of goals or purposes by an individual or an organized group” (Goodpaster 2007, 28). Ed Freeman (2010, 6–7) has also argued, under the label of the “separation fallacy”, that “[m]ost business decisions or statements about business have some ethical content or an implicit ethical view” (Freeman et al. 2010, 7). In particular, he argued that any business decision may create or destroy value; affects a variety of people, often by harming or benefiting them; and has the potential to align or misalign with a variety of people’s rights and values. The complexity of the ethical dimension of business decision-making tends to make business practitioners uncomfortable. Most of them would prefer to follow clear-cut procedures to guide their decision-making. Their hope to find a clear ethical algorithm to guide them is part of what drives many of them simply to conform with the letter of the law and justify their ethical behavior in light of this conformity. The aspiration to offer a simple and easily applicable decision-making procedure also characterizes the position of several business scholars. Not surprisingly, most of these come from academic disciplines, such as economics or finance, that take themselves to model their disciplinary approach on that of STEM fields. But managers at all levels of the company are faced with situations that demand difficult moral choices, situations that pit certain duties against others, certain stakeholder against others, or that simply involve compelling but conflicting moral intuitions. Things are always messier than they appear at first. To see this with more clarity, it can be valuable to look into one example: shareholder primacy. We choose to examine this normative theory of business because one of the driving motivations that attract scholars to it is the managerial simplicity that it purports to offer. By restricting the attention on serving one single stakeholder (shareholders) and by narrowing the objective of the firm into one single metric (increasing shareholder value), the managerial decision-making procedure becomes simplified. This is celebrated because it reduces agency risks and offers clearer metrics to determine whether managers are accountable in their job (Goodpaster 1991; Heath 2006, 2010; Jensen 2002). Our aim here is not to challenge or impugn this normative theory of business, but to highlight that even when one conceives a firm along this model that affords an allegedly simple decision-making criterion, there are still very difficult and complex humanistic questions, questions that will require the kinds of interpretive, critical

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approaches that find their home in the humanities. The ostensible clarity of shareholder primacy deludes the manager into a false sense of pursuing a concrete and objectively verifiable end. Contemporary scholars tend to identify shareholder primacy with Milton Friedman, who defended that managers should be conceived as agents of shareholders (Friedman 1962, 1970). Because shareholders’ motivation to invest in a company was, typically, to increase their wealth, Friedman concluded that the main metric to assess managers’ success was the extent to which their managerial activity contributed to increased shareholder wealth. Friedman’s views were grounded on a liberal framework that depended on a strict division of labor between the public and the private sector. According to such division of labor, the government was responsible for establishing rules and regulations that ensured that companies competed in ways that served society’s needs and interests. The private sector, in turn, was allowed to guide itself primarily by self-interest, but within the limits imposed by the government. According to Friedman, the invisible hand of the market transformed the self-interested orientation of each company into an economic system that ensured that resources and products were allocated efficiently, enhancing society’s welfare. While this paradigm was very influential within business, it was systematically criticized by business ethicists (Bower and Paine 2017; Ciepley 2013; Freeman 1998; Freeman et al. 2010; Ghoshal 2005; Ireland 1999; Kochan 2002; Stout 2012). In the last decade, however, this normative theory of business has experienced a resurgence. A wave of business ethicists has attempted to vindicate it (Heath, Moriarty, and Norman 2010). Joseph Heath’s work has been particularly influential in such resurgence. While Heath is sympathetic to the overall structure of Friedmans’ arguments, he has shown that Friedman’s conclusions require important forms of nuance and qualification that significantly complicate the alleged simple managerial decision-making that Friedman proposed. As we mentioned, Friedman’s view depends on a strict division of labor between the public and the private sector, a division of labor that is not present in our current political environment, where corporations systematically interfere with the political process. As Norman (2011, 44) has argued: “political scientists are often most struck by the extent to which regulatory bodies are ‘captured’ by business interests and even particular businesses.” Moreover, Heath reminds us, it is neither possible nor desirable to codify all moral norms into law. Many potential laws come with high administrative costs that outweigh their possible benefits (Heath 2014, 34); formulating and implementing certain laws requires access to information that is too hard to acquire or simply unavailable (Heath 2014, 34, 89, 109); the design of laws and regulations often fails to get the right degree of generality (“write the rules too broadly and it creates legal uncertainty […], write the rules more narrowly and it encourages circumvention” (Heath 2014, 13–4)); and there are moral restrictions that would be so difficult to enforce by the state that that they should not be codified into law.

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As a consequence, Heath has shown that the model defended by Friedman requires significant moral restraint from managers. Such managers need to ensure, not merely that their company complies with the written law but also with the potential laws and regulations that are not codified into law. From this perspective, the managerial decision-making within shareholder primacy is not as simple as Friedman suggested. According to Heath, proper managerial decision-making requires managers to identify the laws and regulations that should be in place to avoid market failures, even if these laws and regulations do not exist. While Heath’s account does not idealize the total separation of state from business, it is nevertheless formulated within an idealized perspective where markets are perfectly competitive. As several scholars have pointed out, and as Heath himself has recognized (Heath 2014, 38–41), it is far from straightforward to draw inferences about the moral norms that apply to market participants in current markets from a reflection on the “implicit morality of the market” under conditions of perfect competition (Moriarty 2019; Steinberg 2017). Perfect markets do not provide an ideal to which imperfect markets should gradually approximate. The second theory of welfare economics shows that the aspiration to emulate perfect markets within an imperfect market may actually worsen the efficient allocation of resources. If a market deviates from a perfect market, and one wants to enhance the efficiency of the allocation of goods, one may need to pursue non-competitive strategies that pull this market farther away from the conditions of perfect competition. But finding the regulations (and self-regulations)  that have to be in place in these imperfect contexts requires not merely to have taken an economic course describing the conditions for perfect markets. Rather, it requires acquiring a full appreciation for the specific ways in which different potential policies may impact the successful allocation of resources, and even the extent to which this allocation may be just and fair. This last point is worth stressing. The idea that the “invisible hand” leads to the best allocation of resources is formulated more precisely through the concept of Pareto optimality, namely, a state where attempting to make some agent better off will inevitably make another agent worse off. But it is well known that Pareto optimality does not ensure that the resources are distributed fairly. To the extent that Heath’s account is meant to focus exclusively on addressing market failures, it is also, albeit tacitly, making an important assumption about the division of labor between the public sector and the private enterprise, namely that the state redistributes the resources of the economic activities fairly. However, if this was not the case, then managers would also need to include considerations about fairness in their decision-making processes. This is a point to which Norman (2011, 45) points in an article that provides a friendly amendment to the market failures approach. Norman shows that what Heath’s account entails is not so much that managers should avoid market failures, but that they should regulate their behavior by reflecting on the merits of having certain regulatory norms governing and limiting their behavior (Norman 2011, 48). If issues of distributive justice are not fulfilled by the state, the company may need to step up (Hsieh, 2004). All of this entails that proper ethical

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decision-making by managers would require knowledge, not merely of economics, but also of political science, political philosophy, and moral philosophy. According to shareholder primacy, managers are meant to serve only one stakeholder group and considering only one objective of the firm. As such, such normative theory of business provides the framework with the simplest decision-making. Despite this, and as we have just shown, the ethical dimensions of such decision making are extremely complex and involve considerations which economists, political scientists, and political and moral philosophers have not sorted out yet. They pose, that is to say, the kind of problems that are characteristic of the humanities, problems that pose difficult answers that, as Socrates recognized long ago, we may not be equipped to answer.

Humanizing Business What would the world look like if businesses were humanized? And should all domains of business be humanized? These two questions should be answered in tandem. The most salient dimension of business administration that demands a humanistic approach has to do with the highest levels of strategy decisions. This was something about which the founders of strategy were keenly aware (de los Reyes 2020). Kenneth Andrews and others argued that it is the responsibility of companies to engage in “controversial ethical issues, about which honest differences of opinion are common and self-deceiving rationalizations endless” (Cristensen et  al. 524). Directors also need to reflect on and articulate the aims and mission of the firm, its role in and contributions to society, as well as the political and economic system that it seeks to align with and promote. These are all decisions that are at the heart of what the company is. Each one of these, however, is contentious and controversial. Partly because of this, most current companies fail to engage with them, choosing instead to uncritically endorse simple managerial models where the success of the firm and its members is given by a single metric: return on investment. In doing so, however, these firms and their members have not avoided these contentious issues but have uncritically committed themselves to one particular answer to them. Such an approach, even if endorsed by many others, should be seen as naïve and dogmatic. Dogmatic given that there is not even an effort to go through the motions of assessing the merits and demerits of such models. Naïve because it doesn’t seem to recognize that they are taking a stance in a controversial and contentious issue. It is a truism that businesses organizations need to make money in order to function. And there is no way to guarantee that anything about humanistic practices will help businesses make more money. So, what is the promise of the humanities? It frees business from thinking that money alone should drive decisions; it liberalizes what it would mean to be successful in business. More generally, it brings into question all the success concepts that may associated with a business. This opens up the

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conceptual space to imagine and dream a variety of business organizations, diverse in their theoretical grounds and varied in their aspiratory aims. The promise of humanizing business is that it leads, quite literally, to a marketplace of ideas. It is important to note, however, that this humanistic approach has limits. Humanists get into trouble when they overreach in describing the distinctive attributes of the humanities and what they may contribute to other discipline. Ambiguity and complexity may comprise the core of humanistic endeavors and may be important to infuse into business. But it’s often humanists themselves who express certainty about their superiority over other disciplines and practice areas. In doing so, humanists ironically seem to violate their own core commitment to uncertainty, probing curiosity, and ambiguity. Moreover, and as we mentioned above, in an effort to define their usefulness to other disciplines, humanists sometimes fall into the trap of claiming that any qualitative skill—certainly any critical faculty—marks the distinctive terrain of humanistic disciplines. This impulse to overstate the value of the humanities sometimes arises from the perception that STEM disciplines and economic metrics get too much easy credit for their social contributions. But, arguably, businesses would be unable to function effectively if its strategic decisions were always in flux, incessantly questioned and reimagined. Organizations need to provide their members consistency with respect to their roles and what is expected of them, they need to coordinate members’ efforts around goals which can only be achieved if they are pursued collectively. Business would also be unable to function effectively without the contributions of a variety of non-humanistic disciplines which seek to quantify the business operations in order to assess, organize, and predict the business operations. Quantitative assessments allow managers to bring together a variety of organizational processes under one single metric and to use this metric to establish comparisons within the company’s internal divisions and external competitors. Standardization of these measures and analysis is essential. The replicability and methodological uniformity of these quantitative measures is what allows for such comparisons to be successful. But the need for quantification, standardization, and unity should not be overstated either. While these quantification approaches often allow managers to condense a wealth of information into a single number, it is a danger, and one into which business practitioners fall too often, to forget that such a number is a simplification, an imperfect attempt to measure a complex variety of dimensions. When we lose sight of it, they lose the humanizing side of business and, thereby, falsify what business is and what it should aim to do. As Alvesson (2012) put it, the failure to recognize the ambiguity and complexity behind the apparent simplicity and tidiness of a single numerical metric may lead, say, an accountant, to “compress a broad range of issues into recordable numbers, thereby ignoring many of the more substantive debates around what those numbers exactly represent and the moral implications associated with using those numbers in decision making” (Alvesson 2012, 120). The attentive reader will have noticed that dialectic nature of our argument in this section. Every important claim we make is subsequently qualified, almost contradicted, by the next one. Such dialectic suggests a deep tension, perhaps an

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impossibility, of humanizing business in the way that we suggest. The project of humanizing business brings with it a tension between the certainty that effective business management requires and the uncertainty that the humanist wants to infuse into it. Both the humanistic and the scientific approaches to business restrict the ability of both sides to claim certainty of their worldviews. We are convinced, however, that this is a feature, not a bug, of business. The complexity of issues that need to be considered as part of high-level strategic decisions, and the ambiguity and uncertainty in the execution of members fulfillment of their roles, are inevitable. The idea that business is not always already plagued by these complex humanistic difficulties is a refusal to recognize the reality of the nature of business. Managing a company requires the courage to recognize that it has to be humanized. But managing a company also requires recognizing that the exploration, within the business organization, needs to be combined with more reductive approaches that depend and rely on leaving fixed assumptions and assume certainty and stability in their premises. As such, proper managerial wisdom requires the wholehearted recognition of the ambiguity, of the complexity, of combining humanistic and scientific approaches. Both the humanities and traditional approaches to business restrict the ability of both sides to claim certainty of their worldviews. In this, humanizing business entails a commitment to ambiguity about humanizing business itself, a commitment to the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of properly combining these two approaches. But humanizing business entails the wholehearted recognition of this ambiguity and complexity.

Conclusion There are many ways to argue for the value of the humanities for business. The most popular—that the humanities have a set of skills to give to practitioners of business—instrumentalizes the humanities, cheapening both business and the humanities. Instead, we have argued that the most meaningful way to articulate the value of a humanistic approach to business is to emphasize the effects of these disciplines to recognize the need to ask itself central humanistic questions about the business enterprise, questions that inevitably upend established truths, proliferate with new interpretations, and generate ambiguity and complexity by looking at the world through multiple lenses. This process ensures that we do not get comfortable in our received understandings and that we do not overreach in our assertion of our knowledge about the world. In doing so we have also offered a distinctive opportunity to articulate why the humanities matter, drawing on the value systems of multiple ways of looking at the world—and perhaps even broadening the critical capacities of the humanities in the process. Acknowledgements  We would like to thank Hannah Daru for her invaluable editorial support.

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References Alvesson, Mats, and André Spicer. 2012. A stupidity-based theory of organizations. Journal of Management Studies 49 (7): 1194–1220. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2018. The State of the Humanities 2018: Graduates in the Workforce & Beyond. Accessed December 15, 2019. https://www.humanitiesindicators. org/binaries/pdf/HI_Workforce-­2018.pdf. Bower, Joseph L., and Lynn S. Paine. 2017. The error at the heart of corporate leadership. Harvard Business Review 95 (3): 50–60. Bradley, Elizabeth. 2018. The practical humanities. Inside Higher Ed, October 22, 2018. Accessed August 17, 2019. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/10/22/ humanities-­provide-­practical-­workplace-­and-­life-­skills-­opinion. Ciepley, David. 2013. Beyond public and private: Toward a political theory of the corporation. American Political Science Review 107 (1): 139–158. Davidson, Cathy. 2017. The new education: How to revolutionize the university to prepare students for a world in flux. New York: Basic Books by Hachette Book Group. Douthat, Ross. 2018. “Oh, the humanities!” The New York Times, Aug. 8, 2018. Accessed August 17, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/oh-­the-­humanities.html. Freeman, R. Edward. 1998. A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation. The Corporation and Its Stakeholders: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Max B.E.  Clarkson, Chap. 6, 125–138. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Freeman, R. Edward, et al. 2010. Stakeholder theory the state of the art. New York: Cambridge University Press. Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1970. The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits. The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 13, 1970 33: 122. Ghoshal, Sumantra. 2005. Bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Academy of Management Learning & Education 4 (1): 75–91. Goodpaster, Kenneth E. 1991. Business ethics and stakeholder analysis. Business Ethics Quarterly 1 (1): 53–73. Goodpaster, Kenneth. 2007. Conscience and corporate culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Hartman, Edwin. 1996. Organizational ethics and the good life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heath, Joseph. 2006. Business ethics without stakeholders. Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (4): 533–557. ———. 2010. Economics without illusions: Debunking the myths of modern capitalism. New York: Broadway Books. ———. 2014. Morality, competition and the firm: The market failures approach to business ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Heath, Joseph, Jeffrey Moriarty, and Wayne Norman. 2010. Business ethics and (or as) political philosophy. Business Ethics Quarterly 20 (3): 427–452. Hsieh, Nien-he. 2004. The obligations of transnational corporation Rawlsian justice and the duty of assistance. Business Ethics Quarterly 14 (4): 643–661. Ireland, Paddy. 1999. Company law and the myth of shareholder ownership. Modern Law Review 62 (1): 32–57. Jaschik, Scott. 2017. A practical Education. Inside Higher Ed, October 13, 2017. https:// www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/13/author-­discusses-­his-­new-­book-­why-­liberal-­ arts-­majors-­make-­great-­employees. Jensen, Michael C. 2002. Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (2): 235–256. Kochan, Thomas. 2002. Addressing the crisis of confidence in corporations: Root causes, victims and strategies. The Academy of Management Perspectives 16 (3): 139–141. Mejia, Santiago. (2020). Socratic ignorance and business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-­020-­04650-­x

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Moriarty, Jeff. 2019. On the origin, content, and relevance of the market failures approach. Journal of Business Ethics: 165 (1): 113–124. NCES – National Centre for Education Statistics. 2017. Bachelor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970–71 through 2015–16. Institute of Education Sciences, August 2017. Accessed August 17, 2019. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/ digest/d17/tables/dt17_322.10.asp Norman, Wayne. 2011. Business ethics as self-regulation: Why principles that ground regulations should be used to ground beyond compliance norms as well. Journal of Business Ethics 102 (1): 43–57. Nussbaum, Martha. 2010. Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ober, Josiah. 2019. What are the Humanities? Stanford Humanities Centre. Accessed August 17, 2019. http://shc.stanford.edu/what-­are-­the-­humanities Pentrigliere, Gianpiero. 2019. Humanities and business: An interplay of apparent opposites, for a better world. Humanities Watch editorial. Posted October 29, 2019. Accessed August 15, 2019. https://humanitieswatch.org/2019/10/ humanities-­and-­business-­gianpiero-­petriglieri-­harvard-­business-­review/ Pirson, Michael. 2017. Humanistic management: Protecting dignity and promoting well-being. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato. 1997. In Plato: Complete works, ed. D.S. Hutchinson and John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. de los Reyes, Gaston. 2020. “How Strategic Management Shed Business Policy’s Sense of Social Responsibility in the 1980s.” Academy of Management Proceedings 2020 (1): 14326. https:// doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2020.14326abstract Saul, Scott. 2013. “Berkley English Prof Defends Humanities From Recent Attacks.” Letters & Science 1, University of California Berkley. Accessed August 17, 2019. https://ls1.berkeley. edu/feature-­detail/berkeley-­english-­prof-­defends-­humanities-­from-­recent-­attacks Schmidt, Benjamin. 2018. The humanities are in crisis. The Atlantic, August 23, 2018. https://www. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-­humanities-­face-­a-­crisisof-­confidence/567565/ Sison, Alejo Jose, and Joan Fontrodona. 2012. The common good of the firm in the Aristotelian-­ Thomistic tradition. Business Ethics Quarterly 22 (2): 211–246. Snow, C.P. 1959. The two cultures and the scientific revolution. (2013 reprint, Eastford: Martino. Solomon, Robert. 2010. Business ethics and virtue. In A companion to business ethics, 30–37. Oxford: Blackwell. Steinberg, Etye. 2017. The inapplicability of the market-failures approach in a non-ideal world. Ethics Journal Review 5 (5): 28–34. Stout, Lynn. 2012. The shareholder value myth. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Strauss, Valerie. 2017. Why we still need to study the humanities in a STEM world. The Washington Post, October 18: 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-­sheet/wp/2017/10/18/ why-­we-­still-­need-­to-­study-­the-­humanities-­in-­a-­stem-­world/. Stross, Randall. 2017. A practical education: Why liberal arts majors make great employees. Palo Alto: Redwood Press.

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Santiago Mejia  is an assistant professor of business ethics at the Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University. His research interests span moral psychology, virtue ethics, organizational behavior, and normative ethical theories of businesses. His research on moral psychology brings together empirical results from clinical psychology, social psychology, and cognitive science with theoretical insights of virtue ethicists. He is developing two projects specific to business ethics: one seeks to identify the unrecognized obligations that shareholder primacy imposes on managers and shareholders, the other seeks to show how a reflection on Socrates’ profession of ignorance opens up novel perspectives and research avenues. A-J Aronstein  is Dean of Beyond Barnard, an initiative at Barnard College that integrates career and professional development advising with support for graduate school, fellowships, and student jobs. He previously led a similar office for graduate students and postdocs at the University of Chicago, where he also taught a master’s-­level seminar on the value of humanistic scholarship. His essays have appeared in the LA Review of Books, Post45, Post Road, The Millions, the Paris Review blog, and elsewhere.

Chapter 34

The Role of Humanistic Management in Humanizing Business Michael A. Pirson

Introduction Humanistic Management is a label for practices of organizing the protect human dignity and promote well-being. It is an umbrella term for fundamentally humane organizing practices, be they applied in the field of business, education, government or health care. Humanistic Management draws on what the preeminent biologist E.O. Wilson (2012a, b) labels the emergent consilience of knowledge that draws on insights of the humanities and ancient wisdom traditions along with the insights of natural sciences around the questions of what it means to be human and what it means to flourish. Other scholars and I believe that therefore the humanities have a huge contribution to make to a renewed understanding of management and business. A first contribution centers on the age old question of who we are as human beings; or put more crudely: the question of human nature. A second contribution of the humanities lies in understanding the larger purpose of being human or the question why we are here and what we want to organize for? In the following chapter I will be making the case that we do need to rethink management as a fundamental way humans collaborate, and that the question of human nature is central that that rethinking. Second I will argue that the notion of dignity, as that which represents intrinsic value, will need to be central to humanizing efforts for business and beyond. Thirdly I will argue that without a fundamental shift of the intention and purpose of organizing towards shared well-being on a common planet we will neither be able to survive nor thrive. I will close with some suggestions on how a humanistic paradigm can help reorient research, practice, pedagogy and policy to support the efforts to humanize business.

M. A. Pirson (*) Fordham University, New York City, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_34

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House and Home Are on Fire The world cries out for healing and better organizing practices are called for. Efforts to humanize business are increasing. Many actors share the perspective that business organizations are harmful to human beings, our dignity and our flourishing. Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist states that the elites need to panic because our house is on fire.1 Shoshana Zuboff adds that not only our house is on fire but our home as well.2 She suggests that the way dominant actors in business conduct themselves threatens our safe spaces, our sanctuary. She suggests that the utopian idea of B.F. Skinner in “Beyond Dignity and Freedom” is coming to fruition as surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism does away with the notions of autonomy, self-determination, dignity, and freedom in order to achieve a new form of social harmony. While in the U.S. this threat is coming from private companies and business firms with the tacit support of public institution and corruption, in China it is the state acting with private companies. Business and the way it is run does play a significant role in burning home and house. Zuboff (2019) argues that we need firemen and woman to save our home and house, as an intertwined set of human basic needs. Similarly, Pope Francis argued that the problems of climate change and inequality are two sides of the same coin.3 He argues that they are the outcome of the same problem at the source: our lack of clarity on who we are as dignified human beings and the purpose we are supposed to embrace (thriving).

Neglect of Dignity as the Source of Fire I argue that the currently dominating forms of organizing, whether enacted by state or market actors, mostly neglect the notion and the notion of freedom and dignity. Human beings are instrumentalized at best if not marginalized. At the core of our current ills lies a disrespect for intrinsic value of life or what some label dignity. As Philosopher Immanuel Kant famously noted: “In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity.4 ”

1  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate (accessed Oct 2, 2019) 2  https://www.presencing.org/news/news/detail/25605680-8f5b-4594-b022-26361e989036 3  http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf (accessed October 16, 2019) 4  Kant Immanuel (1998). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page 42 [4434].

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Scholars argue that dignity understood as intrinsic value has been ignored, neglected and violated. This neglect is manifest in the destruction of our environment which possesses intrinsic value. It is visible in the threats to life itself in an era of mass extinction, and can be seen in the threats to our own survival in times of crises. Dignity has taken a back seat in an economic system which focuses mainly on price as indicator of value. The dominance of what I label economistic thinking is pervasive. Even in addressing some of the most pressing problems, we tend to focus on developing pricing mechanisms for things that have inherent value. One such notion is the idea of “Natural capital” which represents the notion of putting a price on nature, for example in carbon pricing schemes or pollution rights at large. Another form of pricing inherent value is the notion of social, cultural or human capital which render human relations priceable and ultimately commodifiable. While these mechanisms may yield beneficial results in that they internalize economic externalities there is arguably a value in thinking about organizing mechanisms that do not need price as indicator of value. I argue that the notion of dignity can play a central role in rethinking business and humanizing management. To provide an example of such rethinking, much of more recent management literature is focused on the notion of value creation (often in contrast to profit maximization). While indeed managers do well when they create value for stakeholders there may be equally much benefit in managers recognizing existing, inherent value of nature and community. The notion of dignity can therefore enrich our understanding of the managerial process as recognizing and protecting inherent value as well as creating value. We argue that it is central for efforts to humanize business.

What Does Humanizing Mean? As a stepping stone to understand dignified and more humane business practices better, I wish to turn to the core question that the humanities have pursued: Who are we? In social sciences the answer is based on assumptions relating to human nature i.e. its ontology. One of the critical stepping stones to better assessment of the impact of management I argue, is a better and more accurate understanding of who we are as people. As Michael Jensen and William Meckling convincingly argue: “Understanding human behavior is fundamental to understanding how organizations function, whether they are profit-making firms, non-profit enterprises, or government agencies.” They further state that “much disagreement among managers, scientists, policy makers, and citizens arises from substantial differences in the way we think about human nature—about their strengths, frailties, intelligence, ignorance, honesty, selfishness, and generosity. (ibid, p.4)” While these scholarly challenges seem to be critical they have remained largely unaddressed. If we follow the majority of management scholars, agency theory provides the blueprint of corporate behavior. It shapes the governance problem of a

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managerially managed firm and it shapes its corporate governance imperatives. Agency theory arguably also shapes the way corporate managers develop their strategies. Jensen and Meckling (1994) argue that the ontological specifications summarized in the Resourceful, Evaluative Maximizing Model (REMM) best support agency theory. Jensen and Meckling (1994) suggest that REMM is the product of over 200 years of research and debate in economics, the other social sciences, and philosophy. They provide a number of postulates that serve as a “bare bones summary” of the concept, namely: • • • •

Individuality Rationality Amorality Maximization

Clearly, every theory and its underlying ontology needs to be reductionist. The REMM ontology proposed by Jensen and Meckling (1994) is not designed to be a perfect descriptor and their authors acknowledge its limitations. The problem with successful theory is that the underlying assumptions and contingencies are often forgotten, are tacitly adopted, mindlessly employed, and often performative in terms of outcomes. Agency theory and its ontological assumptions not only had an enormous impact on business theory, but also on business practice. Based on agency theory inspired research regarding the theory of the firm, corporate governance was redesigned, motivational schemes were developed, and stock options created. Khurana (2007) describes an event in the early 1980s, in which corporate raiders linked to T. Boone Pickens provided regulators with copies of Jensen and Meckling’s papers when they had to convince them that his proposed takeovers would be the best way to deliver shareholder value maximization. As such, REMM thinking took a firm hold on practice. REMM also became a cultural phenomenon when movie director Oliver Stone portrayed corporate raiders in his movie “Wall Street,” and his main character Gordon Gekko uttered the famous line: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” It is therefore difficult to understate the impact of Jensen and Meckling’s perspective on human nature, as it percolates tacitly throughout the social sciences and business culture. This REMM inspired narrative also explains why managerial activity is oblivious to dignity. Concern for intrinsic value has to be imposed from the outside as amorality is key to REMM. A framework that assumes amorality can hardly respond well to the expectation of humane practice. To make any progress in thinking about humanizing management and business we need to provide a better conceptual blueprint of human nature.

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Towards a More Human Understanding of Human Nature A different blueprint needs to draw on a different ontological architecture. Many scholars argue that we need a paradigm shift. Core to this paradigm shift are insights from evolutionary sciences that increasingly converge with the insights from ancient wisdom traditions and the humanities. Scholars call this paradigm which is based on scientific insights rather than assumptions, a humanistic paradigm. The humanistic ontology largely contradicts the REMM propositions that underpin mainstream economics and business theorizing, specifically: • • • •

Sociality Emotionality Morality Balance

Taken together, the findings from the natural sciences concerning human nature do overlap with insights by the humanities and social sciences. Aristotle for example argues we are social beings endowed with reason. E.O Wilson (2012a, b) classifies our species as truly social (eusocial). Greene (2014) suggests that our emotions are key to survival as they formed as responses to our social nature. Darwin (1909) sees our morality as the core to our sociality and the ability to survive. There is an increasing consilience of knowledge (Wilson 1998) which provides a clearer perspective on who we are as human beings. A number of elements long considered bugs in our system have now been identified as features, including sociality, emotionality, morality, and altruism. These insights challenge REMM’s claims about the human nature that underlie a larger, dominant theoretical framework in business studies and practice. I argue that this view of human nature can be a foundation for a humanized version of managerial activity.

A Humanistic Perspective on Humanizing Management Theoretical models are helpful by reducing complexity and distilling the essence of a phenomenon. They are also critical as they provide a blueprint for action, such as managerial decision making or structure, such as corporate governance mechanisms. I draw on insights from evolutionary biology and neuroscience to form the basis of a proposed new humanistic model. The work of Lawrence and Nohria (2002), as well as the collaborative work of Lawrence and Pirson (2015), form the cornerstones of this proposition. This work suggests that human beings have developed four independent drives that allowed survival (drive to acquire, drive to bond, drive to comprehend, and drive to defend). Building on their work, I integrate additional insights from the humanities and social sciences to build a model of human behavior that reflects the emerging consilience of knowledge. The proposed model is based on four innate human drives that need to be balanced to achieve dignity

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and well-being. In this light, managerial action can contribute to humanizing business practices by balancing the four drives above the dignity threshold.

Dignity as a Universal Threshold I argue that the evolutionary four-drive model of human behavior can be enhanced if we take onboard perspectives from the humanities. For example, Hans Kueng’s (2004) findings suggest that there needs to be recognition of a human dignity baseline. Amartya Sen (2001) points out that such dignity enables human freedom. Sen argues that if people have not fulfilled their baseline drives, they cannot be considered free. In this sense, and in contrast to what Jensen and Meckling claim, there are basic needs that need to be fulfilled. The fulfilment of human needs can be included in the four-drive model through what Donaldson and Walsh called a “dignity threshold.” In other words, to ensure human survival at the individual level, as well as the group level, a better model of human nature needs to integrate universal dignity thresholds. This would mean that the humanistic model needs to include a conceptual baseline that ensures basic human dignity as a matter of balance in the four drives. This baseline needs to be further restricted, but a dignity threshold could, for example, require minimum fulfillments of the drive to acquire (enough food), drive to defend (basic shelter), drive to bond (a social connection to other people), and the drive to comprehend (a basic purpose in life). This dignity threshold represents a moral claim, but is also a key survival mechanism. Increasing research shows, for example, that whenever dignity is violated, the human brain reacts as if it experienced physical pain. Hicks argues that dignity violations are a permanent source of conflict. Hicks (2011) mentions that conflicts across the globe fester if those dignity violations are not addressed. Introducing the notion of baseline dignity is not only helpful, but essential if the model is to help explain human survival and human flourishing.

Well-Being as the Ultimate Objective Another extension of the four-drive model of human nature relates to the purpose of human existence. In the reductionist, economistic model, the ultimate objective function is wealth, status, power, or anything else that can be maximized. In the humanistic model, the ultimate purpose of human existence is the notion of flourishing and well-being. In this, the humanistic model reflects a rather consistent, albeit often forgotten, agreement between economic thinkers about the purpose of the economy. Ever since the emergence of the concepts of economics and management, there has been a debate about their respective larger purpose. Aristotle, who is

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credited with popularizing the term “economics,” wanted to distinguish “oikonomia” early on from sheer money-making, which he labelled “chrematistike.” Oikonomia should follow moral rules and ultimately enhance “eudaimonia,” the well-being of the community or polis. In his viewpoint, chrematistike represents the relentless pursuit of more, of which he disapproves. Consequently, the humanistic model is oriented towards a balance of the four drives, which achieves ever higher levels of well-being and flourishing.

Pathways to Humanizing Management Humanizing management can occur at the conceptual level through research. It can occur in practice and in pedagogy. It can and also needs to occur at the level of public policy. In the following section I provide a way of thinking about how to humanize business across all four domains: research, practice, pedagogy and policy. My aim is to re-conceptualize management according to two basic precepts: (1) the role of human dignity, and (2) the notion of social welfare as either wealth or well-being (see Fig. 34.1). In general, human dignity can (a) be denied or (b) protected, and (c) promoted. The denial of human dignity over history has led to coordinated efforts to protect it (i.e. the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights). While the protection of human dignity is a necessary step for human development, many scholars have focused on how human dignity can be achieved through emotional, moral, and character development. Following Sen, I argue that the protection of dignity is a necessary condition for dignity promotion. Similarly, dignity protection is a necessary step in well-being creation because any value created for a human being without considering their humanity can ‘make a happy house swine’ but not a fulfilled human being. Role of Dignity as Category Irrelevant

Relevant Human Dignity is

Ultimate Goal of Organizing

Neglected

Protected

Promoted

Pathway 1

Wealth creation

Pure Economism

Well-being creation

Bureaucratic Paternalism

P a t h w a y

Bounded Economism

Enlightened Economism

Bounded Humanism

Pure Humanism

2

Fig. 34.1  Humanistic vs. Economistic Archetypes of Management

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As shown in Fig. 34.1, the suggested two dimensions result in six archetypes5: three economistic and three humanistic management approaches. The economistic management archetypes are all focused on wealth creation. In that economistic approach, management practices can (1) neglect dignity, as in Pure Economism, (2) protect dignity, as in Bounded Economism, or (3) promote dignity, as in Enlightened Economism. The humanistic management archetypes are all focused on well-being creation. In this humanistic approach, management practices can (4) neglect dignity, as in Bureaucratic Paternalism, (5) protect dignity, as in Bounded Humanism, or (6) promote dignity, as in Pure Humanism. These archetypes represent a normative stance and a mindset with which people can engage in research, practice, pedagogy, and policy.6 This typification can help how to approach the task of humanizing business. Humanizing business can take two main pathways: One pathway focuses on the protection and promotion of dignity in the organizing process; the second pathway focuses on well-being creation as outcome rather than mere wealth or performance. In the following I briefly outline what such a shift can look like in research, practice, pedagogy and policy.

Pathway 1: Putting Dignity Back in the Organizing Processes Two organizing forms have dominated the past. The market model has been a dominant model in the Western world for the past 50 years. The bureaucratic model has been dominant for the past several hundred years. Both models were improvements over feudal ways of organizing, yet they have marked problems with regard to the notion of intrinsic value. In the Pure Economism archetype, human beings are viewed as homo economicus or REMM.  Humans are only seen and studied in the context of market engagement, for example, as participants in the labor or consumer market. Considerations outside the exchange paradigm, such as love, trust, or care, are considered irrelevant. Rational behavior is based on cost-benefit calculations and people who are concerned with fairness are considered irrational. In Pure Economism, organizations are treated as a nexus of contracts in which rationally maximizing agents negotiate their respective benefits, often at the expense of others. An example of this type of economistic practice can be found in the financial markets, in which commitments do not matter, and where “exchange” is the dominant logic. At the extreme end, psychopaths engaging with each other represent Pure Economism. 5  As archetype I understand general properties that define and distinguish an ideal type of organizing (see also Weber’s ideal types). 6  There has been a long discussion in the literature on science being non-normative and purely descriptive. The author subscribes to the view that even taking a position that management science is non-normative is a normative stance.

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In Pure Economism, the market becomes THE organizing mode above all others, including community, family, or hierarchy. Within this archetype, a market society is the ideal society. The ultimate goal of a market society is to create efficiencies and increase wealth. Developments, from Uber to Air B&B, to freelance websites such as Huffington Post, the financialization and marketization of organizations witness the marketization logic. In this organizing perspective, human dignity does not really matter and human beings are generally referred to as human resources or human capital. Moving away from pure economism requires a broader perspective on human nature and of organizing. Price is relevant and all that is exchangeable is relevant in theorizing, practice and pedagogy. Yet, there needs to be increasing attention to that which is not part of the market. These aspects are summarized by anthropologists, for example, as community based organizing mechanisms, as legitimate hierarchical structures that have proven helpful to survival or equality matching mechanisms. Researchers are increasingly paying attention to such dignity protecting organizing mechanism. Shift Toward Bounded Economism  Management research, practice, pedagogy and policy that recognizes the need to protect inherent value and organize for wealth creation humanizes business. A transition toward Bounded Economis would require a decided focus on the aspects of dignity related to human nature. All the aspects of life that are intrinsically valued but cannot be exchanged or priced need to be included as central elements. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be a starting point (especially articles 1 to 4 as well as 18 to 24) for such theorizing and practice. The United Nations Global Compact and its signatories represent organizations that intend to humanize business by adhering and complying with dignity based rules and practices. Pedagogical efforts to humanize business can be represented by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education. Policy efforts to humanize business in this domain focus on limiting Pure Economism, to the degree that it ensures the protection of human dignity. It is a limited “laissez faire” approach with boundaries. This is an approach that, with careful reading of the original sources, many of the fathers of modern economics advocated. Roger Scruton argues that: Left-wing thinkers often caricature the conservative position as one that advocates the free market at all costs, introducing competition and the profit motive even into the most sacred precincts of communal life. Adam Smith and David Hume made clear, however, that the market, which is the only known solution to the problem of economic co-ordination, itself depends upon the kind of moral order that arises from below, as people take responsibility for their lives, learn to honor their agreements and live in justice and charity with their neighbors. Our rights are also freedoms, and freedom makes sense only among people who are accountable to their neighbors for its misuse.7

It can similarly be argued that both Milton Friedman (1962) and Friedrich von Hayek (1970) called for the law to bound markets, and that the government has an  http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/01/the-right-way/ (Accessed May 21, 2016)

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important role in upholding boundaries to “dog-eat dog” competition. Likewise, Michael Sandel (2012) points out that, within Bounded Economism, public policies recognize that human beings do not only act as market participants, but also as citizens. In his book Rebalancing Society, Henry Mintzberg (2015) also calls for much stronger boundaries to private sector activity.

Shift Towards Enlightened Economism Management can be further humanized when the central focus of management becomes the development of human faculties that are intrinsically valued, such as aesthetic and artistic dexterity, or wisdom, trustworthiness, and character. Since the ultimate objective for such organizing remains an increase of performance and wealth, Melé (2003) therefore calls this archetype “Masked Economism,” because protecting and promoting people’s dignity serves as a means to higher financial gains. The overarching logic presented is that fully flourishing people and organizations will produce better business results. While there is increasing evidence for this, the overarching logic puts human dignity concerns in the service of wealth creation. For example, when examining the role of civility in the form of stakeholder management or organizational culture, certain research focuses decidedly on the connection between such dignity-promoting/demoting activities and their impacts on financial performance. The Enlightened Economism archetype of management can be found in an increasing number of businesses. Conscious business, conscious capitalism, and business with purpose are only a few of the more popular labels. It seems that many business practitioners have understood that human beings are not only human resources, but that they are their most “important assets.” Consequently, people need to be engaged, trained, and developed. The notion of human beings as assets is clearly meant to highlight the value of human beings for the business, but also connotes that a human being’s main purpose is to serve the wealth creation of the organization. In Enlightened Economism, pedagogy draws on a wide array of disciplines, including management, but also from the liberal arts. Many of the best-known economistic companies, including investment banks and consulting agencies, prefer to hire liberal arts students rather than business students. They do so because the liberal arts provide these students with a richer educational experience and a broader perspective on life. While this might indicate that the liberal arts degree is regaining lost luster, business education in the Enlightened Economism archetype usually draws on all kinds of educational experiences to make students more marketable. The Enlightened Economism archetype encompasses all policies that relate to what Henry Mintzberg (2015) calls “adjectival capitalism” There is an increasing awareness that business as usual no longer works. The proposals in this archetype accept that capitalism and wealth creation are the dominant goal of organizing, yet

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prefer to improve it. In Enlightened Economism, the role of public policy is to help organizations do less or no harm, and to help elevate sustainable, regenerative, democratic, and conscious practices to achieve prosperity. To humanize management by shifting towards a more enlightened practice of business is sensible and practical. It makes a lot of sense even in financial terms to protect and promote dignity. The pragmatic benefit of transitioning towards bounded and masked economism is that the humanization of management can occur within the dominant frame of current business thought. I argue though that this is not enough if we truly want to unearth human potential and humanize management. An additional pathway that can be taken is to shift the objective function of business from wealth towards well-being.

Pathway 2: Moving Towards Well Being as Outcome The bureaucratic model of organizing has always viewed the purpose of organizing as some version of contribution to the common good. Yet, there has been a constant dissatisfaction with the bureaucratic organizational model because it was dehumanizing. Dignity was not honored, protected or promoted. The advocates of market-­ based approaches to organizing oftentimes positioned the market against bureaucracy (i.e. the state) because of its inhuman forms of management. Yet, we argue that moving towards well-being as the ultimate outcome of organizing is a critical stepping stone towards humanizing management. When organizing for well-being, it is critical to protect dignity as well. The problem of Bureaucratic Paternalism is that well-being can be achieved without particular consideration of human dignity. Bureaucratic Paternalism thus provides room for authoritarian and possibly even totalitarian organizational forms. It has been argued with good reason that human liberty and dignity can be abused in the guise of welfare or well-being. Even in its more benign forms, Bureaucratic Paternalism can be authoritarian and undermine respect for human dignity. Many leading economists have suggested to humanize management requires a stronger focus on increases in well-being outcomes. To assure dignity protection, Nussbaum (2003) and Sen state that they prefer procedural approaches – such as stakeholder dialogues on the relevant notions of dignity and capability development  – to measuring such concepts quantitatively. Dierksmeier (2016) calls this approach procedural humanism: a form of interaction and discourse that allows voices to be heard and does not impose any preconceived goals. Accordingly, these procedural approaches will be more effective in yielding well-being. Shift Toward Bounded Humanism  To humanize business, dignity protection along with a focus on the outcome of well-being are critical. Again, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be a point of departure to outline research questions relevant to such management theory, practice, pedagogy and policy.

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In Bounded Humanism, the organizing objective remains well-being, but there is a central focus on valuing human dignity to prevent autocratic and paternalistic practices. Human beings are intrinsically valued, which is reflected in organizational practices in terms of decision-making, governance, and strategy. Scholars suggest that the community and family metaphor is helpful for an understanding of organizing practices within this archetype. Nevertheless, the distinction between Bureaucratic Paternalism and Bounded Humanism lies in the accordance and protection of individual freedom and autonomy. Transcending the individual, Bounded Humanism embraces practices that are intrinsically valuable for the creation of a functioning community. Such practices may relate to building and maintaining social trust, responsibility, and practical wisdom. Examples of such practices can be found in reality yet are not pervasive. David Sloan Wilson and Elinor Ostrom pointed out some basic principles under which such practices can function. When they function they are often considered superior in their humanity. The emergence of B-Corps and Social Enterprises represent forms of more humane organizing that fit this category.

Shift to Pure Humanism Going a step further, humanizing management can focus on human development as a core element to achieving the outcome of shared thriving on this planet (i.e. Well-­ being). Research, practice, pedagogy and policy in this area relate to capability development and its impact on improving well-being. The difference between Bounded Humanism and Pure Humanism is the latter’s focus on promoting dignity through organizing practices. This may seem a small difference, but it highlights an important aspirational shift. Within Pure Humanism, the formal protection of human dignity through the application of human rights is insufficient; it is important to allow space for the co-creation of human development so that all people can flourish.

Concluding Thoughts- Challenges of Humanizing Management Clearly the above transitions are not easy. Yet, I hope by providing a structured, conceptual perspective on how such humanizing efforts can occur addressing the broader challenges can be viewed as possible. Observers have suggested that the main challenge for such a transition is our mindset which is informed by the global narrative about what business is and what good management is supposed to be. As long as that narrative embraces Gordon Gekko as the dominant understanding of human nature and the “dog-eat-dog”

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perspective as good business, humanizing efforts for business will be limited. As long as we view business and management as an area that “sucks”, we will not be able to develop a positive vision. Therefore, the main challenges for efforts to humanize business is to shift the narrative about the role of business in society and the role of the manager in that context. We see a shift occurring already with large investors like Larry Fink and Ray Dalio arguing for a more humane form of management. Similarly, CEO’s have shifted their public statements in documents such as the Business Round Table statement. Business groups have emerged that embrace a more conscious and enlightened way of organizing. Nevertheless, humanizing efforts seem an uphill battle. Home and House are on fire and more efforts need to be dedicated to the task of humanizing our organizations and serve humanity at large. The good thing is that the humanities can provide a lot of the insight and wisdom needed for such a transition.

References Darwin, Charles. 1909. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. New York: Appleton and Company. Dierksmeier, Claus. 2016. Reframing Economic Ethics: The Philosophical Foundations of Humanistic Management. Edited by The Humanistic Management Network. Heidelberg/New York: Springer. Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. 2nd edition (September 15, 1982) ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. Greene, Joshua. 2014. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap between Us and Them. Atlantic Books Ltd. Hayek, Frederich. 1970. Constitution of Liberty. University of Chicago Press. Hicks, Donna. 2011. Dignity - Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict. Yale University Press. Jensen, Michael C., and W.H.  Meckling. 1994. The Nature of Man. The Journal of Applied Corporate Finance Summer: 4–19. Khurana, Rakesh. 2007. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kueng, Hans. 2004. Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic. Wipf and Stock Publishers. Lawrence, Paul. 2010. Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership. In Warren Bennis Books, ed. Warren Bennis. Jossey-Bass. Lawrence, Paul, and N.  Nohria. 2002. Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lawrence, P.R., and M. Pirson. 2015. Economistic and Humanistic Narratives of Leadership in the Age of Globality: Toward a Renewed Darwinian Theory of Leadership. Journal of Business Ethics 128 (2): 383–394. Mele, Domenec. 2003. The Challenge of Humanistic Management. Journal of Business Ethics 44 (1): 77–88. Mintzberg, Henry. 2015. Rebalancing Society. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Nussbaum, Martha. 2003. Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice. Feminist Economics 9 (2–3): 33–59. Sandel, Michael. 2012. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: McMillan. Sen, Amartya. 2001. Development as Freedom. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

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Wilson, Edward O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. 1st ed. New  York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House. ———. 2012a. On Human Nature. Harvard University Press. ———. 2012b. The Social Conquest of Earth. W Norton & Company. Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Profile Books. Michael A. Pirson  is a scholar of humanistic management, which holds that business and commerce ought to protect human dignity and promote societal well-­being. He is currently a professor for Global Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship at Fordham University, New York, where he is Chair, Leading People and Organizations Area Chair, Leading People and Organizations Area, Director of the Center for Humanistic Management and Master of Science in Management. He is a Research Fellow at Harvard University and Full Member, Club of Rome. He is president of the International Humanistic Management Association, a global organization bringing academics from various disciplines together with practitioners, policy makers and media representatives to accelerate the transition towards a life-conducive economic system. His academic work has won numerous awards, including from the Academy of Management and the Association of Jesuit Business Schools. He is editor-in-chief of the Humanistic Management Journal published by Springer.

Chapter 35

The Role of Champion Metaphors in Humanizing Business and Stakeholder Relationships Elisabet Garriga

Introduction Businesses as well as stakeholders use formal and informal communication channels, events and workshops to engage and relate to each other. Consequently, business-­ stakeholder relationships emerge and develop through these repeated interactions. Businesses and stakeholders make sense of them through different types of symbols, rituals, customs, narratives and communication schemes, and among them, we find metaphors. In spite of the abundant use of metaphors in organizational studies (Boxenbaum and Rouleau 2011; Alvesson 2003), decision making (Connolly 1988), leadership (Bensimon 1989), organizational change (Cornelissen et  al. 2011; Palmer and Dunford 1996; Lundberg 1990), information technology (Siano et al. 2018; Kendall and Kendall 1993), strategy (Peters 1992), organizational design (Tsoukas 1993), business and society (Wood and Logsdon 2008; Crane et al. 2004) and sustainable development (Jones 2016); the role of metaphors in stakeholder theory has been scant. There are few examples of the use of metaphors in the stakeholder field, such as the role of “the wheel and spoke” metaphor (Freeman et al. 2010) and “the weblike relationships” metaphor (Wicks et al. 1994). However, there are no studies on the role of metaphors in specific business-stakeholder relationships, metaphors that do not emerge in theories or in abstract terms but in specific business-stakeholder relationships. We aim to fill this gap by describing the role of metaphors in business and stakeholder relationships when promoting social progress and social hope, which we describe as champion metaphors. Champion metaphors are those which inspire new ways of human living and they bring about social progress whilst humanizing business-­stakeholder relationships. How? Champion metaphors “widen the circle of E. Garriga (*) Strategy, Leadership, People Department, EADA Business School, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_35

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people who we think of being “much like ourselves”. Hence, the “we” is widened to include other social groups, in our case, stakeholders, that were previously excluded in society (Rorty 2006). The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, we will provide some insights into the conceptual development of metaphors in several organizational fields in general, and in stakeholder theory in particular. Secondly, we will explain the concept of a metaphor based on Davidson’s and Rorty’s work, which is different to the “mainstream” approach to metaphors in organizational and management studies. After that, we will proceed to outline the role of the champion metaphor in business-­ stakeholder relationships. Finally, we will illustrate the concept by looking at the role of the dandelion metaphor in the Specialisterne business case, and its stakeholders: employees, clients, suppliers, government and the local community. We will conclude the chapter with the social and managerial implications and steps for further research.

 he Role of Metaphor in Organizational Studies T and Stakeholder Theory What is a metaphor? The word “metaphor” is derived from the Greek metapherein, which roughly translates as “to transfer”: the transfer of information from a relatively familiar domain to a new and relatively unknown domain. Hence, metaphors re-describe the domains to which these words are applied. Since the time of the Greeks, philosophers have studied the role of metaphors in our language and our cognition. However, philosophers have often adopted a dismissive attitude towards metaphors, regarding them as an obtrusive or unimportant ornamental feature of natural languages and excluding metaphors from the rational discourse because they “openly profess deceit” (Locke, Bk 3, chapter 10, 1960). It was not until the mid 1960’s that philosophers began to take a positive interest in the metaphor, for example, with the work Black In Models and Metaphors (1962) which gave the first systematic treatment of metaphor within analytic philosophy. In the organizational field, many conceptual orientations (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Tsoukas 1991) from different epistemological and ontological views have explained metaphors. For instance, “cognitive linguistics” in the tradition of George Lakoff, argued that we acquire metaphorical understanding of our world and that we must understand them in terms of other entities and experiences (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 177). So, literal utterances are also processed metaphorically: in other words, “our ordinary conceptual system, in the terms of which we both think and act, is metaphorical in nature” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 4). Lakoff has argued that it is very natural to employ certain metaphors with certain topics such as love and anger because the topics cannot be fully comprehended in their own terms. Therefore, metaphors have some cognitive import and special figurative meaning rather than being illustrative or simply figures of speech (e.g. Cornelissen 2004,

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2005; Morgan 1980, 1983, 2006; Weick 1989). For instance, the study by Skorczynska and Deignan (2006) provided evidence that metaphors were used as constitutive ‘models’ to ‘explore’ and ‘extend’ thought. Despite the fact that most organizational researchers agree that metaphor has a cognitive content, there is much disagreement about the nature of this import and how it is generated. Therefore, questions on how metaphors work, how they provide meaning, and how they may eventually become literal expressions, are questions for debate in the organizational field. What are the most popular metaphors in organizational studies? The “Organization as a machine” and the “Organization as a garbage can”, or recently the “Organization Improvisation as jazz” or “Organizational Behavior as collective mind” by Weick (1989) are some of the most popular examples that have been analyzed and discussed in the organizational field on a theoretical level (Cornelissen 2004). In stakeholder theory, we find few examples of metaphors on a theoretical or abstract level (for instance, the role of “the wheel and spoke” metaphor (Freeman et al. 2010) or “weblike relationships” (Wicks et al. 1994) to describe business and stakeholder relationships. No studies as far as we know have focused on the role of metaphors in specific business-stakeholder relationships. So, instead of applying the cognitive and social constructivism approach, which is found in most organizational studies, we will apply a different approach: Davidson’s and Rorty’s work on metaphors.

Davidson’s and Rorty’s Approach on Metaphors Davidson (1984, 2001, 2004) has a unique explanation concerning how metaphors work, and Rorty (1989, 1991, 1998, 2000) expands on Davidson’s view to create a larger theory about the contingency of language and, from this, an account of social progress and hope. Rorty distances himself from the traditional philosophical paradigm that affirms that if something contributes to “knowledge” this is the greatest compliment we can make to speech. For Rorty the greatest compliment to speech is that it brings social progress and hope, new ways of human living. So, we identify the following main aspects of Davidson’s and Rorty’s understanding on metaphors: Firstly, Davidson’s theory of metaphor holds that the words used in metaphorical expressions do not take on a figurative meaning. For him, the words in a metaphorical expression retain their literal sense and gain their metaphorical status by virtue of their being used in unfamiliar ways. Moreover, Davidson agrees with previous accounts of metaphor, which claim that metaphors have no cognitive content beyond that which is contained in their literal meaning. He does not agree however, that they are mere ornaments of language. Therefore, He emphasizes that metaphors may provoke thought and insight about the world but do not represent it. Then, metaphors in general do not represent the world accurately in the sense of the mirror where “the truth is out there”.

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Following this anti-representalism of language, Rorty calls for a “post-­philosophical” culture and abandons the pursuit of “representing the world,” and rejects the philosophical distinction between knowing and representing, subject and object. In the first chapter of the book Contingency, irony and solidarity, dedicated to the contingency of language, he also assumes that “the truth is not out there” but that truth is a property of the lexicon. Rorty addressed in his book two more main issues: first, the development of the “epistemological turn” that implies that there is no access to a final structure of consciousness in which to sustain universalism, and second, the postulation of the «linguistic turn» that implies that it is not possible to find an ultimate and essential language of human structure. The three aspects challenged important assumptions of philosophical thinking such as the role of knowledge, mind and truth in linguistics and cognition. Furthermore, this had important consequences in Rorty’s thinking concerning metaphors. He argued that truths indicate a property of statements. That these depend on the lexicons and that the lexicons are made by human beings, and as such, are subject to intervention and variation; so they are contingent. Secondly, Davidson’s metaphor theory, according to Rorty, accounts for the shifts in “vocabularies”. The metaphor synthesizes, for Davidson, the phenomenon of interruption that can occur in the plane of the usual, in the routine of our linguistic uses: “In our opinion, tossing a metaphor into a conversation is like suddenly breaking off the conversation long enough to make a face or pulling a photograph out of your pocket and displaying it, or pointing at a feature of the surroundings, or slapping your interlocutor’s face, or kissing him. Tossing a metaphor into a text is like using italics, or illustrations, or odd punctuation or formats.” (Davidson 1984, 262). The metaphors’ interruption allows us to open up a space for new beliefs that bring new uses and experiences. Thirdly, Davidson also claimed that we understand metaphors only through use and experience, when we experience in ourselves an opening, a new disposition, we review our theories and vocabularies to incorporate the new material. Consequently, when a thinker introduces metaphorical uses, he can lead to a re-framing of the network of beliefs of a community. According to Rorty, the metaphor is one of three ways through which we can add a new belief to our previous beliefs. Unlike the other two, which are perception and inference, the metaphor does not only modify the truth of some of our sentences but also the metaphor’s impact touches our language, our lexicons. A metaphor can be a reason to remake our network of beliefs and desires: “Metaphor is, so to speak, a voice from outside logical space, rather than an empirical filling up of that space, or a logical-philosophical clarification of it. In fact metaphor is something of a call to change one’s language and one’s life, rather than a proposal about how to systematize either.” (Rorty 1991, 30). Rorty’s conception proposed viewing metaphorical sentences “as the forerunners of new uses of language, uses that may eclipse and erase old uses», which implies no longer thinking of the metaphor as endowed with a merely “heuristic“ and “ornamental” function. Rorty assesses it’s necessary to distance yourself from the traditional philosophical cognitive-knowledge paradigm of metaphors. We therefore need to find other compliments to address those forms of language that

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have no direct cognitive or knowledge pretensions. What could these compliments for metaphors be? The value of metaphor would not be cognitive, but a use value. Maillard expands on Rorty’s thinking, ensuring that the metaphor is the hermeneutical core that allows us to design possible worlds. The metaphor is not intended to capture or access any truth outside of itself but tries to build fictions whose elements are well crimped, so that the entire result is effective. The effectiveness of metaphor is measured by the degree of the opening/broading of vision that it can produce. Therefore, the metaphor does not represent (as does the symbol) but presents, and what it presents is something new, something whose presentation brings about an activation of creative potentials. What activates and enables metaphors? The moral imagination. Precisely, the moral imagination defined as “the ability in particular circumstances to discover and evaluate possibilities not merely determined by circumstances or limited by its operative mental models or merely framed by a set of rules or rule-governed concerns.” (Werhane 1999, 83). Hence, because we have moral imagination, we have metaphors. Fourthly, the metaphor also has an impact on the listeners: it broadens our comprehensive disposition and impacts on the ways in which we assimilate the stimuli and prepare for a new vision: “Metaphorical activity is the condition of possibility of the comprehensive opening that allows such production. The keys to metaphorical activity are those that explain the mechanism that allows us to build comprehensive images of the world, that is, make sense of the world.” (Maillard 2001, 516). In a nutshell, as Davidson and Rorty suggested, metaphors dispose us to understand the always-latent possibility of novelty and change, and they allow us to assume the contingency of language. They are in a contingent scope; all vocabulary has resulted from a previous process of literalization of introduced metaphors as a new way of speaking. Following Rorty, culture is conceived as a succession of languages, of metaphors, that arise continually due to causes that most of the time we do not know “The creative activity does not act simply by causality but, in any case, by chance: that law that governs the connections in the making and getting rid of the elements” (Rorty 1991, 40).

The Champion Metaphor Rather than focusing on existing types of metaphors based on cognition or knowledge (for instance; primary versus complex, live versus conventional versus dead metaphors (Cornelissen and Kafouros 2008), we describe metaphors based on the social progress and the hope they bring to society. What metaphors are these? The champion metaphors. Following Rorty’s thinking, we could describe the champion metaphors as metaphors to “widen the circle of people who we think of as being “much like ourselves”. So, the “we” widens the circle of people to include other social groups (in our case stakeholders) that were previously excluded in society (Rorty 2006). In

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doing so, champion metaphors inspire new ways of human living, humanizing business-­stakeholder relationships and bringing about social progress. Rorty’s understanding of social progress is based on human solidarity “we have the moral obligation to feel a sense of solidarity with all human beings” (Rorty 1989, 190). But, he describes human solidarity in very different terms to most approaches, not based on the human condition, nor on the recognition of human essence in all human beings. Rather, he describes solidarity as the ability to regard more and more traditional differences (tribe, religion) “as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation- the ability to think of people widely different from ourselves as included in the range of “us” (Rorty 1989, 192). Consequently, Rorty escaped from the idea of essence, nature or any foundation for human beings as a foundation for human solidarity, social progress or hope, because “What counts as being a decent human being is relative to historical circumstance, a matter of transient consensus about what attitudes are normal and what practices are just or unjust” (Rorty 1989, 189). Then, champion metaphors are those that promote social progress and hope, and over time, become literalized and are subsequently spread around and used by the rest of businesses, stakeholders and society in general. Champion metaphors can bring about social progress, but they are contingent, and that means that these descriptions could be replaced by new metaphorical re-descriptions in the future. To describe and explain the role of champion metaphors we will look at the IT services organization, Specialisterne and its dandelion plant metaphor as an illustrative example. Why only one case? Whilst Specialisterne may be considered an unusual company, it is suitable because of its revelatory qualities (Yin 2014): it clearly illuminates how the champion metaphors concept works. In the case, we have collected primary data (mainly interviews with members of the Spanish executive committee and several employees, called the specialists (See Table 35.1 for detailed interview information). We also have included secondary data (newspapers and magazines which include interviews) published in an annual press report named (Specialisterne 2019) and social media and social networks posts (Twitter and Facebook). We also cite excerpts from some of the talks and presentations by Thorkil Sonne, founder of the organization, and by Fransesc Sistach the organization’s CEO in Spain (Table 35.2). We have structured the case as follows; firstly, we will explain the Specialisterne business model and its origins. We will then outline the dandelion plant metaphor and, thirdly, we will point out its role in humanizing Specialisterne stakeholder relationships before we conclude on how the organization has brought about social progress and hope.

Table 35.1  Detailed Interviews People Fransesc Sistach Jose Segundo Susana Torrent Darko Diaz Cristina Paradero Amaia Guerrero Daniel Sanchez People Thorkil Sonne John Brabazon Jens Maibom Luisa Delgado Maria Mansilla

Position CEO of specialisterne Spain Head of Training Head of the Business Specialisterne Consultant Specialisterne Consultant Specialisterne Consultant Specialisterne Consultant

Position Founder of Specialisterne CEO Specialisterne Ireland Vice President Lego

Code in the chapter FS JS ST DD CP AG DS

Specialisterne (2019) Kennedy, John https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/ pete-­brabazon-­specialisterne Specialisterne (2019)

Executive Board SAP Specialisterne (2019) Manager Director EVERIS

Specialisterne (2019)

Table 35.2  Press articles included in the annual press report Specialisterne Spain (2015–2019) Year 2015 https://www.barcelona.cat/infobarcelona/ca/el-­valor-­afegit-­dels-­treballadors-­amb-­ autisme_148274.html Ledo, Max, El valor afegit dels treballadors amb autisme 18/02/2015 http://laterapiadelarte.com/numero-­11/articulos/specialisterne/ Agencia EFE: Una aplicación permitirá saber el estado de 18.000 playas del sur de Europa, en Antena 3, La Vanguardia, El Confidencial, El Mundo, 20 minutos, La Opinión, Hoy, La Verdad y otros. Specialisterne busca personas con autismo para trabajar en Madrid https://diarioresponsable.com/empresas/noticias/19792.html MARÍA LÓPEZ ESCORIAL Las cadenas híbridas de valor llegan a España para quedarse, 5 05 2015 https://elpais.com/elpais/2015/05/04/planeta_futuro/1430752062_634753.html El autismo encuentra en la tecnología una gran aliada https://www.computing.es/mercado-­ti/opinion/1080815046401/autismo-­encuentra-­ tecnologia-­gran-­aliada.1.html, 20/04/2015 Les persones amb TEA troben un aliat en la tecnologia 29 d'abril de 2015 https://www.social.cat/noticia/5183/ les-­persones-­amb-­tea-­troben-­un-­aliat-­en-­la-­tecnologia Specialisterne connect people with autism to companies SOPHIA EPSTEIN, 20/04/2015 https://www.wired.co.uk/article/disabled-­people-­work MICROSOFT TRABAJA EN UN PROGRAMA PARA CONTRATAR PERSONAS CON AUTISMO, 6 abril 2015 https://wwwhatsnew.com/2015/04/06/ microsoft-­trabaja-­en-­un-­programa-­para-­contratar-­personas-­con-­autismo/ (continued)

Table 35.2 (continued) SPECIALISTERNE Y LA INCLUSIÓN LABORAL DE LAS PERSONAS CON TEA 2 marzo, 2015 https://autismodiario.org/2015/03/02/ specialisterne-­y-­la-­inclusion-­laboral-­de-­las-­personas-­con-­tea/ Empresas buscan a personas autistas y con síndrome de Asperger para darles empleo, Amalia F. Lérida, 22/03/2015 https://sevilla.abc.es/sevilla/20150322/sevi-­autistas-­encuentran-­trabajo-­201503211908. html Emprendimiento social con retorno económico 15/03/2015 https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2015/03/14/empresas/1426289428_649684.html 2016 5 d'octubre de 2016 PAULO GOMES: «La societat desaprofita persones amb autisme» https://www.elperiodic.ad/entrevista/54007/ paulo-­gomes-­la-­societat-­desaprofita-­persones-­amb-­autisme Una 'start up' valora entrar a Andorra per millorar la inserció laboral dels joves autistes 30/06/2016 https://www.diariandorra.ad/noticies/nacional/2016/06/30/una_start_valora_entrar_ andorra_per_millorar_insercio_laboral_dels_joves_autistes_103974_1125.html José Andrés Rodríguez 10/04/2016 El reverso de la inteligencia http://www.magazinedigital.com/historias/reportajes/reverso-­inteligencia LA FUERZA DE UNA IDEA A LA QUE LE HA LLEGADO SU TIEMPO https://ethic.es/2016/03/la-­fuerza-­de-­una-­idea-­a-­la-­que-­le-­ha-­llegado-­su-­tiempo/ MAIRA CABRINI "Las personas con TEA aportan un valor añadido que se resume en el lema Pasión por los detalles” Indra Kishinchand, 18/03/2016 https://www.elreferente.es/innovadores/specialisterne-­entrevista-­fundadores-­29464 18/01/2016 Emprendedores españoles con los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/14/planeta_futuro/1452798563_713475.html La diversidad, 201/032015 http://www.directivoscede.com/misc/pdf/CuadernoDiversidad.pdf

Year 2017

Volíem demostrar que una organització pot ser sostenible amb persones autistes o amb Asperger” Rubén Escobar07/08/2017 http://xarxanet.org/internacional/noticies/ elena-­velasco-­voliem-­demostrar-­que-­una-­organitzacio-­pot-­ser-­sostenible-­amb 2 JUL. 2017, JORGE BENÍTEZ Futuro La 'revolución autista' de la informática https://www.elmundo.es/papel/futuro/2017/07/02/59552306e5fdea8c038b45c7.html “Necesitamos más empresas que muestren su compromiso de contratar personas con TEA.” http://diversidadrse.com.ar/2017/05/21/ necesitamos-­mas-­empresas-­que-­muestren-­su-­compromiso-­de-­contratar-­personas-­con-­ tea/ (continued)

Table 35.2 (continued) Year Juan Carlos Flores Autismo, en el lugar correcto https://www.cuatro.com/Noticias_Cuatro/Fin_de_Semana/Autismo-­asperger-­ Specialisterne-­discapacidad-­trastorno_2_2326305086.html Astrade presenta la experiencia de una multinacional que contrata a especialistas con Trastornos del Espectro Autista 8 febrero 2017 https://www.laverdad.es/murcia/201702/08/astrade-­presenta-­experiencia-­ multinacional-­20170208110421.html

Year 2018

Year 2019

Autismo y tecnología, un binomio posible, Junio, 2018 http://www.computerworld.es/pubs/cw1356/index.html?page=7 DE AUTISTAS A ESPECIALISTAS DETECTANDO ERRORES EN SISTEMAS INFORMÁTICOS, 08/07/2018 Natalia Lázaro Prevost https://brands.elconfidencial.com/sociedad/2018-­07-­04/ autista-­tea-­trabajo-­desempleo-­detectar-­errores-­bra_1584189/ Laura Daniele, 2018 02/07/2018 Las empresas buscan en la filantropía su mejor negocio https://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-­empresas-­buscan-­filantropia-­mejor-­ negocio-­201807020226_noticia.html Unos ‘coaches’ ayudan a que personas con autismo superen los escollos que se encuentran al buscar trabajo: “Pueden desempeñar tareas mucho mejor que tú https://www.lasexta.com/noticias/sociedad/unos-­coaches-­ayudan-­a-­que-­personas-­con-­ autismo-­superen-­los-­escollos-­que-­se-­encuentran-­al-­buscar-­trabajo-­pueden-­desempenar-­ tareas-­mucho-­mejor-­que-­tu_201808195b79a4560cf28f24b164ebab.html L’Informatiu, RTVE, 02/04/201 http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/linformatiu/linformatiu-­02-­04-­2018/4550922/

La transformación digital, una oportunidad para las personas con autismo YOSUNE VILLANUEVA, 9 octubre, 2019 https://navarracapital.es/ la-­transformacion-­digital-­una-­oportunidad-­para-­las-­personas-­con-­autismo/ Specialisterne - Las personas con autismo son excelentes con la tecnología https://efectocolibri.com/ specialisterne-­las-­personas-­con-­autismo-­son-­excelentes-­con-­la-­tecnologia/ Este hombre fundó una empresa para crear 1 millón de empleos para personas con autismo https://nation.com.mx/accion-­social/ este-­hombre-­fundo-­una-­empresa-­crear-­1-­millon-­empleos-­personas-­autismo/ Madrid Trabaja28.06.2019 Redacción http://www.telemadrid.es/programas/madrid-­trabaja/Madrid-­Trabaja-­9-­ 2135276478%2D%2D20190628042126.html

SPECIALISTERNE SPAIN 2019. http://es.specialisterne.com/ca/specialisterne-­en-­els-­mitjans/ accessed 8 January2020

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Specialisterne The organization provides assessment, training and IT consultancy services, such as software testing, programming, data conversion, filing, data logistics and data acquisition to clients. What makes this company unique is that it is one of the first companies in the world to hire, recruit and train people within the Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ADS), who are its consultants, providing stable and sustainable jobs in the fast growing IT industry. Therefore, 100% of the organization’s consultants are people with autism.

Its Business Model The organization’s earnings come from selling computer services to big companies in the banking and financial industry (BBVA, Banco Itaú, Banc de Sabadell), the IT and consulting industry such as Deloitte & Co,, SAP, PriceWaterhouse, EVERIS, and companies such as IBM and Agbar, among others. Its business value proposal is based on the high performance of its IT consultants (for example higher bug and error detection rates in software testing than average consultants); with low consultant turnover (lower than the industry average rate). The organization is economically sustainable because the IT sector is growing, so “Especially in the IT world, a sector that generates jobs and is growing, without accumulating unemployment rates.” (ST, 2019). How does Specialisterne work? First, it selects people with autism who are suitable for the job vacancies (the company has developed their selection process with its own tests with LEGO, with Lego robot kits). Once potential consultants have been selected, they received a 3 to 5-month training course (in order to improve the candidate’s social and technical skills) in the organization’s office. Once they have been trained, Specialisterne hires them as consultants and sells their data treatment, software testing or big data services to other companies whilst at the same time providing support to the employees, given by coaches in the workplace. The business model is economically sustainable and they re-invest all their profits in research and international expansion. In 2019, Specialisterne was located in 21 countries, through subsidiaries or franchises. One of the most successful expansions was in Spain, where the organization began in 2013. In 2019, the Spanish organization had offices in Madrid and Barcelona, and has also expanded to Italy with the first office in Milano, and now is moving to Latin America with the Brazil office and has started out projects in Argentina and Costa Rica. In Spain, the organization has about 25 full time employees, and since 2013 has trained more than 300 potential consultants. See Table 35.3 for an outline of the Spanish organization mission, vision and values.

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Table 35.3  SPECIALISTERNE SPAIN: Mission, Vision and Values Vision A world where people have the same opportunities in the labor market Mission Our mission is to help create jobs for people with Autism Spectrum Disorders and similar diagnoses based on: Disseminate the message of Specialisterne Provide training and employment Disseminate our knowledge and share our best practices Values Respect: We strive to create a work environment that encompasses diversity and respects the requirements of individuals, their needs and their skills. Adaptation: We listen, learn and support each other. Accessibility: We share knowledge and experiences and openly collaborate with our external partners. Transparency: We keep our promises and work with clear goals. Sustainability and scalability. We strive to replicate the Specialisterne model and multiply its social impact in an economically sustainable way. SPECIALISTERNE SPAIN, 2019. http://es.specialisterne.com/vision-­mision-­y-­valores/ accessed 20 Sept 2019

Specialisterne’s Origins The organization was founded in 2004 in Denmark by Thorkil Sonne, an IT engineer. Thorkil, after a trip to Europe, discovered that his son with autism was able to exactly reproduce the Europe road maps index with over 500 numbers, without any mistakes. Thorkil made a twist in how he regarded his son and, instead of focusing on his son’s social and communication problems, discovered in him special capabilities and skills such as a strong memory, the capacity to concentrate on details and a willingness to submit to exacting standards. Thorkil Sonne figured out that these special capabilities were highly valuable in the IT sector, especially in software testing. Therefore, instead of focusing on what his son could not do, he began to focused on what his son was able to do. This twist in outlook is reflected precisely by the dandelion plant metaphor, which aims to promote a shift in society’s perceptions concerning people with autism. Moreover, at that time, in 2004, there were no companies specialized in software testing, because this was usually a part of larger software development projects. Only a few small consulting firms offered expertise in testing programs and Sonne’s analysis of the industry revealed a huge market opportunity, which provided Specialisterne with a first mover advantage, making his business model economically sustainable.

From People with Autism to Specialisterne’ Consultants All its consultants (employees) have an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis (ADS) or similar challenges such as Asperger’s Syndrome or Tourette’s Syndrome.

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According to Wing and Gould (1979), Autism is a complex disorder, a spectrum of neuro-environmental conditions often referred to as a “Triad of impairments”, which represents difficulty in three main areas: (a) Social interaction. Difficulty with social relationships; for example, appearing aloof and indifferent to the other people (b) Social communication. Difficulty with verbal and non verbal communication; for instance, not fully understanding the meaning of common gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice or sarcasm. (c) Social Imagination. Difficulty in the development of interpersonal play and imagination; for instance repetitive behavior patterns and resistance to change in routines, and a limited range of imaginative activities. However, the degree and intensity of such impairments varies greatly from person to person. We have thus, an spectrum ranging from mild autism (the person is able to communicate and with a little support can live an “autonomous life”) to severe forms of autism (in which people are not able to communicate at all). Even so, these three impairments have an impact on the way that people with autism relate to others in society, which sometimes condemns them to social isolation (no friends or relationships) beyond the family circle. Nevertheless, in spite of these difficulties, 75% of people with mild autism are likely to have an IQ in the average to high range and some of them will have high intellectual capabilities. The frequency of autism in the general population is often cited at 1%, although some estimate it to be much higher and it has been growing recently. For instance, in the USA, the latest prevalence report the CDC indicated that 1 in 56 people have autism. Socially excluded group: In addition to social isolation, people with autism spectrum disorder have serious difficulties in finding a job. The unemployment rate among autistic people is 85%, much higher than the rate for people with other disabilities such as physical disabilities, which is 56% in Spain. “Society, out of ignorance or discrimination, prefers people with physical disabilities because mental ones make them feel insecure.” says Cristina Paredero, a 26-year-old a Specialisterne consultant, actively seeking employment despite having a University degree and a good level of English. If we compare this rate with the unemployment rate of non-­ disabled people, in Spain it is 20% and 5% in the USA. If we consider that having a job is one of the highest forms of social integration, then people with autism are socially excluded from society. The statistics are alarming in 2019: only 12% of adults with autism have jobs but only 6% of adults with autism have full time jobs. Brabazon CEO of Specialisterne Ireland assessed “the benefits are, for the autistic person, you can employ one and you will transform their lives because it is a way of their participating in society. It is that simple.” (JB, 2019).

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Barriers to Social Integration People with autism were socially excluded because there were a series of barriers that prevented them from integrating in society, which are the following: 1. A lack of adequate education and training. People with autism usually don’t get into College or University. They also have higher high school dropout rates. A recent study showed that one in two Americans with an autism diagnosis does not attend college and they have a higher high school dropout rate. 2. A lack of training for the job market (they do not know how to write a CV nor are they able to pass an interview). Furthermore, they don’t have access to the job listings or contacts and relationships in companies. 3. There is also a lack of support in the workplace. For those who do have jobs they do not receive support, so they are very likely to be fired in the long term. From the business and management side, we also come across several barriers. Managers and recruiters have significant social taboos, fears and prejudices surrounding autism. The Specialisterne consultant Darko Diaz explained” There are many myths around autism. We are confused with dangerous or problematic people, but nothing is further from reality, we are easy to deal with, “He was 26-year-old from Madrid with Asperger Syndrome and a degree in History from the University of Alcalá de Henares. In addition, there are few precedents of companies hiring people with autism, so few existing companies show successful ADS people integration.

The Dandelion Metaphor As it is stated in their mission, Specialisterne seeks to provide job opportunities to people with ADS, breaking down the social taboos, fears and prejudices that companies and society in general have against them. Moreover, it claims that people with ADS can stand out in the labor market thanks to their natural abilities and skills that make them very suitable for some tasks in the IT sector, among others. The organization uses several metaphors to relate to its stakeholders and to explain its mission. For example, the dandelion metaphor: the dandelion plant is people with ADS and it is formulated as follows: “Weed or herb? You decide. The value of what you see depends on who you are.” The dandelion plant is a metaphor that explains Specialisterne’s relationship with its employees to all stakeholders in the following terms, in the words of its founder Thorkil Sonne: “By most people the dandelion is seen as nothing more than an annoying weed – something to be rooted out of our lawns and flower beds. However, what many people do not know is that, when cultivated, the dandelion is one of the most valuable and useful plants in nature, known for its healing and medical properties. The value of the dandelion is very much dependent on the knowledge of the individual.

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Most of us do not want it in our gardens – it does not fit in. But if you place the dandelion seed in your kitchen garden and cultivate it, it can turn out to be one of your most valuable plants, used in beer and wine making, salads and as a natural medicine” (TS, 2018). Thorkil Sonne refers to society’s perception of the dandelion plant as a weed (with no value) and likens it to society’s perception of people with ADS (with a lot of problems and impairments) “We see a clear parallel between on the one hand, the perception of the dandelion in nature and on the other hand, society’s perception of people with autism – or “specialist people” – in the workforce” (TS, 2019). In contrast, Specialisterne perceives the dandelion plant and people with ADS in the opposite way. Referring to the dandelion plant, Thorkil Sonne states: “We see it as a medicinal plant with a lot of good properties and useful for curing certain illnesses. The translation of the metaphor for Specialisterne is that people with ADS, our dandelion plant, have special capabilities and skills such as a true passion for details, a great capacity for concentration, tenacity to do systematic and repetitive tasks, and the ability to discern patterns where other people only see chaos”. (TS, 2018). He also highlights the value of employees with autism as true specialists: “We focus on the traits that make them valuable employees, such as attention to detail, zero tolerance of errors and a persistence to get the job done. We do not see them as people with problems of communication or learning. Rather, we see them as true specialists, valuable employees, very perfectionists, which is why we refer to them as Specialisterne in Danish, “specialist people” (TS, 2019). However, society in general does not see them as valuable because people with autism are perceived as different because they communicate and interact differently. So, they are considered to be of no value, like a weed. The founder of the organization stated: “Society in general sees it as a weed, because it breaks the harmony in the middle of a garden. Then we forget all the healing properties that it has, even though they are still present.” (TS, 2019). Furthermore, the dandelion metaphor not only explains these two main positions (weed or herb) but also pushes society towards a behavioral change. Fransesc Sistach, CEO in Spain, explained: “You decide. The value of what you see depends on what you are.” The metaphor prompts us to focus on the listeners (society) and their responsibility towards people with ADS because “The problem does not reside in the plant but in the vision and conception we have of it” (FS, 2019). In fact, the power of the metaphor resides in provoking a shift in outlook and a behavioral change in the listeners. He has also argued “The dandelion metaphor also helps us to place the responsibility on the listeners of our talks (our audience). We put the question to them and we are making them responsible for the attitude and behavior that they have towards people with ADS. The dandelion metaphor is clear: it is people who decide what they see, a medicinal plant or a weed” (FS, 2019). Therefore, the dandelion metaphor ultimately aims to promote a positive behavioral change towards people with autism on the part of the people who attend the organization’s talks and workshops.

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The organization validates the dandelion metaphor by arguing that people with autism are like anybody else in society. In this sense, Fransesc Sistach points out that all of us have one disability or another, understood as things that we are not able to do, like people with autism: “In fact, all of us have disabilities to some extent. People with autism are not different from us. We have to remind ourselves that we all have disabilities. For instance, I cannot play the piano and I cannot speak Chinese. Will I write this down in my CV? NO. What do we put in our curriculum vitae? Things we know how to do or things we do not know how to do. We don’t write down things that we cannot do. We all have, to a greater or lesser degree, disabilities of one type or another. But it is these differences between each one of us, that make us what and how we are.” (FS, 2019). The dandelion metaphor also has some important benefits for Specialisterne. Firstly, it is its brand image because the organization has featured the dandelion plant on its logo. “It is so important that the dandelion plant is in our logo. The blue square around the dandelion represents the open sky of opportunities, with a rounded corner to illustrate this, even though we are in a tough market, we tailor the environment to fit the individual” (TS, 2019). Secondly, the dandelion plant makes it easily identifiable by its clients and potential clients and differentiates the company from its competitors. Susana Torrent, head of the business unit in Spain, has said “Now we are facing competition from the companies Passwerk and Auticon. The term Specialisterne is Danish and is difficult to remember so we could miss out on potential clients but thanks to the logo they easily recognize what we do with who we are” (ST, 2019).

Spreading of the Dandelion Metaphor The organization usually explains the dandelion metaphor in all their presentations, events and workshops that give them the opportunity to talk to all their stakeholders: suppliers (LEGO), clients (SAP, EVERIS), government and NGO’s and associations in Spain, as well as local communities (universities, city halls) and the business community (business schools, universities and professional associations). Fransesc Sistach stressed the importance of attending as many events as possible so as to spread the company’s message and the dandelion metaphor, “I try to go to all the events, workshops and conferences as many as I can, because it is part of our mission. For me this is not an additional activity nor a Public Relations activity nor is it because I enjoy talking in public. It is my duty as CEO. Actually, it is OUR duty, because all our executive board are trained to explain the mission, business model and its benefits. So, I have to report where (the place), the reason (why), the time (duration), and the number of people reached as well as the impact in the social media (number of news articles or twits) of my talks and presentations to the marketing director.” (FS, 2019). The impact of the dandelion metaphor is ranked by the audience and the attendees of the meetings. As Fransesc Sistach has explained: “I use the metaphor in all

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my presentations and I also use the dandelion picture in PowerPoint presentations; The dandelion plant is also our logo. After giving a talk we find out which aspects people liked the most: usually the testimonies of people with ADS (shown on videos) are first in the ranking but after that, the dandelion metaphor is what people remembered the most” (FS, 2019). Therefore, it has accomplished its goal. It is a living metaphor; it is used in all presentations and workshops dealing with stakeholders, and stakeholders remember and use it as well. Thanks to all its presentations it has reached over 22,000 people. It has been presented at 180 events, conferences and workshops and has had over 90 appearances in the media. The type of events, workshops and conferences have been diverse, and they have been organized by different types of stakeholders: from autism associations (NGO’s) to professional associations but also business schools and universities (educational institutions) as well as government agencies. Furthermore, Specialisterne Spain uses the dandelion picture in the following communication channels with their stakeholders and society in general: 1. On its website, in a central position featuring the image and the logo plus as reminder of its meaning 2. In the social networks: On twitter (with around 55,000 followers around de world and 2500 followers in Spain) and Facebook (with 7500 followers in Spain) enable two-way business-stakeholder communication, posts and replies (Fig. 35.1). On Twitter, the dandelion is the logo of each twit, so it is displayed on each twit. So it is displayed (at least twice on each twit) by its stakeholders (Fig. 35.2).

Fig. 35.1  Dandelion Plant Image. (SPECIALISTERNE SPAIN 2019. http://es.specialisterne. com/ca/specialisterne-­en-­els-­mitjans/. accessed, 8 January 2020)

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Fig. 35.2  Twitter. (https://twitter.com/SpecialistsES?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Es erp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor. Accessed Jannuary, 20th 2020)

On Facebook, the dandelion photo appears on the frontpage (Facebook). So, all stakeholders see the dandelion photo when they post something on Facebook, and or visit the Facebook page and also when they receive a post as followers (Fig. 35.3). Specialisterne has measured the impact of the social media posts and knows that when an employee posts a news item or event on Twitter or Facebook there is a 561% increase in twits/likes compared to when the news is posted by the organization itself. In addition, the dandelion logo appears on official communications with all stakeholders (the logo on letters) and on all managers’ business cards, as a reminder of their role.

Humanizing Business and Stakeholder Relationships Specialisterne is inspiring and improving new ways of human living for its consultants (employees): now most of them live independently from their families with autonomy and self-respect. Its employees work on the client’s offices and are

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Fig. 35.3  FACEBOOK SPECIALISTERNE SPAIN. (Source: https://es-­la.facebook.com/specialisternespain/. Accessed 20th January 2020)

considered “one of us” within their teams. Clearly, the organization is fostering a way of human living for its consultants (people with ADS) that they never had before. The organization is also changing the perceptions of its stakeholders: its clients, suppliers, governments, autism NGO’s and associations. Furthermore, this has a spillover effect with its stakeholders. What is this spillover effect? Stakeholders have expanded the “we”. They also are widening the “we” to include people with autism or other socially excluded group in their respective business models. In this way, it is humanizing its stakeholder relationships: its clients’ managers have improved diversity in their companies and have become better managers. Its suppliers have opened new lines of products that help children with autism and children with other disabilities. Governments have increased the funds invested in helping people with ADS and other socially excluded groups. Autism NGO’s and associations have improved their professionalization and the sustainable management of their resources and are now able to reach and treat more people with ADS.  The media have published more news about autistic conditions and other companies that work with them. See Fig. 35.4 graphically the spill over effect with its stakeholder relationships.

Inspiring and Humanizing Consultants The greatest impact has been on the consultants’ lives and those of their families. Jose Segundo head of human resources in Spain stated: “In most cases it is the first job they have had and, for others, the first time they found a place where they fit in. This means offering an opportunity to people they have never been given before. This also has an impact on their families; many parents think they will die without seeing their children in employment.” (JS, 2019). Amaia Guerrero, a full time consultant, who monitors computer systems was hired in April 2018. She is 30 years old and is from Vitoria (north of Spain) and she

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Funds to other NGO’s

More news about disability

More attention published

Diversity Programs

Media Press

Resources Money

Intellectual disability People

Customers

Government

Efficiency

Mental disability People

More news about autism

Business Resources People

Consultants

NGO’s Associations

Start ups that help autistic people Resources Asperger Foundation

Suppliers

More people Diagnosed New Projects and products

Products Children Disability

Fig. 35.4  Spillover effect with its stakeholders. (Source: Own elaboration. 2020)

holds a degree in computer science. When she was trained at Specialisterne’s office, she started a new life in Sant Cugat (a town close to Barcelona). She now leads an independent life (her own home, a salary, her own decisions) for the first time. “It has gone better than I expected,” she admits satisfied. «I am now living alone, and I am developing myself much better than I thought I was capable of. I have gained respect from my colleagues and my boss has given me responsibility. I am much happier, and I can do a lot of things by myself» (AG, 2016). From a medical standpoint, consultants improve all their physiological, personal and social spheres, especially those related to their autism complex disorder: communication and social abilities. Jose Segundo has declared “Employment inclusion is an excellent therapy for adults diagnosed with autism, and from our experience, we have observed great improvements in aspects such as independent life, increased self-esteem and improvement of symptoms in associated disorders such as depression” (JS, 2019). Among them are the social acceptance and self-respect needed to built self-confidence because, as the human resources director pointed out “Some of them have a career, almost a doctorate and had never found a job. Now they are software testing wiz kids and are well recognized within their company” (JS, 2019). In the words of Daniel Sanchez, a consultant “I have finally found a place where I fit in, where I am putting into practice what I am capable of”. Before Specialisterne I had never worked, or worked and did not have a good time because just didn’t fit in … and I am now happy to say “I have a place where I fit in, and here I can learn and improve “ (DS, 2019). The consultants have not only improved their wellbeing and quality of life but are also helping other people with autism or with other types of disabilities. A young spanish consultant stated the following: “Personally, in addition to working with data and documentation… in fact, that’s why I’m training and doing internships at

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Specialisterne… I just launched my own personal project, Boxed Dreams, an e-commerce start-up for solidarity purposes: I allocate part of the profits to Asperger foundations throughout Spain and to organizations that help others in one way or another”. (DS, 2019).

Inspiring and Humanizing Clients The numbers of Specialisterne clients in Spain has increased over the last 5 years. Susana Torrent commented “the number of jobs has increased at a very high rate. In the first 5 years we have created, directly or indirectly, over 150 jobs in Spain. We have set up offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Sao Paulo. We are speeding up operations. Moreover, in two years time, we expect to double our size in Spain and open another office in Latin America. We have projects in Argentina, Costa Rica, and probably very soon in Colombia and Mexico.” (ST, 2019). Firstly, the perceptions of clients towards Specialisterne consultants have changed since the consultants first started working with them: “At the beginning, I thought that maybe there would be some challenges, but you get loyal, honest, humorous people who are hardworking.” Maria Mansilla, manager of EVERIS Barcelona, explained: “When they get into a work place, they do not get tired of doing repetitive tasks and their level of attention does not drop. The quality is always very high and motivation is very good. “(MM 2016). Secondly, the negotiation process in Spain has been simplified: “Three or four years ago, potential clients hired two or three consultants on specific small projects, and, once we successfully passed the test, clients then hired a steady program with us. Now, thanks to word of mouth and our media exposure, some of them start a steady program with us right away.” (ST, 2019). The majority of its clients have also explained that hiring its consultants has helped them to become better managers and has increased diversity in their own company. Why? More than one client manager has observed that IT employees and especially software developers often have special personality traits and unusual work habits that are difficult to manage. Working with Specialisterne consultants involved careful thinking about how to create the conditions in which not only consultants but also all employees could work most effectively. Managers started to think about how they could create the best context and environment in which all their workers can provide the best ideas, novel solutions to important problems, placing employees in a cohesive team for maximum performance. Therefore, thanks to Specialisterne, client managers are now also better managers. Furthermore, its consultants have brought to the client’ company new ways of doing things, new ideas and new approaches to solving problems and innovation that have been highly valuable, introducing a diversity policy in their companies. Luisa Delgado, member of the Executive Board of SAP, remarks “By focusing on the skills that each talent brings we can redefine the way we manage diverse talent. With Specialisterne we share the belief that innovation comes from the ‘extremes’.

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Only by employing people who think differently and bring innovation will we prepare SAP to face the challenges of the 21st century.” (LD, 2019). SAP started with the Program “Autism at work” has now extended the diversity program to include all kinds of intellectual and developmental disabilities (such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia and obsessive compulsive disorder), talking about neurodiversity at work.

Inspiring and Humanizing Suppliers One of the most important suppliers is LEGO. Specialisterne has inspired LEGO to develop a new line of products/games for children with disabilities and special needs such as children with autism. Previously, very few games were offered to them, now LEGO has a complete line of products for them, targeted to improve their social and communication skills whilst incorporating therapy objectives. Jens Maibom, Vice president of LEGO Education, declared “The way Specialisterne uses LEGO to evaluate and assess what qualities candidates have before starting their professional life is unique. What is so exciting for LEGO is that the basic values of LEGO can now find a new application since Thorkil’s Specialisterne work.” (JM 2019).

Inspiring and Humanizing Governments Generally, governments provide disability benefits to people with ADS (in Spain they receive an official disability certificate plus a series of pensions and benefits). But, since Specialisterne has been providing jobs to people with ADS, the government has been saving money on disability benefits. Because governments are ruled by budgets, this money is now available to be spent on helping and reaching more people with autism and other socially excluded groups. Moreover, the government benefits a great deal from the organization not only because they have people coming off benefits but also because these people are now taxpayers, who pay taxes on their income and salary like everyone else. Furthermore, several studies around the world have found that the value to the government/state from an unemployed person (person with ADS) entering the workforce is approximately € 1 m. Different studies in Denmark and Australia have shown that every €1 invested in Specialisterne delivers a return on investment of €6 in savings in public spending, according to a cost–benefit analysis conducted by The Specialisterne Foundation.

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Inspiring and Humanizing NGO’s and Associations The organization has worked with an increasing number of autism NGO’s and associations from all over Spain to recruit potential consultants and to help them to change society’s perceptions towards people with ADS. All regions were covered: Burgos, Avila, Tenerife, Barcelona, Madrid, La Coruña, in all the corners of Spain. Because, as Fransesc Sistach has argued, the most important challenge “is not so much to find more clients but to locate these people. Many of them do not have a clear diagnosis, are not linked to associations, universities and usually have few social relationships”. (FS, 2019). The organization has also had an impact on these associations and NGO’s, inspiring and motivating them to become economically sustainable. They have imitated some of Spacialisterne’s managerial aspects, enabling them to become more professional, to improve control and techniques (marketing, finance, HR techniques) thus allowing them to help more people with autism.

Inspiring and Humanizing Press and Social Media Specialisterne has received increasing media attention and coverage (especially in Spain from 2015 to 2018) which has helped to spread not only its business model but also to draw general attention to the challenges of people with autism and to the businesses that help provide jobs to people with autism. Since the organization started in Spain, media attention has increased: from local newspapers to national newspapers (ABC. Las empresas buscan en la filantropía su mejor negocio) and from local TV programs to nationwide programs such as LaSexta Noticias and RTVE. Specialisterne has also received increasing attention from the specialized IT and computer press and magazines such as Computer World, IDG Communications and El Confidencial (See Table 35.2 for a detailed description). It has also received an increasing number of visits/views of its website videos after each talk. Thanks to greater media attention, some foundations and associations that work with people with autism, such as The ONCE foundation programs and Fundacion Diversidad, have appeared in the press. United Nations, declared World Autism Awareness Day (United Nations) on April 2nd in 2007. Susana Torrent explained how this day has helped all types of associations and foundations to work together for a common cause. “Now there is greater international media coverage of autism because the United Nations has declared April 2nd as World Autism Awareness Day. On this day we all hold autism-friendly events and we also hold educational activities throughout the month to increase awareness, acceptance, and foster worldwide support.” (ST, 2019). However, it should also be acknowledged that World Autism Awareness Day (United Nations) was declared through the efforts

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and lobbying of all the foundations, companies, associations and NGO’s that work with people with autism.

Concluding Remarks Can business promote social progress and social hope? Yes, in this chapter we have explained the role of the dandelion metaphor in doing so. The dandelion metaphor has helped to promote a change in stakeholders’ perceptions whilst providing jobs to people with autism, who were previously socially, and labor excluded. Furthermore, Specialisterne has inspired new ways of human living not only for its employees but also for all their stakeholders because they have themselves in turn integrated people with autism or any other socially excluded group into society. For instance, its clients such as SAP or IBM have hired consultants with autism by themselves and increased diversity in their companies, improving and valuing the innovation that comes from this type of employees with steady programs and policies that integrate different socially excluded groups. The clients also have recognized themselves that they have become better managers, improving the culture and the relationships with all types of employees. Its suppliers such as Lego have launched new product lines for groups that were socially excluded, such as children with autism and other disabilities, which improve their social and communication skills through playing therapy. Governments have increased funding for integrating other socially excluded groups. Autism NGO’s and associations have been able to help more autistic people thanks to greater professionalization and more economically sustainable programs. Finally, the media and the press have not only spread more news about autism (Autism Day) but have also given greater news coverage to more NGO’s and associations that work with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In order to be able to do all this, Specialisterne relied on the dandelion metaphor to explain and spread its outlook on people with autism, which is based on Thorkil Sonne’s twist in outlook towards people with Autism. The dandelion plant metaphor has offered two things: 1. it has opened up the space for new ways of thinking, thanks to the moral imagination breaking down prejudices, fears of the unknown and the reservations of those who are more reticent or more contrary towards people with ADS.  The metaphorical activity was what allowed us to make this shift and to view autistic people like any other employee or consultant in the IT industry. 2. It has put the question to them; placing the responsibility on the listeners (audience) and on stakeholders to make this twist and change their attitude towards them. A part of the metaphor “You decide whether it is an herb or a weed” and “it depends on you” turns to the audience and makes them responsible for the attitude they adopt towards people with ADS. This has allowed us to widen the “we” and treat them like “one of us” because all of us have disabilities; we all

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have some tasks or activities that we are not able to do. Therefore, ultimately, the dandelion metaphor has promoted a positive behavioral change towards people with ADS. Every business should identify what kind of metaphors they promote among their stakeholders and which metaphors they could promote to take care of and integrate socially excluded groups into society. Of course, this requires a change in their business models and a change in their stakeholder relationships, which will be inspired and become humanized. Then, businesses will promote social progress and social hope.

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Morgan, Gareth. 1980. Paradigms, metaphors and puzzle solving in organizational theory. Administrative Science Quarterly 25: 605–622. ———. 1983. More on metaphor: Why we cannot control tropes in administrative science. Administrative Science Quarterly 28: 601–607. ———. 2006. Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Palmer, Ian, and Richard Dunford. 1996. Conflicting uses of metaphors: Reconceptualizing their use in the field of organizational change. The Academy of Management Review 21: 691–717. Peters, Tom. 1992. Liberation Management; Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties. New York: Knopf press. Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Philosophy and Social Hope. Penguin Press. ———. 2006. Is Philosophy relevant to Applied Ethics? Business Ethics Quarterly 16: 369–380. Siano, Alfonso, Agostino Vollero, Della Volpe, Confetto Maddalena, Maria Giovanna, and Pantea Foroudi. 2018. The role of physical metaphors for decision-making in integrated corporate communication. The Bottom Line 31: 42–55. Skorczynska, and Deignan. 2006. Readership and purpose in the choice of economics metaphors. Metaphor and Symbol 21: 32–55. Specialisterne. (2019). http://es.specialisterne.com/. Accessed 20 Sept 2019. Tsoukas, Haridimos. 1991. The missing link: A transformational view of metaphors in organizational science. Academy of Management. The Academy of Management Review 16: 566–585. ———. 1993. Analogical reasoning and knowledge generation in organization theory. Organization Studies 14: 323–346. Weick, Karl. 1989. Theory construction as disciplined imagination. Academy of Management Review 14: 516–531. Werhane, Patricia. 1999. Moral Imagination and Management Decision Making. The Ruffin Series of Business Ethics. Oxford University Press. Wicks, Andrew C., Jr Gilbert, R. Daniel, and R. Edward Freeman. 1994. A feminist reinterpretation of the stakeholder concept. Business Ethics Quarterly 4: 475–497. Wing, Lorna, and Judith Gould. 1979. Severe impairments of social interaction and associated abnormalities in children Epidemiology and Classification. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizoprenia 9: 11–29. Wood, Donna, and Jeanne M.  Logsdon. 2008. Business citizenship as metaphor and reality. Business Ethics Quarterly 18: 51–59. Yin, Robert. 2014. Case Study Research Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Elisabet Garriga is Associate Professor at EADA Business School (Barcelona, Spain) at the Strategy, Leadership and People Department and Director of the Corporate Sustainability Impact. Phd at IESE Business School. She publishes on Corporate Social Responsibility, Stakeholder Theory, Social Business, and Networks. She acted as project leader in several projects for United Nations for Development Program, United Nations Global Compact, Yunus Social Business Center Barcelona and European Union, among others. She has developed TVIM, the software that measures social performance for Social Business, NGO’s and CSR programs.  

Chapter 36

Stakeholders Are Human: The Micro-­ foundations of Stakeholder Theory and an Application to the Value Distribution Problem Jeffrey S. Harrison, Andrew C. Wicks, and Maximilian Palmié

Introduction Business executives manage people and groups of people. Although some of them may specialize in managing money, physical products or tangible productive assets and distribution channels, even in those cases the assets they are managing are connected to humans, and the utility humans receive through their interactions and affiliations with a firm is directly related to the way those assets are managed. To some extent many economists have tried to minimize the influence of human predispositions, experience, expectations, reactions and biases by assuming rationality or holding human characteristics constant. Stakeholder theory approaches the management problem from the opposite direction. It puts managers in the middle of a network of stakeholders with all of these characteristics, and makes relationships between firms and stakeholders the most relevant unit of analysis (Freeman 2011; Freeman et al. 2007). According to the most popular versions of stakeholder theory, the primary objective of these relationships is to promote co-creation of value – economic value, yes, but also more subtle relational outcomes that are valued by humans, such as happiness, security, pride through affiliation, freedom, and fulfillment (Freeman et al. 2010; Harrison and Wicks 2013; Jones and Felps 2013). Our approach to this work is to highlight the humanities and the power of thinking about stakeholders as humans, particularly as a source for generating distinctive J. S. Harrison (*) Robins School of Business, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. C. Wicks Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. Palmié Institute of Technology Management, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_36

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theory that may be more relevant and useful. We do not presume that theories and ideas from other disciplines, particularly economics (which today is not so much a part of the humanities), are irrelevant or lack value. Indeed, there is much in economics and statistics that is incredibly relevant for thinking about people in the context of business. However, many of the core assumptions that currently drive these other theoretical contexts, and/or enable them to generate the insights they create, are either highly problematic or antithetical to the wisdom of the humanities. The critical point is about the way in which such insights are used, the underlying assumptions made (especially about people and business) and the ways in which such assumptions can frame and impact what people actually do. We want to devote a bit of time and space to highlighting some of the points that are most important for us and exploring how they might be critical for stakeholder theory – not just individual theoretical insights, but as a larger genre or way of thinking about business. In the wake of the Business Roundtable (2019) statement that the purpose of business is to serve the interests of customers, suppliers, employees, communities, and financiers, this becomes especially relevant. In many respects, what the 183 CEOs who signed the statement agreed to was nothing short of revolutionary. They explicitly rejected the idea that the purpose of business is to maximize profits and they affirmed the notion that business is about creating value for stakeholders. Many critics rightly noted that this sounded and felt like a public-relations move that was more window-dressing and cynical marketing rather than a substantive change in business. We don’t want to take a stand on what the statement really meant or to map out all the implications the signers saw resulting from this shift. Instead, we want to emphasize that it was an important signal, part of a sea change in business towards a management approach that emphasizes a broad group of stakeholders and the things they value as opposed to an infatuation with bottom line profitability. This signal can be leveraged to create not just different ways of talking about business, but new ways of acting within business, including new opportunities and capabilities that people can utilize to make each other better off.

The Humanities and Business Business is a human creation. It is done by humans, with other humans, for the benefit of people and communities. Stakeholder theory and the humanities bring the center of gravity and the starting point for such conversations back to people and away from “things”, especially the kinds of non−/in-human forces that economists tend to deify or make the center of the conversation: “the Market”, profits, supply and demand curves, and the like. Traditional ways of talking about business tend to remove the human face of business and flip the role of agency – rather than being the source and driving forces of business, people become cogs in the machine of markets and organizations that dictate what they should do and who they should become. This is the vision of Steinbeck in the Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck 1992), of Weber and his metaphor of the Iron Cage (1930), of Marx and alienated labor

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(1964) – as well as scores of other critics who see business as the antithesis of what it means to be human. Shifting the narrative to be about people allows us to generate ways of thinking, talking and acting that reclaim business as a human activity and – as we will argue in the rest of this chapter – that show up in a variety of other places that matter both in what businesses do and how people live in business. The humanities provide important perspectives on what it means to be human and how that matters, even when people operate in the distinctive realm of business – a place where many people see humans as different than who they are in other spheres of life. Much of the language of business and markets is around competition and how competitive people are, including how markets harness that impulse to create systemic benefits for all. While there is plenty of evidence to highlight the competitive tendencies of humans, we are also learning that humans are far more cooperative than we thought. Much of Michael Tomasello’s work highlights ways in which people appear to be “wired” for connection to, and cooperation with, other humans – and that these capabilities may have played a critical role in our evolutionary path (i.e. how and why we survived and thrived while many of our pre-human ancestors did not) (Tomasello 2009, 2010; Tomasello et  al. 2005). The ability to generate “shared intentionality”  – to find ways to collaborate in which everyone involved benefits, and the terms under which we share risks and rewards – these are all skills that we needed to hunt, to farm, to build cities as well as to create modern business organizations. While competition helps promote market forces, this work highlights that what may have done most of the important work was collaboration – and our distinctive disposition and capabilities to collaborate even when doing so became difficult. Such insights about humans are not just abstract and idle notions – they shed light on critical capabilities that can be nurtured and harnessed (or neglected and glossed over). This shows up in a number of places in how we write and talk about modern business organizations. For instance, our colleagues in economics and finance talk about “agency problems” (Jensen and Meckling 1976) and “transaction costs” (Williamson 1981), noting the ways in which individual self-interest and our competitive nature tend to make it hard to cooperate with others. The result is an elaborate set of assumptions and contracts to overcome our selfishness to allow firms to operate efficiently – including how to take steps to address agency costs and reduce transaction costs. What such work misses is the fact that humans are very capable of cooperation and following through on their agreements, and that starting from a different set of assumptions about people opens up solutions that are simpler, less costly and more “human” (i.e. the kind of arrangements that people would choose to be part of). If we can create terms of relative trust with others, we can tackle most of the problems of agency costs and enable smooth transactions – as well as open up the ongoing benefits of mutual concern and cooperation (e.g. when firms and suppliers share information, find ways to help each other improve, act with concern for the other party even when not contractually bound to do so). Indeed, much of the work on trust highlights the malleable and contextual cues that can set people up for either conflict or for cooperation. As such, how we think and

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talk matters a great deal for our ability to work with others and the terms under which such cooperation happens. The humanities also underscore the desire of people to be decent to each other, to live a good life and operate with a deeper sense of meaning in what they do. If we start with Aristotle (2009), we note that humans have an underlying drive for excellence – to cultivate ways of living that are core to being human and which serve the larger communities of which we are a part. Humans are communal beings who are naturally drawn to work with other people and find ways to do great things that serve both themselves and their fellows. Indeed, it is in doing things that serve the group that we have an understanding of what excellence and “virtues” really are: courage, temperance, prudence and the like. Aristotle draws our attention towards the underlying commitment to excellence and the good life as such. Other work in moral philosophy highlights the importance of our own sense of self-respect and living according to our values – which includes how we treat people different from ourselves. Rather than trying to assume this away or to make it in their strict financial self-interest to behave in pro-forma ways that seem ethical, this stream of research would suggest we start our theorizing with the idea that people  – both individually and in groups – want to behave ethically and treat each other decently. They seek meaning and want to find it through how they live their lives, including when they are “at work”. Theories that begin with these assumptions have the power not only to incorporate the work of the humanities and reclaim these ideas, they can offer reasons to believe that the fruits of such work may well prove more enduring and powerful. If such research speaks more directly and authentically to the human condition, it allows us to create things that are more likely to unleash our fullest abilities and our deepest desires. These are the sorts of aspirations that business, and people involved in business, should embrace – and that we as scholars should use as our starting point in theorizing. Finally, the humanities remind us of the complexity of being human and the factors that move us to do what we do. We have a multitude of impulses and drives, both things that we tend to associate with “reason” and factors we label as “emotions”; things that are part of our conscious choices and those that are part of our unconscious – something that we are now realizing has an even larger role in human behavior than previously thought. Such work allows us to portray humans as interesting and multi-faceted beings who can think about others and their well-being, important norms, their own interests and self-image, ideals of relationships and what they require of us, and their own sense of what they most value. We see people as three-dimensional – as “fully human” in both the most wonderful and frustrating senses of that phrase. Yet much of the work we find related to business goes in the opposite direction, offering us overly simplistic accounts of human nature that either remove or mute what makes us unique. Rather than see humans as capable of multiple impulses and motivations at the same time, such thinking reduced all human behavior to self-interest or variants thereof. While there may be some specialized circumstances where such insights are useful, this kind of thinking pushes us into a mode of thinking where ethics, values, and the complexity of human beings gets lost – or at least overshadowed. Not only is this a bad picture of humanity, it has

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tangible consequences for cooperation in organizations: If everyone is self-­interested (especially if I take it as self-interest with guile), then I need to develop ways of cooperating with people who will act that way. If, instead, I can modify and expand the range of potential motivations for human behavior, it becomes easier to develop complex and enduring forms of collaboration that are efficient, resilient, and better for all. Not only does such thinking “work” better, it provides a richer platform to craft a narrative about business – including what business is and who business people are. Much of the current narrative about business is highly negative and focused almost exclusively on money and profits. We believe this is no accident, especially when the underlying narratives and conceptual resources provided to give an account of business are about self-interest and profits – and only admit of these as the motivations for behavior. If, instead, we open up the possibility that people can act from both their sense of their interest and their concern for the well-being of their customers (or suppliers or community) or doing the “right thing”, then we can craft a different set of possibilities for how we collaborate. This approach is sometimes called “bounded self-interest,” where our own personal interests are bounded by norms of fairness and reciprocity (Bosse and Phillips 2016). A view of self-interest that is less than purely selfish allows us to generate a story about business in which firms can be committed to making the world a better place, serving their core stakeholders, and acting with integrity – while also creating products and services that allow them to prosper financially. We have no trouble creating such a narrative about people and the human condition if we focus on our personal lives, how we operate within friendships or families – yet a careful examination of human behavior highlights that self-interest is present in these domains as well. What we do, how we form and manage relationships, and how we treat those closest to us is driven by a host of factors – and we are right to see it as a complex mix of motivations. Yet, self-interest and doing what I want is not something we see as coming at the exclusion of other things we would say drive my behavior – such as caring for others, being a good friend or parent, looking out for people in my network, etc. If we can start with this more complex picture of human nature, we can tell a more nuanced story about business – and allow people the resources they need to act on the full range of impulses and moral sensibilities they have when they are at work. In spite of the importance of understanding the human aspects of managing stakeholders, what might be called the micro-foundations of stakeholder theory, this line of research is in its infancy (Crilly 2019; Phillips et al. 2019). As Crilly (2019, 250) suggests, “Much existing stakeholder research focuses on macro-level explanations that emphasize the importance of the external environment in shaping firm-­ stakeholder relations. In contrast, a behaviorally informed perspective looks inside firms and stakeholder organizations alike to understand better the drivers, and consequences, of the relations between firms and their stakeholders.” What is needed is more research that examines lower-level constituent units to explain behavior and results at higher levels of analysis (Barney and Felin 2013; Crilly 2019).

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Introduction to Stakeholder Theory Before engaging in this discussion, recognizing that some readers may not be particularly familiar with stakeholder theory, we should clarify what the theory is. As we already alluded to, we view the stakeholder approach as a theoretical perspective with the objective of helping business managers (and students of business) understand how firms can effectively co-create value with their stakeholders and distribute it back to them (sometimes at the same time it is created) in a highly complex and ever-changing business environment (i.e., Freeman 1984; Freeman et al. 2007). Stakeholders are people and groups of people who have a legitimate interest in the actions and objectives of an organization, and upon whom the organization relies in the accomplishment of its goals (Freeman 1984; Freeman et al. 2007; Harrison et al. 2010). Stakeholder theory has a moral foundation that includes principles such as fairness, respect, care, and integrity (Freeman 1984; Freeman et  al. 2018; Jones 1995; Jones et al. 2018). Stakeholder theory is also integrative, in that it allows, even requires, inclusion of multiple stakeholder perspectives. This last point is critical to understanding this chapter. A research paper that deals exclusively with marketing issues, such as how to manage a customer, is not a stakeholder paper – it is a marketing paper. A paper that examines how to motivate employees (exclusively) is an organizational behavior paper. Yes, these are all micro topics that explain human behavior, and some of the same foundational principles, such as reciprocity or trust, might be applied, but this does not mean they are contributing to the stakeholder literature. What makes stakeholder theory unique is that it deals with multiple stakeholders simultaneously. For example, a stakeholder researcher may study how treatment of customers influences the behavior of firm employees and ultimately the return shareholders receive (Cording et al. 2014). Or a study might develop theory regarding how an organization’s culture influences the way it treats all of its stakeholder groups (Jones et al. 2007). This understanding is important because we will be examining ideas that have already been applied elsewhere, but we are going to discuss how they might be (or have been) applied more broadly through a multiple-stakeholder lens. For those new to this area, we should also clarify that stakeholder theory is not the same as corporate social responsibility (CSR), which often focuses on conformance with particular societal expectations or environmental issues. As Barney and Harrison (2018, 7) point out, “The environment is not human, and society, although composed of a lot of humans, is at a level of analysis that is more appropriate for sociologists.” The term corporate responsibility, indicating a firm’s moral and economic responsibilities to its stakeholders, is a more stakeholder-friendly term than corporate social responsibility. A firm that treats its stakeholders ethically is, from the perspective of the theory, acting responsibly. In this chapter, we highlight examples of what we consider some of the most insightful micro-level research in the extant stakeholder literature. The chapter is not intended to be an encyclopedic review, but rather to illustrate the ability of micro-theory, or what might be called behavioral theory, to inform stakeholder

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theory (Crilly 2019). We then discuss some of the topics from other disciplines, and social psychology in particular, that seem most promising in terms of informing the stakeholder discussion and leading to fruitful new research. In the final section, we integrate two of these topics, exchange rules and goal-framing theory, to demonstrate how they can help us better understand the factors that influence the process of allocating value to stakeholders, the critical counterpart to co-creating value. This chapter, then, is intended to humanize business as it relates to stakeholder theory and management, and also serves to motivate more micro-level research pertaining to the stakeholder perspective.

Micro-theory in the Existing Stakeholder Literature This section highlights a few examples of influential stakeholder work on human characteristics that are closely linked to value co-creation. Topics include organizational justice, reciprocity and generalized exchange, ethics and values, cooperation and conflict, trust, relational bonding, and culture. For each of these topics, we focus on one work that is representative of the body of work on the topic, as well as a few citations that support that work. Because we intend to highlight research that is reflective of where we are as a field, more recent studies are given preference in this section.

Organizational Justice, Reciprocity and Generalized Exchange Reciprocity, which involves reinforcement of actions by one party to the actions of another (Simon 1966), has become an important construct in the stakeholder literature. A related concept is generalized exchange, which supports the notion that relationships and actions between two parties can influence third parties (Ekeh 1974). Bosse, Phillips, and Harrison (2009) tie reciprocity and generalized exchange to organizational justice (Colquitt et al. 2001), explaining that firms that exbibit distributional justice (fairness of distribution of value to stakeholders), procedural justice (fairness of the processes through which decisions are made) and interactional justice (how stakeholders are treated in exchanges) are more likely to enjoy reciprocity from their stakeholders. Their conclusion is that firms actually create more value by distributing parts of it, in various forms, to the stakeholders who behave fairly. Working from this foundation, Harrison et  al. (2010) build a model that demonstrates that firms that exbibit organizational justice in their relationships with stakeholders will gain sensitive information about their utility functions, and this information can be used to develop superior value propositions for those stakeholders as well as to enhance efficiency, innovation, and the ability to deal with unexpected changes in the firm’s environment.

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Ethics and Values Because of its moral foundation, ethics and values are perhaps two of the most highly discussed subjects in stakeholder theory (Freeman et al. 2010; Phillips 2003). Often these topics are examined at the firm level – how organizational ethics and values influence relationships between the firm and its stakeholders, along with corresponding outcomes (Jones et  al. 2018). Alternatively, there is a long history around the topic of how to introduce ethical values into management decision making processes (Freeman et al. 2010; Goodpaster 1991). At the micro level of analysis, a stakeholder approach might examine how the ethics and values of individual stakeholders influence, correspond with, or conflict with those of the firm and/or its other stakeholders. That is, stakeholder theory could benefit greatly from more research regarding the interface between the organization’s ethics and values and those of its suppliers, employees, customers, community leaders, financiers, etc.  – not individually (one relationship at a time), but collectively. As Goodstein and Wicks (2007, 375) put it, “It is time we make business ethics a two-way conversation and start putting greater emphasis on stakeholder responsibility and the role stakeholders such as employees play within the firm, and the role customers, investors, suppliers, and public and nongovernmental organizations play, along with corporations, in fostering ethical business practices and business excellence.” To this end, they promote a perspective that makes stakeholders, rather than the firm, fundamentally responsible for what happens in and around business, which provides an opportunity to think more critically and comprehensively about why moral failures occur in corporations and how to prevent them.

Cooperation and Conflict The stakeholder perspective envisions organizations as a part of a cooperative system of value creation (Freeman et al. 2007, 2010). However, some amount of conflict is unavoidable because of competing goals among stakeholders. One of the key questions, then, is whether one or more stakeholders must lose for others to win. One way to envision this problem is with a pie, which we will use as an analogy for the total resources a firm controls. If a larger piece of pie is given to one stakeholder, does it mean that some other stakeholder must get a smaller piece? The problem is that one may assume the size of the pie is fixed. In reality, there is no such thing as a fixed resource pie – it is always growing or shrinking. When the size of the pie increases, stakeholders can get a larger piece of pie without reducing the pieces available for other stakeholders. The instrumental perspective of stakeholder theory is largely about how to do this (i.e., Choi and Wang 2009; Harrison et  al. 2010; Jones et  al. 2018). Along these lines, Tantalo and Priem (2016) recently demonstrated the possibility that “stakeholder synergy” may exist due to the fact that

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multiple potential sources of value creation exist for each of a firm’s stakeholders. A single strategic action by the firm may increase the value provided to multiple stakeholders simultaneously without reducing the value received by any other stakeholder group.

Trust Although trust leads to vulnerability (Mayer et al. 1995), a firm that gains the trust of its stakeholders will likely receive information from them that can be used to create value (Barney and Hansen 1994). In a recent article, Crane (2018) developed a model to demonstrate how trust building actions with one stakeholder can enhance a perception of trustworthiness with other stakeholders. The trust building actions he described fell into the categories of ability, benevolence, integrity, responsiveness, volunteerism and transparency. Crane’s perspective is consistent with the generalized exchange literature that was described previously (Ekeh 1974). It is of increasing importance because organizations are more interconnected now than they have ever been, due to influences like social media. His arguments suggest that not all cues about the trustworthiness of firms are of equal influence. Thus, developing an understanding of the underlying mechanisms that influence trust is important to developing and maintaining stakeholder trust.

Relational Bonding Bosse and Coughlan (2016) express surprise that so little research has been done regarding the causes and effects of decisions made when managing individual stakeholder relationships. The inner workings of relationships with stakeholders, in general, is largely neglected in the literature (Jones 2011). Taking a step towards filling this void, they examine relationships from the perspective of a single firm stakeholder. They focus on the perceived psychological bond that drives a stakeholder to decide whether to continue to engage with the firm and, if so, how much pro-relationship behavior should be exerted. Specifically, they explain that if a stakeholder’s current situation with a firm is greater than its best alternative opportunity, the stakeholder is likely to remain in the relationship (stronger dependence/ bond) and is more likely to leave a relationship if the opposite is true. In some respects, the difference between current and best alternative situations is similar to the stakeholder’s opportunity cost (Harrison and Wicks 2013); however, Bosse and Coughlan provide a lot more specificity, describing acquiescence bonds as forming when there is no attractive alternative, instrumental bonds when staying is expected to provide a favorable outcome or leaving would be expensive, commitment bonds when the stakeholder feels affective commitment (simply wants to stay attached), or identification bonds when the stakeholder identifies with the firm’s values. This

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latter type of bonding is particularly relevant to stakeholder theory because of its moral foundation.

Culture An organization’s culture, its set of shared values (Ravasi and Schultz 2006; Schein 1992), is critical in shaping behavior in organizations. Jones, Felps, and Bigley (2007) develop a typology of corporate stakeholder cultures based on major ethical theories. They describe five types, and argue that they lie on a continuum from most self-interested to most other-regarding  – from agency to corporate egoist, instrumentalist, moralist, and finally altruist. They also demonstrate how these cultures influence the salience given to particular stakeholders when executives make decisions. Building from this work, Perrault (2014) links the cultural biases of individualism, hierarch, fatalism and egalitarianism to stakeholder cultures to help explain the salience managers are likely to give particular groups of stakeholders. Also, in a recent article, Soundarajan, Brown, and Wicks (2019) use this work to help explain the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder initiatives in global supply chains. This section is illustrative of some of the important micro-level stakeholder work that has been published. The next section presents some perspectives and theories from other behavioral disciplines that seem to hold promise for future micro-­ research in the stakeholder domain.

 opics with High Potential for Adding T to the Micro-foundational Literature Phillips, Barney, Freeman and Harrison (2019), in the introduction to their edited Cambridge Handbook of Stakeholder Theory, highlighted several micro-behavioral areas with high potential for advancing research in the stakeholder domain. They identified the areas using a very well cited author, and we will do likewise in this section. That is, we will identify the central idea of each of these works, as presented by a well-known author on the topic, and then we will discuss how this idea might be applied to a multi-stakeholder perspective. If there are any prominent works on stakeholder theory that already make use of these classics, we will include them in our discussion. The areas suggested by Phillips et al. (2019) are expectancy theory, escalating commitment, cognition, sensemaking, goal setting (framing), and exchange rules. These last two topics will be expanded upon in the final section to further illustrate the potential of this sort of research to have an impact on stakeholder management and the stakeholder theory literature.

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Expectancy Theory Stakeholders are likely to be motivated by a number of factors as they make decisions about whether to engage with a firm and the amount of effort they will contribute to the relationship. Vroom’s (1964) expectancy theory holds the potential to help explain this sort of stakeholder behavior. The three key elements to the theory are: (1) expectancy, which describes the degree to which a subject believes that if they expend effort they will actually have the ability to perform what they intend to do, (2) instrumentality, which is the expectation that their performance will lead to an anticipated reward, and (3) valence, the value of the reward to the subject. Expectancy theory is often applied in the organizational behavior literature, which tends to focus on employees; however, it also holds significant potential for helping firms manage relationships with all stakeholders. Hayibor (2012) applied the theory in explaining when stakeholders might be motivated to take negative actions against firms, such as sanctions. In a more positive direction, the theory could be used in stakeholder management to help managers co-create more value by identifying what might be impeding the value creation process. One of the common assumptions in business is that more money is going to provide a higher level of motivation for stakeholders to engage with the firm and to give more energy to the relationship. However, it may be that a stakeholder lacks motivation not because they are underpaid, but because they do not believe they have the appropriate tools (i.e., technology, resources) to satisfy the firm. For example, a supplier may not believe that it has the potential to develop a new product to the specifications required by a firm, and therefore may opt out of the relationship. If a manager understands (seeks) this information, she would work with the supplier, perhaps even provide resources to the supplier, to help it achieve the desired outcome. In this sort of situation, the help may serve as an even bigger motivation than the expected reward. This is true value co-creation. Expectancy theory is supportive of the important assertion that stakeholders value more than just economic outcomes, an idea that is gaining prominence in the stakeholder literature (Harrison and Wicks 2013; Jones and Felps 2013). Of course, expectancy theory is only one of many motivation theories that might be applied to developing micro perspectives useful to stakeholder theory, but because of its “expectancy” element, it seems particularly well suited.

Escalating Commitment Sometimes people pursue a course of action long after it becomes evident, from a rational perspective, that it is a losing proposition. First recognition of this phenomenon in the academic literature is often attributed to Staw (1976), whose work led to a stream of research on why the phenomenon exists and its impact on people and organizations. For example, it may be caused by commitments made at the

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beginning of a project, or high costs associated with its termination (Liang et al. 2014; Staw 1997). Social factors such as external justification or leadership norms can also play an important part in continuing a course of action beyond its rational conclusion (Staw 1997). Of course, at an even more micro level, psychological determinants such as personality, cognitive factors and emotion can play a role (Bundy 2019; Liang et al. 2014). Escalation of commitment is likely to have a large impact on transactions with stakeholders, and over time the nature of those transactions forges relationships. For example, in some popular versions of stakeholder theory, loyalty of firms to their stakeholders (and vice versa) is highly desirable both as an input to and output from the value creation process. We might ask what a firm should do when a stakeholder is no longer contributing enough to the value creation process to justify continuing the relationship? This could happen when a long-time supplier no longer has the best resources the market can supply or when an employee gets old. If the firm severs the relationship, the action could have an impact on relationships with other stakeholders, as they see that the unwanted stakeholder was essentially “put out to pasture” like an old work horse. Jones et al. (2018) refer to this situation as a cost of managing for stakeholders.

Cognition Cognitive processes and biases could be a factor contributing to escalation of commitment, but they are also likely to have a much broader impact on stakeholders and relationships between firms and stakeholders. Tversky and Kahneman (1974) were pioneers in identifying heuristics that people use when making judgments that can often lead to biased decisions. Among them are: (1) representativeness bias, which occurs when, due to past experiences or beliefs, people incorrectly assume two similar things are more closely correlated than they actually are (i.e., stereotypes); (2) availability bias, which results because ideas that are easy to bring to mind are often over-relied upon in making decisions, or (3) anchoring bias, which involves making inadequate adjustments from a readily available value, even if the value is obviously wrong. If indeed excellent relationships with stakeholders are one of the principal goals of stakeholder management, then cognitive biases that influence those relationships are worthy of serious consideration. The most obvious would seem to be representativeness biases, as reflected in stereotypes a manager could have about a particular stakeholder or stakeholder group, whether supplier, customer, or employee. And, of course, all decisions made by managers affect one or more stakeholders. Thus far not much has been done with cognition in the stakeholder literature. There is some related work looking at unconscious biases held by the board in dismissing a CEO (Weber and Wiersema 2017), as well as some promising work on CEO overconfidence and resistance to corrective feedback (Chen et al. 2015). However, there is very high potential for additional research that takes a broader stakeholder approach.

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Sensemaking Sensemaking, the process through which people explain and give meaning to their experiences, involves activities such as retrospection, exacting cues to help decide what information is relevant, and an ongoing process of conversing with ourselves and others (Weick 1995). Weick noted that plausibility is desired above complete accuracy, and that sensemaking processes are ongoing as people simultaneously shape and react to what is going on in their environments (see also Weick 1993). Sensemaking is not absent from the stakeholder literature, but it tends to be used as a supportive element rather than the mainstream, or driving, theory. One exception is Pater and van Lierop (2006), who describe a joint sensemaking process between the firm and its stakeholders to explain how contested opinions over a disputed issue can be integrated into a unitary account. They view this sort of process as the only way forward if the issue is highly complex, as in defining what it means to be socially responsible. They provide an example from IKEA to demonstrate how the process can help deal even with issues as complex as child labor. Beyond this work, sensemaking processes between firms and stakeholders offer high potential to frame organizations and their actions such that everyone who is part of the value creating process has a common understanding of objectives and outcomes, or what Bundy (2019) calls a “mind-set.” How are the collective opinions of the firm’s multiple stakeholders integrating into this common vision, and what can/should a manager do if one of the stakeholders simply refuses to engage in collaborative sensemaking processes?

Goal Framing Goal-framing theory distinguishes between three overarching goals that influence the cognitions and motivations of individuals, and in turn affect individuals’ behaviors (Lee and Puranam 2017): the hedonic goal, which expresses the desire to improve (or preserve) the way one feels right now; the gain goal, which expresses the desire to improve (or preserve) one’s resources; and the normative goal, which expresses the desire to act appropriately in the service of a supra-individual entity (Lindenberg and Foss 2011). These overarching goals compete for the privilege of being in the cognitive foreground (i.e., being “focal”). The focal goal substantially influences how people process information, what they think of at the moment, what information they are sensitive to, how they will evaluate things (i.e., which preferences are salient), what action alternatives they perceive, and how they will act (Lindenberg 2008; Lindenberg and Steg 2007). A focal goal together with these cognitive and evaluative consequences is called a “goal frame,” indicating that the goal creates a frame within which all other processes take place (Foss and Lindenberg 2013; Lindenberg 2008; Lindenberg and Foss 2011).

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The goal frames of firm managers and stakeholders would seem to have a great deal of influence on the way these actors behave towards each other and their resulting relationships. For example, the way a manager treats a particular stakeholder group could be largely influenced by whether the manager is seeking to increase resources through the relationship, or simply because they believe the behavior they are exhibiting is right, from a normative perspective. But even more interesting would be an examination of when the first goal frame becomes dominant, that of the desire to improve the way one feels (the hedonic goal). Feelings have rarely been addressed in stakeholder research (for one exception, see Harrison and Wicks 2013); however, they would seem to offer the potential to explain some of the variance in firm/stakeholder relationships (Bundy 2019). In addition, goal-framing theory has potential to help explain how much or what type of value must be allocated to each stakeholder to induce them to engage or remain engaged with the firm. Stakeholder theory devotes little attention to whether and why stakeholders differ in the distribution of value they consider sufficient to continue their part in the value co-creation process. For example, one stakeholder may consider the distribution of value it receives from the firm sufficient, while another views the same distribution as insufficient. If such differences exist, they will have substantial implications for how much value the firm is able to preserve and reinvest, and hence for firm performance. A sound understanding of such differences is therefore pivotal to addressing the value distribution problem.

Exchange Rules Research in social psychology discusses individual differences in general preferences for distributions of outcomes to self and others in situations where these outcomes are a function of both one’s own and others’ behavior (e.g., De Cremer and Van Lange 2001; Fehr and Fischbacher 2002). These preferences are often called social value orientations (SVOs). Meeker (1971) studied social exchange behavior and developed a refined set of exchange rules with six orientations: competition, rationality, reciprocity, status consistency, group gain, and altruism. Table 36.1 contains a description of the overriding objective and dominant goal frame for each orientation (to be discussed in the next section). Also included are comparisons of Meeker’s terminology with titles used to describe similar phenomena in studies by Bridoux and Stoelhorst (2016) and Jones, Felps, and Bigley (2007). As a recent example of an application of research on SVOs, Bridoux, Coeurderoy, and Durand (2017) distinguished between self- vs. other-orientations, which they referred to as individualist or reciprocator, to explain how individuals’ motivation and social interactions influence capability development in predictable ways (see also Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2014). One of the issues that stakeholder theory attempts to address is the problem of value creation and trade (Freeman et al. 2010). Exchange rules address the trade portion of this problem directly – they are applicable to the distribution of value to

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Table 36.1  Meeker’s (1971) exchange rules and their relationships to goal frames and similar concepts Exchange rule Competition Overriding Maximize objective possible distance between P’s and O’s total payoff, with P’s payoff higher

Rationality Maximize P’s total payoff, regardless of payoff to O

Gain goal Goal frame Hedonic frame is goal frame is dominant; dominant gain goal also important

B&S (2016) relational models

Authority ranking

None J, F & B (2007) stakeholder cultures

Reciprocity Minimize difference between the value that P has contributed to O’s payoff and the value that O has contributed to P’s payoff

Normative goal frame is dominant; gain goal also important

Market pricing

Equality matching

Agency

Instrumentalist (in some cases) or moralist

Status consistency Maximize possible distance between P’s and O’s total payoff, with P or O higher depending on who has higher status OR minimize difference if equal status In case of unequal status: Hedonic goal frame is dominant. In case of equal status: Normative goal is dominant. In case of unequal status: Authority ranking. In case of equal status: Equality matching. Moralist (in case of equal status)

Group gain Maximize possible value of the total of P’s and O’s payoffs

Altruism Maximize O’s payoffs

Normative goal frame is dominant

Hedonic goal frame is dominant

None

Communal sharing

Moralist

Altruist

Note: P denotes the focal person in an exchange and O denotes the other person. “B&S (2016)” refers to Bridoux and Stoelhorst (2016); “J, F & B (2007)” to Jones et al. (2007)

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stakeholders. Specifically, if managers understand the primary exchange rules their stakeholders follow in exchanges with the firm, they will be better prepared with value creating options their stakeholders are likely to find desirable. This knowledge can increase the probability that an exchange will take place, and could also increase efficiency from the firm perspective, since the firm is less likely to produce an offer for exchange that is greater than what would be necessary to consummate the deal. In addition, and from a multiple stakeholder perspective, it would be interesting to study whether firms are more successful in completing exchanges with stakeholders if they are consistent in the exchange rules they apply across all of their stakeholders. While the existing stakeholder literature would suggest that reciprocity is the most effective exchange rule overall (Bosse et  al. 2009; Harrison et  al. 2010), empirical testing could confirm this assumption and could also help define when different kinds of exchange rules can be more successfully applied in various contexts (Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2014). The next section takes a step in this direction by applying both goal-framing theory and exchange rules to the topic of managing exchanges with stakeholders.

 oal Framing and Exchange Rules Applied to the Value G Distribution Problem An instrumental version of stakeholder theory deals with the implications of adopting a stakeholder approach – treating stakeholders fairly, considering their interests, and respecting them – for firm performance (Freeman et al. 2010; Harrison et al. 2019; Jones 1995; Jones et al. 2018). When a firm adopts a stakeholder approach, stakeholders may feel motivated to contribute more to value co-creation with the firm, but this sort of management also requires the firm to allocate additional (beyond pure market) value to its stakeholders in order to accommodate their interests and enhance their participation. If the firm distributes excessive amounts of value to stakeholders, it will appropriate less value itself and performance will decline substantially (Harrison and Bosse 2013). From a strategic management perspective, a firm therefore needs to distribute enough value to its stakeholders to motivate their ongoing contribution to value creation, but simultaneously needs to avoid allocating too much value. We call this the value distribution problem. At a micro (individual) level the value distribution problem is informed by goal-­ framing theory. Specifically, a stakeholder – as well as the individual representing the firm in negotiations with this stakeholder – is likely to be operating primarily from a hedonic, gain or normative goal frame. We say primarily, and not exclusively, because research has found that all three of the goal frames can be operating simultaneously, but there is one that is primary in any particular social interaction. When one of these overarching goals becomes focal, the others do not vanish but are pushed into the cognitive background, where they can still affect the salience of the current goal frame (Lindenberg and Foss 2011). Furthermore, the three overarching

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goal frames differ in their a priori strength. The order of strength is justified on evolutionary grounds that give precedence to individual reproductive success, with group work merely being a means to this end (Lee and Puranam 2017). Thus, the hedonic goal frame, being directly related to need satisfaction and thus being the most basic, is a priori expected to be the strongest of the three master goal frames (Lindenberg 2008; Lindenberg and Foss 2011). This means that in order to displace the hedonic goal from the foreground, the gain and normative goals must have additional support from institutional arrangements and compatible goals in the background (Lindenberg 2008). The gain goal frame is somewhat weaker than and may be displaced by the hedonic goal frame if it is not supported by social institutions (such as religion and/ or secure property rights) that allow the individual to act on behalf of a reasonably well-established future self (Lindenberg and Foss 2011; Lindenberg and Steg 2007). Finally, the normative goal frame is the weakest of the three. It usually needs strong flanking arrangements and support to avoid displacement by one of the other goal frames (Lindenberg and Foss 2011; Lindenberg and Steg 2007). Thus, goal-framing theory shows that a normative goal frame is precarious in the sense that it is in constant danger of being displaced by gain or hedonic goals. The precariousness of the normative goal frame, alongside the difference between foreground and background goals, is one of the key ingredients of goal-framing theory for understanding the emergence and persistence of a “joint production motivation” (Lindenberg and Foss 2011). Lindenberg and Foss (2011: 502) proffer the concept of “joint production motivation” to describe the insight “that human beings are especially equipped with coordinated cognitive and motivational faculties that are geared to participating in joint production […]: they [can] recognize a joint endeavor and see themselves as part of this endeavor, each with his or her own roles and responsibilities, involving a sharing of cognitions about the relevant tasks, interdependencies, timing, and possible obstacles to smooth coordination in terms of joint goals.” As they point out, it seems that the most potent human brain power (the neocortex) evolved as a “social brain” to allow human beings to gain the adaptive advantages of living in larger groups. Individuals’ joint production motivation is associated with their normative goal frame. Individuals in a normative goal frame choose higher levels of effort towards the realization of collective goals, coordinate more easily with others, and engage more readily in pro-social activities related to reaching the common goals than individuals applying a gain or hedonic goal frame (Foss and Lindenberg 2012). Consequently, although a predominant normative goal frame may be rare, it is highly attractive, especially from the perspective of a firm if a stakeholder adopts such an emphasis. The concept of joint production motivation nicely illustrates that goal-framing theory represents a well-suited perspective for thinking about stakeholder management. At the core of much stakeholder thinking is the idea that a firm and its stakeholders can, under conditions defined by the theory (e.g., Jones et al. 2018), jointly

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generate more value than they can with the arm’s length relationships traditionally assumed in the management literature (Freeman et al. 2010; Harrison et al. 2019). The SVOs/exchange rules stakeholders adopt likely depend on which goal frame is in the stakeholders’ cognitive foreground and which goals are in their background. Consequently, goal frames will not only affect how much value gets co-created, but also which distribution of value stakeholders consider appropriate. We will now discuss the stakeholder management implications of goal-framing theory within each of five exchange rules identified by Meeker (1971). We do not discuss status consistency separately because it is identical to competition for the higher status actor and the opposite of competition for the lower status actor (Meeker 1971, 490). If the focal stakeholder and the firm are of equal status, then the situation resembles reciprocity in that the stakeholder considers his/her own payoff and the firm’s payoff and seeks to equalize the two. Relevant insights for status consistency can hence be found in the sections on competition and reciprocity, respectively.

Competition A stakeholder with a competition orientation assesses the difference between his/ her own payoffs and the firm’s payoffs (Meeker 1971). S/he prefers situations in which the difference between his/her payoff and the firm’s payoff is large over situations in which the difference is small. We argue that individuals will adopt a competition exchange rule when corresponding hedonic goals are in their cognitive foreground and gain goals hold a strong position in their cognitive background. Competition-oriented stakeholders can improve their own utility not only by increasing their own payoff, but also by decreasing the firm’s payoff. This not only applies to situations where they do not have to spend resources to decrease the firm’s payoff, but also to situations where they forego some resources – as long as they have to spend less than X to decrease the firm’s payoff by X. In absolute terms, these latter situations benefit neither the stakeholder nor the firm. This constellation indicates that their cognitions are not dominated by a gain goal frame, which would urge them to improve or preserve resources. Rather, the stakeholder’s preferences point towards a hedonic goal: “The criteria for success in a hedonic goal frame relate to improvements in the way one feels, not the way things function” (Foss and Lindenberg 2013, 91). Direct improvements in self-esteem are an example of a hedonic goal (Foss and Lindenberg 2012) that may depend more on the size of an individual’s advantage over someone else than on the individual’s absolute position. There are also outright destructive hedonic goals such as revenge (Lindenberg and Foss 2011) which can leave all involved parties worse off. McClintock’s (1972, 448) argument that “man’s need to maintain control over others, to maintain or achieve a position of superiority in terms of outcomes” provides a basis for the competition rule corroborates the association between the competition rule and the hedonic goal frame.

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As individuals with a hedonic orientation seek to satisfy their basic needs and emotions in a particular situation, their perspective is rather myopic (Foss and Lindenberg 2013). Due to their myopia, they may even be inclined to take actions which they know are likely to be harmful to them in the long run (Lindenberg 2008). Still, a stakeholder who adopts the competition rule aims to improve his/her payoffs  – albeit in relative terms (in relation to the firm) and not in absolute terms. Consequently, a gain goal is still likely to play a major role in the stakeholder’s cognitive background. Firms can use these insights to devise measures that make the adoption of a competition exchange rule by their stakeholders less likely. These measures can either take the stakeholder’s hedonic orientation as given and address the content of his/ her hedonic goals or they can aim at strengthening the stakeholder’s gain orientation relative to his/her hedonic orientation. With respect to the former alternative, firms can look for ways that respond to the stakeholder’s activated needs and emotions without having a negative effect on firm payoffs. For instance, if the stakeholder can strengthen his/her self-esteem in a different way, s/he does not have to do so at the expense of the firm. Firms can also emphasize positive emotions the stakeholder may feel if s/he decides to engage with the firm in a productive cooperation (Lindenberg and Steg 2007). With respect to the latter alternative above (i.e., strengthening the stakeholder’s gain goal), goal-framing theory suggests that the more important gain goals become for the focal individual, the less influence his/her hedonic goals will exert. The gain goal may even displace the hedonic goal from the foreground when it is especially strengthened (Lindenberg 2008; Lindenberg and Foss 2011). For instance, a firm may be able to make the pursuit of a hedonic goal that hurts the firm less attractive for a stakeholder by raising the costs of pursuing such a goal (Lindenberg and Steg 2007). However, the hedonic goal is characterized by a focus on the here and now without paying much attention to context. When they are in a hedonic goal frame, people who in principle care about money and have learned to take norms seriously tend to focus more on how things feel rather than on how appropriate they are or how much they cost. As a consequence, it may be easier for a firm dealing with a competition-oriented stakeholder to address the content of his/her hedonic goals than to substantially strengthen the stakeholder’s gain orientation relative to his/her hedonic orientation.

Rationality Stakeholders who adopt the rationality exchange rule assign a positive value to their own payoffs and do not take the firm’s payoffs into account (Carlo et  al. 2001). Their preferences reflect a strong dominance of the gain goal, which activates subgoals having to do with one’s own resources (such as saving money, increasing one’s income, dealing with threats to one’s financial security) (Lindenberg 2008).

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In contrast to the hedonic goal frame, which represents “a lower-order form of self-regulation […,] the gain and the normative goals are part of higher-order forms of self-regulation […]. What is often called “self-control” is a process in which prepotent hedonic responses (“temptations”) are dominated by appropriate standards (the normative goal) or longer-term aspects (the gain goal)” (Lindenberg 2015, 154). While context is poorly cognitively represented and processed in a hedonic goal frame, context – such as the presence of conflicting lower-order processes, appropriateness of action, expectations of others, and longer-term consequences of action – plays an important role in higher-order forms of self-regulation (Lindenberg 2015). The relative strength of the normative and gain goals depends heavily on flexible activation by situational factors. When people are in a gain frame, they are very sensitive to changes in their personal resources and much less sensitive about how they feel and what is appropriate. Nevertheless, normative goals are still likely to influence individuals in a gain frame to a certain extent from the background. While individuals in a gain frame may not see norms as obligations, at least they tend to perceive norms as sources of potential sanctions and costs (e.g., in terms of a fine or reputational damage) (Lindenberg 2008, 2015). But typically, the influence of norms goes beyond pure sanctions and costs. For example, experimental evidence shows that people rarely act completely egotistically even if their main goal is gain – even then, they seem to be somewhat restrained by normative concerns (Camerer 2003). As a gain frame does not lead to a total disregard of norms, framing the situation appropriately enables firms to make gain goals more compatible with normative goals (Lindenberg and Steg 2007). For instance, extending the time period that stakeholders consider can induce rational stakeholders to adhere to the reciprocity rule (Gattig and Hendrickx 2007; Meeker 1971). Specifically, reciprocity can be based on contributions received in the past as well as on expectations of contributions to be received in the future. When a firm makes it clear to a stakeholder that s/ he will only be able to participate in and benefit from future joint value creation efforts with the firm if s/he contributes proportionally to these efforts and is willing to share some of the value with the other involved parties, even a self-interested, rational stakeholder can be motivated to adhere to the reciprocity exchange rule: “In essence, expected reciprocity is motivated by self-interest” (Korsgaard et al. 2010, 278). In this way, it becomes rational to reciprocate.

Reciprocity Stakeholders adopting the reciprocity rule assign a negative value to the difference between the amount that the firm’s decisions contribute to the stakeholder’s payoff and the amount that the stakeholder’s decisions contribute to the firm’s payoff; i.e., they seek to do as much for the firm as the firm does for them (Meeker 1971). Reciprocity is one of the most studied exchange rules in social exchange research (Cropanzano et  al. 2007; Cropanzano and Mitchell 2005) and has become an

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important part of theory building in the stakeholder literature (Bosse et al. 2009; Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2014, 2016; Harrison et  al. 2010; Jones et  al. 2018). Reciprocity has been called a “hypernorm” because it has been observed across time and cultures (Dunfee 2006). Whether reciprocity is universal or not, this label pinpoints its normative nature. We consequently argue that the adoption of the reciprocity rule indicates a normative goal frame. Moreover, we argue that gain goals assume a strong position in their cognitive background when stakeholders adopt the reciprocity rule. When stakeholders adopt the reciprocity rule, they not only look at their own payoffs, but also assign a positive value to the firm’s payoffs (to the extent to which the firm’s payoffs equalize the mutual contributions). Thus, the stakeholder’s concern transcends his/her individual welfare, which is characteristic of a normative goal frame (Lindenberg and Foss 2011). Also indicative of a normative goal frame are his/her behaviors: S/he is interested in “acting appropriately” according to social expectations and is willing to forego some resources to do so (Lindenberg 2008, 2015). However, gain goals also play an important role in the reciprocity rule. First, efforts to balance mutual contributions require the involved parties to devote some attention to each parties’ payoffs and costs. Inherently, finding a balance among mutual contributions is a more delicate task than trying to increase a single outcome. To cope with this more delicate task, the minds of the involved parties can actually be more heavily occupied with calculating benefits and costs under a reciprocity rule than when they are under other, more self-interested rules. Second, while stakeholders following the reciprocity exchange rule try to make a contribution to the firm that is comparable to the contribution of the firm, they will attempt to make this contribution in a way that minimizes the costs they incur to do so (Meeker 1971, 493). Stakeholders who want to make a contribution to the firm can frequently choose from various pro-relationship behaviors to achieve this end; for instance, customers could share private information with the firm that allows the firm to improve their products, purchase more of the firm’s products, or recommend the firm’s products to family and friends. In selecting among these different options, stakeholders tend to choose the option that “is most advantageous for them in terms of gain” (Lindenberg 2008, 674). Moreover, when it is possible to comply with a certain norm to various degrees, even individuals in a normative goal frame can be expected to comply less with this norm when the cost of compliance increases (Lindenberg and Foss 2011). Finally, we argued above that the expectation of future payoffs can induce rational stakeholders to adopt the reciprocity rule (Gattig and Hendrickx 2007; Korsgaard et al. 2010). This argument illustrates that behavior in line with the normative goal frame can be heavily affected by gain goals. Since a greater compatibility of the normative reciprocity rule with gain goals makes stakeholders more likely to comply with the reciprocity rule, a firm’s framing activities should emphasize this compatibility. We argued above that extending the time period that stakeholders consider is one way to do this (Gattig and Hendrickx 2007). Moreover, the firm’s framing activities should specify which pro-­relationship behavior(s) the firm would like to see from its stakeholders when they reciprocate

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the favorable treatment they received from the firm. The more ambiguous a norm (or the criteria for norm compliance) is, the more difficult it is to know what behaviors would be or would not be appropriate, and the more individuals will tend to choose behaviors that best serve their gain goals (Lindenberg and Foss 2011; Lindenberg and Steg 2007; Wade-Benzoni et al. 1996). Finally, in order to strengthen the reciprocity rule relative to hedonic, gain, and possibly rival normative goals, firms can try to subject it to a process of “moralization” (see Rozin et al. 1999). In this process, normative goals – which typically tend be relatively precarious as highlighted above – are clearly linked to morally supporting emotions (e.g., calling somebody who acts against the norm a bad person or displaying physical disgust as reaction to deviance) (Lindenberg and Steg 2007).

Group Gain Group gain is an exchange rule that assigns the maximum value to the sum of the stakeholder’s and the firm’s total payoffs (Meeker 1971). Because so much of stakeholder theory is based on the idea of increasing joint value (e.g. Freeman et al. 2007, 2010; Freeman 1984), the group gain exchange rule, perhaps even more than reciprocity, is at the core of stakeholder theory. This is because reciprocity can be based on a purely instrumental motivation in which the firm or a stakeholder is acting selfishly (Jones et al. 2007), whereas a group gain exchange rule is motivated by a genuine interest in maximizing the joint value created. This latter motivation is closely associated with the normative foundation of stakeholder theory (Freeman et al. 2010). It should be noted that situations in which individuals adopt group goals and choose actions in terms of those goals are not just a theoretical possibility, but exist in reality (Foss and Lindenberg 2012). A review of the empirical evidence found in game-theoretic studies of cooperation suggests that “it is possible to provide an environment in which almost all of the subjects contribute toward the group interest” (Ledyard 1995, 172). Illustrative real-life examples in which contributors pursue group interests heavily are supporters of sports clubs and their club of choice or “community enterprises” such as Wikipedia (Foss and Lindenberg 2012). We also expect that the group gain rule will be emphasized heavily by the various actors in successful business ecosystems (Adner 2017; Jacobides et al. 2018; Palmié et al., forthcoming). Goal-framing theory argues that the normative goal frame is the “all-important precondition for joint production motivation” (Lindenberg and Foss 2011, 506). “Contributing to a joint project” is among the sub-goals associated with appropriateness that a normative goal frame can activate (Lindenberg 2008, 673). A normative goal frame helps individuals “focus on which actions are appropriate for the common goal” (Lindenberg and Foss 2011: 508). Although the normative goal frame is dominant when a stakeholder is applying the group gain exchange rule, the other overarching goals may either support or weaken this goal frame from the

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individual’s cognitive background. In particular, a gain goal can be compatible with the group gain exchange rule when individuals not only consider their personal payoffs, but also include the payoffs of the other group member(s) in the evaluation (Lindenberg and Steg 2007). Lindenberg and Foss (2011) used goal-framing theory to develop suggestions for how to stimulate the adoption of a group gain rule so as to initiate and maintain a joint production motivation. First, firms can emphasize interdependencies among parties when engaging with them so that the parties understand both what their contribution is/can be as well as what others contribute to the value co-creation process. Second, firms need to exercise caution when developing their missions so that they do not communicate the wrong sort of objectives (also see Foss and Lindenberg 2013). For example, a mission should avoid an over-emphasis on profit maximization (which could induce stakeholders to adopt a gain frame) in favor of a broader stakeholder-oriented purpose that instills a shared sense of common direction in its stakeholders (Birkinshaw et  al. 2012; Lindenberg and Foss 2011). Third, reward systems should mix individual and group rewards in highly interdependent contexts that encourage “team member motivation on working collaboratively while maintaining a sustained, directed effort toward their responsibilities” (Pearsall et  al. 2010, 188). While contingent rewards assume accountability, firms should also be careful in how they frame accountability. Specifically, accountability that stimulates intelligent effort in joint production should not be restricted to outcomes, but should emphasize the stakeholder’s behavior in the joint production process, because sometimes the stakeholder’s objective performance may suffer when s/he adopts valuable pro-relationship behaviors in the process (e.g., helping another party). Finally, authority should not be legitimized on the basis of the right to control, but rather on superior insight on what is needed for the realization of common goals – what Lindenberg and Foss (2011, 512) call “functional prerequisites for joint production.” Framed in this way, the exercise of authority is not just compatible with joint production motivation, but is supportive of smooth joint production and, thus, of the motivation to contribute to it. Conflicting gain or hedonic goals are likely to make it necessary that the activation of the normative goal receives situational support. A firm can use framing to create this support. Its framing activities should embed the group gain rules in legitimacy beliefs and frequent reminders of legitimacy (Lindenberg 1992, 2015). Examples are cues that show respect for the rules and information that establishes an instrumental link of following the rule to important collective goals (Birkinshaw et al. 2012; Keizer et al. 2013; Lindenberg 2015; Lindenberg and Foss 2011; Steg and de Groot 2010). As was the case with the normatively framed reciprocity rule, firms can try to subject the group gain rule to a process of “moralization” to strengthen the rule relative to hedonic, gain, and possibly rival normative goals (Lindenberg and Steg 2007).

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Altruism A stakeholder with an altruistic orientation towards the firm is interested in maximizing the firm’s payoff without regard to his/her own personal payoff. True altruism is rare. Donors who believe in the firm’s cause, customers of luxury brands who are willing to be overcharged in order to be associated with the brand and the prestige it confers, and individuals who are addicted to the firm’s products may display traits of altruism in business relationships. Since there are no widespread social norms to engage in altruism towards one’s business partner, we argue that stakeholders who perform altruistic behavior towards the firm are primarily guided by hedonic goals. Support for this argument comes from empirical data which indicates that that altruism can be gratifying for individuals and lead to a greater sense of satisfaction (Cialdini and Kenrick 1976). Moreover, Batson (1987) points out that altruism is consistent with a central proposition made in the psychological hedonism literature, viz. that goal attainment always brings pleasure, even if the goal was to benefit another rather than to benefit oneself. Firms dealing with altruistic stakeholders should adopt their framing activities accordingly. As altruistic stakeholders are in a hedonic and not in a gain goal frame, they are more sensitive about how they feel than they are about changes in their personal resources (Frey and Jegen 2001; Small et al. 2007; Caruso et al. 2013). Since the effort that individuals have to spend is directly related to the way they feel, the amount of effort stakeholders have to spend to make their contribution to the firm’s value creation endeavor can be more relevant than the financial costs they incur for their contribution (Lindenberg 2008). Thus, it can pay off for a firm to devote resources to make the stakeholder’s experience of the firm-stakeholder relationship more pleasant and smooth.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have attempted to illustrate how stakeholder theory both contributes to and has the potential to contribute further to our understanding of the human aspects of business organizations. We have also highlighted how our understanding of human beings, particularly insights from the humanities, can foster a deeper and richer understanding of the kind of cooperative activities at the heart of modern business. We demonstrated how important our assumptions about people are, both to accurate theorizing and to enabling the kind of complex coordination required to build great organizations that serve human purposes – and that realize our potential, both as individuals and as communities. Part of the richness, and distinctiveness, of stakeholder theory is how it is grounded in the idea that business is both for and about human beings – and that future work should build from this core starting point. In this chapter, we have drawn heavily from social psychology and organizational behavior as well as other disciplines in the humanities. In addition, we have

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provided a starting point for integrating goal-framing theory with exchange rules in a stakeholder context, along with some practical implications for doing so. Because it deals specifically with the nature of the value stakeholders are likely to expect through their interactions with a firm, this work has the potential to begin filling the crucial knowledge gap regarding value appropriation in the stakeholder literature. Using framing activities, firm managers can influence how salient the three overarching goal frames are in their stakeholders’ mind and hence which exchange rule stakeholders tend to adopt. One of the conclusions we drew from this exploration is that there is very little in the extant stakeholder literature that is truly micro-foundational and that the potential for adding insights in this area is very high. One of the challenges may be to determine which areas have the highest potential to be explored first, since the opportunities would appear to be limitless. In this regard, we would like to suggest three questions that can help determine which research topics or streams of theory might hold the greatest potential for a contribution to the stakeholder literature. First, does the theory lend itself to evaluating interactions or relationships between the firm and multiple stakeholders simultaneously? Second, will the proposed research be morally grounded? Third, and we suppose this question might be applied to all business research, if the research does result in findings that are statistically significant, is it also likely to be managerially significant – can it really help managers as they attempt to co-create significantly more value with their stakeholders? After all, this is the central purpose of stakeholder theory.

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Andrew C. Wicks, through his teaching and research, encourages us to ask questions about how we live and operate in the world – as individuals, as organizations and as a society. An ethicist with a background in religious studies, he examines both the theoretical and practical implications of ethics through thought-provoking courses such as: “Responsible Leadership: Ultimate Questions and Creating Value for Stakeholders”. Wicks is the Ruffin Professor of Business Administration at Darden. His leadership roles across the school include director of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics, academic director of the Institute for Business in Society, and director of Darden’s Doctoral Program. Known internationally for his research in business ethics and stakeholder theory, Wicks also examines topics such as trust, the relationship of medicine and business, total quality management, and the “dark side” of stakeholder theory. Co-author of five books, Wicks has published extensively in journals in business ethics, management, health care and the humanities, and served as guest editor of Business Ethics Quarterly and Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion.  

Maximilian Palmié is Assistant Professor of Energy and Innovation Management at the University of St Gallen (Switzerland), where he also received his PhD in Management. His research focuses on the strategic management of innovation and new technologies with an emphasis on microfoundations, stakeholder theory, and sustainability innovation. His journal publications include articles in the International Journal of Management Reviews, Small Business Economics, and, most recently, the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and Technological Forecasting & Social Change. He further is co-author of the book “Smart Cities: Introducing Digital Innovation to Cities” (Emerald Publishing, 2019).  

Chapter 37

Stakeholder Engagement in Humanizing Business Sybille Sachs and Johanna Kujala

Introduction This chapter argues that business leaders need to understand the importance of stakeholders in humanizing the business. The traditional, neo-classical business view sees firms as production machines between input from suppliers, investors and employees, and output to customers (Donaldson and Preston 1995). The emphasis is on firm value rather than on joint value creation (cf. Bosse et al. 2009; Donaldson and Walsh 2015), and people are treated as resources instead of as human beings in value creation processes. Stakeholder engagement has pursued, and to a certain extent also achieved, a differentiated understanding of human beings, their contribution to a firm’s value creation and their well-being (Freeman et  al. 2017). For example, based on a long tradition of different narrative accounts, stakeholder theory offers insights into a more comprehensive view of the understanding of human well-being and their contribution to firms’ value creation than the traditional view (for overviews, see, e.g., Donaldson 2012; Friedman and Miles 2006; Harrison and Wicks 2013; Jones and Felps 2013a, b; Laplume et al. 2008; Phillips et al. 2003; Freeman et al. 2010). However, there are claims that the complex nature of human beings is still underestimated in stakeholder engagement literature (see, e.g., Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2016; Evan and Freeman 1995; Freeman et al. 2010; McVea and Freeman 2005; Pirson and Lawrence 2010; Sachs and Rühli 2011). A recent call-in stakeholder theory emphasized that there is “widespread interest in stakeholders as people, with all that it implies (Phillips et al. 2019, 17).”

S. Sachs (*) HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] J. Kujala Tampere University, Tampere, Finland © The Author(s) 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_37

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The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on stakeholder engagement in humanizing the business. Stakeholder engagement pays attention to how various stakeholder interests, needs, and expectations are included in organizational practices (Freeman et al. 2017; Kujala and Sachs 2019). We see stakeholder engagement as a relational process and pay attention to the importance of stakeholder relationships in value creation. By humanization, we understand those assumptions of human nature in stakeholder engagement that refer to people as humans in business with all their feelings and aspirations (Dion et  al. this volume). Humanizing business is needed as the traditional business view overlooks the rights and demands of different stakeholders as humans while aiming for profit maximization. Stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and suppliers, expect socially acceptable and beneficial behavior from businesses and they have a right to be treated fairly (Kujala et al. 2019). Instead of a single or economic-value perspective, we highlight the multitude of stakeholder values that need to be included in organizational decision making if humanizing business is taken seriously. In this chapter, we will proceed as follows: First, we aim to provide an overview of the assumptions of human nature within the conceptualization of stakeholder engagement, and the potential to revise them for humanizing the business. Second, we will examine in-group and out-group interactions for humanizing stakeholder engagement. Finally, we will provide recommendations for further research in humanizing stakeholder engagement.

Conceptualization of Stakeholder Engagement  takeholders as Groups or Organization with Humanlike S Characteristics vs. Stakeholders as Social Groups In stakeholder engagement, the most common level of analysis is not the individual but the firm and the different stakeholder groups. Different “stakeholders are likely to value different things (i.e., their utility functions are different) (Harrison and Wicks 2013, 112).” Furthermore, stakeholders gain “utility from affiliating with organizations that exhibit behaviors that are consistent with things they value (Harrison and Wicks 2013, 106).” In this understanding of stakeholder engagement, it is a broadly accepted assumption that organizations and stakeholders are central actors with human-like “characteristics, motivations, intentions and emotions (Bundy et al. 2018, 12).” However, an exclusive analytical focus on the level of groups or organizations as stakeholders might fall short when individual members of a stakeholder group are not taken into account. In their “names and faces approach,” McVea and Freeman (2005) already considered stakeholders as individuals. In developing an understanding of the real stakeholders who are relevant to the firm, experiences with each single stakeholder gain importance for value creation. Furthermore, due to modern

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communication technologies, stakeholders as individuals are more easily approachable today than in earlier years (McVea and Freeman 2005). When stakeholder research focuses on an organization’s stakeholder relationships as the unit of analysis (for exceptions, see Crane and Ruebottom 2011; de Luque et al. 2008; McVea and Freeman 2005; Rowley and Moldoveanu 2003), the conceptualization of stakeholders as social groups introduce the members of stakeholder groups as an additional unit of analysis. The social group that is salient to a human shapes interactions within the group, so-called in-group relations, and towards other groups, so-called outgroups relations (Hogg and Terry 2000). In this view, stakeholders are not human resources but resourced humans with personal resources such as different values, capabilities, interests, and emotions, which they can activate in value creation (Sachs and Rühli 2011). In a humanized view, when stakeholders are a collective of two or more individuals who perceive and evaluate themselves based on shared norms, values, and goals (Schneider and Sachs 2017), we have to understand how in-group and out-group stakeholder engagement evolves. Therefore, we need to take a look at the relations and interactions in stakeholder engagement.

 Relational View of Stakeholder Engagement: A Human Interactions Considering stakeholder engagement as a relational process shifts attention to the importance of stakeholder relationships in value creation. Jones, Harrison, and Felps stated (2018, footnote 4): “We believe that in trying to understand drivers of firm performance, the level of abstraction that is the most empirically and practically useful is that of the relationship between the firm and a stakeholder group. As such, that is the level of abstraction at which our theory is pitched.” To understand stakeholder relationships, we need to understand human interactions taking place in these relationships. According to Kujala et al. (2019), value-­ creating stakeholder relationships consist of joint interests, the ability to collaborate, and trust. They argue that “instead of seeking to define what is valuable for whom, leadership should seek to understand value-creating stakeholder relationships and their characteristics (ibid., 131).” According to Freeman (2010), stakeholder engagement is built on the joint interests of stakeholders. They create the basis for stakeholder collaboration and interaction and strengthen stakeholder wellbeing and societal benefits. Shared history and experiences enhance relationships and interaction (Myllykangas et al. 2010). Kujala et al. (2019, 133) argue that “different stakeholders can have different goals and still be willing to work together” as long as “parties see value in collaboration and are willing to invest in it.” The ability to collaborate is essential in human interaction and relationships as it creates space for advancing both individual and mutual interests (Sachs and Rühli 2011). The ability to be responsive, be socially integrated, be empathetic (Garriga

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2014) as well as be able to interact, learn and change (Dentoni et al. 2016) are essential in human interaction and collaboration. It has been argued that being able to share information and learn from each other will transform a relationship from transactional to collaborative (Svendsen 1998; Myllykangas et al. 2010). It is up to the human actors to build relationships and to foster shared interests, engage in collaboration and create trust. Trust is both an element of the relationship and the outcome of successful interaction and collaboration (Kujala et  al. 2019). Trust in the firm’s stakeholder relations fosters the stakeholders’ commitment (Greenwood and Van Buren III 2010; Pirson et al. 2017). Stakeholder theory focuses on the trust that stakeholders have in organizations, which is called stakeholder trust: “the willingness of individuals (customers, employees, etc.) to accept vulnerability to the actions of an organization based on positive expectations (Pirson and Malhotra 2011, 1089).” As a basic precondition of becoming vulnerable, stakeholders ought to believe that an organization will not act opportunistically, i.e., is guided only by self-interest (Greenwood and Van Buren III 2010; Jones 1995). If stakeholders have confidence in the moral, non-opportunistic conduct of an organization and both parties share the same norms and values, stakeholder trust tends to be formed and cooperation as well commitment increases (Jones and Wicks 1999; Post et al. 2002; Ruppel and Harrington 2000). In a humanized view, we need to understand how in-group stakeholder interactions relate to intergroup relations and vice versa (Schneider and Sachs 2017). As stated above, stakeholder research predominantly considers an organization’s stakeholder relationships and therefore, inter-organizational trust. More research is needed, however, on how to define individuals’ social self-concepts in interactions with other stakeholder groups, and on how to simultaneously maintain trust within the stakeholder group.

 alue Creation: Economic-Value Perspective vs. a Multitude V of Stakeholder Values Value is a central concept in the field of strategic management, but little consensus on its definition and creation has been achieved (Bowman and Ambrosini 2010; Lepak et al. 2007; Schneider and Sachs 2017). In their thorough analysis on stakeholder value, Tapaninaho and Kujala (2019) presented four categories of stakeholder value creation: (1) economic value with focal firm orientation, (2) economic value with stakeholder orientation, (3) multiple value with focal firm orientation, and (4) multiple value with stakeholder orientation. The first two categories renew the traditional, neo-classical business view, where the firm is seen as a production machine, and the emphasis is on the firm’s financial performance rather than on the stakeholder’s inclusive value creation. Consequently, people are treated as ‘human resources’ instead of ‘resourced humans.’

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The last two categories are important in terms of humanizing the business. With respect to the third category, Mitchell et al. (2016) rejected the notion of a corporate single value object when considering the benefits of value creation for social welfare and suggest instead that “multiple considerations” of stakeholders might be relevant in a value creation process that incorporates social value (p. 258). Especially the fourth category, where the emphasis is on a multiple value perspective with stakeholder orientation, offers ample possibilities to study how value is created in stakeholder engagement and interaction. The understanding of what is valuable in stakeholder relationships has to be clarified separately for each stakeholder (Harrison and Wicks 2013). In this regard, Garriga (2014, 491) stated: “For determining what is valuable and how value is perceived by the stakeholder, we should consider that value is a subjective concept, is not a single phenomenon, is multifaceted and can be different for each stakeholder group.” All involved parties define how they understand value and which components are to be included for specific situations, contexts, issues, products, or services (e.g., Auster and Freeman 2013; Reed and Reed 2009; Roloff 2008). For example, Rühli et al. (2017) studied innovation in multistakeholder settings and found that participative stakeholder engagement is crucial for mutual value creation in health care. In sum, humanizing stakeholder value creation necessitates a change in the current business mindset from economic to multiple values, and from the focal firm to a stakeholder perspective. For example, Buchholz and Rosenthal (2005) proposed that intertwined relationships between organizations and their stakeholders are essential for harmonious and nurturing stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder orientation, together with a multiple value perspective, draws attention to the importance of stakeholder cooperation and reasons for broader value creation purposes, including the multiple needs, aspirations, and objectives of human beings. Human rights, for example, have proved to be an important issue in legitimizing both the claims of stakeholders and related business practices (Van de Ven 2005). By changing the language and narratives we use to describe business and stakeholders, it is possible to humanize the view of different stakeholders and their needs (Derry 2012).

Outcome: Hedonic Well-Being vs. Eudaimonic Well-Being Stakeholders’ interactions are considered to reciprocally value creating when the utility function for a stakeholder is positive while human beings pursue their specific utility function by maximizing their pleasure and minimizing their pain (Harrison and Wicks 2013), so-called hedonic or psychological well-being (Diener 2006; Ryff 1989). Jones and Felps (2013b, 227) propose that, “for publicly-held corporations in developed economies, the direct pursuit of social welfare, through a corporate objective [they, authors’ notice] call stakeholder happiness enhancement (SHE), should replace the profit motive as the driving force behind economic activity.” However, dealing with human beings as if they were an assembly of

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measurable variables does not acknowledge “the fact that most human beings are pretty complex,” as claimed by Freeman et al. (2010, 7). In a humanizing view, the focus is on eudaimonic well-being. Eudaimonic well-­ being is the realization of one’s full potential, not in an individualistic sense, but a universal sense (e.g. Haybron 2016). Ryff and Singer (2008) conceptualize six dimensions of eudaimonic well-being, one of which is positive relations with others, for example, the capacity for great love, empathy, guidance of others, and warm relations with others. Value creation for stakeholders then means furthering eudaimonic well-being by offering potential space for individuals in the social group to grow and do virtuous work. Recently, the role of nature in human well-being has been widely recognized. For example, urban nature can provide various benefits to people living in cities as green areas offer space for both physical and mental recreation, and thereby support human health and wellness in many ways. Heikkinen et  al. (2019) showed how stakeholder engagement related to urban stormwater systems created benefits for business organizations, the public sector, and the local community. They further argue that “stakeholder engagement can serve as a starting point for more open and participatory dialogue between various human and non-human stakeholders (ibid., p. 29).” While nature is often considered as the “ultimate” (Laine 2010) or the “primordial” (Driscoll and Starik 2004) stakeholder, its importance and meaning are often neglected in literature studying a human-centered business view. For example, Pirson and Lawrence (2010) developed a ‘humanistic’ conception of business organizations examining the viewpoints of strategy, governance, leadership, and organizational culture. We argue that examining the human-nature relationship by taking into account “the embeddedness of humanity in nature” (Glaser 2006, 135) will offer a possibility to further research on stakeholder wellbeing and thereby contribute to the discussion on humanizing business.

I n-Group and Out-Group Interactions in Stakeholder Engagement Stakeholders are mostly active in groups or organizations. Stakeholders as social groups need a justification to exist; they transmit intentions and purposes to make a useful contribution to human needs through their coordinated activities (Freeman et al. 2010; McVea and Freeman 2005; Sachs and Rühli 2011). To understand how humans engage in and between stakeholder groups, in the following, we rely on social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979; Turner et al. 1987; Schneider and Sachs 2017). Stakeholders as social groups are, in this perspective, two or more humans who perceive and evaluate themselves based on shared norms, values, and goals concerning specific issues (Schneider and Sachs 2017). The distinct nature of humans due to their individual experience, values, capabilities, interests, and

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emotions form a stakeholder identity (Rowley and Moldoveanu 2003; Barraquier 2013; Crane and Ruebottom 2011). Even though each human has different identities, an individual’s mind is influenced by the salient identity that influences perceptions of members of the same group and those of contextually relevant outgroups in the context of specific issues (Hogg and Terry 2000). The stakeholder identity’s salience process is inductive and deductive in intergroup interactions (Postmes et al. 2005): the inductive stakeholder identity salience process enables the perception of intergroup similarities in stakeholder norms, values, and goals. The deductive stakeholder identity salience process enables the perception of intergroup differences and concerning a specific issue (Schneider and Sachs 2017). Humans who deductively identify themselves with a stakeholder group do not need to have experience in interacting with each other. Instead, identification with the salient stakeholder group gives them meaning, while the inductive process results from perceived similarities and is based on regular interactions (Fiol et al. 2009; Postmes et al. 2005; Turner et al. 1987; Schneider and Sachs 2017). In frequent stakeholder interactions, humans are more prosocial and are more willing to cooperate (Gaertner and Dovidio 2000). The inductive process can lead to the salience of a superordinate stakeholder group as a collective with shared norms,

Mutual value creation process based on joint interests, trust and collaboration (dual stakeholder identity)

Similar (inductive: superordinated stakeholder identity) and different (deductive: specific stakeholder identity) perceptions for mutual value creation

Stakeholder identity based on shared norms, values and goals

Forming social groups

Humans (experience, values, capabilities, interests and emotions) Fig. 37.1  Stakeholder engagement based on in- and outgroup relations (Sachs and Rühli 2011; Schneider and Sachs 2017; Kujala et al. 2019)

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values, and goals with high trust if the superordinate identity is pre-salient (Schneider and Sachs 2017). However, the cooperation level might decrease if the specific stakeholder identity is in danger. If both the deductive and inductive stakeholder identity salience processes are prevalent at the same time, then individuals may identify simultaneously with both a specific and a superordinate stakeholder group as a dual stakeholder identity representation with a rather high level of trust and cooperation (see Fig. 37.1). In this perspective of humanized stakeholder engagement, we focus on humans engaged in different social groups. These social groups are shaped by stakeholder identities, which provide meaningfulness for individuals in the stakeholder engagement process for a specific issue. In this multiple value perspective, the diverse needs, aspirations, values, and objectives of human beings are respected and negotiated based on in-group and inter-group trust.

Future Research in Humanizing Stakeholder Engagement To support the research on humanizing stakeholder engagement, we suggest future avenues and novel methodological choices for research based on our discussion. In our chapter, we have offered insights into how individuals assign themselves to stakeholders as social groups. We elaborated especially on the in- and outgroup effect of specific stakeholder identities and the collaborative impact of superordinated stakeholder identity. However, we make a call for further sources of micro-­ level theories to emphasize the uniqueness of each individual in a stakeholder group. For example, the literature on organizational bonds (Klein et al. 2012) takes into account the cognitive and affective perception of individuals and how they relate to an organization’s value creation. Furthermore, motivation theories can shed light on the individual bonds with organizations based on the interplay between self-identity and regulatory focus as promotion or prevention of specific goals (Johnson et al. 2010). Secondly, we suggest that by changing the language and narratives we use in our research, it is possible to humanize the view of businesses and their stakeholders. An important theme here is the multidimensionality of stakeholder value. We argue that we need both a broader understanding of the concept of stakeholder value allowing for a multitude of different stakeholder values to show, and a deeper understanding of the social value firms and their stakeholders are producing. This refers to values beyond the economic or financial performance or outcome to social and human values such as health, wellbeing, aesthetics, and happiness, to name a few. By broadening the understanding of value creation, we may also come to recognize that humanizing business means giving a voice to marginalized or less powerful stakeholders who may be affected by the firm’s actions or have an interest in the case, but who have no power or voice to express their concerns. As the third theme in our humanized view, we proposed considering eudaimonic well-being as an outcome of stakeholder engagement. We encourage research that

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aims to understand stakeholder engagement as a mutual human learning and development process. For example, cases in the era of social innovation and entrepreneurship might shed light on the stakeholder learning and development processes. The fourth theme we suggest for future research on stakeholder engagement in humanizing business is the examination of how the salience of the natural environment can be recognized. The most urgent challenge of our time, i.e., sustainability, needs to be taken seriously in stakeholder engagement studies. We need to take into account the embeddedness of humans and the natural environment to further research on stakeholder wellbeing. Moreover, the natural environment is important since it consists of living organisms and is an end in itself. We argue that to overcome the narrowness the current view, a broader cast of human beings, such as ‘Sustainability Advocate Groups’ or ‘Environment Protection Activists’ who can represent interests of the natural environment have to be included in stakeholder engagement studies. This will offer a possibility to further research on stakeholder wellbeing and thereby contribute to the discussion on how the natural environment that supports human health and wellness in many ways is taken seriously in humanizing business. In addition to these suggestions, we want to raise the question of time and future orientation as an important issue in studying stakeholder engagement from the humanistic viewpoint. If we as stakeholder engagement scholars want to take humanizing the business seriously, we need to pay attention not just to the issues that are important in our current business environment but also issues that are likely to gain importance for future generations. As already mentioned, sustainability and giving voice to powerless stakeholders are issues that are likely to gain importance in the future. Besides, we want to emphasize the study of social and organizational structures and the question of how they shape the world we live in as an increasingly important and interesting topic in the field of humanizing business. We argue for the use of case studies, qualitative data collection methods and discourse analysis in this examination since we need novel methods to gain a deeper understanding of these themes.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter was to provide an humanized understanding of stakeholder engagement. In doing so, we first revised the assumptions of human nature within the conceptualization of stakeholder engagement, and defined stakeholders as resourced humans with personal resources such as different values, capabilities, interests, and emotions, which they can activate in value creation. After that, we took a relational view to stakeholder engagement to understand human interactions taking place in stakeholder relationships and value creation. Furthermore, we examined in-group and out-group interactions for humanizing stakeholder engagement, and discussed how to define individuals’ social self-concepts in interactions with

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other stakeholder groups, and how to simultaneously maintain trust within the stakeholder group. We argued that humanizing stakeholder engagement necessitates a change in the current business mindset from economic to multiple values, and from the focal firm to a stakeholder perspective. Finally, we called for further research to, first, focus on the uniqueness of each individual in a stakeholder group; second, to emphasize the multidimensionality of stakeholder value; third, to examine stakeholder engagement as a mutual human learning and development process; and fourth, to examine how the salience of the natural environment that supports human health and wellness in many ways can be recognized in humanizing business. Finally, we raised the issues of time and future orientation as well as social and organizational structures as important in studying stakeholder engagement from the humanistic viewpoint, and called for novel methods to study these themes. We can close our call for the humanization of stakeholder engagement with a unanimous quote: Even executives are humans! So why should stakeholders not be humans? Acknowledgements  The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Academy of Finland (Decision number 298663) and the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland (Decision numbers 320194 and 320206).

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Open Access  This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Chapter 38

Sustainability Reporting and Interactive Storytelling: A Genre Approach for Humanising Business Laura Corazza, Alessio Antonini, John Dumay, and Maurizio Cisi

Introduction Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother having been eaten by a bad wolf, was freed by a hunter, and both lived happily ever after.

If the story of Little Red Riding Hood were told as a shallow summary of the events leading up to an all-important end, it would probably read something like the quote above. It is a succinct telling of events, but what is the moral of the story? How can we be sure of what is good and bad? More to the point, how can we determine whether the end truly justifies the means? This is the current state-of-play in accounting. Investors want results. Managers want to disclose what investors want to read. And stakeholders are grappling to find information from alternative sources because it is clear that no one is talking to them sincerely. Stakeholders are simply passive witnesses to a monologue, whose opinions are only and rarely considered once a report is published. Freeman et  al. (2018, 14) argue that “Our accounting systems are targeted to investors and how managers can create value for them, not other stakeholders. If we L. Corazza (*) Department of Management, University of Turin, Turin, Italy e-mail: [email protected] A. Antonini The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK J. Dumay Department of Accounting & Corporate Governance, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia M. Cisi Department of Management, University of Turin, Turin, Italy National Research Council, Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth (CNR-­ IRCRES), Turin, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_38

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put stakeholder theory at the centre of the narrative about business, how should we think about accounting for stakeholders?”. This proposition pinpoints one of the critical debates in accounting today – the opposition between, and benefits of, narratives versus succinctness in corporate disclosures. For the prosecution, we have those who emphasise narratives, explanations and disclosures of salient information to a diverse range of stakeholders (Dumay et al. 2015; Czarniawska 2004, 2008, 2017). Arguing for the defense, we have investors, financial capital providers, regulators, and the European Commission, who are increasingly promoting policies that reward succinct reporting. In this chapter, we set out a case for the prosecution. We support Zyphur and Pierides’s (2019) claim that publishing only results creates a false myth of numerical reductionism. We argue that sustainability reporting can become a foundational instrument in a polyphonic dialogue between companies and stakeholders. At its extreme, it can become a tool for representing a multi-faceted reality; for collecting the voices of the excluded and underrepresented; and for challenging the status quo (Dillard and Vinnari 2017; Dillard and Yuthas 2013; Dillard et al. 2016; Brown and Dillard 2014). At the same time, we are fully aware that sustainability reports can also be used to tell fairy tales (O’Dochartaigh 2019). Known as greenwashing or window-­ dressing (Bhatia 2012; Diouf and Boiral 2017), these red herrings are designed to build an organisational façade as a way to recover from a situation that threatens the organisation’s legitimacy (Deegan 2002; Guthrie and Parker 1989; Lindblom 1994; Blanc et al. 2019). While reprehensible, the fact that so many companies engage in this behaviour during scandals demonstrates the there is a risk in storytelling of being abused and misused. By disregarding narratives instead, managers can strictly control what is disclosed, privileging managerial interests first, then shareholder interests, and finally, the information needed by stakeholders (Dumay et al. 2019). And stakeholders can only gain a limited understanding of how the company operates to achieve sustainable results because narratives keep stakeholders informed about business operations through facts, values, and decision-making (Freeman et al. 2018; Freeman 2018). A humanistic approach to business should foster interactions with and between stakeholders using the report as a conduit. Challenging the monologue of a report means to directly involve the reader as an active co-creator of the story or embracing a story from other viewpoints. For instance, interaction in a static report could happen by adding boxes of content to the report written by NGOs and partners providing their point of view on specific projects. Another interesting approach could be to give readers the option to select their preferred content through a non-linear story. Through the use of examples and the rich and diverse voices of stakeholders, interactive storytelling can be a way for everyone involved in an enterprise to develop moral reasoning (Werhane 1998, 1999). Storytelling is a specific kind of narrative that can help people to make sense of events. It is composed of a range of devices, such as structures, plot, viewpoint, character, and rhetorical devices (Beattie and Davison 2015).

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Communicating problems means coping with the complexity surrounding sustainable development (Weber and Khademian 2008). Researchers around the world agree that traditional measures are not sufficient to capture progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and that new and non-­ traditional methods are required, such as citizen-scientist opinions (Fritz et  al. 2019). Thus, now is the time to seize the opportunity and narrow the divide between practising and preaching with a more stakeholder-oriented and interactive form of sustainability reporting. A background on state-of-the-art practice in sustainability reporting and the current trend toward excessive numerical reductionism follows. “Sustainability reporting and humanism: a critique” discusses the existing literature on accounting and humanism. Our case is set out in “Defining a genre in sustainability reporting” beginning with the general context followed by the specific context of sustainability reporting standards. The “Discussions and conclusions” and “Implications for humanising business” sections end the chapter.

Background Today, the landscape of corporate sustainability reporting is a maze. Among the dozens of reporting standards and frameworks, at least six are well-established – the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the Climate Disclosure Standard Board (CDSB), the Integrated Reporting Framework (IRF), the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). Moreover, these frameworks are now being joined by roundtables, such as those offered by the Corporate Reporting Dialogue (2019) or Accountancy Europe (2019), and hundreds of other initiatives designed to help companies account for sustainability in all types of organisations, from for-profits to social enterprises (Grieco et al. 2014). What is common to almost all guidance is a trend towards numeric reductionism. This trend is also evident in public policy. For example, the European Commission’s Green Deal pushes the debate on the credibility of data on climate change, asking companies to prove their calculations using science-driven indicators. Science is wonderful, but it meets the information needs of markets and investors more so than citizens, NGOs, politicians, and local actors. With its Directive on non-financial disclosures (2014/95/EU), the European Commission has perpetuated numeric reductionism to such an extent that researchers are arguing that a result of its implementation has reduced the primitive communicative intention of sustainability reports with indicators (Farneti et al. 2018). Such is the emphasis on data-­ driven disclosure that many data analysts do not even consult the sustainability report; they simply determine whether a company is making efforts toward sustainability by reading a table or chart (Seele 2016). This explains why the sustainability scores and ranking systems created by Bloomberg and DataStream to replace

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narratives are attracting so much attention from researchers (Cubas-Díaz and Martinez Sedano 2018). What is surprising is that this reductionism is in contrast to the narrative turn of accounting explained in several works by Czarniawska (2017). For narrative turn, it is intended the progressive increase affecting the traditional accounting documents, with information regarding corporate’s risks, business model descriptions, corporate’s strategy overview, management approaches and descriptive elements of the business and the market served. According to Czarniawska (2017), a narrative, intended as an increase of amount of information about the business, delivered in the written form with qualitative descriptions, can help an organisation to collectively construct meaning, and circulating a narrative is a form of education that can help people understand the world’s complexity. This is why we argue that restoring narrative to reporting is important, and why sustainability reporting  – more than other forms of reporting – is the place where stakeholders should be able to find information about people, actions, procedures, values, and beliefs (Gray and Milne 2015, 2018). Unfortunately, the mess of standards and frameworks is creating a situation where sustainability reporting is increasingly becoming just another tool to fulfil the expectations of shareholders. Rather, sustainability reports should be educating all stakeholders on how companies are working toward sustainable development (Bebbington and Unerman 2018; Buhr et al. 2014). For instance, the GRI largely provides principles based on stakeholder inclusiveness to guide the quality and content of reports, but how exactly this guides reports to shareholders not stakeholders still remain an evident gap. In contrast, the galloping IRF boldly and proudly makes succinctness its bastion because its audience is financial capital providers. However, a problem can also emerge in the first scenario (Milne and Gray 2013). Current solutions to regulate or simply guide companies in providing narratives are simplistic and, most of the time, unsatisfactory. The GRI dedicates an entire standard to the disclosure of management approaches with advice on how to manage words, facts, and actions (GRI 103), but all other standards are either silent or, worse, they support a counterproductive, self-celebrative form of reporting. The narrative sections of a report are also less likely to be subject to audit and review and this, coupled with the lack of adequate guidance, has unfortunately given companies excessive freedom to use this space to execute impression management strategies, as evidenced in a host of studies on corporate disclosure following disasters and scandals (Blanc et al. 2019; Cho et al. 2015). Further, a last reflection can be made about a possible risk related to narrative, because they are less comparable than quantitative data. Proponents of pluralism and polyphonic debate find it extremely acceptable to have different perspectives on the same story (Dillard et al. 2016; Brown and Dillard 2015; Dillard and Vinnari 2018). Manager and investors might have a different opinion. The opposition between numerical reductionism and narrative needs in traditional accounting is also affecting sustainability accounting and reporting. Further discussions are needed to simplify and provide solutions, and this chapter wants to contribute to

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this, offering a genre-based approach applied to sustainability reporting, providing a critique to remind us that data are senseless without a story, and stories have morals.

Sustainability Reporting and Humanism: A Critique Unlike mainstream accounting studies on annual reports, studies on narratives in sustainability reports are scarce. Of the few there are, Beattie et al. (2004) analysis and evaluation of narratives in annual reports was motivated by the heightened awareness markets and investors were developing on the importance of narrative as a way to enhance corporate transparency and accountability. Rutherford (2005) subsequently found that following a genre-based approach is essential to understand what preparers intend to communicate and to let the reader able to grasp information not only through numbers, but also reading the narratives. One of the future avenues of future accounting research Rutherford called for was to compare and contrast the characteristics of different genres of writing, including regulated and unregulated narratives. Genres of writing is intended as non-fictional business writing that can represent a separate literary genre by itself, for instance, focusing on the form of writing, it seems to recognise that an annual report is not the same of a sustainability report, a consolidated financial statements, or an ethical code. The implicit assumption here, which we support, is that there are different writing styles and genres for both regulated and voluntary sustainability reports. Drawing parallels with previous research on financial reporting, we found that there are several commonalities in the work of Rutherford (2013) that can be applied in sustainability reporting, intended as a new literary non-fictional business genre. The elements of applying the perspective on writing genres to sustainability reporting include: (a) a model that incorporates all stages of a report’s development in a systematic, comprehensive and integrated way; (b) the need to embrace both technical and social dimensions; (c) the importance of the interrelationships between the expectations of users and preparers; (d) recognition by the company reporters that composition is a challenging process; (e) greater importance of context and dynamism; and (f) a new perspective on complex social problems. According to this elements, we think that a genre-based approach to sustainability reporting can empower stakeholders. According to Lehman (2017), this empowerment involves a change in reporting, that is deprioritising investors and financial capital providers and creating a richer, more encompassing narrative that another type of public that is represented by the stakeholders at large. More recently, Beattie (2014) has argued that the influence of sustainability accounting over the narrative turn of accounting deserves more study. A quite contradictory aspect is that in her work she explicitly mentions the IIRC’s Integrated Reporting Framework (the ) as a possible reformer of disclosures on business models and corporate strategies, but unfortunately this has never happened. In fact Flower (2017) has demonstrated that this increase in the narrative has not happened to the sake of sustainability issues, but on the contrary, the information on business

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models, corporate risks, corporate strategy have been increased to the sake of investors’ knowledge. Despite in Beattie and Davison (2015), we can find a well discussed application of genres in reporting, however, even that work does not go into the merits of sustainability reporting that remains a relatively neglected area of accounting research (under a narrative perspective). Only in the last few years have researchers begun to apply a humanistic perspective to understanding the communications in sustainability reports (Nazari et  al. 2017; Lin 2020; Yang and Liu 2017; Yu and Bondi 2019). Hossain et al. (2019), for example, draw on symbolic convergence theory to demonstrate that fantasy and rhetorical visions are a common thread in corporate sustainability reporting. O’Dochartaigh (2019) also refers to rhetorical fairy tales, while Dion (2017) claims that sustainability reporting cannot be intended as a narrative if the author does not recognise the importance of the plot and, hence, the plot should bring more meaning to the continuum between the past, present and future. Yet the full potential of sustainability reporting could be realised with effort on three fronts. First, a sustainability report, as a format, has always been perceived as monodirectional; even the GRI ask for an explicit involvement of stakeholders in defining the material assessment of the topic included in the report. Unfortunately, managers and investors can manipulate the materiality matrix, that is the output of the material assessment, towards the topic that the company wants to disclose, playing the game of changing the priority assigned quite easily, also considering that auditors do not check that part (Dumay et al. 2015). Second, guidelines offer little to no control over who receives the message or how the message is interpreted once received, exception due to requesting a feedback to a specific stakeholders, but this is usually on the generic aim of the report, and not on specific messages (Herremans et al. 2016; Unerman 2007). Third, there is a tension between practice and preaching. Control over the reader on the accountability duty provided by the sender of the message is like water in the desert. These days, it is tough to find a sustainability report that includes statements or declarations to supplement disclosures by NGOs. Instead, the credibility of the content relies on the auditor’s report.

Defining Genres in Sustainability Reporting A genre or genres? Sustainability reports are a type of “literary” work in the sense that, in them, we can find a story – a flow. There is a protagonist (the company), a detailed description of the set (the market) and an end (the annual results). Antagonists (competitors) may try to thwart the company’s endeavours, market conditions may have been treacherous, but the company triumphs in the end. All these elements are part of storytelling. The narrative form of storytelling in a sustainability report is notable because stories are crafted by authors to help readers make sense of events. Here, the author is a workgroup pseudonymed under an institutional umbrella, and the readers are stakeholders (Beattie and Davison 2015).

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From this perspective, sustainability reporting is, in general, a new genre that can be analysed. Literary studies are rarely seen as relevant outside the humanities, but there is a secure historical interconnection with the content industry, un umbrella concept that refers to companies providing mass media and media metadata. On the one hand, the study of literary expression and response sheds light on the different anatomies of literary works and their impact on readers. On the other hand, the content industry innovates by stressing existing practices and incorporating the lessons learned from a direct relationship with readers. Over the last decade, the humanities approach, critical studies and studies on communications mediums have substantively addressed some of the contemporary challenges emerging from socio-­ technological systems. A significant example is the influence of feminist theories, and critical theories in general, in the design of digital technologies (Bardzell et al. 2018). Another significant example is represented by the birth of disciplines and literary genres like ecolinguistic intended as the science of studying the language representations of natural phenomena (i.e. climate change), and it focuses on the relationships between the language and how the linguistic can potentially influence the ecosystem (Fill and Muhlhausler 2006; Fill and Penz 2017; Stibbe 2015). Similar to any literary work, sustainability reporting is the result of a tension between the practice and standards emerging from organisations and a cultural discourse that reflects on the scope and role of sustainability reporting. While sustainability reports are the result of regulations, standards, and organisational practices concerning communication and engagement with stakeholders and the public, scholars and researchers are providing new indications concerning best practices, emerging issues, and societal challenges surrounding the relevance of sustainability reporting. Here, genre studies can contribute by providing a general framework for sustainability accounting that highlights the relationships between content, audience, channel and production. As we already clarified, currently, most of the content of sustainability reports predominantly consist of an established set of data represented through numerical tables and diagrams. Preparing this type of content requires little effort by the author, but filling the gap between data and the underlying narrative requires a great deal of effort on the part of the reader. While narratives are a linear reading experience (where different lines/stories can be designed), graphic representations of data are usually fixed. To communicate better information using data, it needs that such data should be displayed with a free, unstructured exploration to the reader. Consequently, each reader can reconstruct his/her information in an unstructured way, if compared to a linear narrative where it is clear where the story begins and where it ends. This unstructured exploration of data amplifies the semantic gap between the data and its meaning, resulting in the need for prior knowledge and skill from the reader to interpret them properly. It is worth highlighting that ambiguity between narrative and data is not accidental but rather a deliberate stylistic choice. Establishing the right amount of narrative and data is an essential aspect of the reading experience, a gap filled by readers’ experiences and expectations (Eco 1979; Gerrig 1993). On first impression, data convey a sense of objectivity; data are factual and rational. The semantic gap in

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data-driven communications concerns precisely the rationale behind the author’s selection of what to include and exclude, which units and aggregations to use, and what it is worthy to be explained or what is left to the reader’s interpretation. Thus, the first issue we highlight concerns the balance between the commitment of the author to influence the reader’s experience giving a narrative containing the writer’s explanation versus a greater effort required by the reader to interpret the story by itself. In this regard, the overamount of data is called a data-driven communication, that can be supported by the introduction of elements of storytelling. Storytelling in data-driven communication matches the narrative of a story with data and data visualisations encoded and tightly linked to the story (Kosara and Mackinlay 2013). Similar to charts and graphs, storytelling allows the author to express a rationale, supporting the reader interpreting the content by using standard and clear identifiable elements of the narration. These elements are the essence, the actors, the roles and the events, that in turn, are bound by temporal and causal relations (i.e., a narrative). One of our first proposition involves extending sustainability reporting by introducing elements of storytelling. Although storytelling can be an essential tool for steering the interpretation of data, the introduction of a narrative is not without consequences for the author. It requires a commitment beyond selecting and preparing data to developing a standpoint about the data. The choice of a specific narrative is a double-edged sword because storytelling shifts part of the responsibility for interpreting the content to the author by reducing ambiguity, but increasing the risk of misinterpretation. One way to reduce ambiguity is to make assumptions about who and what is of interest to readers based on one’s understanding of the audience. In the case of sustainability reporting, the assumed audience should be a complex body of stakeholders with a wide range of needs and goals. Framing the audience highlights the second issue of this genre: the selection of a narrative and, therefore, of an audience. Finally, the message conveyed using a sustainability report presents two levels of complexity. First, sustainability reports have complex structures and should have complex narratives that reflect how an organisation operates within a socio-­technical ecosystem. Specifically, narratives should exemplify complex organisational structures, protocols, and practices, decisions and actions for reacting to a dynamic multi-scalar environment (i.e., from the international to the local). Further, they should explain the interweavings between short-, medium-, and long-term strategies. Consequently, one of the most crucial aspects for the editing phase of a report is to match properly, the content with the story with a logical flow of topics, that it is not always obvious in our society characterised by a plethora of data to be translated into new knowledge (Katifori et al. 2018). More specifically, who write a sustainability report should keep in mind that through interactive storytelling, the reader can find interesting information aggregating/disaggregating data using its point of view (Davis 2007). Let the data open to the public, and letting the reading experience self-decided, is a dramatic shift. First, it requires a greater variety of skills and a team of experts with a deep understanding of narrative and audiences. Second, it

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forces the need to build a consensus around a vision and then a narrative. Not committing to an interpretation means not committing to building a coherent shared view. This scenario highlights a third issue concerning the very existence of the message behind the report. Even combining data and data visualisation can be a first step in building up a genre in reporting, unfortunately this is not sufficient. The introduction of storytelling can be a solution in line with the current trend in data visualisation (e.g., data journalism is born as a trend in journalism where different data sources are statistically elaborated by the journalist, finding new knowledge and a news to be communicated). In the same way, the data interaction should include first the need to select an audience and further to assume the relevance and use of the report. Concerning the plurality of audiences, a solution can be found in interactive storytelling. Interactive storytelling provides a non-linear experience based on decision points presented to readers. It transforms the communication from a unilateral explanation into a dialogue. In this way, interactive storytelling is not a single work, but a collection of interwoven versions of a work. Readers then use the decision points to navigate the collection of works towards the specific version to meet their information needs. Interactivity also provides the opportunity to collect feedback from readers on what they think and how they use the report. Hence, interactivity provides the opportunity to re-frame the report as a live document that can be revised and extended at the convenience of the reader. Live interactive storytelling mitigates the issues concerning: (1) the commitment to a specific narrative; (2) the commitment to a specific audience; and (3) the challenge of complexity (van Enschot et  al. 2019). First, live interactive storytelling configures an open narrative field in which the content (like the length of a story) can be expand and reduced as a result of an ongoing interaction (dialogue) between author and reader. Second, a narrative field offers the flexibility of providing multiple narratives, each designed for a different audience. Further, combining storytelling and a plurality of narrative strands also broadens the accessibility of sustainability reports to non-expert audiences (Boy et al. 2015). Third, the combination of narrative and interactivity provides the opportunity for authors to represent complexity in their work, and for readers to explore that complexity through their own eyes, interests and sensibilities. Finally, an interactive report of stories should mitigate the risks of letting someone apart, with a generalised inclusion of all stakeholders in the narrative. A last remark must be made about the goals, aims, and, therefore, the uses of reporting. Sustainability reports are generally published annually as part of an organisation’s communication and sustainability strategy. From an organisational perspective, the report is a due-diligence activity. However, its underlying goal is of strategic relevance for steering the management of sustainability strategy. In this scenario, sustainability reports must support: (1) intra-organisation comparability (year by year), and (2) inter-organisation comparability (with similar organisations). The need for comparability is a crucial requirement in the argument for data-driven reports. Therefore, interactive storytelling reports must be grounded on an analytical framework for the comparison of different narratives.

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In this regard, a narrative can be confused with non-structured content, providing a degree of freedom to authors that will eventually impede report analysis. Indeed, a narrative can be instantiated in a wide variety of ways, ranging, for instance, from novels, romances, and poetry to comics and drawings. On the other hand, a narrative implies a specific set of elements that can be articulated freely, but that is also recognisable regardless of the result. A narrative must include actors and their roles, actions, and events, all articulated in a timeline and including causal relationships. The common elements of narratives have been highlighted by works on archetypes, prototypical stories, and narrative functions and characters (Booker 2004; Propp 1984). In conclusion, a narrative provides a flexible but structured framework for sustainability reports that could be effectively employed regardless of the complexity of the organisation. Further, an interactive storytelling approach provides the opportunity to: (1) establish a dialogue with the different audiences and collect feedback; (2) express the right message for each type of audience; and (3) explore a field of mutually supporting narrative streams on the reader’s terms.

Discussion and Conclusions What happens when we apply interactive storytelling as a framework for codifying sustainability reporting as a literary genre? First, we should address the question of whether sustainability reports represents a standalone genre, reflecting upon the differences that exist between a sustainability report and other forms of sustainability disclosure (or pseudo-sustainability disclosure like reports that should be developed on sustainability concerns but at the end are tools to communicate to investors). We should reflect, in fact, that as a result of the application of different guideline/standards/framework, the writer will obtain completely different narratives and editorial output. Consequently, we cannot affirm that a sustainability report is the same literary genre as an integrated report because the plots, stories, messages and audiences are different. With the exception of the GRI and CDP, which explicitly mention stakeholders as the target audience, all other standards and frameworks have been developed to suit the needs of investors and financial capital providers. It should be noted that, in the case of CDP, the user can choose whether to access to their guidelines as a company or as an investor. The CDSB and the TCFD were developed to communicate the impact of climate change on financial statements to investors along with the possible implications to risk and opportunity. The SASB standards were developed to inform investors about industry-specific sustainability problems with potential financial effects. Last, the Integrated Reporting Framework, published by IIRC, explicitly states that its interlocutors are financial capital providers. Therefore, data-­ driven narratives prioritise an investor audience. Second, there is prose. The GRI emphasises the need to explain a company’s management approach to material sustainability issues, but all other standards and

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frameworks encourage conciseness and minimal narrative (e.g., SASB, TCFD, CDSB). The IIRC’s treatment of this issue is unusual. Despite it promotes to disclose data on risk management and business modelling, on the other side it requires to be concise as a general reporting principle. However, this is done not for the sake of stakeholders, but rather for the benefit of investors. Last, the CDP’s internal structure specifically focuses on accounting for forests, water and climate change with the goal of companies, but its structure does not require to create a standalone report because CDP is elaborated as a questionnaire. Third, there is the content. Most of the standards, frameworks and guidelines adopt the materiality principle, derived by financial accounting standards, but in a different way. To draw a parallel with literature, materiality should represent the voice of the reader. Unfortunately, standard-setters recognise that materiality is not unique and, in the case of SASB and the European Commission, the trend of identifying double materiality is growing. Traditional materiality is company-directed; it emphasises what a company can do for society and the environment, whereas double materiality deals with how external social and environmental changes affect business performance and how organisations can exploit or cope with those changes. It is difficult to believe that, instead of putting stakeholders’ information needs at the core of reporting practices, future trends are moving in the opposite direction. Today, only the GRI explicitly involves stakeholders in the definition of materiality. Data-driven storytelling can be a solution independent of the standard or framework used to tell it that makes information more accessible to users. With interactive storytelling, the reader becomes part of the story, and the problem of comparability is overcome by developing a new definition of comparability itself. That is, the problem is not how to compare different standards, but to recognise herein the narrative part, like the comments of tables and all the introductory sections a structured discourse. This involves identifying the actors, the message, the actions, inside the narrative. Then, the author can offer to the reader specific reading paths. A reading path can be described as the way that the text, or text plus other interactive actions (like interacting with tables and data, enter in the table, select specific data to be analyse disregarding others, etc.), can determine or order the way that the reader will use. In turn, the reader will compare the different discourses provided in a sustainability report or in different sustainability reports, no matter the standards used to develop them. Narratives, in particular, become a powerful tool for developing a moral imagination around complex sustainability issues including from different viewpoints and interactivity can bring the reader inside the data obtaining new interpretation of the data. Of course, there will be barriers to adopting narratives as a sustainability reporting norm. Companies should accept that they must deliver information with an exact entry point. A book starts from the first page, and there is a clear identifiable flow of actions, whereas with interactive storytelling, the story is developed following the reader’s need of information, where the reader (that is a stakeholder) can enter in the story starting from different section. For instance, this can be exemplified into developing the discourse in narrative blocks, where actions/reactions, values/beliefs/actions and actors/actions are easily recognisable. Reshaping the logical

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process of writing a sustainability report can be costly but would yield benefits for more and different stakeholders – especially if creating a plot to explain how a story about the company efforts in dealing with sustainability issues and grand challenges has evolved across the years and the impacts derived. Digital interactive storytelling can be beneficial for bringing stakeholders back to their roles as gatekeepers and activists and to break down the walls of inscrutable companies. By providing data to non-expert readers and broadening knowledge of a company’s sustainability efforts, the process of preparing a sustainability report should change. For instance, it will be necessary to include representative of stakeholders in the editing phase, to understand a reasonable amount of reading paths. Investors will not be compromised; they can choose to read the data they want, but delivering the information they want will not come at the expense of other stakeholders needs. Of course, this process requires a radical shift towards open information and stakeholder engagement, that is juxtaposed to select information at the beginning applying a material legitimacy (Dumay et al. 2015). Conversely, the involvement of stakeholders in the editing phase can represent a first attempt to empower them and learn from them, starting an internal moral reasoning on critical issues such as poverty, hungry, inequalities, discrimination, etc. using different viewpoints (Werhane 1998, 1999). The views we present here are the first step towards a more sophisticated critique that applies approaches from genre theory, the social sciences, and the humanities to sustainability reporting. As such, our analysis suffers from a lack of concrete examples and applications. What is does offer, however, is a critique of the alarming signals coming from those who set worldwide standards for sustainability reporting. These trends are becoming embedded in public policy but run counter to the aim of rediscovering the human dimension of businesses.

Implications for Humanising Business Although accounting researchers have made countless efforts to restore the dialogic importance of reporting, the truth is that their efforts are vain. This does not mean that all is lost. But we should be aware that numerical reductionism is perpetuating a tendency to provide succinct information for people who have little time to waste on an in-depth understanding of the information being presented. Yet it is precisely through reading and making one’s own personal interpretation of what has been read, through empathy and one’s own experiences, that stories take on meaning. Different meanings. Because sustainability is a complex phenomenon, only through a different point of view can a reader gain a slight idea of the bigger picture. Therefore, from the perspective of humanising business, interactive storytelling can serve to help reporting flourish as a tool for exposing different points of view and for establishing a dialogue with the reader as a co-creator of the story. Reading a specific sustainability report, with the freedom of jumping from one data to another, exploring a story can stimulate imagination and critical thinking, which also benefits the business. From such different viewpoints, companies receive

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comments, can make observations about how their business is perceived and benefit from diverse opinions. Although reducing complexity is a business prerogative, interactive storytelling increases complexity. Readers can create their own different stories as they move through the content provided, which is not a terrible thing. For instance, some companies, like Nestlè and Heineken, are publishing reports types of interactive storytelling where the reader finds performance indicators alongside testimonials and the voices of partners, suppliers, collaborators telling their version of the story with external links to NGOs website etc. With interactive storytelling users can gain a deeper understanding of the content (Zhang and Lugmayr 2019). For instance, in sustainability reports of the company there are published data pollution, poverty, energy consumption, that can have a use that goes beyond the mere financial market and investors’ information need. These data are collected by the organisation can be fruitful as a snapshot of specific problems affecting territories. For instance, explaining the quality of life of remote rural villages where the company has started philanthropic projects, or explaining the difficulties of reducing Co2 emissions in a specific business fields, or it can be used to show problems affecting all similar companies, like the glass ceiling problem in academia. Such access to data can allow all the readers in creating moral awareness on specific problems. Let’s make a conclusive example. Who is interested in knowing more about the problem of glass ceiling can enter in the table of the report, sees the data for the organisation itself, the yearly trend, but at the same time, he can be redirected to an external link where the university dean explains the future politics about how to manage that issue (maybe a video), or again, the reader can explore data about other universities, data at an European level, or data on other countries. Here, the use of technology is grounded on user-design aspects, that it is to say, readers are placed at the centre of the discourse. Interactivity establishes personal engagement by encouraging the reader to explore data and discover information for themselves. Today, sustainability reporting is exclusively a passive reading, whilst with these type of interaction the reader is place at the centre for humanising business communication. Managers and investors will always find a short-cut to the results – but know that this at the stakeholders’ expense. In this sense, humanising a business must involve a change in reporting that increases its dialogic importance going beyond the mere financial legitimacy. Future directions of research must consider lights and shadows of such increase in interactivity. For instance, interactions can annoying, the design of reading paths requires people with specific skills in humanities and ICT to define storylines and the use of para-textual tools. Identifying best practices among reporters for creating a catalogue of examples and best practices can be a starting point to test the validity of specific technological choices, such as for instance, technical features (explore data, consolidate data), fonts, charts, mostly used to accounting for poverty, climate change, water consumption, etc. This can help sustainability reporting editors and programmers in designing the usability of those technologies from a stakeholder perspective. The reality is that, today, stakeholders are finding alternative sources information about companies because reporting is too boring, too succinct and too censored to

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meet their needs. So, if we want to say “The sustainability report is dead, long live the sustainability report!”, maybe we need to start criticising what is happening. This chapter is a first tentative step in this direction.

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Fritz, Steffen, Linda See, Tyler Carlson, Mordechai (Muki) Haklay, Jessie L. Oliver, Dilek Fraisl, Rosy Mondardini, et al. 2019. Citizen science and the United Nations sustainable development goals. Nature Sustainability 2 (10): 922–930. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-­019-­0390-­3. Gerrig, Richard J. 1993. Experiencing narrative worlds: On the psychological activities of reading. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gray, Rob, and Markus J.  Milne. 2015. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it? Of method and madness. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 32: 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cpa.2015.04.005. ———. 2018. Perhaps the dodo should have accounted for human beings? Accounts of humanity and (its) extinction. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 31 (3): 826–848. Grieco, Cecilia, Laura Michelini, and Gennaro Iasevoli. 2014. Measuring value creation in social enterprises: A cluster analysis of social impact assessment models. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 44 (6): 1173–1193. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764014555986. Guthrie, James, and Lee D.  Parker. 1989. Corporate social reporting: A rebuttal of legitimacy theory. Accounting and Business Research 19 (76): 343–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/0001478 8.1989.9728863. Herremans, Irene M., Jamal A. Nazari, and Fereshteh Mahmoudian. 2016. Stakeholder relationships, engagement, and sustainability reporting. Journal of Business Ethics 138 (3): 417–435. Hossain, Mohammed, Md Tarikul Islam, Mahmood Ahmed Momin, Shamsun Nahar, and Md Samsul Alam. 2019. Understanding communication of sustainability reporting: Application of symbolic convergence theory (SCT). Journal of Business Ethics 160 (2): 563–586. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10551-­018-­3874-­6. Katifori, Akrivi, Manos Karvounis, Vassilis Kourtis, Sara Perry, Maria Roussou, and Yannis Ioanidis. 2018. Applying interactive storytelling in cultural heritage: Opportunities, challenges and lessons learned. In International conference on interactive digital storytelling, 603–612. Cham: Springer. Kosara, Robert, and Jock Mackinlay. 2013. Storytelling: The next step for visualization. Computer 46 (5): 44–50. Lehman, G. 2017. The language of environmental and social accounting research: The expression of beauty and truth. Critical perspectives on Accounting 44: 30–41. Lin, Yuting. 2020. Communicating bad news in corporate social responsibility reporting: A genre-­ based analysis of Chinese companies. Discourse & Communication 14 (1): 22–43. https://doi. org/10.1177/1750481319876770. Lindblom, Cristi K. 1994. The implications of organizational legitimacy for corporate social performance and disclosure. In Critical perspectives on accounting conference, New  York, vol. 120. Milne, Markus J., and Rob Gray. 2013. W(h)ither ecology? The triple bottom line, the global reporting initiative, and corporate sustainability reporting. Journal of Business Ethics 118 (1): 13–29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-­012-­1543-­8. Nazari, Jamal A., Karel Hrazdil, and Fereshteh Mahmoudian. 2017. Assessing social and environmental performance through narrative complexity in CSR reports. Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics 13 (2): 166–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcae.2017.05.002. O’Dochartaigh, Aideen. 2019. No more fairytales: A quest for alternative narratives of sustainable business. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 32 (5): 1384–1413. https://doi. org/10.1108/AAAJ-­11-­2016-­2796. Propp, Vladimir Jakovlevič. 1984. Theory and history of folklore, vol. 5. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rutherford, Brian A. 2005. Genre analysis of corporate annual report narratives: A corpus linguistics–based approach. The Journal of Business Communication (1973), 42 (4): 349–378. ———. 2013. A genre-theoretic approach to financial reporting research. British Accounting Review 45 (4): 297–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bar.2013.06.006.

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Seele, Peter. 2016. Digitally unified reporting: How XBRL-based real-time transparency helps in combining integrated sustainability reporting and performance control. Journal of Cleaner Production 136: 65–77. Stibbe, Arran. 2015. Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. London: Routledge. The Corporate Reporting Dialogue. 2019. Driving alignment in climate-related reporting. https:// corporatereportingdialogue.com/wp-­content/uploads/2019/09/CRD_BAP_Report_2019.pdf. Unerman, Jeffery. 2007. Stakeholder engagement and dialogue. In Sustainability Accounting and Accountability, 86. London: Routledge. van Enschot, Renske, Iris Boogaard, Hartmut Koenitz, and Christian Roth. 2019. The potential of interactive digital narratives. Agency and multiple perspectives in last hijack interactive. In International conference on interactive digital storytelling, 158–169. Cham: Springer. Weber, E.P., and A.M. Khademian. 2008. Wicked problems, knowledge challenges, and collaborative capacity builders in network settings. Public Administration Review 68 (2): 334–349. Werhane, Patricia Hogue. 1998. Moral imagination and the search for ethical decision-making in management. Business Ethics Quarterly 3: 75–98. ———. 1999. Moral imagination and management decision-making. New  York: Oxford University Press. Yang, Jessica H., and Siwen Liu. 2017. Accounting narratives and impression management on social media. Accounting and Business Research 47 (6): 673–694. https://doi.org/10.108 0/00014788.2017.1322936. Yu, Danni, and Marina Bondi. 2019. A genre-based analysis of forward-looking statements in corporate social responsibility reports. Written Communication 36 (3): 379–409. https://doi. org/10.1177/0741088319841612. Zhang, Yangjinbo, and Artur Lugmayr. 2019. Designing a user-centered interactive data-­ storytelling framework. In OZCHI’19: Proceedings of the 31st Australian conference on human-computer-interaction, 428–432. New  York: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3369457.3369507. Zyphur, Michael J., and Dean C. Pierides. 2019. Statistics and probability have always been value-­ laden: An historical ontology of quantitative research methods. Journal of Business Ethics 167: 1–18. Laura Corazza  (PhD) is a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Management, University of Turin. She is also the Editor of the University’s sustainability report. Her research has been published in many books and peer-reviewed journals including: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Sustainability Accounting Policy and Management Journal, Knowledge Management Research and Practice, Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Journal of Business Ethics Education, and Information Resource Management Journal. Her research interests include stakeholder engagement, sustainability accounting and accountability in private, public, and social enterprises. Alessio Antonini  (PhD) is a Research Associate at the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi), Open University, and a member of KMi’s Intelligent Systems and Data Science group. His more than 30 peer-reviewed papers on Human-Data Interaction (HDI) discuss real-world transdisciplinary problems and practical applications for civic technologies, smart cities and digital humanities (DH). With extensive experience in EU and national projects, and current roles as lead investigator for 14 project work packages, his collaborations span urban planning, philosophy, law, humanities, history and geography.

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John Dumay  is a Professor of Accounting and Finance at Macquarie University Business School, in Sydney, Australia. He is also an Honorary Professor at Nyenrode Business Universiteit and an Adjunct Professor at Aalborg University Business School. Formerly a consultant, he joined academia after completing his PhD in 2008. His thesis won the European Fund for Management Development and Emerald Journals Outstanding Doctoral Research Award for Knowledge Management. John is a critical scholar who researches intellectual capital, knowledge management, accounting, corporate reporting and disclosure, research methodologies, and academic writing. John is recognised by Stanford University study as one of the top 2% of scientists in the world for 2019 and lifetime. In 2020 the Australian newspaper also recognised John as Australia’s leading Accounting scholar. Furthermore, in 2021 John reached more than 13,000 Google Scholar citations from over 120 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books. He is an Associate Editor of the highly regarded Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Meditari Accountancy Research, and a Deputy Editor of Accounting & Finance. Maurizio Cisi  is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Department of Management, University of Turin. His research focuses on corporate social responsibility, financial disclosure for and by SMEs, business networking, sustainable business models, business networks, sustainability accounting and financial accounting. His latest research has been published in Accounting Education, Knowledge Management Research and Practice, Small Business Economics, and the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. He holds several institutional appointments and coordinates the Master’s Degree in Accounting program for the University. He is a research associate of the Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IRCrES).

Chapter 39

Strategy Lessons from Shakespeare? Humanities and the Soul of Business Jared D. Harris

A focus on the humanities can yield direct benefits to business leaders and organizations, both in the short and long run. But understanding the true value of the humanities to business lies in recognizing that our experiences with the humanities put us in touch with the fundamental underpinnings of what business is ultimately all about, and in so doing, the humanities touch upon the soul of what a business truly is.

Introduction What do the humanities have to do with business? This important question can be usefully considered from a variety of angles, and analyzed and answered in a multitude of ways. In turn, an engagement in this question could certainly elicit many different opinions, varying personal preferences, and divergent expressions of belief. In this sense, one might simply see business as either related or unrelated to the humanities, and such differing conceptual positions are difficult to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ but instead represent differing narratives about the importance of the humanities in general or disagreements about the very nature of business itself. Yet as a practical matter, these differing views are being adjudicated in very concrete ways. For instance, on college and university campuses all over the world, this question is continually contested in the form of consequential budgetary decisions and resource allocations. It also impacts curricula; for both undergraduates and graduate students, what emphasis should be placed on the liberal arts, versus more vocational training like that of business? Within business programs, how much emphasis should the humanities receive? Institutions have come to differing conclusions, and J. D. Harris (*) University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_39

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these debates continue. One way to examine the relationship between the humanities and business practice is to simply look at the effects, considering whether or not a humanities focus makes for better business leaders, and therefore better organizations.

The Humanities: Good for Business In terms of the practical, affirmative case to be made for the inclusion and integration of humanities training into business education, the argument has been eloquently and passionately (and more extensively) made elsewhere. Essentially, this instrumental argument could be summarized as follows: exposure to the humanities produces more effective businesspeople and organizations. It has been argued that it does so in at least two ways. First, an approach to business that incorporates insights from the humanities adds value because a more tactical or technical approach to understanding business and commerce seems to be simply insufficient for the long run. Even so, many aspiring businesspeople approach their education and training vocationally, in which students tend to “just think in terms of the jobs they are preparing for” (Olejarz 2017), producing entry-level workers “with some of the technical skills they’ll need to secure jobs, but without having made the gains in writing or critical thinking skills they’ll require to succeed over the course of their careers” (Applebaum 2016). The allure of short-term readiness often trumps the more difficult job of investing in the longer-term skills that a humanities education can foster. Technological advancement plays an interesting dual role in this dynamic as well; on one hand, advancing technology tools (in software coding, for example) make entry-level technical job performance easier and more accessible than ever, but despite this immediate advantage, an over-reliance on developing a facility with those tools creates a vulnerability as those technical skills become outdated, and that same individual may later be left with a diminished ability to adapt. In other words, a vocational focus on tactical skills may help one’s business career in the short term, but does little to prepare one for business leadership down the road, and this dynamic can be exacerbated by the advance of technology itself. This suggests that humanities exposure and a liberal arts education produce more effective business acumen and leadership in the long run (Hartley 2017), a relationship supported by empirical evidence (Hill and Pisacreta 2019; Stillman 2019). Second, a humanities focus can positively impact business operations in the short run, as well. In the rapidly-changing world of business in the digital age, the ability to think about problems from a variety of standpoints and disciplines—calling upon insights from the breadth of disciplines represented in a multidisciplinary, classic liberal-arts education—will increasingly lead to business agility and responsiveness. Humanities and the liberal arts help individuals learn how to ask good questions, analyze information from many different sources, and process complex and ambiguous problems with flexibility and imagination. In turn, such insights and differential approaches to analytical reasoning can positively impact job candidates’

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attractiveness to employers (Pasquerella 2019), because such skills lead directly to improved business effectiveness and performance; multidisciplinary teams simply have fewer blind spots. Furthermore, under the best of organizational circumstances, a collaborative, synergistic approach can be achieved, wherein managers move beyond the simple coexistence of different perspectives, toward a truly expansive interdisciplinary analytical approach, where each individual’s understanding of the issues is expanded by incorporating the others’ perspectives. The humanities can serve as a key catalyst to achieving such an ‘interdisciplinary approach’, breaking down barriers between entrenched perspectives and offering familiar ground upon which to recognize the role of human interests and importance of underlying human values. As a result, the humanities can ultimately open up an organization’s perspectives to new opportunities, helping managers and business leaders better design and develop products that respond to real human needs. As companies work to better understand “the human beings represented in their data sets”, they can better serve the markets they operate in (Olejarz 2017), an idea that seems fairly intuitive. Examined more closely, however, this argument rests on a more fundamental and provocative claim: that an exposure to the humanities might allow individuals to ‘see’ things that other disciplines miss, suggesting that some of the more traditional ways of understanding business—the dominant lens of economics, say—embody views of human behavior that are abbreviated at best. As Morson and Schapiro (2018) point out, economics tends to ignore a number of critically important influences on human behavior: the effect of culture on decision making, the role of stories and narratives in explaining human actions, and the central role of values and ethics1 on decisions and actions. That is, the shortcomings of many economic models arise from a “want of human understanding” (Olejarz 2017), an absence of examining some of the very factors that ultimately prove most valuable in understanding the mysteries of human action and reaction. The antidote to such a blinkered view of human understanding? Engage in the humanities! Read some literature! As Madsbjerg (2017) suggests, the deep cultural knowledge businesses require arises not from sterile, algorithmically-driven market research, but instead from a humanities-driven study of texts, languages, and people. Accounting for and incorporating some of the deep, nuanced insights from literature and the arts can infuse economics-based models with more complexity and predictive power, and can lead to managerial flashes of inspiration on how to more effectively lead and manage. From this perspective, Adam Smith’s heirs not only include Friedman, Samuelson, and Keynes, but also Austen, Chekhov, and Tolstoy.2 Along these lines,

1  For a more direct and thorough examination of the impossibility of separating ‘business’ from its ethical underpinnings, see also Harris and Freeman (2008). 2  On this particular point, a long quote from the preface to the paperback edition of Sensemaking is particularly instructive. “Understanding real people is at least as important in economics as in any other discipline. If you don’t understand what motivates human beings, how can you possibly predict how they will act? Sure, you can simply assume that individuals act rationally and in their own self-interest. But even the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, considered and rejected that notion. To fully understand his seminal Wealth of Nations, one must also read his

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economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz suggests that anyone wanting to better understand economic cycles, income inequality, or macroeconomic forces and their effects should “turn to Steinbeck or Dickens” (Stiglitz 2020). The reason, of course, isn’t necessarily that Chekhov or Steinbeck placed supply and demand equations or specific analytical economic insights into their literature; rather, it is because literature itself is ultimately a humanist form, and therefore engaging with it reveals fundamentally important things about human interaction. As opposed to economics or astrophysics, for instance, the literary arts are “about emotions and human consciousness” rather than “data points”—and therefore, engaging with and discussing literature is “not only about dispensing information, it is also about bearing witness, grappling with the complexities of another” (Moody 2020). Such engagement helps one see and understand important business considerations that an analysis of the quantitative data cannot reveal on its own. So the humanities create instrumental value for business training and business practice, both in the short run and the long run. As such, when considered strictly from the standpoint of ‘what makes business better or more effective?’ the case for the humanities is not a difficult one to make. A humanities focus therefore accrues to a long list of other things that make more effective business leadership and business practice: investment in R&D, certain organizational designs and management practices, the development of industry-specific dynamic capabilities, productive engagement with key stakeholders.

The Humanities: The Soul of Business However, I want to extend this conversation about the role of the humanities in business by arguing something more fundamental. Sure, a focus on the humanities demonstrably benefits business leaders and improves business practice; good business outcomes can be achieved through exposure to the liberal arts. But the humanities are connected to business in a much more essential way than simply as a ‘nice to have’ that might boost a business’s performance or improve its customer service metrics, along with hundreds of other tactical influences and strategic decisions, from inventory management practices to incentive structures. Rather, humanities drive business in a more fundamental way that underlies these more immediate and tactical business concerns. The humanities are at the very center of business as an enterprise, as an institution. The humanities reveal the core of what business is ultimately all about. Business success is dependent upon its soul, and the soul of complimentary volume, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where Smith explicitly denied that human behavior could be adequately described in terms of people’s ‘rational choice’ to maximize their individual utility. Not only do people often behave foolishly; their care for others is an ‘original passion’ that is not reducible to selfish concerns. One needs a subtle appreciation for particulars, the sort of sensitivity that was dramatized a half century after Smith’s moral treatise by Jane Austen and her successors” (Morson and Schapiro 2018, vii).

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business is made manifest through the humanities. The humanities give us a lens through which to view and understand the most important things at stake in a business. As such, the humanities do not simply instruct us about what is good for business, they help us understand the soul of business. What is meant by ‘soul’? Appropriately, a number of liberal arts disciplines (philosophy, religious studies, great literature) have much to say on the subject. Here it is sufficient to employ the term to mean something more colloquial, but certainly consistent with insights from those fields: that for individuals, the soul is our true self, our fundamental self. It is where our values reside, and where we cache the insights that elicit our strongest feelings and inspire grit and meaning and motivate us to become who we are. The soul is deep. The things of one’s soul are the things that touch on our purpose and aspirations, on what it means to live what Aristotle described as ‘the good life’—achieving our deepest desires and enacting our most cherished virtues. Think of the soul as our most genuine and ideal self. It is this most authentic part of us that drives our strongest preferences, our goals, our passions, and our deep interests. The soul is our inner identity that engages in love, enacts courage, inspires sacrifice, and quickens the pulse. To truly understand what we live for, one has to look inward, to the great mysterious wellspring of our deepest self. To the soul. So what does this mean for business? One does not need to believe that businesses are themselves anthropomorphic, therefore possessing some sort of disembodied equivalent of an individual’s fundamental essence; perhaps organizations do and perhaps they don’t. Rather, one simply needs to understand business as a practical enterprise of genuine human cooperative interaction, a collective endeavor promoting human flourishing through value creation and trade. Business brings humans together to achieve their desires and create mutual value, and those individuals bring with them their own underlying deep desires and passions and interests. We engage in cooperative ‘team production’ in order to achieve together things that would be impossible on our own (Blair and Stout 1999). And those underlying objectives—the things we hope to cooperatively achieve in the first place, giving purpose to all this business activity—arise from individuals’ passions and feelings and profound human needs. In other words, business is fundamentally a deeply human enterprise. This is a key point, and a one with important implications about how to understand what is most important in business and what is less so; what is fundamental versus what is tactical. Business is not—at its core—a spreadsheet activity, or a forecasting activity, or a decision tree activity. Certainly these tools are important and useful, as a practical matter in the actual conduct of business. Sales targets, cost structures, rates of return: all are key to understanding tactical and operational aspects of business activity. But none touch the core of why we cooperate and do business in the first place. This idea isn’t entirely foreign in management theory. Good business strategy, for example, arises from an analytical consideration of both the market opportunities (“what will we do?”) and organizational capabilities (“how will we do it?”), bearing in mind both the external and the internal considerations for a firm’s strategic choices and actions. Along these lines, a focus on market opportunities involves an examination of external stakeholder demands and influences, a consideration of

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the competition and their respective structures and strategies, an analysis of the competitive dynamics of the industry, and an understanding of the market segment’s competitive lifecycle and state of evolution and maturity—all these external factors influence the prospects for success of the focal firm. In turn, a business must also look inward to the needs and desires of internal stakeholders, and also to develop and foster a set of valuable capabilities—an interconnected and aligned set of people, processes, and systems—that serve as an organizational engine for value creation, helping the organization create products or services in a way that is distinctive, difficult for others to imitate, and (ideally) sustainable over time. However, as important as the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of business strategy are, there is a more fundamental question to consider, which gives business strategy its meaning and touches upon its soul: a consideration of the ‘why’—why are we here? In order to address and answer this question, leaders in an organization must pay attention to considerations touching on more fundamental, underlying human values. What is the organization’s purpose? Why does it exist? What are the most important values at the organization, whether explicit or tacit? What non-tactical, deeply important considerations are important above all else to the members of the organization? These are examples of fundamental ‘why’ questions, the answers to which are “critical for understanding the strategy of an organization” and provide the fundamental, foundational “baseline for any strategic analysis” (Harris and Lenox 2013, 4). These questions touch on the values that motivate organizational cooperation and engender organizational loyalty, draw out workers’ best efforts, and create cultural esprit de corps. Tapping into values is therefore the crucial, primal task a business leader must engage in, in order to infuse the ‘what’ and ‘how’ considerations with meaning. Without a careful consideration of the values—the ‘why’—at the heart of an organization’s mission and purpose, the remaining components of that organization’s strategy constitute just so much hollow, tactical maneuvering. See Fig. 39.1 for a visual depiction of the important role of values in business strategy.3 Which brings us back to the initial question: what do the humanities have to do with all of this? I have argued that human values lie at the heart and soul of what a business is, but how do the humanities connect to those values? What, in other words, do the humanities have to do with business? The answer is: everything! As individuals, our own experiences with the humanities are what most directly informs our own values. This is why Steve Jobs, when introducing the iPad in 2010, referenced this idea, touching on this fundamental connection between business and the humanities in the context of discussing the secret to Apple’s success. He suggested that Apple’s capabilities in engineering, design, manufacturing and marketing were critically important, but were insufficient on their own. Rather, Apple’s phenomenal success depended more fundamentally upon its embrace of the liberal arts. “Technology is not enough. It’s technology married with the liberal arts, married 3  For more on the interplay between the three questions of business strategy—how, what and why—and the important role of values in the ‘strategist’s challenge’ of balancing and managing these three questions, see Chapter 1 of The Strategist’s Toolkit (Harris and Lenox 2013). Figure reprinted by permission.

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Values

What is our mission? What is our scope? What do we value?

Valuable Competitive Position

Opportunities What does the market demand? Who else, if anyone, offers this value proposition?

How do we create and sustain value?

Capabilities What are our strengths? Where might we have a competitive advantage?

Fig. 39.1  Values as a key component of business strategy

with the humanities, that yields the results that makes our hearts sing” (Lehrer 2011). Here Jobs was making an argument about the soul of business—and he suggests that there is something embodied in the arts and humanities that gets at the very core of what a successful business should be about. The reason the humanities are so deeply important for running a business—or for any other cooperative human enterprise, for that matter—is that, other than perhaps our direct life experiences themselves, our experiences with the humanities are the things that most directly and powerfully inform our values. The humanities inform our identity and help us discover who we truly are. They provide us a vision of what we aspire to, and open our horizons to what our expanded, reflective self could become. The humanities provide reference points to our hopes and dreams, and in so doing, give meaning to our lives that would be emptier without them. Consider, for a moment, the intangible but fundamental insights to be gained from philosophy, from religious studies and spirituality, from the arts, from great literature. When you tap along with the rhythm and hum the melody of a favorite song, when you sit in a film that moves you, when you read something that changes the way you see the world—these are the experiences that impact one’s ‘fundamental self’. These are the things that “make our hearts sing”. These are, in other words, the things of the soul. Think about the last time you felt inspired—not simply interested or attentive, but inspired—chances are, that moment or experience had something to do with the humanities. Our hearts sing when we exercise our faith, or view a beautiful piece of art, or philosophically reflect on the beauty of the natural environment, or become

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moved by the emotional impact of a beloved fictional character’s experiences and insights, or feel our spirits rise along with the chorus or bridge of a favorite song. These are the things that elicit deep emotion in our lives, and help form self-identity. These are the influences that shape us. This shaping, this self-molding and yearning for more—this is what makes us truly human. And what does that deep humanity have to do with business? Everything. Acknowledgements  An earlier version of this essay was delivered as an invited keynote presentation at “Human/Ties”, the September 2016 conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) held at the University of Virginia. The author expresses gratitude for constructive comments on this paper’s underlying ideas from fellow panelists Gene Schutt (University of Virginia Associate Dean for Development in the College of Arts and Sciences), Liz Smith (Chairwoman and CEO, Bloomin’ Brands), and Blair Labatt (CEO, Labatt Food Services). Thanks also to the editors for feedback on the final paper, and in particular Sergiy Dmytriyev, for terrific developmental comments and input.

References Applebaum, Yoni. 2016. Why America’s Business Majors Are in Desperate Need of a Liberal-Arts Education. The Atlantic, June 28. Blair, Margaret M., and Lynn A.  Stout. 1999. A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law. Virginia Law Review 85 (2): 247–328. Harris, Jared D., and R.  Edward Freeman. 2008. The Impossibility of the Separation Thesis. Business Ethics Quarterly 18 (4): 541–548. Harris, Jared D., and Michael J.  Lenox. 2013. The Strategist’s Toolkit. Charlottesville: Darden Business Publishing. Hartley, Scott. 2017. The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Hill, Catherine B., and Elizabeth D. Pisacreta. 2019. The Economic Benefits and Costs of a Liberal Arts Education, January 2019 Monograph. New York: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. https:// mellon.org/media/filer_public/82/fa/82fac4d2-­8e1c-­4b7e-­ba80-­5efbd396c6c9/catharine_hill_ on_economic_outcomes_1-­9-­2019.pdf. Lehrer, Jonah. 2011. Steve Jobs: ‘Technology Alone Is Not Enough.” The New Yorker, October 7. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-­desk/steve-­jobs-­technology-­alone-­is-­not-­enough. Accessed 15 Mar 15 2020. Madsbjerg, Christian. 2017. Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm. New York: Hachette Book Group. Moody, Rick. 2020. Humanism, Remote. The New Yorker, 13 April, p. 43. Morson, Gary S., and Morton O.  Schapiro. 2018. Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Olejarz, Josh M. 2017. Liberal Arts in the Data Age. Harvard Business Review 95 (4): 144–145. Pasquerella, Lynn. 2019. Yes, Employers do Value Liberal Arts Degrees. Harvard Business Review. Digital articles. September 19 (AN: 138924064). Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2020. The Nobel-Winning Economist Who Wants You to Read More Fiction. The New York Times Sunday Book Review, April 12, p. 7. Stillman, Jessica. 2019. Stop Bashing Liberal Arts Degrees. This New Analysis Shows They’re a Good Investment. Inc., March 25. https://www.inc.com/jessica-­stillman/new-­economic-­ analysis-­getting-­a-­liberal-­arts-­degree-­is-­totally-­a-­good-­investment.html. Accessed 25 Mar 2020.

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Jared D.  Harris is the Samuel L.  Slover Research Associate Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, academic director of Darden’s Institute for Business in Society (IBIS), and a Senior Fellow at Darden’s Olsson Center for Applied Ethics. He teaches courses and workshops on strategic thinking and ethical decision making to graduate students in business, military officers, leaders in education, legislative leaders, and business executives. His research centers on the interplay between ethics and strategy, and has been published in Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Journal of Business Venturing, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Journal of Business Ethics. Insights from this research have been highlighted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The New Yorker, as well as other media outlets in the United States, Canada, Germany, India, Portugal, and the U.K. Books include Public Trust in Business (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Strategist’s Toolkit (Darden Business Publishing, 2013), and Kantian Business Ethics: Critical Perspectives (Edward Elgar, 2013). His academic career follows a distinguished business career, first in consulting at several global public accounting firms, followed by a stint as a CFO for a small technology startup. Jared is an accomplished musician on several instruments and has a passion for the humanities.  

Chapter 40

Humanizing Business in the Age of Artificial Intelligence John Hooker and Tae Wan Kim

Introduction A humanized business views customers and employees as more than a means to productivity and profit. It cares about customers for their own sake and allows workers to express their full humanity while creating economic value. The age of artificial intelligence, however, is adding new complications to the challenge of achieving humanization. Intelligent non-human agents are replacing fellow workers, and sophisticated chatbots are taking over customer relations. This is more than automation. It is an expectation that workers and customers will increasingly collaborate and converse with smart machines rather than real people. What will this do to our humanity? Will it only add to the dehumanizing tendencies of a workplace dedicated to greater profitability and shareholder value? Ironically, a primary concern expressed in both popular and scholarly media is that workers and customers will humanize the robots (Lin 2016; Kwon et al. 2016). To meet their need for social relationships, they will anthropomorphize the machines. They will endow their robot companions with intellectual sophistication, ethical autonomy, or emotional depth that the underlying algorithms cannot deliver. Because machines are inevitably deficient in human subtlety and unpredictability, those who habitually interact with them may become similarly deficient. Their faculty for interpersonal relations, and ability to see themselves as others see them, may atrophy. The workplace may become less humanized because workers are a little less human themselves. Nicholas Christakis (2019) writes, As AI permeates our lives, we must confront the possibility that it will stunt our emotions and inhibit deep human connections, leaving our relationships with one another less reciprocal, or shallower, or more narcissistic.

J. Hooker · T. W. Kim (*) Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_40

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We therefore advance the thesis that humanizing machines dehumanizes the workplace, especially when machines are endowed with gratuitous humanlike traits that are inessential to their core function. This not only due to the subhuman capabilities of even very smart machines, but to our strong tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects and nonhuman animals. In this chapter, we suggest relating to intelligent machines by neither humanizing nor objectifying them, but by interacting with them in a way that suits their particular capabilities. We begin with an anthropological perspective. Our ancestors domesticated work animals for centuries, a process that generated unique relationships between humans and animals. Likewise, humans can, and likely will, create similar relationships with robots, particularly if we avoid a Western tendency to anthropomorphize that is rooted in the disenchantment of nature. The future of business with robots can be a new kind of ranch life. We then move to an ethical analysis. Just as humans have a prima facie moral duty to treat work animals in a reasonably decent manner, tamed robots will likely have a similar status. However, as work animals’ moral status does not measure up to that of humans, the moral status of robots, if any, should not be equated to that of humans. By introducing ritual activities involving robots, we can clarify their ethical status and provide guidance as to how their human companions should relate to them.

Humanizing Machines Examples abound of our tendency to humanize robots and AI systems. One of the most striking, and most frequently cited in popular media, is the honor bestowed on Boomer the battlefield robot (Carpenter 2016; Garber 2013). Boomer was deployed in Iraq to seek out and disarm explosives, saving life and limb. When Boomer met its destruction on the battlefield, its grateful soldier companions arranged an elaborate funeral, including a 21-gun salute and posthumous awarding of a Purple Heart and Bronze Star—even though Boomer was a relatively unsophisticated robot that did not interact with the soldiers in any humanlike fashion. Such relationships may be more likely to form in the context of stress and danger in a war zone, but similar behavior can be found in everyday workplaces. Workers at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation threw a retirement party for five mail robots that had been roaming the hallways for 25 years (Gorvett 2018). The festivities included cake, balloons, a farewell video, and a good-bye card containing affectionate comments from employees. Workers can also form attachments with “cobots,” which are collaborative robots designed to work alongside humans in a shared space. At least one study claims that an emotional attachment with one’s cobot leads to greater productivity (Yo and Robert 2018). A particularly poignant type of emotional attachment has been reported in nursing homes and other healthcare facilities. The therapeutic robot Paro, developed by the Japanese firm AIST to look like a baby seal, has been used in nursing homes since 2003 (Vitelli 2013). In one facility, “a number of residents expressed affection

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for the robot, stating, ‘I love you Paro,’ stroking its back, kissing the robot, and generally speaking to it as one would a pet” (Taggart et al. 2005). A more recently developed humanoid robot, Zora, can speak to patients. At a nursing home in France, where residents have dementia and other conditions that require round-the-clock care, “many patients developed an emotional attachment [to Zora], treating it like a baby, holding and cooing, giving it kisses on the head” (Satariano et al. 2018). These robots are fairly rudimentary, and Zora’s words actually originate from a human operator who types them into a console elsewhere in the building. Yet more sophisticated devices that converse with humans, sense emotional states, and anticipate human behaviors are under development (Görür et al. 2017). Early versions of such cobots are already on the market and, at the time of this writing, include IBM’s Soul Machines and Qihan Technology’s Sanbots. Soul Machines are “digital humans” with the “ability to sense, learn and adapt” (Soul Machines 2019). They are marketed for both customer care and workplace functions, the latter including personal and wellness coaching, onboarding, and various types of employee training. Sanbots are humanoid robots equipped with voice and facial recognition, video chat, speech recognition in 26 languages, and other AI capabilities powered by IBM Watson (Sanbot 2019). Workers can also find robotic relationships after hours, if so inclined. A variety of robotic pets are on the market, ranging from Sony’s Albo to Zoetic’s Kiki. Hard-­ working Japanese citizens can head home to cuddly “Lovots” whose “only job is to roam around the house, beg you for hugs and generally act as an adorable pet that helps you unwind after a long day” (Alpeyev 2018). Even robotic vacuum cleaners (“robovacs”) provide companionship. According to a spokesperson for iRobot, maker of a robovac named Roomba, “People get attached to them and think of them as part of their family. It’s almost a pet. It makes them feel like they’re not alone” (Kahney 2003). Companionship is available from androids as well. The multilingual robot Pepper, introduced in 2015 by the Japanese firm Softbank, resides in thousands of Japanese homes and is attracting attention in Europe as well. It can serve as a surrogate grandchild in a country where one’s children tend to marry late or not at all (Cornish 2018). Pepper can reportedly detect emotions by analyzing facial expressions and voice tones. The robot takes on workplace roles as well, including office receptionist, restaurant server, and customer guide or assistant. That brings us to the customer’s experience. If customers currently find it hard to reach a human being at a company, they will only see it become harder as AI-powered chatbots take over customer relations. Chatbots have become so sophisticated that California recently passed a law requiring that chatbots identify themselves as nonhuman (Kunthara 2018). Yet customers may soon have their revenge, as they increasingly insulate themselves with their own personal chatbots (Thiboudeaux 2018).

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An Anthropological Perspective Anthropologists remind us that there is nothing new about collaboration between humans and nonhuman intelligent agents (Gladden 2019). Intelligent beings of various kinds have long played an integral role in traditional societies, ranging from hunting dogs and beasts of burden to spirits and departed ancestors. It was only in the last two centuries or so that machines replaced beasts, and belief in spiritual forces faded, and even then only in certain parts of the world. From this perspective, the age of AI only returns us to the status quo. We should therefore have some cultural experience with relating to nonhuman intelligent beings. Yet it appears that we have forgotten the art. Traditional peoples understand that various kinds of relationship with animals and other beings are possible, depending on their capabilities. By contrast, industrial and postindustrial peoples, particularly in Western cultures, tend to see these relationships as either/or, as a choice between humanizing or objectifying. The phenomenon of pets illustrates this tendency. The modern conception of a pet seems to have originated in nineteenth century England, perhaps as an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of a middle class. A pet in this sense is an animal kept around the house that one scolds, praises, loves, and shares intimacies with, almost as though it were a human child. Pets serve as surrogate children in many households. The death or illness of a pet occasions intense grief or emotional distress. The owner may go to great expense to obtain a cure or arrange a proper burial, as pet hospitals and cemeteries abound. Most other animals, in the meantime, are objectified. Persons who recoil at the idea of eating roast cat or dog for dinner give nary a thought to eating beef or pork, despite the fact that pigs are more intelligent than dogs. The same perspective explains why dog regularly appears on restaurant menus in some Asian countries where canines are not kept as pets. Max Weber’s (1919) concept of the disenchantment of nature may shed some light on why Westerners—particularly those with cultural roots in Britain and certain other European countries—tend to be the most enthusiastic pet owners and are perhaps prone to developing a particular type of relationship with robots. Most traditional peoples have seen nature as inhabited by spirits, as “enchanted,” whence their efforts to control nature by invoking and appeasing those spirits. Western civilization, on the other hand, tends to see nature as a mechanism that can be manipulated by technology, with consciousness appearing as an emergent phenomenon in humans and perhaps a few other beings. This conception may derive from the Abrahamic religions, which recognize a single transcendent godhead rather than spirits that are immanent in nature, thus giving humans permission to control natural phenomena by their own devices. The possibility of technology is reinforced by the rationalistic Greek heritage, which gave rise to the sciences and provides the intellectual wherewithal to understand phenomena well enough to control them. This is not to say that other civilizations lack technology, as many inventions key to European development, such as gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press,

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were pioneered in China. Yet it led Western civilization to rely more heavily on the manipulation of nature as a coping strategy. If nature is disenchanted, then human beings are lonely outposts of consciousness in an unfeeling and perhaps meaningless universe of photons, quarks, and force fields. Historically, disenchantment (as well as individualism) led to the romantic movement and a search for the sublime in nature, a sentiment that persists in the form of wilderness values and environmentalism. More germane to our topic is the almost desperate search for companionship in a lonely universe. Aside from the anthropomorphism of pets already discussed, we see an intense interest in wildlife films and ecotourism, as well as perennial scientific attempts (so far unsuccessful) to show that we humans are not alone, perhaps by demonstrating that chimpanzees or dolphins are intelligent enough to use language creatively, or by discovering extraterrestrial intelligence. Western individualism, already briefly mentioned as a factor in the romantic movement, likewise supports the technological manipulation of nature and search for companionship. An individualist culture is one in which the unit of human existence is the lone individual, and one’s primary obligation is to oneself. It can be contrasted with collectivist cultures, where the unit of human existence is a collective such as the extended family or the village, and one’s primary obligation is to this collective (Hofstede 2010; Hooker 2003). Young people in individualist cultures are generally expected to declare independence of the family and strike out on their own, while those in collectivist cultures maintain organic ties with the family or village throughout life and can scarcely conceive of existence without them. While inhabitants of a collectivist society rely on family support for a sense of security, individualists often have weak family ties and must rely on the assumption that a technical fix will be available when misfortune strikes. Loneliness is almost impossible by definition in a properly functioning collectivist society, while it is a constant risk in individualist societies, and people may reach out for companionship wherever they can find it. Based on decades of surveys and other empirical investigations, the anthropological literature finds the most thoroughly individualistic societies in northern Europe (particularly the United Kingdom) and its cultural offspring (particularly Australia and the United States) (Hofstede 1983; House et al. 2004). One might see this as a result of industrialization in these countries, but one might also see their industrialization as a result of a pre-existing individualism and disenchantment of nature. One might object that people have long formed attachments to nonhuman animals worldwide, not just in the West. Yet it is typically not a pet-like attachment. A traditional practice in China, for example, was to keep crickets in a small cage to provide “company,” but there was no relationship as with a pet. One of the most storied and remarkable cases of animal attachment in a non-Western culture is the life-long relationship between a mahout and his elephant, yet even this is not what Westerners often romanticize it to be. A mahout may reveal that he talks to his animal and say that the elephant “loves” him. Yet he will admit in the same breath that the elephant would escape into the woods and abandon its master forever if allowed to do so (Hart 2005). There have been occasions when elephants have been honored

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with a funeral, but these were not elephants with which mahouts had a particularly affectionate relationship. Rather, they were elephants that were seen as particularly noble due to their size and power. In fact, mahouts may treat elephants in a seemingly cruel manner that would never be appropriate for a pet, for example by prodding the animal with sharp instruments as part of the training process. The treatment is particularly severe during a male elephant’s musth, when the animal becomes uncontrollable and may attack or kill humans around him, including the mahout.

Lessons for AI The mahout and his elephant offer a clue to why pet-like relationships were unusual even in the West until industrialization, and perhaps how we can avoid inappropriate relationships in the age of AI. The mahout is, after all, a trainer, and the elephant is a work animal. The experience of training an animal makes it hard to anthropomorphize, because it is so radically different from training a human child. Children learn language and other sophisticated behaviors almost effortlessly (toilet training excepted!), while the brute stupidity of an animal becomes obvious as one tries to condition simple behaviors with reward and punishment. Domesticated animals nearly always had a practical function before industrialization, and they were therefore typically trained to do something. The advent of machines obviated the necessity of training animals, and it became easier to anthropomorphize them. This leads us to two suggestions for promoting appropriate relationships with robots, particularly among Westerners. One is to involve workers in the training of robots. As with animals, this can quickly reveal their limitations. While there seems to be a popular perception that multilayer neural networks perform some kind of magic, they are nothing more than frameworks for parameter estimation, similar to that done in statistical regression, and moreover, they overfit to the data. As a result, the accuracy of deep learning can be remarkably fragile when one moves even slightly beyond the training set. Changing a few pixels in an image can cause a neural network to misclassify a school bus as an ostrich (Szegedy et  al. 2014). Workers may find it even harder to humanize such a system than an animal in training. A second and more general suggestion is that we should recognize that robots are, in essence, work animals. They should be built for a particular task, not to provide emotionally sensitive companionship to human workers. Chatbots that interact with customers should be designed as intelligent devices for product-related information exchange, without pretending to be human representatives. It should be clear to all concerned that these AI systems are nothing more than what they are intended to be. They should not be endowed with gratuitous humanlike traits, which may create media buzz in the short term but quickly become irrelevant and tiresome. Restaurants that employed the robot Pepper to wait tables found that the novelty of its humanlike traits quickly wore off, and its limited skill at its core task eventually required that it be removed from the job. A robot that waits tables should be designed

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well for this particular purpose, and customers should treat it as nothing more than a smart machine that takes orders and answers questions about ingredients and cooking methods. Giving it a humanoid appearance is silly and a needless nod to old science fiction movies. This is not to say that robots cannot or should not embody certain skills at levels approaching human proficiency, although this can require a good deal of discipline if humans are to relate to them appropriately. A robotic language instructor can be fully fluent in interpreting error-prone speakers and correcting mistakes when discussing a limited and predetermined topic. The system could be as effective as a human tutor, or more so, but the student must regard it as nothing more than a tutor, and in particular one that has no inclination or ability to form a relationship. A robotic psychologist could perhaps someday administer cognitive therapy as well as a human therapist, but like a human professional, it must remain emotionally detached and deflect any attempts to form a relationship, and the patient must respect this limited role. Robotic managers could perhaps someday be built with the ability to make decisions and rationally justify them, perhaps to the point of qualifying as an autonomous agent that has certain rights and obligations. This is a particularly challenging case for two reasons. Human coworkers must avoid any assumption that the robot possesses emotions, desires, or other mental states that normally accompany rights and duties in humans. At the same time, they must fully recognize that a machine with no feelings can be a genuine moral agent with rights and duties no less binding than for humans. Companion robots present the most difficult challenge. The more humanlike they become, the greater the risk that they will exacerbate the individualistic tendency to anthropomorphize. Empathetic robots in nursing homes, or even sex robots, may be suitable for carefully circumscribed therapeutic purposes, but any invitation to treat the machine as a companion should be avoided to the extent possible. When companionship is needed, other options can be sought. Animal therapy, already widely employed for the elderly and terminally ill, at least has the advantage that it does not add to humanizing tendencies that already exist. Yet no animal possesses the ability for interpretation, assessment, and pushback that are hallmarks of human relationships. This is, after all, one of the attractions of pets; they don’t talk back as children do, or judge one’s actions and motives as adults do. Of course, no animal (or machine) is capable of true empathy with the human predicament. There is no substitute in sight for human companionship, whether with family members or others. While family obligation may be less intensely felt in an individualistic society, there is at the same time a strong belief both in volunteer work (which follows from an emphasis on individual responsibility) and organized, systemic solutions to social problems (a form of technical fix). By leveraging and combining these two cultural traits, it is possible to design programs that solicit volunteers to provide human companionship to those who lack it. Many such programs already exist, operated by Elder Helpers, Senior Corps, Visiting Angels, Companions for Children, and countless other organizations. As for human companionship on the job, it is already declining due to social media and other factors that are unrelated to smart robots (Pfeffer 2006; Riordan and Griffeth 1995). The trend can be reversed by

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addressing the causes and designing a workplace that allows human friendships to form (Dutton 2003). The analysis presented so far may seem to overlook the glaring counterexample presented by Japan, a non-Western collectivist society. Japan pioneered and remains the world’s leader in relationships with robotic companions, and of course there are the famous cases of men “marrying” a video game avatar and a hologram (Lah 2009; Japan Times 2018). These are responses to a much-discussed problem of loneliness in Japan, most dramatically manifested by the hikkikomori phenomenon, in which people become hermits and avoid all social contact and employment for months or years at a time (Kato et al. 2018). Multiple causes have been identified, but one might see loneliness as fundamentally the result of a strongly collectivist society losing the basis for its collectivism due to rapid industrialization and economic restructuring. The West, whose underlying individualism already provided tools to deal with industrialization, had centuries to adjust, while collectivist Japan has had only a few decades. In addition, Japan is less completely family-oriented than most collectivist cultures, as it emphasizes loyalty to larger groups beyond the family, such as the company, the school, and even the nation. This allowed the extended family to give way more readily to the nuclear family as in the West, even while the changing economy was undermining company loyalty, leaving the nuclear family with a greater support burden than it could bear. Whatever the precise diagnosis, Japan is a truly unique society that may demand an approach different from that required in Western settings.

Ethical Status of Robots If it is reasonable to recognize robots as if they are work animals, that recognition entails several normative lessons. First, as a legal matter, it is not a far-fetched idea to use court cases about domesticated animals as a benchmark to clarify liability issues about robots (Schaerer et al. 2009). However, this does not give us a useful answer for how we should treat robots in everyday workplaces where there is no liability issue. We need to discuss the moral status of robots, if any, analogously to that of work animals. In what follows, we briefly discuss the status of robots as work animals with two standard accounts: sentience and sapience, explaining why the major standards have limitations. Then, we introduce a third account that we find promising. Sentience is typically defined as the capacity to feel pain. Obviously, work animals have this capacity. One should not hurt cows unless there is a considerable ethical reason to do so. Utilitarian philosophers such as Peter Singer use the standard of sentience to defend animal rights and liberation (1995). If robots are sentient like domesticated cows, it follows from the utilitarian/sentience view, which demands us to maximize happiness and minimize pain that we should treat robots in ways that minimize their pain. Are robots sentient? At this point, it is very unlikely that robots “feel” pain. One might suggest that although robots are not sentient now,

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they could be in the future. There is much discussion about whether artificial neural nets are analogous to human neurons. But if we take the rationale behind sentience seriously—namely, that we should minimize the total net pain—why should we develop robots that can feel pain? There does not seem to be a good reason. Thus, realistically and practically, sentience is not really a useful view by which to treat robots. Hence, sentience is not an apt standard that can be used to defend the analogy between robots and work animals. Sapience is a broadly Kantian capacity associated with high intelligence, self-­ awareness and reasons-responsiveness. Whether some non-human animals, like chimpanzees, have sapience is a controversial issue. We do not answer that question here. Primates are not typically used as work animals. Most work animals are not sapient or sapient in a low level. Robots can have domain-specific higher intelligence, but that does not mean that they have sapience. Machine learning-based robots, for instance, are a bunch of correlations. As John Searle’s (1984) “Chinese room argument” shows, there is no such thing as self-awareness in a computer, which just simulates reasoning in its seeming understanding. It is not plausible to say that machine-learning algorithms think. They seem to think, but the seeming thought is not a real thought. Because many machine-learning models are non-­ linear algorithms, they are not reasons-responsive. To be reasons-responsive, a decision must be based on reasons that a machine chooses. However, that is not how deep learning, for instance, works; we still do not know exactly how deep learning works and why its predictive power is often good. Logic programming-based robots are better in terms of reasons-responsiveness. How they make a decision is transparent to them and humans in a linear manner. Even it is possible to program a logic-­ based machine to act in accordance with some moral principles (for instance, Kant’s categorical imperative on universalization) (Hooker and Kim 2018). Such machines, perhaps, can have some agency, in terms of having some minimal ability to make an ethical decision, but are not agents that deserve full moral status, which requires machines to have some real phenomenal kind of self-awareness and personal autonomy (Hooker and Kim 2019). Setting aside self-awareness, some advanced robots can have domain-specific high intelligence, even higher than humans; otherwise humans would not use them as recommender systems. Perhaps work animals, too, have some domain-specific higher intelligence in the sense that they can effectively accomplish what they are trained to do, as algorithms trained with data can accomplish what they are trained to do. In this sense, there’s some analogy between robots and work animals. So, in terms of sapience, there is some analogy and dis-analogy between robots and work animals. Both work animals and robots share the intelligence aspect of sapience, but this aspect is not useful to give us lessons on how to treat robots. We should treat humans with respect regardless of whether they are of super intelligence or moderate intelligence. We do not owe super-respect to super computers. Intelligence may be a futile standard for our context. A third approach, which we find is fertile for our context, is a ritual approach. To understand the view, it is useful to look at the background of how this view emerged. In the middle of the debate about animal rights in 1970s, mostly led by Peter Singer,

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sentience was the dominant theoretical foundation to discuss the justifiability of animal liberation. Against that movement, Cora Diamond (1978) pointed out that sentience is not what we really care about when it comes to animals, with a striking question: “Why do we not eat our dead?” The deceased do not have pain or pleasure, so any hedonistic version of consequentialism cannot properly value our activities in the respect for our dead. The deceased would never be able to have interests, so cannot have rights to anything, if having an interest to something is presupposed to have a right to it. However, we express respect toward to the deceased in funeral services by observing many different, complex or small, rituals, depending upon different cultures. Are we irrational? Assuming that we are not, Diamond pointed out that interests, rights, or utilities are not directly crucial to status, but that there is another more fundamental dimension of moral standing. Diamond takes our attention to countless small rituals in funerals, dinners, and other special or common occasions. Think about the ways we pay tribute to fallen American soldiers in Iraq and how their bodies are moved from Iraq to the US to be ritualized with the Stars and the Stripes graciously wrapping coffins. Diamond’s insight is that those rituals, rules of manners, which could seem frivolous, significantly constitute the concept and the meaning of status: who we are, who you are, how we are to be treated, and how we should treat “others” prior to rights and utilities (see also, Buss 1999). One phenomenon Diamond observed about animals is that we refuse to eat our pets, regardless of whether they have a right to life, when we interact with them through social rituals (e.g., offering a funeral). By engaging in social rituals with our pets, we treat animals as if they had some kind of status. Return to all the stories we discussed in the beginning of this chapter about how humans interact with robots. One thread that weaves them together is ritual. When a robot dies, people offer a funeral, for example. So, by having some rituals with robots, humans invite robots to be assimilated with them in a unique way. The question is now: can robots observe rituals together with humans in a workplace? Ritual is primarily a behavioral activity, so robots can be trained to behaviorally observe ritual, without sentience or sapience. During rituals, humans can endow some status to them. Evolutionary studies show that “human beings, and only human beings are biologically adapted for participating in collaborative activities that involve shared goals and socially coordinated action plans (joint intentions)” (Tomasello et  al. 2005, 676), which are typically structured by “shared symbolic artifacts such as linguistic symbols and social institutions” (675). Robots do not likely have joint intentions, because they do not likely have any intention in a phenomenal level. However, they can behave as if they have joint intentions, by sharing symbolic rituals with humans. Pets do not likely have joint intentions with humans, but by being a participant in a ritual observed by humans, they become endowed some unique status. If humans tame an animal to be a pet, they give him a name and allow him to sit next to them at a dinner table. By doing so, the pet has some kind of status and standing. If humans tame an animal to be a purely work animal, not to be a pet at all, they do not usually give it a name but a number, and do not allow it to come inside a house. Of course, there is a spectrum between these two. Work animals are often

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given names even though they are not pets. The tamed animal in the middle has some mid-range status. What does this imply for business with robots? Companies invest valuable assets in rituals such as annual shareholder meeting, Chair/CEO inauguration ceremonies or welcoming ceremonies for new employees. Trice and Beyer (1984, 1991) conceptualized organizational rituals as rites of passage, rites of degradation, rites of enhancement, rites of renewal, rites of conflict reduction, and rites of integration. It is likely that an introduction of a robot to a workplace involves some ritual and other various types of rituals for other contexts. Businesses should carefully design and arrange corporate rituals (both special events and everyday rites) with robots, because they can make a significant impact on how people believe they should treat robots. In a circumstance in which treating a robot as a pet is not a reasonable option, giving it a pet-like name, for instance, should be discouraged.

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, we have discussed how to humanize business in the age of artificial intelligence. We maintained that neither anthropomorphizing robots, nor refusing to use robots, is a good answer. A reasonable choice is to think about how to treat robots through the analogy between robots and work animals. In fact, it is more than an analogy. Robots and work animals are both non-human entities tamed to work for humans. Using robots is not necessarily dehumanizing. Humans have lived with work animals for centuries. Taming animals is not the same thing as anthropomorphizing them. In a healthy ranch life, work animals have their own unique status, qualitatively distinct from that of pets, who we sometimes treat as if they are human family members. We do not deny the potential for robots to reasonably play the role of pets in some circumstances. In business settings, however, treating robots as if we have tamed the wild is a reasonable choice. This does not mean that we are allowed to treat robots brutally. Like humans have a prima facie moral duty to treat work animals in a reasonably decent manner, tamed robots will likely have a similar status. As work animals’ status does not measure up to that of humans, the moral status of robots, if any, should not be equated to that of humans. Humans can, and will likely, create analogous relationships with robots in business, through the processes of taming the wild of artificial intelligence. One might argue that drawing an analogy between smart machines and work animals is inadequate, because we can expect machines to become much more intelligent than animals. Machines can or will soon be able to compose music, converse with humans, anticipate and manipulate our desires, and so forth. Yet the problem of anthropomorphism is posed not by machine intelligence per se, but by gratuitous humanlike characteristics. An octopus is remarkably intelligent but inspires no one to anthropomorphize it in the slightest. While Max Weber might well have understood our drive to humanize robots in our quest for companionship, we can make machines as intelligent as we want, with respect to the task at hand, without making

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them any more humanlike than work animals. In any case, by drawing an analogy with work animals, we do not suggest that we should interact with machines in the same specific ways as with animals, using the same ritual behaviors. We only suggest that we take a cue from these interactions by developing relationships and rituals that are appropriate to the capabilities of the machine.

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Kwon, M., M.F.  Jung, and R.A.  Knepper. 2016. Human expectations of social robots. In 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Christchurch: IEEE. Lah, Kyung. 2009. Tokyo man marries video game character, CNN, 17 December. Lin, Patrick. 2016. Relationships with robots: Good or bad for humans? Forbes, 1 February. Pfeffer, Jeffrey. 2006. Working alone: Whatever happened to the idea of organizations as communities? In America at Work, ed. E.E. Lawler and J. O’Toole, 3–21. Palgrave Macmillan. Riordan, Christine M., and Rodger W. Griffeth. 1995. The opportunity for friendship in the workplace: An underexplored construct. Journal of Business and Psychology 10 (2): 141–154. Sanbot. 2019. Industrial. http://en.sanbot.com/industrial/. Accessed 15 September 2019. Satariano, Adam, Elian Peltier, and Dmitry Kostyukov. 2018. Meet Zora, the robot caregiver, New York Times, 23 November. Schaerer, Enrique, Richard Kelley, and Monica Nicolescu. 2009. Robots as animals: A framework for liability and responsibility in human-robot interactions. In RO-MAN 2009-The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication. IEEE. Searle, John. 1984. Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Singer, Peter. 1995. Animal Liberation. Random House. Soul Machines. 2019. Solutions. https://www.soulmachines.com/solutions/. Accessed 15 Sept. Szegedy, Christian, Wojciech Zaremba, Ilya Sutskever, Joan Bruna, Dumitru Erhan, Ian Goodfellow, and Rob Fergus. 2014. Intriguing properties of neural networks, arXiv 1312.6199, 19 February. Taggart, Will, Sherry Turkle, and Cory D. Kidd. 2005. An interactive robot in a nursing home: Preliminary remarks, Cognitive Science Society Conference, Android Science Workshop, 21–23 July, pp. 56–61. Thiboudeaux, Wanda. 2018. Personal chatbots are about to take over. Here’s what to expect, Inc., 20 December. Tomasello, Michael, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne, and Henrike Moll. 2005. Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (5): 675–691. Trice Harrison, M., and Janice M. Beyer. 1984. Studying organizational cultures through rites and ceremonials. Academy of Management Review 9 (4): 653–669. ———. 1991. Cultural leadership in organizations. Organization Science 2 (2): 149–169. Vitelli, Romeo. 2013. Can robots help care for the elderly? Psychology Today, 17 June. Weber, Max. 1919. Science as a vocation, originally published as Wissenschaft als Beruf by Duncker and Humboldt, Munich, from a speech given at Munich University. Translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 129–156. Yo, Sangseok, and Lionel P. Robert. 2018. Emotional attachment, performance, and viability in teams collaborating with embodied physical action (EPA) robots. Journal of the Association for Information Systems 19 (5): 2. John Hooker is Holleran Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, and professor of operations research, at Carnegie Mellon University. His interests lie in integration of AI and OR methods for optimization,  business ethics, ethics of AI, cross-cultural management,  and music theory and composition. He holds PhD degrees in philosophy and operations research.  

Tae Wan Kim is Associate Professor of Business Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University. He did his PhD in Ethics and Legal Studies at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. He studies AI ethics, future of work, data capitalism, and cross-cultural ethics. He is an editorial board member of Business Ethics Quarterly and Journal of Business Ethics. Kim served a program committee of AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Society and Ethics (2019). Kim is a committee member of the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations  in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy Systems and Halcyon Dialogue for Responsible Integrated Technology Certification.  

Part IV

Cultural and Geographical Perspectives on Humanizing Business

Chapter 41

An Anthropological Perspective on Humanizing Business Ann T. Jordan

Introduction Sociocultural anthropology identifies with both the sciences and the humanities. This is due in part to its origins. Anthropology as a field of study began in the late-­ nineteenth century as scientists in Europe and the United States struggled to understand behavior in non-Western societies through a scientific lens. They surmised that by marrying scientific principles with the study of human behavior in remote locations, they could make the same sort of leaps in understanding human behavior that natural scientists had made in understanding the so-called physical world. The goal of anthropology then and now is to understand why humans behave as they do, what in their behavior is panhuman and therefore natural to the species, what in their behavior is unique to a specific group and therefore cultural, and how human practices worldwide can be explained. Consequently, the anthropological study of business is, by its nature, a study of the human in business and presumes you cannot understand business without recognizing the important variable that is human behavior. Even anthropological work on business financial returns focuses on how this can be better understood when the human is considered. To improve the bottom line, leaders will be more successful if they realize that all involved, themselves included, do not leave and cannot leave their humanity at the office door. Instead management could consider their employees with respect and tap into their expertise. Management focuses on economic success and anthropology demonstrates that a human-centered approach improves their ability to impact the bottom line. In addition, anthropologists are trained to think holistically. When focused on a specific problem, they draw back from the specifics to view the situation in context, to consider its

A. T. Jordan (*) University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_41

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interconnectedness with the larger environment and other stakeholders. This broadens the bottom-­line focus into a more human-centered one.

Importance of the Ethnographic Method Much of the uniqueness of the anthropological worldview is both a cause and a consequence of the process of gathering data in unfamiliar settings as early twentieth century anthropologists were forced to do. Knowing nothing about the Trobriand islanders, for example, forced the anthropologist to go to the natural setting and meet with Trobrianders in order to learn about them firsthand. Prior to Malinowski’s (1984 [1922]) study, there was no thorough anthropological information available on the Trobrianders and no way to gather it from a distance. Roger and Felix Keesing explain: Whether the setting is city, town, village, or jungle hut, the mode of anthropological research is in many important respects the same. Most essential, it entails a deep immersion into the life of a people.. . . [The anthropologist’s] place and his task are in many ways like those of an infant. He does not understand the noises, the visual images, the smells, that carry rich meanings for those around him.. . . He can administer questionnaires to find out about the world he has entered little better than an infant can, and for many of the same reasons: he does not know what the questions are that have answers. (Keesing and Keesing 1971, 12–13)

Ethnographic techniques were devised to cope with the field setting, where every pattern was hidden and every experience unfamiliar. Fieldwork in such a setting is different from fieldwork in a setting in one’s own culture. Yet, the strength of using ethnographic techniques in a familiar setting is that they challenge the researcher’s assumptions. By guiding anthropologists to learn cultural patterns anew, the techniques help them delve below the obvious cultural familiarities. Not knowing to whom it is important to talk, one builds an understanding of the unfamiliar by asking questions of as many different people and groups as possible. Understanding the interconnections and importance of various participant groups is crucial to understanding the whole. A CEO cannot provide a detailed, 360-degree view of the organization when she only views it from her vantage point in the executive suite. One also needs the view of the employees in production, sales and marketing who are the “experts” on their portion of the organizational view. As Francisco Aguilera, an anthropologist who has been doing business consulting for decades, explained, anthropologists have the ability to begin their data gathering as an unbounded inquiry with no preconceived notion of what is important (Aguilera 1996, 741). They must discover the questions to ask as well as the answers.

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How the Anthropological Approach Humanizes Business The anthropological skill set and knowledge base that value the human in business include the following (Tett 2014; Sieck and McNamara 2016; Desjeux 2017; Morais and Briody 2018). 1. Culture Construct: The construct “culture” is a building block of theory and method in anthropology and important to the work that business anthropologists conduct. Anthropological definitions are legion but, in this chapter, “culture” will simply be defined as an integrated system of shared ideas (thoughts, ideals, attitudes), behaviors, and material artifacts that characterize a group (adapted from Hiebert 1976, 25). Culture is shared, learned, symbolic and adaptive. Understanding cultural groupings is a unique contribution business anthropology makes to the study of business. For example, organizational behavior specialists’ training is typically based in psychology and sociology. While many of these organizational specialists use the term culture in their analysis of organizations, they define the term in a way that gives it less explanatory power. Culture, from the organization studies perspective, represents one of the characteristics of an organization at the organizational or macro level analysis. Culture is seen as something an organization has that can be manipulated by the singular efforts of leaders. It is additive, one more characteristic of an organization. Anthropologists, on the other hand, see the organization as a culture and all the components of the organization’s structure, reward system, rules of behavior, and goals are parts of the culture. An organization is also a web of interacting cultures which can be internally nested, cross-cutting and overlapping and the organization is a subculture within larger cultural units. In addition, individuals are members of ethnic, regional, gender, and professional cultures outside of the organization. Cultures are shared and negotiated, not dictated by leaders. Every individual worker contributes to multiple cultural groupings in the organization and, along with the CEO, is a “culture producer.” Power is never absolute since subordinates create culture and hold power just as leaders do, although typically not to the same degree. 2. Holism: A holistic perspective, the ability to see the integrated picture, to pull back from the specific problem, event, or situation under study and put it in a larger context, is one of anthropology’s important tools in understanding business. Just as the anthropologists understand that culture is an integrated system, they understand how issues are frequently integrated with other issues so that to understand museum attendance, for example, one must look at use of space, types of visitors, and placement of objects. Not just museum attendance. Sieck and McNamara (2016) discuss how the anthropologist reframes and expands the conversation. For example, police violence could be reframed by viewing officer training as ritual or a police department as kin networks. Tett refers to this as “joining up the dots between different parts of peoples’ lives (2014, 133). 3. Emic View: Anthropologists are trained to be able to understand the “emic” perspective, which is the point of view of the individual subjects of our research, not

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just the view others hold of them. In organizations, one interviews and observes at all levels to get many points of view in addition to those of the organization leaders. In studying consumers, one interacts with the consumers, not just product designers, in the quest to see patterned group behavior. This gives one the fine-grained analysis that quantitative data cannot provide. We are trained to ­analyze not only talk but silence and not only what people say they do but what they actually do. 4. Ethnocentrism: One barrier to our ability as humans to understand the cultures of others is our tendency to mistake our own cultural behavior for natural, panhuman behavior. Corporations with interests in multiple countries recognize the importance of understanding foreign cultures but frequently insist on running their international branches with the cultural bias of the home office. Anthropologists have the skills to understand this all-to-human behavior and explain how it leads to management mistakes and product failures. 5. Comparative Analysis: An additional important insight is the understanding of how cultural groupings interface. One of the tasks of the anthropologist is to act as a culture broker and negotiate among multiple stakeholders, for example, between a Norwegian CEO and his local manager in Brazil. Anthropologists are ambassadors of cultural difference whether that difference be between employees in the sales department and those in the marketing department, between technology specialists who design the company website and the less tech savvy customers who use it, or between company employees in Germany and those in Kenya. 6. Analysis of Power Structures: anthropologists are trained to see informal and formal power structures. Tett (2014) states that CEOs avoid the mention of power as almost a taboo. Processes of social control include clearly stated controls but also controls transmitted in more subtle, silent ways. 7. Ethnographic Methods: While anthropologists are specialists in ethnographic, qualitative methods, they appreciate the value of quantitative methods as well and frequently incorporate them into their work as Gluesing (2013) did in her study of global organizing in an automobile company. Qualitative methods used in conjunction with quantitative ones tap the subtexts or additional information not always evident from the quantitative data. The goal, after all, is to understand human behavior. Gathering data in multiple ways increases the likelihood of getting a well-rounded picture of human life so that researchers can better understand the issues that impact the problem they are addressing. Anthropologist Daniel Miller explained that ethnography is more than a method: it reflects a commitment—a commitment to the people being studied, not just the objects; a commitment to understanding what people actually do, not just what they say they do; a commitment to study people in the context of their regular lives, not just a circumstance created by the researchers; and a commitment to understand people within the larger context of their lives (holism), not just in the context of the transaction under study (Miller 1998, 16–17).

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 ow Anthropologists Use the Ethnographic Method H in Business Some of anthropology’s qualitative fieldwork techniques and the ways they contribute to humanizing business are described below. Participant observation and treating employees with respect is the gathering of data about the daily life and customs of a people while participating, to the extent possible, in that life. This was the preferred approach to observation used by anthropologists studying unfamiliar cultures. We use it in business as well. For example, Julian Orr used observation to understand the work process of technicians servicing copy machines. He learned that the written instructions that the company provided for repair technicians to use in fixing machine problems were inadequate and repairs were thus unnecessarily costly. He observed two technicians fixing a particularly complex problem and learned that the process they used to solve the problem involved telling each other stories about prior problems they had encountered and solved that were related to this problem. In so doing, they eventually found a solution that worked. Months later at lunch, the technicians retold the story of this particularly difficult service call to other technicians, an event Orr also observed. In observing these behaviors, Orr was able to document the process of solving the problem and the importance of the interaction of the two technicians and their storytelling. Later, if asked to describe how they solved the problem, neither technician would have remembered the details of the situation as they occurred (Orr 1990). Pierre Bourdieu distinguished between modus operandi and opus operatum (Bourdieu 1977; Brown and Duguid 1991): the former refers to the way a task looks to someone in the process of working on it, and the latter is the way a task looks to that individual when looking back on it after it is completed. In the latter, one tends to focus on the task alone and not recall the complex process one went through to accomplish the task. Thus, the anthropologist who is observing the process of task completion must record all the details of the process, which will not be easily recalled by the participants afterward. This is invaluable in understanding work processes or, for that matter, purchasing behavior or consumption behavior. As a result of his observations, Orr was able to give specific, cost-saving advice for the training of technicians and for repair guidelines, advice that has become protocol for repair technicians from copy machines to software bugs. This is an example of the importance of treating employees with respect and valuing their expertise. Interviewing and looking for the larger context is a basic anthropological technique that is used in most if not all anthropological studies of organizations. For example, in a study of work teams across 10 organizations, the first step taken was to interview organization members to learn about them, their work, and their concerns (Jordan 1999). This began from the traditional anthropological premise that the researchers did not know the right questions to ask and consequently a quantitative questionnaire would not necessarily get to the truth of the situation. The goal was to get the individuals in the organizations talking in order to learn what issues were important to them. Each team member and the managers in the management

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chain above the team were interviewed using a loosely structured interview, in which all interviewees were asked to talk about the same list of topics: (1) career history, (2) company history, (3) teaming process, (4) content of team’s work, (5) personal definition of successful leader and team, and (6) perceptions of advantages and disadvantages of teams. As a result of these interviews, the research team learned that there were numerous barriers to success for self-managed work teams. These issues included lack of trust, poorly integrated organizational change and type of work. The project was originally designed as a study of the characteristics in leaders’ behavior that contribute to the success of a work team. As a result of these initial interviews, the team broadened the focus of the study to look holistically at all issues within and surrounding the organization that effect the success of the work team. Focus on the individual and his knowledge contribution, not just his output, was key. Had the research team begun with a questionnaire or other similar quantitative technique focused on leaders’ behavior, it is unlikely it would have learned about these larger contextual issues impacting leader success and team success. Later stages of the study incorporated valuable quantitative techniques to further define and understand the issues. Analysis of events and seeing cultural groupings and stakeholder difference: Specific features of an organization’s life can provide a window through which to view that life. In the course of participant observation, Helen Schwartzman (1989) and her research colleagues realized that, as observers in the organization, they were attending many meetings, and the meetings were a vital clue to understanding the organization. Schwartzman learned that staff members had different roles in the organization than board members and that the staff and the board were caught up in a battle for control. Each group viewed the actions of the other as evidence that the other was “out of control.” The details of this could be best understood, Schwartzman felt, by attending and observing what took place in their meetings. Staff and board respectively held their own meetings, and in their respective meetings the attendees described and interpreted events. Schwartzman found that in these meetings the two groups were describing different versions and interpretations of the same events. Thus, both groups were experiencing and generating a differing set of interpretations regarding the realities they all faced. Schwartzman was using the construct of cultural grouping of staff and board to understand the dynamics of this business organization. Analysis of Relationships and stakeholders and cultural groupings: Studying relationships provides another specific lens through which to analyze human behavior. In anthropology we have gathered much cross-cultural data in societies that have no formal legal systems; social relationships hold those societies together. Thus, we appreciate the importance of understanding social relationships in order to understand human behavior. Anthropologists were some of the first social scientists to focus on systematic social networks when they focused on kinship. Louis Henry Morgan’s nineteenth-century kinship drawings were early network maps of relations. W. Lloyd Warner, in his work at the Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works was interested in the patterning of informal ties among the workers, and he

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systematically gathered data on interpersonal interaction. This resulted in social network data and graphic depictions of network ties (Gluesing 2013). A common thread across many organizational anthropology studies is the significance of relationships, stakeholder perspectives and trust. In work on exchange systems, the work of both Karl Polanyi and Marcel Mauss provide insights. Negotiating trust among numerous stakeholders with different cultural perspectives and interests is a common subject. Friberg (2017), describes the position of Swedish mediator companies which mediate between universities and businesses. Using Marilyn Strathern’s theory of ‘cutting the flow,’ he studies how the flow of knowledge in a laboratory can be stopped, cut, and remade. Wan and Ip (2014) discuss how the Chinese practice of guanxi (built on family ties, principles of Confucianism and favoring personal bonds) impacts relationship marketing in China’s foreign banks. From the broader perspective, however, relationships are one piece of the larger puzzle, and the researcher is ultimately interested in how this network is integrated into the cultural whole of the organization.

Current Trends in Anthropological Work in Business Anthropologists have been employed by and consulted with corporations such as Procter and Gamble, WD-40, Coca-Cola, Safeway, Swissotel, General Motors, Google, Intel, American Eagle, Nissan, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Campbell’s Soup, Revlon, MARS, and Airbnb. They also conduct research on business from outside/ academic positions. Responding to the interests of clients, much of the early anthropological work in business focused on internal organizational processes, cultural diversity, organizational culture and change, and cultural diversity. The work made use of the basics of anthropological research: ethnographic methods, the culture construct, holism and integration. As organizational anthropology has matured, those trends continue to be bedrock in the field, but the twenty-first century brings additional concerns about globalization, technology, capitalism, and power. Below are examples of research that demonstrate characteristics important to humanizing business. Anthropologists are conducting more work that focuses on the large and complex internal and external environment of the organization. Baba et al. (2013, 18) propose applying new institutional theory to the study of organizations. They state that, “(n)ew institutional theory, with its focus on processes of institutionalization, could be an interdisciplinary approach to address major societal and economic issues”. Institutional analysis does not require the traditional perspective of a focal subject or a singular point of view but instead allows for actor-actor and translocal interactions and can reflect divergent perspectives and possible oppositional forces. They explore three analytical dimensions of an anthropological approach to new institutionalism: (1) actors, (2) interactions and (3) multiple perspectives. Three types of actors are found in institutional theory: individuals, organizations and societies (usually nation-states). Baba et al. suggest that rather than limit anthropology

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to the traditional role in institutional research of exploring rational choice explanations, its role should expand to analyzing different societal problems from an institutional perspective. They emphasize that “anthropologists could contribute to understanding behavior by examining each of the diverse perspectives attendant to a set of actor-actor and / or translocal interactions and their consequences at various levels of analysis” (2013, 18). Others are working with complexity theory. For Darrouzet et al., “the situation of complexity needs to be recognized as the empirical and epistemological background of most ethnographic anthropological work” (2009, 63). Just as complexity is a diagnostic characteristic of weather patterns and sand dunes where one cannot predict when a sand hill will start to slide, it is also a diagnostic of socio-cultural phenomena. In organizations, for example, the cultural and societal dimensions are apart from the formal organizational system with its regulations, policies and pay grades. They are the informal part of the organization and complexity theory is useful for analyzing these informal organizational systems. Sobo et  al. (2008), in a study of how implementation scientists in a health care organization approach their work and what issues they encounter, describe the health care organization as a complex adaptive system and explain the competing agendas of the implementation scientists and those their research impacts. New work also analyzes global organizing. Extending the use of complexity theory to look at organizational action on the global level, Jordan (2011) studied complex adaptive systems in the oil industry where the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was one institutional partner. Complex organizations, including nation-state governments, transnational businesses, and supranational regulatory bodies, are important not just for their economic might and consequent political power. They are also important for the ways in which they combine in intraorganizational arrangements so that what one experiences is a web of interconnected organizations. These organizations are all acting in their own interest but achieving their self-interest through partnerships with other organizations and other networks and through adaptations that appear beneficial to all network partners. This is a significant form of global organizing. Garsten and Jacobsson (2011) suggest that regulation is moving toward post-political forms of regulation based on consensual relationships. This narrows the conflictual space and makes unequal power relations almost invisible. They cite the Open Method of Coordination of the European Union as an example. Evidence of this can also be found in other supra-regulatory organizations such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Work on valuation in business anthropology draws from economic anthropology. Batteau and Psenka (2012, 75–76) suggest that business anthropology is well suited to further the study of how “economic progress” has brought normative instability to societies and flexible deprivation to workforces and consumers. Business anthropology can contribute to studying this by the (1) “development of the concept of value,” (2) the study of the “growth of tightly coupled networks circulating not only information and objects across the world, but also value and authority,” and (3) the “analysis of authority.” Moeran and Garsten (2012, 3) make a case for the anthropological study of assemblages of worth in a special issue they edit on how

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humans and organizations valuate and evaluate their lives. They assert that “the study of culture—is a study of the values that constitute a particular configuration of culture and the evaluations that are practiced by, and negotiated among, people.” Social organization, religious beliefs, artistic forms, trading relations, and so on are all cultural forms based on values and evaluation. Røyrvik (2013) writes on managing corporate values in Hydro, a Norwegian multinational, and Ailon describes the increasing importance of shareholder value instead of profit as the measure of corporate success. Garvey (2013) focuses on consumption and material culture in a study describing the relational values and “having, wearing, and showing” in furniture and clothing, for example the relationship between Ikea furniture and H&M clothing. More work uses assemblage theory as a guiding theoretical perspective. McCabe and Briody (2018) edit a volume describing the interaction among consumers, corporations, and nonprofit organizations in the U.S., China, India, Cambodia, and Nigeria. McCabe explains the use of assemblage theory to theorize culture change emphasizing agency. At its heart, assemblage theory allows one to analyze how people, objects, practices, discourses, and institutions align, disperse, and coalesce forming new, often temporary, arrangements. From this perspective, culture change is the movement in these assemblages. Examples of assemblage theory include: Ejiro and Onomake’s analysis of a brokerage assemblage in a Nigerian-Chinese business relationship; and Aiken’s description of an assemblage involved in introducing human centered design for spacecraft at the National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA) (Ejiro and Onomake 2018; Pahl et al. 2018).

Anthropological Insights That Can Help Humanize Business Anthropology has contributed a variety of insights, theories and constructs to social science understanding. Discussed below are three of the most important in aiding business academics and practitioners make business more humane.

Emic View: Respect and Learn from Employees • Expand the focus of study beyond leaders to include all organizational members. This validates employees. Acting on their advice can be good for business and makes business more humane. Business focuses on leader strategy, characteristics, and practices as a means of improving the organization. Enlarge that focus to include employees. • View all organization members as experts. Each is an expert in her own job specialty and knows advantages and barriers to the success of the job. She is likely to have important ideas on how to improve the operation of her job. When employees resist a change, talk to them to find out why.

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• Not all good ideas come from the top. Many bubble up from below. Act on what employees say. • Do not make assumptions about employees’ motives or behaviors. Learn from them instead. • Pay attention to all stakeholder points of view. Stakeholders typically considered in business are shareholders, organization leaders and clients. Include employees as an important stakeholder group. Consider the following example: In a company undergoing a complete restructuring by shifting to self-managed work teams for technical professionals, the leadership was experiencing difficulties with morale and cooperation in the newly formed teams.

By interviewing team members, researchers recorded comments such as this: See the big thing that’s going on in this environment is budget cuts…In order for teaming to work, you’ve got to believe that the top level is truly into it and truly involved and that doesn’t happen….the whole culture has always been lack of trust.

And this: The performance appraisal is structured for traditional management. It’s not structured for team environment…Bonuses, salary administration, salary planning, raises. All of those things are set up by HR in a normal…the policies are all written for normal (pervious structure) management.

And this: The nominee for team coordinator….everybody that was nominated, rejected it and refused…If we felt there was some recognition of what we’re doing and the volume of work we have to perform and the extra work we do that there be some appreciation and therefore there would be people wanting that job, rather than running away from it.

Analysis: In a rush to restructure, the organization had failed to restructure the reward system and employees could see that they did not have the time to fulfill their previous duties, for which they were still rewarded, and also take on new duties which were unrecognized in the old reward system. Giving employees voice provided the solutions to much of the resistance to the new structure (Jordan 1999, 17).

The Construct Culture: Look for Patterned Group Behavior • As described previously, the construct “culture” as anthropologists use it is an important contribution to the study of business. The anthropological construct is different from the one typically used in business. Culture is not something the organization has; rather, the organization is a culture with many subcultures and cross-cutting cultures. It is not determined solely by leader mandates. Culture is “made” by the actions and beliefs of all organization members. Managers can direct culture change, but they cannot control it and directing it is complicated.

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To understand organization’s culture again means listening to employees throughout the organization and looking for patterned group behavior and cultural groupings. • Good managers are culture brokers who learn the perspective of each group and then help each to see the other’s point of view. • Recognize that it is a human characteristic to assume one’s own cultural view is correct, and others are wrong. This is the human characteristic of ethnocentrism. Leaders would do well to become culturally relative instead. Consider this example of a corporate merger: Two companies, here named Abbotts and Bakers, merged in 1986 to form Abbotts/Bakers. Both companies manufactured, marketed, sold and distributed similar lines of nationally known products. In 1986, an investment group and the senior management of Abbotts put together a plan to buy Bakers, merge it with Abbotts and have the senior management at Abbotts manage both halves of the newly formed Abbotts/Bakers. Functionally this was a merger of the two companies by the holding company. However, in practice it was a takeover. Abbotts leaders determined that Bakers must radically change to fit Abbotts culture. Abbotts moved Bakers’ headquarters to the city and building where Abbotts resided. 150 of the 1,100 Bakers employees were asked to relocate. Only 9 did so. Two years after the merger, despite substantial attempts by management to promote the view that the two companies were equal parts of the same whole, the two companies continued to be two distinct subcultures of the company. Bakers culture had not changed even though only four of the original Bakers headquarters employees remained. Bakers employees were frustrated and stressed by Abbotts demands that they adopt Abbotts culture while Abbotts leadership could not understand the stubborn resistance to change among Bakers’ employees. For example, Bakers insisted on more expenditures for marketing than Abbotts felt necessary.

An Abbotts employee stated that: Abbotts was lean, tightly financed, people were lots of hats, aggressive in growing products, and profits. Bakers had made money two years out of 10 and was overstaffed, overfunded and under worked.

Employees at Abbotts stated that Baker’s had “too much money with no accountability.” A Bakers employee said: We as a department have been criticized about the quality of our people, about the quality of our work or other departments and we feel that it is unfair because they lack the understanding of what we do.

Employees of Baker’s explained that they felt like “stepchildren” were “treated unfairly” and that “everything must be done the Abbotts way.” Analysis: Bakers employees felt the leadership did not understand how their business, while similar, was not the same as Abbotts. A main difference was that Abbotts had no competitors for its products while Bakers did. Thus, Bakers needed to spend more money on marketing. The solution for this tension was for both sides to listen to the other. Leaders play an important role here as culture brokers who can help each side understand the point of view of the other and negotiate between them (Jordan 1990, 216). Consider this example from a multinational automobile manufacturing company:

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An internal product program was charged with engineering car seats for a set of vehicles that would be sold both in and beyond the US market. In order to keep costs to a minimum, the goal was to share the architecture and component parts of the seats across three partnering units. A chief engineer and representatives from three engineering groups each (depicted here as groups A, B and C) representing a unique seat design manufactured for a unique car model were tasked with developing a common seat design. Problems surfaced immediately.

An excerpt from a group meeting illustrates the conflict. Engineer from Group A: “We don’t understand the Engineering Group C requirements.” Engineer from Group C: “Why not? Three or four months ago, I took the requirements over there (to Product Planning) myself. I don’t understand why you don’t understand what the Engineering Group C requirements are.” Chief Engineer: “We need to get to common (a shared seat design) first. I understand … that Engineering Group A went through two of these seats recently. But we are taking a different view here on (this) seat program. Let’s take that (discussion) out of here (this meeting).” Analysis: Each of the three units (A, B and C) wanted to ensure cost and risk were minimized for their home unit and a new seat design would satisfy their customers. Each tried to protect their home units. Organizational cultural differences among the three groups contributed to the strife. In Group A, engineers present all technical specifications to suppliers who then make the seats. In group C, the building of the seat is an iterative process where modifications in design and testing occur throughout the process of building the seat and not all the specifications are dictated up front. Group A criticized Group C for incomplete specifications while real reason for the confusion was a difference in process, neither process being clearly better. Another problem was a difference in meeting styles. Group A assumed their role was to present a solution in meeting as was common in their group. Group A came into the meeting and presented their solution. Groups B and C, on the other hand, assumed a decision on the new seat specifications would be made by all three groups working together. Group C suggested sending a representative from Group A to Germany, location of group C, so that they could come to understand the Group C process. Group A refused. The situation seemed at a stalemate. The Chief Engineer ignored these problems by insisting that these contentious discussions be taken out of the room. This indicated to the three groups that solving these issues was not part of the process of developing a common seat. For the three groups, however, solving these issues was significant in the process of developing a common seat. In order to move the negotiations along, the chief engineer could act as a cultural broker. He would then help all concerned understand their own ethnocentrism and appreciate the cultural differences among the three engineering groups. This would also allow him to acknowledge and support all three groups in mitigating the potential costs to their home units in adopting a common seat design (Briody 2013, 241–242).

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Holism: Look at the Larger Context of any Problem • The organization is an integrated whole. Consequently, a 360-degree perspective on the organization is optimal. Each individual in the organization, including the CEO, has only a partial view of the organization. It is as if each is sitting in a closet and the closet door is only partially open. One can see only that part of the organization that is visible through that partially open door. Therefore, leadership needs to consult organizational members at all levels of the organization and in all organization functions in order to get an understanding of the other parts of the organization. • Place the organization in its larger environment and look outside the organization to understand its larger context. Integration in the organization can mean considering how a structural change such as the one described in the self-managed work team example will require change in every part of the organization, including the reward structure. Placing the organization in its larger context requires understanding the marketing issues for Bakers in the merger example and the larger cultural environment of each engineering group in the car seat example. This kind of thinking helps to foreground relevant issues from the larger context and understand employees’ concerns. Better understanding of employees’ concerns helps humanize business.

Conclusion Consequently, in the study of a business problem, anthropologists gather data by (1) looking at the larger, holistic context; (2) interviewing individuals from all relevant stakeholder groups in order to understand the interconnectedness of stakeholder issues, identify cultural patterns, promote intercultural knowledge, and bring under-­ represented groups into the discussion; (3) viewing the worker on the shop floor as just as much an expert on the workings of the organization as the CEO in order to bring every voice to the table; and (4) understanding that, while data gathered quantitatively on the end user and the employee is important, it is thin in providing understanding when not accompanied by the rich, contextual data accumulated in time spent with these stakeholders. Thus, from the perspective of business, the anthropological approach is one that “humanizes” business. From an anthropological perspective, it is one that provides valuable insight into the workings of any human grouping.

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References Aguilera, Francisco E. 1996. Is Anthropology Good for the Company? American Anthropologist 98 (4): 735–742. Baba, Marietta L., Jeanette Blomberg, Christine LaBond, and Inez Adams. 2013. New Institutional Approaches to Formal Organizations. In A Companion to Organizational Anthropology, ed. D. Douglas Caulkins and Ann T. Jordan, 74–97. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Batteau, Allen W., and Carolyn E. Psenka. 2012. Horizons of Business Anthropology in a World of Flexible Accumulation. Journal of Business Anthropology 1 (1): 72–90. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Briody, Elizabeth. 2013. Managing Conflict on Organizational Partnerships. In A Companion to Organizational Anthropology, ed. D. Douglas Caulkins and Ann T. Jordan, 236–256. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid. 1991. Organizational Learning and Communities-of-­ Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation. Organization Science 2 (1): 40–57. Darrouzet, Christopher, Helga Wild, and Susann Wilkinson. 2009. Participatory Ethnography at Work: Practicing in the Puzzle Palaces of a Large, Complex Healthcare Organization. In Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter: Reflections on Research in and of Corporations, ed. Melissa Cefkin, 61–94. New York: Berghahn Books. Desjeux, Dominique. 2017. The Strength of Anthropology. Anthropology Newsletter, November 17. Ejiro, U., and O.  Onomake. 2018. Relationship Building: Nigerian Entrepreneurs, Business Networks, and Chinese Counterparts. In Cultural Change from a Business Anthropology Perspective, ed. Maryann McCabe and Elizabeth K.  Briody, 187–210. Lanham: Lexington Books. Friberg, Torbjörn. 2017. The (Re)making of Flow: Mediator Companies and Knowledge Production. Journal of Business Anthropology 6 (2): 199–217. Garsten, Christina, and Kerstin Jacobsson. 2011. Post-political Regulation: Soft Power and Post-­ political Visions in Global Governance. Critical Sociology 39 (3): 421–437. Garvey, Pauline. 2013. ‘Ikea Sofas Are Like H&M Trousers:’ The Potential of Sensuous Signs. Journal of Business Anthropology 2 (1): 75–92. Gluesing, Julia. 2013. A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding Global Networked Organizations. In A Companion to Organizational Anthropology, ed. D. Douglas Caulkins and Ann T. Jordan, 167–192. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Hiebert, Paul G. 1976. Cultural Anthropology. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. Jordan, Ann T. 1990. Organizational Culture and Culture Change. In Cross-Cultural Management and Organizational Culture, Studies in Third World Societies No. 42, ed. Tomoko Hamada and Ann Jordan, 209–226. Williamsburg: College of William and Mary. ———. 1999. An Anthropological Approach to the Study of Organizational Change: The Move to Self-Managed Work Teams. Practicing Anthropology 21 (4): 14–19. ———. 2011. The Making of a Modern Kingdom: Globalization and Change in Saudi Arabia. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Keesing, Roger M., and Felix M.  Keesing. 1971. New Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1984 [1922]. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Long Grove: Waveland Press. McCabe, Maryann, and Elizabeth Briody, eds. 2018. Cultural Change from a Business Anthropology Perspective. Lanham: Lexington Books. Miller, Daniel, ed. 1998. Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moeran, Brian, and Christina Garsten. 2012. What’s in a Name? Journal of Business Anthropology 1 (1): 1–19.

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Morais, Robert J., and Elizabeth K. Briody. 2018. Business is Booming for Business Anthropology. American Anthropological Association Blog, February 2. Orr, Julian E. 1990. Sharing Knowledge, Celebrating Identity: Community Memory in A Service Culture. In Collective Remembering, ed. D. Middleton and D. Edwards, 169–189. London: Sage. Røyrvik, Emil A. 2013. Incarnation Inc.: Managing Corporate Values. Journal of Business Anthropology 2 (1): 9–32. Pahl, Shane, Angela Ramer, and Jo Aiken. 2018. Organizational Change from the Inside: Negotiating the Dual Identity of Employee and Ethnographer. In Cultural Change from a Business Anthropology Perspective, ed. Maryann McCabe and Elizabeth K. Briody, 235–270. Lanham: Lexington Books. Sieck, Kate, and Laura McNamara. 2016. Ethnography/Organizations & Change. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings 2016: 2–15. Schwartzman, Helen B. 1989. The Meeting: Gatherings in Organizations and Communities. New York: Plenum Press. Sobo, Elisha, Candice Bowman, and Allen Gifford. 2008. Behind the Scenes in health careimprovement: The complex structures and emergent strategies of Implementation Science. Social Science & Medicine 67 (10): 1530–1540. Tett, Jillian. 2014. Anthropology and Power to the People? Journal of Business Anthropology 3 (1): 132–135. Wan, Adolphus Yee-Yin, and Marco Pui-Lam Ip. 2014. Guanxi in Relationship Marketing of China’s Foreign Banks: A Marketing Research to Echo Business Anthropology. International Journal of Business Anthropology 5 (2): 47–66. Ann T. Jordan is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of North Texas. She is an applied anthropologist who specializes in business anthropology, especially organizational anthropology. Her work includes studies of health care systems, organizational culture and change, mergers, self-managed work teams, and global organizational networks. Her current research is on emergent organizational forms in political movements. Her publications include books on business and organizational anthropology, globalization in Saudi Arabia, and Native American religion. Recent publications include “Business Anthropology” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Chicago: Oxford University Press. Published in October, 2019. doi:https://doi. org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.4. She can be reached at [email protected].  

Chapter 42

A Nordic Perspective on Humanizing Business Robert Strand

Sustainable Vikings! While Vikings of the past are associated with seafaring and pillaging, the modern-­ day Vikings of the Nordics are global sustainability leaders. These modern-day Vikings have constructed companies and business practices that directly support the ideals of humanism. I am currently working on a book by the title Sustainable Vikings: Nordic Leadership in Sustainable Capitalism. In this chapter, I draw out key points from my in-progress book and give specific attention to humanizing business in the Nordic context. I will come to focus more directly on the combination of Nordic attention and competencies in systems thinking and humanism. I have come to realize the Nordics have effectively put in practice what can be best described as systematized humanism. This idea of systems-level thinking may, on the surface, seem counter the interpersonal nature one likely associates with the idea of humanism but it represents a deep-seated reason the Nordics achieve such strong performances in domains related to humanism.

What Are the Nordics? Before we begin our expedition, it is worth deliberate attention to this concept of ‘Nordic.’ The word ‘Nordic’ is derived from the French word nordique. Nord means north. The establishment of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 1971, an official collaboration between the Prime Ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden formalized the meaning of the word Nordic in association with these five R. Strand (*) Berkeley-Haas Center for Responsible Business, Berkeley, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_42

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northern countries. The devolved governments of the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland also take part in the Nordic Council of Ministers’ work. Scandinavian is a closely associated concept to Nordic. The origin of the name Scandinavia comes from the district called Scania (or ‘Skåne’ in Scandinavian languages) that is in southern tip of what is today Sweden but was for centuries part of Denmark. Norway has also exchanged hands between Denmark and Sweden over the years and was ceded by Denmark to Sweden in 1814 after the Danes found themselves on the losing side of the Napoleonic Wars. At that time, Norway established its own parliament and was largely self-governed up until it (peacefully) secured its full independence in 1905 (Nordstrom 2000). Famed Danish master of the literary fairy tale Hans Christian Andersen purportedly wrote the poem “Jeg er en Skandinav” – which translates from Danish to English as “I am a Scandinavian” – after a visit to Sweden in 1839 to describe the close relationship he felt between the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian peoples (Strand and Freeman 2015). For some, the expressions Scandinavia and Nordics are used interchangeably. For others, Scandinavia is strictly defined as Denmark, Norway and Sweden where Nordics is Scandinavia plus something else (Bondeson 2003; Nordstrom 2000). In this chapter, we utilize the expression Nordics and in a manner consistent with the aforementioned countries affiliated with the Nordic Council of Ministers.

My Introduction to the Nordics I was first introduced to the Nordics as a domain of scholarly interest through my MBA coursework in business ethics. This business ethics coursework would also serve as my first formal introduction to the ideas of humanism. I had the good fortune to study business ethics at the University of Minnesota under the direction of Professor Norm Bowie (who is a contributor of another chapter in this volume). Drawing directly from the philosopher Immanuel Kant, Professor Bowie taught the importance of taking an ethical stance toward the stakeholders affected by business whether they be the employees, customers, suppliers, community members, or shareholders. The perspective of business ethics professed by Professor Bowie drew directly from the axiom of Immanuel Kant that human beings have intrinsic value as an end in themselves and should never be solely treated as a means. This challenged the Milton Friedman view that the sole purpose of business is profit maximization because a sole focus on profits could very well result in instances in the dehumanization of people. My business ethics course resonated deeply for me because I found it to be one of the few spaces in which I could reflect upon some of the things that were troubling me in my professional life. At the time, I was pursuing my MBA while working full-time as an industrial engineer with the Fortune 500 corporations IBM and later Boston Scientific. As a labor and capacity planner, efficiency was the name of the game where cold, hard calculations about were the norm. In my role, people and equipment were effectively treated the same. Deep down this disturbed me but it

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was not until I encountered Professor Bowie’s business ethics course that I had a space in which to reflect upon it all. It finally clicked for me that the systems in which I was operating, by and large, disregarded human beings. This represented my first exploration in to the realm of humanism. Professor Bowie’s class also raised my awareness that the Milton Friedman shareholder view of the firms was a fundamentally American view of business. This piqued my interest about other views of the firms elsewhere in the world which quickly brought me to the Nordics. I had been noticing how Nordic countries seemed to be demonstrating such conspicuously strong and balanced economic, social, and environmental performances. My business ethics course also included a reading by R. Edward Freeman that would introduce me to the domain of stakeholder management. As I read more of Freeman’s work, I would come to learn about the seminal offerings of the Nordic scholar Eric Rhenman who an originator of the stakeholder concept (Strand and Freeman 2015). This further drew my attention to the Nordics. Upon finishing my MBA in 2005, I applied for a Fulbright scholarship to go to Norway to explore how the Nordic region was achieving such strong and balanced social, environmental, and economic performances. Thanks to a clear lapse in judgement on the part of the Fulbright committee, I was granted the fellowship. I took an extended leave from Corporate America and shipped off to the Nordics. Upon digging into my project companies Statoil (now Equinor) in Norway, IKEA in Sweden, Nokia in Finland, and Novo Nordisk in Denmark, I immediately observed a very different approach to leadership and company culture than what I was accustomed to in the U.S. I saw Nordic business leaders who encouraged cooperation driven through committed consensus building, and who were far more modest, humanistic, and nurturing than what I had experienced in U.S. industry where the macho John Wayne beat ‘em at any cost approach was more likely considered evidence of strong leadership. I saw far more women in positions of power and I sensed cultural norms and practices antithetical to cultures of “toxic masculinity” that I experienced in pockets of Corporate America. People came to work and left at reasonable hours where corporate schedules unapologetically corresponded with daycare schedules to consider employees with children. I saw flatter corporate hierarchies much more intermingling between the “bosses” at the top with the “regular people” down below than what I was used to in the U.S. Formal titles didn’t matter so much. Over time, I could see employees were granted a high degree of autonomy and freedom and where employees of all ranks were empowered to take decisions. Relatedly, I saw continued efforts to utilize democratic principles as a means to organize and take decisions in the company. In my life in Corporate America, I had never heard charges of “that’s undemocratic!” as a critique to how a decision may have been taken or as a critique to the corporation as a whole. In the Nordics, I was exposed to mainstream discussions about the role of corporations in a democratic society. This was all new terrain for me. I witnessed companies and their leaders who actively sought out and engaged with critical voices. These were business leaders who demonstrated the humility to openly express that they did not have all of the answers and, instead, demonstrated

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a greater willingness to ask questions to solicit input and encourage discussion. The apparent difference in leadership approaches between the Nordics and U.S. was exacerbated because at the same time, back in the U.S., Donald Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice” was gaining in popularity. With the catch phrase “You’re Fired!” this brash, hyper-competitive, all-knowing, oftentimes chauvinistic displays by an individual in a position of leadership was completely antithetical to what I was witnessing in a Nordic context. I experiencing evidence of a systems thinking approach that I would come to identify as a norm in the Nordics, meaning that businesses taking into consideration how a system’s constituent parts interrelate – i.e. are connected - and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems. This would become a key element I would later identify as a central reason the Nordics were performing so comparatively well in virtually all sustainability performance metrics. That initial year would prove to be the first of many in the Nordics. I would later pursue my Ph.D. in Denmark and stay on as a professor at the Copenhagen Business School. I launched courses at U.S. universities to bring students and professors to the Nordics on study tours to experience the Nordic context first hand. My career has become that of bridging the Nordics and U.S.

Why Look to the Nordics? I believe the Nordics can save the world. With that bold sentence, I begin my Sustainable Vikings book. I do not intend to hide my point of view that the Nordics have a lot to offer the world. I have sensed over the years that many people across the Nordics were proud in many respects of what their societies have built  – to have gone from a relatively poorer region of Europe in the late nineteenth century to boasting the highest quality of life levels in the world within the span of a century later. Humility runs deep in the Nordic context so I have leveraged my loud-mouthed American identify to assume the role as the Nordics’ #1 hype man. The Nordics lay claim to the strongest sustainability performances on the planet (I will soon support this claim with evidence) where I propose that in order to save the world, we need to understand how the Nordics are achieving their comparatively strong sustainability performances. Consider this a benchmarking exercise. Earth would carry on just fine with or without humans, so by “save the world” I mean ensuring that human beings can live a good quality of life on our home planet. A central element of this is treating one another with humanity and we can learn a lot in this regard from the Nordics. The World Happiness Index arguably attracts the greatest attention each year upon its release that results in the annual crowning of the “world’s happiest country.” Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who is also instrumental in the SDG Index, is a co-­ editor for this report that was first released in 2012 in support of a UN High level meeting on “Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm.” This

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Fig. 42.1  Country ranking in World Happiness Report

metric as displayed in Fig. 42.1 (Helliwell et al. 2019), is intended to measure societal well-being at a broad level where each report includes updated evaluations and a range of commissioned chapters on special topics digging deeper into the science of well-being, and on happiness in specific countries and regions. Nordic countries regularly tops all measurements of happiness. The Happiness Index typically receives the greatest global attention each year upon its unveiling but this is not the sole domain of Nordic performance. The Nordics are proven sustainability leaders. In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came into being that represented a broad framework and greater detail for the concept of sustainability and sustainable development. The most commonly used definition of sustainability comes from the concept of sustainable development defined as: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This definition has deep Nordic roots as it originated by Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Prime Minister Brundtland chaired the UN Commission that published “Our Common Future” in 1987 (commonly called the “Brundtland Report”) that was the source of this now-famous phrase (Brundtland et al. 1987). The Brundtland Report represented a radical departure from prior conceptions of the environment as somehow separate from human beings and economic development as somehow separate from the environment. This definition also explicitly stresses that a longer-term view must be taken into account.

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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the world’s greatest materiality assessment that represent the most significant challenges we face on this planet.1 The 17 SDGs unanimously adopted by the 193 member states of the United Nations and launched in 2015 bring together the world’s most pressing social, environmental, and economic challenges into one widely agreed upon framework. Achieving all 169 targets would signal accomplishing all 17 SDGs by 2030 that would effectively mean humankind has achieved a sustainable world. The deliberation and consensus building process leading up to their launch was significant making the 17 SDGs and their underlying 169 targets politically robust and widely recognized as the most widely agreed upon sustainability framework in the world (Fig. 42.2).2 With the SDGs came the advent of the SDG Index ranking of performances by country as shown in Fig.  42.3 (Sachs et  al. 2019). And guess who consistently comes out on top? (Hint: Think Vikings.) Through the SDG Index, I would come to realize the most straightforward way to tell the story that I had been trying to tell for a decade: In virtually every global sustainability related measurement, the Nordics are at or near the very top. That said, the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg reminds us that when it comes to an urgent challenge like climate change, the whole world needs to rapidly

Fig. 42.2  Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). (Source: https://sdgs.un.org/) 1  Materiality is an accounting term that effectively means something is relevant or significant. We will discuss materiality later when we introduce the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). 2  The SDGs are a result of a multi-stakeholder process conducted throughout 2013–2014 with governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the business community taking part in the negotiations. After 13 sessions, the UN General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals submitted their proposal of 17 SDGs and 169 targets to the 68th session of the General Assembly in September 2014. On December 5, 2014, the UN General Assembly accepted the proposal and the SDGs came into effect for the period of 2015–2030.

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Fig. 42.3  SDG Index: Viking Domination. (Source: Sustainable Development Report 2019, CC BY 4.0)

improve - very much including the Nordics. Nordic societies certainly have their problems and definitely do not have all the answers, but a Nordic perspective rooted in cooperation, consensus-building, humanism, systems thinking, and a deep-seated reverence for democratic ideals is the sort of approach needed to effectively tackle these mounting challenges.

What Is a Nordic Perspective on Humanism? Arriving at a clear-cut definition of humanism is not so straightforward. Davies (2008, 2) offers “Humanism is a word with a very complex history and an unusually wide range of possible meanings and contexts.” Here, I focus attention on the meaning of humanism in a Nordic context. In 2016 the “Nordic Humanist Manifesto” was compiled and published by six Nordic organizations: The Swedish Humanist Association (Humanisterna), the Danish Humanist Society (Humanistisk Samfund), the Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association (Siðmennt), the Finnish Humanists (Suomen Humanistiliitto), the Finnish Free Thinkers (Vapaa-ajattelijain Liitto), and the Norwegian Humanist Association (Human-Etisk Forbund). The Nordic Humanist Manifesto is described as the “common world view” of the Nordic humanist organizations that is thereby worthy of our attention when considering what humanism means in a Nordic context.3 Nordic Humanist Manifesto Humanism is a secular life stance. Its starting point is that humans are part of nature, born free and equal in dignity and rights, equipped with reason and conscience.  https://human.no/om-oss/english/nordic-humanist-manifesto-2016/

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Humanists hold that there is no pre-determined meaning to existence. We are all free to find meaning and purpose in our own lives; through individual reflection, social interactions and the rich culture humanity has created in science, philosophy and the arts. Humanism promotes rationality. Critical inquiry, informed reasoning and scientific methods are our best tools for acquiring reliable knowledge of the world. Humanists encourage critical inquiry of all ideas and opinions, including our own. We should seek out the best arguments and strive to change our minds and adjust our convictions when shown to be wrong. Freedom of speech is essential to test opinions in open debate. Humanists consider democracy, rule of law and human rights to be crucial, rationally justified values. We are part of a society and have a responsibility for our fellow humans and the environment, both locally and globally. We must ensure that our planet is habitable for future generations. Humanism promotes equality for all. Humanists respect freedom of belief and the right of everyone to choose their own life stance. The state should be secular and not grant special privileges to any life stance. It is difficult for me to distinguish the Nordic Humanist Manifesto from general Nordic cultural norms. The sort of humanism expressed in this manifesto is readily apparent across Nordic life within companies, like those that I first studied as a Fulbright scholar, and everyday life. The Nordic Council of Ministers recently published a report (Nordisk Ministerråd 2015) in which it describes a particular “Nordic Perspective” (see Fig. 42.4) as a means to package the Nordics for the world. The ideals of ‘humanism’ are readily apparent. “Compassion, tolerance, and conviction about the equal value of all people” is depicted as an element of the Nordic perspective and is effectively a statement of humanism.

Nordic Leadership Leadership represents a deeply cultural endeavor where it should therefore come of little surprise that I have found an embracement and promotion of humanism as a key feature of leadership in a Nordic context. With respect to the concept of leadership, I utilize the definition from Joseph Rost in his book Leadership for the Twenty-­ First Century in which he stated that leadership is “an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.” This represents a dynamic view of leadership where at any time a “leader” may become a “follower” and a “follower” becomes a “leader” in the participative process of leadership centered about the idea of working toward ‘mutual purpose.’ I take Fig. 42.5 “Nordic Leadership” directly from my Sustainable Vikings in-­ progress book in which I summarize Nordic norms of leadership. Each of these norms (or values) of leadership are interrelated and I center the depiction of Nordic leadership about the norm of cooperation whereby leadership in a Nordic context is first and foremost of building consensus in a trusting manner.

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Fig. 42.4  Nordic Perspective. (Source: Strategy for International Branding of the Nordic Region 2015–2018 (2015). https://doi.org/10.6027/ANP2015-­708, licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0))

Embracement of cooperation so deeply permeates Nordic culture that it can difficult to call it out as specifically as a quality of leadership  – but nevertheless it results in a very distinct leadership approach when compared to traditional norms of leadership in the U.S. and elsewhere. In their book Return of the Vikings: Nordic Leadership in Times of Extreme Change, Chris Shern (an American living in Denmark) and Henrik Jeberg (a Dane living in the U.S.) emphasize the central role of cooperation throughout Nordic life drawing upon their experiences living and working in the Nordic and U.S. contexts (Shern and Jeberg 2018). “Collaboration and cooperation are effective in the workplace and in coalition politics in the Nordics because they come naturally. This way of thinking and acting is what people have known all their lives” and they contrast it to “the promotion of competition that characterizes many other cultures”  – with the U.S. squarely in mind (2018, 31). Central to cooperation in the Nordics is the willingness and ability for consensus

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Fig. 42.5  Nordic leadership

building where Shern & Jeberg also emphasize the important role that trust plays to enable effective cooperation and consensus building. Cooperation and consensus building are closely associated with Hofstede’s “Masculine-Feminine” cultural dimension.4 The aforementioned report “Nordic Leadership” (Andreasson and Lundqvist 2018) provides a useful summary of this dimension. Before you read it, please note there will be a quiz immediately following in which you will be asked to answer how the Nordics and the U.S. were each characterized: masculine or feminine? Masculinity represents a preference in society for performance, heroism, determination and materialistic rewards for success. Femininity stands for a preference for co-operation, modesty, care of the weak and quality of life. These opposing pairs can also be described such that society, in the first case, is more inclined to competition or, in the second case, is more oriented to consensus. (Andreasson and Lundqvist 2018, 29)

Based upon this, how would you say Nordics and the U.S. were each characterized according to this dimension? Of 50 countries assessed, Sweden was deemed the most ‘feminine.’ Norway came in at the second most feminine and Denmark at

 Hofstede, G. 2001. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations, 2nd Edition. London: Sage Publications. 4

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number four (with the Netherlands sneaking in at number three). The U.S. was solidly deemed a ‘masculine.’ Cooperation and consensus building are central to “feminine” cultures. In my experiences, teeing up this dimension serves as one of the most useful to launch discussions of differences in cultures and leadership approach between the U.S. and Nordics. However, it is important to note that Hofestede has been roundly critiqued, as this “Masculine-Feminine” labeling seems to perpetuate a gendered stereotype in its own right. I tend to agree with this criticism and feel a more appropriate moniker would have leveraged the label “Nurturing” rather than “Feminine”.5 That said, I do not entirely want to discard the label as I believe the expression “toxic masculinity” is a useful descriptor of the darkside of hyper competitive cultures where defined gender roles are rigidly enforced. Björn Bjerke, author of Business Leadership and Culture, emphasizes that consensus is achieved in the Nordic context through the practice of effective negotiation. He writes “the typified Scandinavian business leader is a negotiator. Scandinavian top managers stress that their most important ability is to obtain results in cooperation with the employees combined with their ability to negotiate” (Bjerke 1999, 213). Bjerke offers a summary of a ‘typified’ Nordic business leader as follows “They are not autocratic, but use a delegating and participatory style; use power if necessary, but then based on legitimacy; consult their subordinates; look for cooperation, compromises and consensus; are collective individuals” (1999, 217).

Systematized Humanism It is not a far leap to connect these norms of Nordic leadership about cooperation as closely connected with humanism. But I have come to find the Nordics practice a particular sort of humanism related to a more systematic approach. As previously indicated, humanism and systems thinking are two key norms of Nordic leadership and I have come to find that humanism in a Nordic context is, by and large, systematized. Nordic countries are remarkably good at establishing systems that make it more likely for its citizens to pursue and live a humanistic life. The social democracies established across the Nordic region of the twentieth century are the most prominent example of this through the establishment of well-functioning systems to ensure access to quality education, healthcare, pensions. At the time of the late nineteenth century, the Nordic region had been among the poorest areas of Europe whereby in the course of just over a century, the region has achieved the highest quality of life performances in the world. One can point directly to the humanistic systems established as a centerpiece of the social democracies as a reason why. 5  My University of California, Berkeley colleague Dacher Keltner (2009) would champion the expression “survival of the best nurtured” as a better-informed descriptor than the competitively minded and more commonly invoked “survival of the fittest” expression.

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Longtime Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson offers an excellent articulation of these social democracies in his famous “People’s Home.” In 1928, 4 years prior to assuming the position of Prime Minister, Hansson gave arguably his most influential speech in which he introduced the idea of the “People’s Home” and discussed Swedish society as the potential to become a “home” with a productive and inclusive place for everyone. Hansson articulated the social democratic blueprint for the twentieth century in Sweden and what would be effectively put into action across all of the Nordic countries. I offer an extended passage below from Hansson’s speak that effectively summarizes the issues at hand, and relates to this idea of systematized humanism: The foundation of the home is togetherness and the feeling of closeness. A good home doesn’t make distinctions between the privileged and those left behind; there are no sweethearts and no stepchildren. There, one doesn’t look down on the other. There, no one looks for an advantage at the other’s expense; the strong don’t oppress and plunder the weak. In the good home, equality, consideration, shared work, and helpfulness dominate. When applied to the vast people’s and fellow citizen’s home, this would entail the breaking down of all social and economic barriers that currently divide fellow citizens into groups of the privileged and unprivileged, into the rulers and the ruled, the plunderers and the plundered. Swedish society is not yet the good fellow-citizens’ home. A certain formal equality holds sway here, equality in political rights, but socially speaking the class society still remains and economically the dictatorship of the few dominates. The inequalities are sometimes glaring; while some live in mansions, many others regard it as lucky to live in their allotment garden huts even during the cold of winter; while one part lives in glut, many go door to door to get a bit of bread, and the poor fear tomorrow when sickness, unemployment, and other calamities are lurking. If Swedish society is to become the good fellow-citizens’ home, class differences have to be reduced, social care needs to be developed, an economic leveling shall take place, a place should be prepared for the workers to participate in economic governance, and democracy must be implemented and accommodated both socially and economically.

The ability and willingness for Nordic countries and their citizens to recognize systems level problems and address these problems with systems level thinking is quite impressive. I have found in a U.S. context we have a tendency to push systems level problems onto the individual for us to each sort out. Nordics tend to apply a rational, pragmatic level of thinking to tackle so many systems level issues of humanism. This has consequences that, depending upon who you ask, may be considered as positive or negative. I spoke with an American friend who lives in Denmark about what he misses about the U.S. and he said he misses that personal outreach from Americans if something bad should happen. If someone in your family falls seriously ill, in the U.S. one may be more likely to experience an outreach of people in the community bringing over food or if a costly medical procedure is necessary, the neighbors may help to organize campaigns to raise money. He told me he missed these personal connections as this would not happen in the Nordic context as people assume these matters are taken care of by the systems put in place. This is humanism in many respects on an interpersonal level. I then asked my friend if he and his family would consider moving back to the U.S. and his response was “Oh hell no. It scares me to think if one of us got seriously

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ill and we could not pay for the medical bills.” In a U.S. context, individuals (or their parents) are responsible to secure health coverage to provide ongoing preventative checkups and treatments in the event of a discovered health issue. Go Fund Me campaigns are a regular occurrence in a U.S. context that represent an example of a systems level problem (i.e. cancer occurrences among a population of people) that has its responsibility born upon the individual (or their parents) to address. Parents of a sick child in the U.S. may each likely utilize such vehicles as Go Fund Me campaigns to appeal to other individuals to donate to cover the medical costs associated treatment of cancer. Such an individualized approach is under heard of in a Nordic context where the systems level problem is dealt with a systems level response. In a Nordic context, providing universal access to healthcare is not the political dispute as it is in the U.S. From the far left to the far right parties in the Nordics, this approach has been determined an efficient way to offer health services for Nordic citizens. The outcomes merit the strength of this approach. As example, Denmark pays half of the medical costs as does an average American with as good (if not better) health outcomes that merits the strength of this approach in a Nordic context. This also relates to the Nordic leadership norm of pragmatism as Nordic countries collect and systematize enormous amounts of health data on its citizens to ensure the efficient achievement of desired healthcare outcomes. (Nordic governmental bodies have been described as demonstrating “a voracious appetite for data”6). Individualizing responses to systems level issues is deemed inefficient  – such as having each individual run campaigns to pay for their medical bills if their child or they are the unfortunate one who contracts cancer. Nordic populations report high levels of satisfaction with their healthcare systems. The Nordic healthcare systems are example of a humanistic systems level response to a systems level problem and is a centerpiece of the social democracies established across the Nordic countries in the twentieth century. Another key element of the social democracies was an embedded consideration for laborers that included strong rights and health and safety considerations for all workers. Industrialization was in full effect at the time of Per Albin Hansson’s People’s Home speech in 1928.7 Within it, Hansson stressed not treating laborers merely as inputs, harkening to axiom of Immanuel Kant that human beings have intrinsic value as an end in themselves and should never be solely treated as a means, but to respect each as human beings and he stressed cooperation with workers. He stated: If one obstinately sees in the worker only a rented creature from whom one is going to extract as much as possible with the least possible compensation, one will make no progress toward a better order. But if one will see in the worker a valuable colleague in the business and as such make him a participant not just in the work but also in administration and ­management and profit, then it can be worth investigating how far along consensus, common interests, and cooperation will take us.

 Lawrence and Spybey 1986, 21–22. From Bjerke 1999, 207.  Text and translation of The People’s Home speech kindly provided by Professor Mark Sandberg of the University of California, Berkeley. This represents the first effort at translation where minor grammatical adjustments may be expected in future revisions. 6 7

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Systematized Humanism: Case of IKEA Within the Nordic countries, laborers realized the benefits of systematized humanism in the form of strong rights and protections and other structures available to all Nordic systems. However, these protections do not often travel beyond the confines of the Nordic countries. As supply chains became ever the more global in scope throughout the twentieth century, this brought with it the reality that many laborers who worked to produce Nordic products would reside in other parts of the world.8 IKEA is one such Nordic based company whose supply chain stretched throughout the world and where the laborers producing products for IKEA were not privy to the protections and systems afforded to employees of IKEA in its base Sweden. Throughout the years, IKEA has therefore elected to implement policies at an organizational level that systematize humanism. In the 1990s, IKEA faced allegations of the potential for child labor in its supply chain. This was the era boycotts of iconic global companies like Nike for allegations of using child labor and sweatshops. Global companies were coming to terms with assuming responsibilities for activities that took place outside the walls of their own companies to include the company’s supply chain and many did not know how to respond (Zadek 2004). Initial reactions by the company were often defensive and denial. Companies began to develop ‘zero tolerance’ policies whereby if a hint of allegations arose it would simply drop the supplier. IKEA took a different approach. In the early 1990s, Marianne Barner, an IKEA business are manager, helped drive efforts across IKEA to establish a policy of systematized humanism. Barner recognized that IKEA did not have a comprehensive approach for dealing with the potential of child labor in its supply chain. Like most companies with complex global supply chains, IKEA was largely ignorant of the conditions for laborers within its supply chains. An unintended consequence of the success of multinational companies like IKEA is the increased distance between IKEA and its global supply chain. Whereas humanistic considerations for the well-­ being of labors in the supply chain are likely to occur when one sees these people on a regular basis, such a thing does not occur when distance between the company and its suppliers is vast. This prevents the natural arousal of one’s empathy. Furthermore, IKEA lacked the competencies to know what to do in the event that child labor might be found. Should a company simply drop the supplier as others were beginning to do? Finally, Barner realized a global company like IKEA could often lack credibility in the public eye when allegations arise. With the leadership of Barner, IKEA recognized it needed to develop a different approach. Drawing directly from the IKEA vision statement “to create a better everyday life for the many people,” IKEA set upon the path to best ensure a better everyday life for the people who may work in its supply chain. They began with focused attention on potential for child laborers in the supply chain. It follows that 8  Matten and Moon’s (2008) implicit/explicit CSR framework is most useful to explore such differences in their relationship to claims of social responsibility by companies.

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when it comes to issues related to child labor IKEA developed a humanistic approach by making decisions that are in the best interest of the child (Strand 2014). Barner recognized the need for IKEA to establish a systematic response. Ad hoc efforts were not going to cut it. She developed strong relationships with other organizational entities with knowledge of the issues and common interests to effect change for the positive. This included Save the Children, UNICEF, and suppliers with whom Barner and colleagues at IKEA worked to systematize within its policies and procedures a humanistic approach consistent with that advocated within the report What Works for Working Children by Boyden et al. (1998). Boyden et al. (1998) identify the reality that simply dropping a supplier may result in worse working conditions for a child laborer within it – such as being forced into prostitution. Instead of a black and white compliance approach, IKEA developed procedures and a code of conduct to address potentials for child labor is addressed in a pragmatic manner consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child from 1989 and draws upon the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948. As result, IKEA does not accept the employment of children under the legal age as determined within a particular country (14 or 15 years of age, for example) while working to better ensure that young workers who are above this age but not yet adults have safe working conditions and access to educational opportunities. Barner and her colleagues, including then IKEA CEO Anders Dahlvig, recognized that in order to make this procedures come alive at IKEA they needed to activate the empathy of IKEA employees. As they rolled out the new procedures and code of conduct, Barner led visits by IKEA employees to various suppliers so that IKEA colleagues working back in Sweden or wherever throughout the world felt a connection to the people in their supply chain. This had a profound effect at IKEA to help ensure the new policies were embraced. IKEA’s approach to systematize humanism has been widely lauded. The Financial Times described IKEA’s systematic approach as a ‘grown up plan to tackle child labor’ (Luce 2004). Barner and colleagues’ work on these procedures and code of conduct serve as the foundation for what would become the IWAY (for “IKEA Way”) standard for minimum requirements for environment, social, and working conditions when purchasing products, materials and service. The IWAY (2016) guides the decision making processes at IKEA. Its latest version includes those original words to do what is in the best interest of the child and extends far beyond. The introduction of IWAY begins: At IKEA we recognize that our business has an impact on people and the planet, in particular people’s working conditions, as well as the environment, both locally and globally. We also strongly believe that we can do good business while being a good business. This is a pre-condition to our future growth that will be achieved along with Suppliers that share our vision and ambition. Our guiding principles when working with environmental, social and working conditions are: • What is in the best interest of the child?

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• What is in the best interest of the Worker? • What is in the best interest of the environment? Through these principles we support the direction described in the IKEA Group Sustainability Strategy; “People & Planet Positive”

An individual who cares, like Marianne Barner, can do a lot on her own to support the ideals of humanism. But Marianne quickly realized some challenges to humanism demand a systematic response that go beyond what an ad hoc response by an individual can effectively address. So Barner worked to build partnerships extending beyond the walls of IKEA whereby she and her colleagues ultimately built a system that was to become the IWAY system that systematizes humanism at the IKEA organizational level.

Parting Reflections Attention to humanism is deeply embedded in a Nordic context. As I offered within this chapter, it is difficult for me to distinguish the Nordic Humanist Manifesto from general Nordic cultural norms. Throughout the twentieth century, much effort was made throughout the Nordic countries to systematize humanism. This took the form of universal programs to ensure education, healthcare, and general well-being of the Nordic citizens. However, such national systems do not extend beyond the borders of the Nordic countries. Here, we look to the example set by the iconic Nordic company IKEA that pragmatically developed humanistic systems in the form of policies for addressing potential for child labor in its supply chain. IKEA continues to expand its humanistic systems as represented by the continued evolution of the IWAY system. We often associate humanism at the level of the individual. Humanism is between human beings, after all. In this chapter, I hope to have shed some light on the importance to also apply systems thinking to humanism whereby we recognize the opportunities to apply humanism at a national level (e.g. Sweden) or organization level (e.g. IKEA). The Nordics provide inspiration and the good example for effective systematized humanism.

References Andreasson, U., and M.  Lundqvist. 2018. Nordic Leadership. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. Bjerke, B. 1999. Business Leadership and Culture. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Bondeson, U. 2003. Nordic Moral Climates: Value Continuities and Discontinuities in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Boyden, J., L. Birgitta, and W. E. Myers. 1998. What Works for Working Children. UNICEF. Brundtland, G., M.  Khalid, S.  Agnelli, S.  Al-Athel, B.  Chidzero, L.  Fadika, V.  Hauff, I.  Lang, M. Shijun, and M.M. de Botero. 1987. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (The Brundtland Report). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, T. 2008. Humanism. London: Routledge. Helliwell, J., R. Layard, and J. Sachs. 2019. World Happiness Report 2019. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. IWAY. 2016. IWAY Standard Minimum Requirements for Environment and Social & Working Conditions When Purchasing Products, Materials and Services. Available at https://www.ikea. com/ms/en_SG/pdf/IWAY_Standard_Ed_5-­2.pdf. Retrieved 15 Jan 2020. Keltner, D. 2009. Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. London: WW Norton & Company. Lawrence, P., and T. Spybey. 1986. Management and Society in Sweden. London: Routledge. Luce, E. 2004. Ikea’s Grown up Plan to Tackle Child Labour. Financial Times, 14 September. Matten, D., and J.  Moon. 2008. “Implicit” and “Explicit” CSR: A Conceptual Framework for a Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility. Academy of Management Review 33 (2): 404–424. Nordisk Ministerråd. 2015. Strategy for International Branding of the Nordic Region 2015–2018 (2015). https://doi.org/10.6027/ANP2015-­708, licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Nordstrom, B.J. 2000. Scandinavia Since 1500. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sachs, J., G. Schmidt-Traub, C. Kroll, G. Lafortune, and G. Fuller. 2019. Sustainable Development Report 2019. New  York: Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Shern, C., and H.  Jeberg. 2018. Return of the Vikings: Nordic Leadership in Times of Extreme Change. Copenhagen: Dansk Psykologisk Forlag. Strand, R. 2014. Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: The Case of IKEA. In World Humanism: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Ethical Practices in Organizations, ed. S. Khan and W. Amann, 63–80. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Strand, R., and R.E.  Freeman. 2015. Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: The Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in SCANDINAVIA. Journal of Business Ethics 127 (1): 65–85. Zadek, S. 2004. The Path to Corporate Responsibility. Harvard Business Review 82 (December): 125–132. Robert Strand, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Nordic Center at UC Berkeley, and the Center for Responsible Business with the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley where he is a member of the faculty. He is also Associate Professor with the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark and a former U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Norway. His research and teaching compares U.S. and Nordic approaches to sustainable and socially responsible business. More recently, he has broadened his research attention to compare and contrast capitalisms in the U.S. and Nordic contexts to consider what lessons the U.S. may p­ rosperously draw from the Nordics. He is currently working on the book project Sustainable Vikings: What the Nordics Can Teach Us about Reimagining American Capitalisms  

Chapter 43

A Western European Perspective on Humanizing Business: Forging New Identities, Recovering Human Values, Limiting Growth Damiano Cortese and Chiara Civera

What’s the Meaning of Humanizing Business? In a world where business has always been associated with the search for profits at all costs and is typically thought to be far from ethical matters, ongoing evidence shows that a revolution of business is occurring toward the stronger development of the human side of business (Freeman 2017). Practitioners and academics are increasingly experiencing, inspiring, and telling stories about a newfound consideration of human beings and stakeholder relationships in business (Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2016). This consideration has contributed to new chances for value creation and an enlarged perspective of responsibility (Civera and Freeman 2019), which is a bright sign of a business purpose that is undergoing transformation by enriching, evolving, and humanizing business itself. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “humanizing” means “to make something more pleasant or suitable for people; to make something more humane,” while “business” is defined as “the activity of making, buying, selling or supplying goods or services for money” (Oxford Dictionary 2019). When we adopt the perspective of humanizing business, an issue seems to arise because of the two terms’ belonging to apparently divergent paradigms: while the former involves people as the ultimate objective, the latter focuses on money. If we are to address humanizing business as a phrase, however, then we need to consider an action that implies forging a new purpose for business. What does it mean to converge humanizing and business? A few antecedents to the humanizing-business perspective must be considered. First, business cannot be separated from humans, human relationships, and activities that strive for a more humane society. In particular, we cannot distinguish and disconnect business from any matters of ethics (Freeman in Agle et  al. 2008; Freeman et al. 2004), whether the ethics belongs to human beings or corporations’ D. Cortese (*) · C. Civera University of Turin, Turin, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_43

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decision-making and impacts. Dating back to the Berle-Dodd controversy (1930, 1932), any business undoubtedly establishes “relations with a large number of persons” (Dodd 1932, 1145). The way a business relates to its stakeholders is the core argument of new stories about businesses and their purpose and the content of business behaviors (Freeman 2017; Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2016; Freeman et al. 2010). Second, because business is a matter of humans, and people tend to strive for something greater than their own self-interest, business cannot be solely about money. The content and consequences of this logic have become increasingly common in recent years (Freeman 2017). In going beyond business as a pure economic transaction (Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2016), we acknowledge that, as Freeman and Dmytriyev argue, the “‘homo economicus’ doesn’t tell us much about the real world” (2017, 8), but a perspective of broader value creation certainly does (Harrison and Wicks 2013; Freeman 2010). Business is undergoing a revolution at both the conceptual and practical levels, with new business ideas and purposes now including multiple stakeholder perspectives by integrating relationships and their meanings into the business mind-set (Freeman 2017). Following these advances, we can provide an initial managerial interpretation of the humanizing-business concept based on key characterizations drawn from business ethics and stakeholder management. In this chapter’s discussion of humanizing business, we will refer to the development of a new sense of purpose and ethics (Freeman 2017) in which a new business DNA is forged based on a stronger stakeholder-oriented “relational” approach (Bridoux and Stoelhorst 2016) that relies on trustworthiness and fairness (Freeman et al. 2010; Greenwood and Van Buren III 2010; Phillips 1997). Such an approach entails behaviors and practices that strengthen and integrate relationships among all stakeholders by recognizing the value of stakeholders as human beings first, beyond their economic or social power and roles (McVea and Freeman 2005), and by allowing their active contribution to the value-creation process through engagement and empowerment (Greenwood and Van Buren III 2010; Dawkins 2014). The ideas and attitudes related to humanizing business obviously vary from country to country and depend on specific industries. Culture, religious legacies, beliefs, and societal habits might all forge unique and well-established ways to approach business in various ways (Weber 1978): in this case from a more human-­ oriented perspective. The aim of this chapter is to examine a Western European viewpoint of humanizing business. We will outline key tendencies that have converged into the creation of a new humanized DNA of businesses by (a) forging new firms’ identities, (b) recovering human values and the centrality of relationships, and (c) establishing a business purpose that rejects short-term economic benefits in favor of a broader perspective of longer-term value creation and trade. While we explain these key traits, we will also discuss the idea that the specifics of these Western European businesses in creating value and pursuing their values might lead to paradoxes in the way stakeholders digest and interpret a business with a human-oriented and evolving purpose.

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Enabling Factors for a Humanized Business DNA Western Europe includes countries with diverse social, historical, economic, and religious backgrounds that were forged throughout conflicting ideologies and unique rooted cultures (Mosse 2018). Such diversity affects the way in which businesses are configured, structured, and driven, from their purpose and values to their operations and development. Italy and the United Kingdom, for instance, might appear similar because of their geographical and economic contexts, but a deeper exploration into the layers of different history, cultures, and religions that originally forged certain ethics and behaviors shows a tectonic drift. The more explicit way in which humans are integrated into business and how relationships are established in the United Kingdom (for example) is distinct from the more implicit and informal manner through which businesses pay attention to stakeholders and incorporate their claims in Italy (Civera et al. 2020). To explain and structure specific attitudes, models, and business approaches, especially those that integrate business and stakeholder matters, a few previous studies have grouped European (or Western European) countries together based on common cultural, political, financial, educational, and labor patterns. These patterns have also been defined as the “national business system,” or NBS (Maurice and Sorge 2000), which outlines the shared traits of a firm in addressing certain business and society issues (Matten and Moon 2008; Whitley 1999). Based on the NBS of Western Europe but acknowledging that the business system of each nation changes quickly, especially today, we can still identify common enabling factors that, in Western Europe more than in other geographical contexts, can favor the rise and spread of a humanized business DNA that provides more value to humans and stakeholder relationships. First, in terms of culture, Western European businesses are typically associated with a participatory form of welfare and politics, where solidarity and inclusion are the drivers to addressing human issues through more human involvement. The stronger relationships among politics, business, and society have reduced the distances between an institution that imposes a regulatory framework and the stakeholders and businesses that apply its rules. This strengthened relationship has bolstered the design of dialogic solutions that reflect key social, environmental, and human-oriented trends drawn by the European Union (among other entities) and has allowed stakeholders and businesses to perceive their role in society from simple executors to involved proactive actors. Since 1978, for instance, Spain’s constitution has established that public powers should facilitate the collaboration and participation of citizens in social initiatives through empowerment by promoting the necessary conditions for their liberty and equality. Today this aspect is reinforced by simplifying the process through which citizens can codesign social services. To this end, facilitating mechanisms and regional bodies now ensure the possibility of dialogue and the exchange of information among stakeholders at different levels, which has allowed citizens to collaborate in proposing, planning, and managing social services. Their rights and duties to enable active and fair participation are now regulated by law (Seller 2017).

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Second, as mentioned above, a Western European participatory culture relies on the involvement of governments in the various nations’ economic and social matters. Such government involvement has neither the perception nor the characteristics of being a one-way imposition of rules that attempt to solve or respond to economic or social matters. On the contrary, government initiatives to address certain pressing challenges are often the result of a joint discussion among governments, businesses, and stakeholders and their active participation in the design of possible scenarios. One relevant case from Germany relates to Berlin’s water-­supply management. After the water-supply contracts of two private companies (both started in 1999) expired in 2013, local water was to be remunicipalized. Users should have paid a higher price for the service because of contractual obligations that forced the municipality to match the level of profits specified in the contracts with the private companies. In the ensuing economic battle among citizens, governments, and the private companies, a water council was created in 2013 as an open forum to allow citizens and experts to participate in the water-supply democratization with their ideas and proposals. This chain of events led to the establishment of a local not-for profit organization called Berliner Wassertisch, which included a network of representatives of different groups, initiatives, and interested citizens. The organization’s founding declaration was that “water belongs to all of us—water is a human right” (Berliner Wassertisch 2015). The organization created a common document called the Berlin Water Charter to interpret all new and existing laws and regulations about water management in a more transparent and shared manner. Third, multistakeholder involvement and the shared decision-making process have led to a business approach to finance that is specific to Western Europe and is characterized by the presence of a network of “mutually interlocking owners” (Matten and Moon 2008, 408), where relationships and the value of proximity are key to maintaining a stable value system. Furthermore, the financial system has always assigned a similar or even higher value to stakeholders than to mere shareholders (Fiss and Zajac 2004). This tendency is reflected in the formation of entrepreneurial models for fostering cooperation and participation while building an economic system that responds to principles of fairness, transparency, and broader value creation in the interest of all stakeholders. The Western European cooperative movement has been a pioneer in creating a form of participative enterprise where both workers and owners are the beneficiaries of goods and services (Kerlin 2006). Italy is a flagship country for such a movement (Defourny and Nyssens 2010). The rise of voluntary organizations and associations in the late ‘70s and ‘80s was a proactive move by the people (often connected to the Catholic church) reacting to the welfare state’s inadequacy in meeting the demands of social services due to severe financial constraints. During the ‘90s, two fundamental Italian laws formally recognized private social-services initiatives in the form of voluntary organizations and social cooperatives. These forms of enterprise embrace a human-centered perspective by fostering active stakeholder participation, democratic management, and the establishment of relationships based on trust (Borzaga and Santuari 2000). The Italian social-cooperative movement is a European benchmark because of its power to combine liberal and social perspectives (in some cases also within Catholic social

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teaching), thus embracing the human-based purpose typical of the nonprofit sector while overcoming some of its financial limitations (Masiero 2020). Among the latest evolutions of social cooperatives that is expanding in Europe is the multistakeholder cooperative, which merges different membership typologies, such as consumers, employees, buyers, and goods and services providers (Gonzalez 2017). Fourth, while an overall picture of a common Western European education and labor framework is ultimately impossible to provide, we can conclude with the description of an NBS system that enables a more humanized business approach by reporting the particular attitude of Western European countries in pursuing collective interests within a capitalistic system. The tradition of trade union membership across Western Europe is the sign of an inclusive, engaging, and participatory labor model in which stronger relationships and nexuses are established among governments, workers, citizens, and political parties and movements. Without delving deeper into the causes of certain failures and shortcomings among Western European social democratic trade unions (which would require closer and ad-hoc explanations), we can agree with Gramsci (1923) that “the capitalists, for industrial reasons, cannot want all forms of organisation to be destroyed. In the factory, discipline and the smooth flow of production [are] only possible if there exists at least a minimum degree of consent on the part of the workers” (in Upchurch et al. 2016, 20). A stronger humanized approach is detectable in this quote in giving voice to apparently divergent stakeholders’ claims and attributing to two-way legitimate dialogue a higher value for bargaining workers’ needs, even (and especially) when in conflict. Keeping in mind that our descriptions above are just an initial effort to converge the key traits of Western Europe on the topic of humanizing business, we need to reinforce the idea that not only is Western Europe a highly variegated reality both for business approaches and configurations and for national contexts and historical and current characteristics, but also each NBS is changing rapidly. The past few decades have seen an increasing institutionalization of business practices that integrate human-oriented and social perspectives throughout Western Europe. Institutions such as the European Union, local governments and authorities, and various organizations for social change have worked closely to provide more tools and frameworks that managers can adopt to more effectively translate attitudes and behaviors into shared practices, express new business identities, and measure the impacts of their actions. This state of affairs has made some of the traditional implicit approaches to the humanization of business more explicit and less informal (Matten and Moon 2008; Visser 2010). The interconnectedness of these four key traits has favored a more relationship-­ based system in which certain human values are embedded in the Western European business model. The relationship-based system is reflected in three main typical situations where Western European companies express their humanizing and/or humanized business practices at their best. The next sections include new stories where businesses have adopted innovative identities, attributed a central role to humans, and established business purposes based on a broader perspective of value creation.

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Forging New Firms’ Identities Western Europe is vibrant and fertile ground for the application of several new business forms that have arisen globally and have imposed their approaches everywhere, albeit in different ways. Such hybrid forms tend to combine social and economic perspectives, thus opening the way to a more humanized business DNA made of purpose, business models, and attitude. In particular, we refer to the “social business” form, the legal attributes and creative identity of which vary from country to country and make the humanizing approach more particular in certain contexts. Why do we consider Western European social businesses to be an expression of humanized business? This question is particularly relevant because people might think that, simply because a form exists (either a legal form or simply a label) in which a business includes a social mission, the business therefore must be more humanized. We wish to stress that, in Western Europe, the difference arises from the identity that is created out of a business embracing a certain form. The businesses’ particular attitude in integrating multistakeholder objectives, even via a participatory and democratic management style (Defourny 2001), as well as apparently divergent social and economic goals, makes them more inclined to be considered humanized businesses in their core. Some scholars agree that Western European businesses or organizations that adopt hybrid forms seem to intensively link, more than other organizations in other contexts, the nature of the economic activity to the social mission (Bacq and Janssen 2011), because these businesses traditionally relied “on a combination of market and [nonmarket] resources which always varied according to the needs to be addressed as well as to local contexts” (Defourny and Nyssens 2010, 38). This strategy has shaped the differentiated evolution of business identities in Western Europe compared to other countries. Not surprisingly, new Western European business identities are blooming in many industries and are starting to forge a new DNA of business and to cause stakeholders to have a less paradoxical perception of the stronger integration between business and ethics. For instance, an expansion of food-and-beverage social organizations is currently underway in which these organizations develop identities that can integrate the marketing of appealing and trendy products with concern for human issues in an innovative way (Nicholls and Murdock 2012). Evidence is also visible from sectors that typically have suffered from an industry effect. One example is beer, which is subject to intrinsic ethical paradoxes related to the fact that beer is an alcoholic item that uses tons of water in its production and potentially harms both people and the environment. Beer-related social enterprises have started to shape their strategies to meet evolving stakeholders’ needs in various spheres of social caring and have become catalysts for job creation and inclusion (pushed by the desire of humanizing business) to become part of a community and to involve human beings in their business-model conceptualization (Berry et al. 2015). One example of new identity creation within the adoption of hybrid business forms is that of Toast Ale, a London-based limited company labeled as a “social

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enterprise” and certified as an official “B Corporation.”1 The company produces beer brewed from surplus bread that otherwise would go to waste. Toast Ale’s profits are reinvested into growing the company’s social mission through the implementation of educational campaigns for stakeholders and by enlarging its network of partnerships with bakeries. Toast Ale started as a purpose-driven business in 2015, with a clear identity in which business was used as a force for good by locking a social mission into the company’s DNA. The company’s mission is related to achievements linked to environmental sustainability, both in its core activities (fighting bread waste) and in the sending of all profits to a not-for-profit organization composed of activists who advocate for a more sustainable use of resources. Beyond the environment-related purpose, Toast Ale’s stakeholder-oriented “relational” approach contributes to humanizing the company’s purpose, especially in the way it makes profits. One of the strongest signs of Toast Ale’s humanized DNA is its open attitude toward sharing the “secret” of its innovative business with its stakeholders at all levels. Toast Ale declares that to accomplish its mission more effectively, the company invites “everyone in the brewing community, from large established breweries to home brewers, to come together to incorporate surplus bread into their brews” (from Toast Ale’s recipe card, available online). By subscribing to Toast Ale’s newsletter section, users can download the open beer recipe and participate in the fight for a zero-bread-waste community. Such an attitude toward stakeholder involvement and participation is a core element of the company’s forged identity, given that having the form of “social enterprise” and B Corporation certification does not oblige Toast Ale to develop certain business behaviors, apart from sending its profits into growing its social mission. The communication of Toast Ale’s business activities and values reflects an orientation that has fully embedded a dual mission and created a new business DNA. In an interview with Toast Ale’s communication manager in 2017, the manager declared that the human-oriented purpose of the business was so essential and intensively linked to the core business that it was superfluous to use social-oriented value propositions in the company’s communications. Stakeholders, indeed, get used to and engaged in a new company’s clear identity through the direct experiences they have of both the products and of the company’s activities to involve the public, such as (in this case) the open beer recipe. The company addresses its communications to reinforce the qualitative aspects of its beer rather than the human focus, because it knows its mostly UK-based audience already appreciates beer as “liquid bread.” 1  Official “B Corp Certification” (a trademarked term) is the world’s only certification to measure a company’s entire social and environmental performance, thus going beyond the certification of products and services and including the assessment of companies’ impacts on workers, communities, the environment, and customers along the entire supply chain. Such certification has been developed within the general B corporation movement (where B is short for “benefit”), which groups together people who want to use business as a force for good, aims to help societies address their greatest challenges, and hopes to build a more inclusive economy. In this cultural shift, companies can redesign their role in society. As of 2019, more than 2500 companies in 50 different countries had obtained official B Corporation certification (www.bcorporation.eu).

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The audience is characterized by an expectation of “quality, choice and variety” (Thurnell-Read 2016, 68) and does not need any justification of the company’s social involvement to buy the product. To provide evidence of the many contextual differences found in Western Europe described earlier, we can illustrate a different stakeholder approach to businesses’ humanized DNA in other countries. One study conducted in 2019 (Civera et  al. 2020) reported that in some countries such as Italy, stakeholders have a paradoxical perception of humanized businesses in the food and beverage industry: they seem to evaluate businesses that have a strong human purpose and social focus as being less oriented to quality than other businesses. This perception might have arisen because, given the traditional Italian social outlook, businesses that adopt specific hybrid forms seem to overly stress their social mission as a legitimizing element of the business itself, especially in their communications. That study, however, showed that such a misperception of quality can be overcome when businesses develop their communications based on their identity rather than simply on the peculiarities of a business form, thus creating a novelty that combines the company’s approach to market with human-based values. Similarly to what happens to the creative identities that arise from the social business forms found in Western Europe, adherence to the B corporation movement and official B Corporation certification also reflects the same traditional participatory and inclusive background we discussed in section “Enabling Factors for a Humanized Business DNA”. The world-leading multinational food company Danone is a good example. The French company joined the B corporation movement in 2017, which seemed a natural outcome for a corporation that has striven for joint value creation and human-based outcomes of business since its beginning. Even in this case the form appears superfluous: what counts is the identity that Danone has forged as a combination of its traditional values and orientations, which function more than a simple response to a regulatory framework offered by official B Corporation certification. Danone’s mission is part of a purpose-driven business organization that incorporates the inclusion of, relationships with, and benefits of human beings at its core. The company’s mission statement is “Bringing health through food to as many people as possible.” The company’s commitment to providing health through food is as old as the company itself. In 1919, the core business was already focused on producing yogurt to help children with intestinal infections, first through pharmacies and then through grocery stores. Even the brands that Danone has acquired over time have reflected the same approach to human health: Nutricia (the Norwegian brand bought by Danone in 2007) was a pioneer in therapeutic food and clinical nutrition thanks to several breakthrough discoveries. What makes Danone show evidence of a humanized DNA is the company’s approach to people, which has been faithful to the company’s original purpose throughout the brand’s life. The company’s long path to receive B Corporation certification formally started in 2017 but began much earlier than that. In a speech given in 1972 during a French employers’ convention in Marseille, Antoine Riboud (founder and former president of Danone) presented Danone’s already-integrated mission: “Let us conduct our businesses as much with

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the heart as with the head, and let us not forget that if the earth’s energy resources have limits, those of man are infinite if he feels motivated.” (Mousli 2014, 49). The ambition of becoming a world-leading company that incorporates social and economic objectives and strives for B Corporation certification reflects the company’s will to move forward with the full integration of multistakeholder claims into the company’s activity and to help people live better lives. As Danone declares in its “Our B Corp Ambition” statement: In this increasingly complex world, big brands and companies are fundamentally challenged as to whose interests they really serve. At Danone, we are convinced that addressing this issue in straight and simple terms is the best way for our brands and our company to reinforce trust with employees, consumers, partners, retailers, civil society and governments. This is where we found B Lab accreditation a great way to express our long-time commitment for dual economic and social progress, through our ambition to support people’s adoption of healthier and more sustainable eating and drinking practices.

Recovering Human Values and the Centrality of Relationships The intention of this section is to illustrate specific businesses’ DNAs that have reflected a focus on stakeholders and on traditional core relational and human values as sources of value creation since the companies’ foundation. We will show a different perspective of humanized business through identities that have rediscovered and recovered the centrality of people in the way they do business. Starting from Italy and its strong tradition within the luxury fashion industry, a case of an Italian haute couture brand seems to solve another paradox that is linked to stakeholder perception of humanized, sustainable, and responsible business within such an industry. Admittedly, luxury fashion brands are often perceived as wasteful and disrespectful in a variety of matters regarding humanity and social and environmental spheres. Scholars’ opinions and empirical evidence—supported by the latest corporate scandals in the luxury fashion world—have always strengthened the dichotomy and have pointed out stakeholders’ misperceptions of business and humanization in such a context (Janssen et al. 2017; Davies et al. 2012; Torelli et al. 2012; Pomering and Dolnicar 2009). But the fashion luxury world and humanizing practices appear to have much in common in terms of aspirations, attributes, uniqueness, trustworthy relationships, and the search for higher value (Quach and Thaichon 2017; Janssen et al. 2014; Kapferer 2010). This commonality also explains why an increasing number of luxury fashion players have been able to leverage on those values and to try to integrate their social and environmental practices into their core businesses. As a result, growing and successful corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability practices and activities are now evident from luxury fashion companies that provide the feeling of a process of business humanization. But if we conceptualize a humanized business as a changed company’s DNA, then carrying on CSR or sustainability initiatives will not be enough per se to solve some of the paradoxes associated with stakeholders’ misperceptions about items that cost

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thousands of dollars and perhaps exploit minors or natural resources in their production processes. The question thus arises: Which values and relationships can a luxury fashion company work on to build a humanized DNA that remains true to itself and is able to solve an eternal paradox? One answer can be provided through the story of the Italian fashion brand Brunello Cucinelli. The entrepreneur Brunello Cucinelli launched his career in 1978 by introducing colored cashmere into the fashion scene. He started in Solomeo, a medieval hamlet close to the central Italian city of Perugia that he gradually restored. He bought a fourteenth-century castle to function as the company headquarters and to be a hub for the development of culture and social exchange. The entrepreneur’s dream of a world with more knowledge, philosophy, history, and human relationships has guided the business since the beginning and has formed the Brunello Cucinelli company’s DNA in a way that is intrinsically linked to both a geographical positioning and an entrepreneurial orientation. Solomeo, as reported on the company’s institutional documents, is itself a “hamlet of the spirit.” In the 1980s—years when the relationship with the territory and the links with tradition and human values were losing their original meanings in Western Europe and were becoming counter to business development and growth—Brunello Cucinelli was decorating Solomeo with all the symbolic aspects of his life, from Socrates’s passion for constant knowledge painted on the ancient walls to fashion collections exhibited inside the walls. Since its foundation, Brunello Cucinelli has become a sign of an ethical way of producing, a community that was not created from scratch but originated from history and knowledge, where small laboratories became the centers of almost perfect craftsmanship. Cucinelli’s philosophy of a business that creates value has incorporated his vision and ideas about a humanistic form of capitalism. In an article published in the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore in 1999, Cucinelli described his idea of a humanistic enterprise, where “economic value must always go hand in hand with human values.” The concept of fairness shapes such an idea, in Cucinelli’s view; he talks about a fair profit that must be harmonized with providing the world extra value, through ethics, dignity, and morals, for future generations to enjoy in a sustainable way. Such a human-oriented perspective also shapes production choices, which are entirely based on highly specialized manual work and define Cucinelli’s positioning on certain matters, such as technology. In his view, the human component must always prevail over other means and tools for production. People are at the center of the discourse about value creation. The sole task of technology, for instance, is to enrich our lives and serve our goals; technology must never become our main goal. A few key traits of humanistic capitalism may be summarized into pillars that the company respects in managing its human resources, stakeholders, and the environment that hosts the business activities. First, the quality of the workplace should heighten dignity in every human being, which is why the company’s headquarters were restored according to aesthetically pleasing criteria that matched history and tradition. Second, the fair working hours and the fact that Cucinelli employees are forbidden from being online for work or otherwise available for business reasons outside working hours show alignment with the founder’s idea that the principle of

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fairness guides the entire humanistic approach to business. Third, esteem and appreciation for people’s work, as well as their constant empowerment, are key traits of a business purpose that aims to maintain and increase sustainable value creation. Cucinelli created the School of Arts and Crafts in Solomeo to train young people in a new approach to manual work that values heritage and the spirit of adaptation, both of which are crucial for the artisanal work to survive within the fast-moving and growing contemporary world. Fourth, the reconnection with nature, culture, and history has led to the creation of a community of people who are fully integrated with their surroundings. The reconnection has extended into the design of a theater, an amphitheater, and a library in Solomeo, all of which are open to the public to promote dialogue and culture. Extracts from Cucinelli’s book The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism, published in 2018, show how his idea was the result of personal experiences of relationships that have flourished in a place where, as described in section “Enabling Factors for a Humanized Business DNA” of the current chapter, relationships and human values are an informal but key part of the life of the community: The local cafe, where I hung out later on during my youth, was also important; there I came across very diverse human beings, all of them very poignant and amiable: it became a sort of university of the soul for me. My origins, my personality and my experiences started relating to each other.… On these foundations I built my humanistic capitalism, which includes social aspects, the clear notion of the primary value attached to human beings that should be granted moral and economic dignity.

As we have already discussed, the power of informality when establishing relationships with reliable people is sometimes the basis for making such relationships more trustworthy and has become a key part of Cucinelli’s approach to business: “Humanity is the true soul of contemporary humanistic capitalism, namely when some entrepreneurs granted a loan to me, an inexperienced nobody, just because they held me in high regard as a person, a loan that was secured with a simple hand-shake!” The communication campaigns over the years have marked Cucinelli’s will to increase awareness of an identity that is oriented to people and their main concerns of the time. In 2018, the company designed an entire calendar based on the issue of human privacy, which went with the phenomenon of increasingly exposing personal matters on social media and often losing control of the intimate sphere. Keeping people’s well-being at the core, the calendar shows moments of intimacy between people at different ages and in different stages of life that are voluntarily protected by being almost hidden. The strong integration between Brunello Cucinelli’s personal humanized vision of business and the humanistic orientation of his company culminated in the award of an honorary postgraduate degree in the philosophy and ethics of human relations, proposed by Prof. Antonio Pieretti of the University of Perugia, based on the grounds that the entrepreneur was able to unite “aesthetics with an appreciation for the environment; he has shown how capitalism, when it is applied appropriately, can take on a human countenance and constitute a favorable vehicle for the promotion

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of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence” (speech, “Dignity as a Form of the Spirit,” 2010). A different perspective, although with the same outcome of a business identity that is embedded with human values, may be found from the British cosmetics company the Body Shop, founded by Anita Roddick in 1976. The business has always been conceived of as a purpose-driven company that can be a source for good, as shown by the company’s commitment to the fair-trade movement since 1987. At that time, the company was a pioneer in the industry in sourcing raw ingredients sustainably while benefiting local communities and employees globally. That human-based orientation has been a key trait of the company since its foundation and eventually led to the creation of the “Enrich Not Exploit” commitment, which drives business activities according to fair practices with farmers, suppliers, communities, and the environment. Although the embedded humanized purpose has always remained in the Body Shop’s DNA, during the era from 2006 to 2017, when it was owned by the French multinational cosmetics company L’Oréal, the company appeared to lack “the freedom to express what is still alive in the Body Shop, the human activist spirit and purpose-led philosophy” (from an interview with Body Shop Director of International Corporate Responsibility and Campaigns Christopher Davis, published in Ethical Corporation, 13 September 2017). Being owned by a giant company that would probably be misaligned with the Body Shop’s philosophy seemed to have frozen the company’s original orientation without killing it. When L’Oréal sold the Body Shop to the Brazilian multinational Natura in 2017 for €1 billion, the reaction of the Body Shop’s management was positive and supportive of a business transaction that would recover the company’s original human orientation, still alive among the company’s stakeholders and employees. This example shows that when a business is originally conceived with a strong humanized purpose, it is difficult to lose such a characterization, and certain human values remain at the core of the business, no matter the ownership and its geographical localization. What counts is the culture, which is rooted in certain territories, and that forging a company’s identity in the first place makes it remain steady during its evolution. As Davis noted, Natura was “talking about shared purpose; [they were] talking about a shared vision and shared culture. The depth of the change we are going to experience here [with Natura] seems so right and so close to The Body Shop’s DNA.”

Limiting Growth to Ensure a Humanized Business Purpose This section presents a Belgian beer producer that serves as the flagship for the company’s humanization process and purpose-driven business, which is, paradoxically, giving up on creating higher social and economic value in the short term to maintain a coherent and humanized way of working in the longer term. In 2020, the Saint-Sixtus Abbey’s “Westvleteren 12 (XII)” beer was ranked third in Ratebeer’s global ranking; the list includes the top 50 active beers according to a

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worldwide community of beer raters. The rating, further validated by a Bayesian formula with the aim of calculating average values, had ranked the Belgian abbey’s Westvleteren 12 first in 2005, which created a problem for its producers, the Trappists (the common name of the Cistercian order, a strictly observant order of monks). The brewers belong to the International Trappist Association, and their products feature the Authentic Trappist Product label, which brings together a series of monasteries with several shared principles: that (a) “all products must be made within the immediate surroundings of the abbey”; (b) “production must be carried out under the supervision of the monks or nuns”; and (c) “profits should be intended for the needs of the monastic community, for purposes of solidarity within the Trappist Order, or for development projects and charitable works.” Following these rules, the amount of Westvleteren beer is obviously limited, because the aim is to produce only as much beer as is necessary to maintain the community. A growth in demand was clearly unexpected. The average waiting list to buy the Westvleteren 12 to this day remains 3 months, and beer lovers still have to have an appointment at the Saint-Sixtus Abbey to pick up their reserved crates in person. A choice of this type clearly limits promotional activity and also restricts commercial distribution. The brewery has taken this step to control the sale price so that it remains ethical and does not create misperceptions among stakeholders. At present, as confirmed by news reports on the unauthorized sale of Westvleteren beer by supermarkets at €9.95 per bottle (compared to €1.90 at the abbey), the request to brew more beer could generate enormous value. Even if the price were contained but higher than the current price, the increase could generate a margin to be distributed to the Trappist community and for charitable projects globally, which would increase turnover and, in a broad sense, value. A few questions arise from this situation from a general perspective, however. For example, how sustainable would the beer production be over time? How long would the “share of mind” (to use some marketing jargon) be maintained against a growth in market share? The Trappists themselves do not directly ask themselves these questions. Their choice was founded on a rule of life that alternates work and contemplation and on a precise choice, which pertains to the identity of the Authentic Trappist Product brand and the Westvleteren brand. The product itself, which is created according to rules and limits that respect the human and community component, is where the value for such an appreciated and in-demand beer is to be found. This identity rejects short-term economic benefits to allow for a broader perspective of longer-term value creation and trade. The perspective’s roots are found in the brewery’s very human and spiritual motto: “We brew to live. We do not live to brew.”

Concluding Remarks This chapter represents an initial attempt to illuminate some of the key traits of Western European companies’ attitudes toward a humanization of business. As we have described, Western Europe presents variegated cultural and historical

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characterizations that have forged diverse business attitudes and identities over time. Despite these differences—and the fact that the Western European business scene is rapidly changing and certain practices of humanizing business are less implicit and becoming more institutionalized than in the past—certain peculiarities of human-­ oriented business attitudes still belong to and distinctively identify Western European companies. First, we illustrated unique business identities that were created out of business forms that aim to favor improved integration between economic and human values. We outlined that some Western European companies and organizations go beyond the business form to develop a humanized business DNA that is independent of the form itself and is able to cause stakeholders to have a less paradoxical perception of an integration between business and ethics, especially in certain industries. Second, we reported on the cases of several Western European companies that were founded with a strong basis on human values and a human activist spirit. We demonstrated that those values, because they are implicitly embedded in a company’s DNA and its surroundings, can survive time, internationalization, and any changing processes. Finally, we discussed a particular attitude of a Western European beer producer that, in order to protect and maintain its humanized purpose and sustainable long-term value, has chosen to limit its growth and immediate value creation (whether social, economic, of environmental) in the short term.

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Matten, Dirk, and Jeremy Moon. 2008. “Implicit” and “Explicit” CSR: A Conceptual Framework for a Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility. Academy of Management Review 33 (2): 404–424. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193458. Maurice, Marc, and Arndt Sorge (Eds.). 2000. Embedding Organizations: Societal Analysis of Actors, Organizations and Socio-Economic Context (4). John Benjamins Publishing Amsterdam McVea, John F., and R.  Edward Freeman. 2005. A Names-and-Faces Approach to Stakeholder Management: How Focusing on Stakeholders as Individuals Can Bring Ethics and Entrepreneurial Strategy Together. Journal of Management Inquiry 14 (1): 57–69. https://doi. org/10.1177/1056492604270799. Mosse, George. 2018. The Culture of Western Europe: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Routledge. Mousli, Marc. 2014. Antoine Riboud’s Marseille Speech. L'Économie politique 2: 49–49. Nicholls, Alex, and Alex Murdock. 2012. The Nature of Social Innovation. In Social Innovation, 1–30. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Phillips, Robert A. 1997. Stakeholder Theory and a Principle of Fairness. Business Ethics Quarterly 7 (1): 51–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/3857232. Pomering, Alan, and Sara Dolnicar. 2009. Assessing the Prerequisite of Successful CSR Implementation: Are Consumers Aware of CSR Initiatives? Journal of Business Ethics 85 (2): 285–301. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-­008-­9729-­9. Quach, Sara, and Park Thaichon. 2017. From Connoisseur Luxury to Mass Luxury: Value Co-creation and Co-destruction in the Online Environment. Journal of Business Research 81: 163–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.06.015. Seller, Enrique Pastor. 2017. Mechanisms for Participation in the Public System of Social Services in Spain: Opportunities for the Development of Social Work with a Citizenist Approach. European Journal of Social Work 20 (3): 441–458. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.201 7.1283588. Thurnell-Read, Thomas. 2016. ‘Real Ale’enthusiasts, Serious Leisure and the Costs of Getting ‘Too Serious’ About Beer. Leisure Sciences 38 (1): 68–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/0149040 0.2015.1046618. Torelli, Carlos J., Monga Alokparna Basu, and M. Kaikati Andrew. 2012. Doing Poorly by Doing Good: Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Concepts. Journal of Consumer Research 38 (5): 948–963. https://doi.org/10.1086/660851. Upchurch, Martin, Graham Taylor, and Andrew Mathers. 2016. The Crisis of Social Democratic Trade Unionism in Western Europe: The Search for Alternatives. Routledge. Visser, Wayne. 2010. The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business. Journal of Business Systems, Governance and Ethics 5 (3): 7–22. https://ssrn.com/abstract=1725159. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Vol. 1. Barkley: University of California Press. Whitley, Richard. 1999. Divergent Capitalisms: The Social Structuring and Change of Business Systems. Oxford: OUP.

Websites B-Corporation. 2019. www.bcorporation.eu. Accessed 15 Dec 2019. Berlin Water Charter. 2015. Berlin Water Charter, March 22. www.wrrl-­info.de/docs/vortrag_ sem50_wassercharta_hearlin.pdf. Accessed 16 Nov 2019. Berliner Wassertisch. 2015. Neue Fassung der Berliner Wassercharta. www.berliner-­wassertisch. net. Accessed 16 Nov 2019. Brunello Cucinelli. 2019a. www.brunellocucinelli.com/en/. Accessed 10 Dec 2019.

43  A Western European Perspective on Humanizing Business: Forging New Identities… 667 ———. 2019b. Cucinelli, l’umanesimo in azienda produce profitto e responsabilità. press.brunellocucinelli.com/yep-­content/media/19990911_Il_Sole_24_Ore2.pdf. Accessed 10 Dec 2019. Danone. 2019. www.danone.com. Accessed 20 Dec 2019. Ethical Corp. 2017. Exclusive: ‘Under Natura The Body Shop Will Return to Its Activist Roots. Terry Slavin, September 13. www.ethicalcorp.com/exclusive-­under-­natura-­body-­shop-­will-­ return-­its-­activist-­roots. Accessed 2 Dec 2019. Oxford Dictionary. 2019. Humanizing; Business. www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com. Accessed 20 Oct 2019. Toast Ale. 2019. “Mission and vision”; “Homebrew Recipe”. www.toastale.com. Accessed 2 Nov 2019. Trappistwestvleteren. 2019. “History”; “The Brewing Process”. www.trappistwestvleteren.be. Accessed 4 Nov 2019. Damiano Cortese is PhD in Business and Management, Researcher and Lecturer at Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures, University of Turin (IT). He is Visiting Research Fellow at Darden School of Business, University of Virginia (USA), Visiting Professor at Abat Oliba CEU (ES) and Visiting Lecturer at University of Gastronomic Sciences (IT). He teaches business administration and is author of various scientific publications in top-tier journals and books about business economics, sustainability, responsibility, stakeholder theory. He is member of research groups for the economic impact evaluation of sustainable approaches in European Projects.  

Chiara Civera is a Senior Researcher at the University of Turin, Department of Management, Ph.D. in Business and Management and qualified as an Associate Professor in Italy. She is visiting professor and researcher in several foreign universities: London South Bank University and St. Mary’s University in London (UK), Abat Oliba CEU in Barcelona (Spain), and Darden School of Business, University of Virginia (US). She teaches strategic marketing and business strategy in Turin and is author of various scientific publications in top-tier journals and books about stakeholder theory, company responsibility and sustainability, communication and marketing. She is the director of the International Master in Food and Beverage Sustainable Entrepreneurship (Italy, UK and Spain).  

Chapter 44

An Eastern European and Baltic Perspective on Humanizing Business: The Role of State, Social Entrepreneurship, and For-Profit Enterprises Anastasiya Luzgina

Business Humanizing and the Role of State in the Economy Humanizing Business in Eastern European Countries (EEC) and Baltic States has its own features. The fact is that majority of EEC and Baltic States were the part of socialistic block where principals of planned economy played a major role and state owned enterprises prevailed. The State was the owner of the main part of national economies in many countries of the region. In Soviet Union, for example, the economic life was built on the base of total equality, lack of competition and huge social support from the state side. On the one hand such situation supported people with lower incomes, gave equal access to medical care and education, ensured gender equality. On the other hand it led to inefficient use of human, natural and financial resources, slowed down economic development. Existing at that time economic system wasn’t able to cover all growing human needs. For last decades state domination in economic  life in many countries of the region was decreased significantly. The concept of state planned economy was changed to the concept of market economy. At the same time in some EEC the role of State is still very high. Reducing the state influence on socio-economic life included the reforming of social security system and declining the state social guarantees for employees. The important role in social security belongs to pension system. And many countries of the region have changed their pension schemes significantly. In Soviet time many EEC and Baltic states had Pay As You Go (PAYG) pension system where contributions from current workers spent on benefits for current pensioners. But after Soviet block was destroyed many countries decided to reform pension systems. They were partly transferred to savings pension schemes. Individual pension accounts were created. Centralized state funds continue to exist A. Luzgina (*) Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Center, Kyiv, Ukraine e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_44

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but the resources of personified accounts of state funds or personal private pension accounts cover part of pensions benefits (Table 44.1). In Ukraine (mostly) and in Belarus (fully), PAYG systems continues to exist. In Ukraine authorities have plans to introduce mandatory personal pension savings. In Belarus supplementary pension contributions on the voluntary basis will be introduced in October 2022. Up to 10% of employee’s wage can be transferred to personal pension savings. In this case, up to 3% of the statutory contributions will be transferred to personal account by employer (Ukaz on voluntary insurance of supplementary saving pension was signed, 2021). Despite the changes  the guaranteed  level of pension benefits was not high in many countries of then region. Given the aging population in EEC and Baltic States as well as problems of transition economies the replacement rate (the indicator is calculates as pension size to former income) in many countries was deteriorated. After the world economic crisis (2008–2009) some of EEC and Baltic States increased the role of state in pension systems. For example, in Poland in 2014 individual pension funds were joined to centralized state fund.  Individual personal pension accounts have become optional for opening. In Russia transfers to personal pension accounts were frozen in 2014. In fact, PAYG  pension system was reversed. In Ukraine private pension funds were unpopular. In Hungary funded pension system was canceled in 2010. Funded (saving) contributions were decreased in Latvia form 8% to 2% in 2009, in Lithuania from 5.5% to 1.5%, in Slovakia – from 9% to 4% in 2012. In Hungary the resources of personal pension accounts were joined to centralized state fund (PAYG system) in 2010 (Ortiz and others 2018, 44). All Eastern European Countries and Baltic States had to increase retirement age. Russia was the last country that decided to start the process only in 2018. The reasons of these changes were aging population  growth, limited budget resources, growth of life expectancy and etc. Today there is harder and harder to provide stable and acceptable income for all  pensioners in many countries  of Eastern Europe Region.  Usually Government  guarantees some  minimum of pension benefits. Supplementary pension savings can be created by employees through voluntary (or in some cases obligatory) deductions from wages or employers as a part of corporate social programs. The problem of social services costs compensation is very vital in many countries of the region also. In contrast to Soviet time today people should pay for Table 44.1  Pension system reform (Ortiz and others 2018, 3) Country Hungary Kazakhstan Croatia Poland Latvia Bulgaria Estonia

Year 1998 1998 1999 1999 2001 2002 2002

Country Russian Federation Lithuania Romania Slovakia Macedonia Czech Republic Armenia

Year 2002 2004 2004 2005 2006 2013 2014

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medical services and education. National governments declined or canceled subsidies for public services. For example, according to “Challenges and prospects in the EU: quality of life and public services” more than 30% of working age population in such countries like Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania have difficulties with the covering of health services costs. In post soviet countries, like Belarus and Russia, there is the system of state owned hospitals and clinics. But the quality of services is not always on a high level. People can get paid services in private medical centers. Secondary education in these countries is free but universities and colleges provide as free so paid education. Taking into account that at the end of 2018  average salary in Belarus was 1115.3  Belarusian rubles (National Statistical Committee 2019) or 523.2  USD1 (National Bank of the Republic of Belarus 2018) and in Russia – 55,1502 Russian Rubles (Federal State Statistics Office 2018) or 819 USD (Kursvaliut.ru) it is obvious that not everyone can buy medical insurance or pay for the university education by him/herself. For example, education cost for students of Belarusian State University was about 2900–4600 Belarusian rubles per 2019–2020 academic year  or approximately 1.386 USD  – 2.200 USD3 per year (Belarusian State University 2020; National Bank of the Republic of Belarus 2018). The price depends on faculty and year of study. At the same time cost of education in Moscow State University of Lomonosov in 2019  was around  406,000 Russian rubles or 65004 USD per year in average (Vuzopedia n.d.). Price of annual medical insurance  is about 300–700 USD in Belarus and approximately 800–1568 USD5 in Russia (Alikina Sept. 19, 2017). All these facts characterize that the main part of social services are partly paid by population and support from the business side would have very important positive impact for the majority of people. Today state-owned and private companies try to develop social programs for their workers. All employees have minimum social guarantees. The most of such guarantees are state-regulated. At the same time more and more companies in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other countries try to create comfortable conditions for their workers and provide additional social (including pension) benefits voluntary. This is especially true for the spheres with high demand on qualified labor force and for large companies with foreign capital.

1  Average exchange rate USD to Belarusian Ruble in December 2018 = 2.1318 (National Bank of the Republic of Belarus 2018). 2  Average exchange rate USD to Russian Ruble in December 2018 = 67,3353 (Kursvaliut.ru). 3  Average exchange rate USD to Belarusian Ruble in Jan-Dec 2019 = 2.0914 (National Bank of the Republic of Belarus 2018). 4  Average exchange rate USD to Russian Ruble in December 2019 = 62,9325 (Kursvaliut.ru). 5  Data for 2016.

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 ocial Entrepreneurship as an Important Aspect of Business S Humanizing in Russia and Belarus Very important trend in business humanizing in EEC and in other regions is development of Social entrepreneurship. It includes the business that aims to achieve some social (including ecological) goals. For example, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship explains that social entrepreneurs have to comply with the following characteristics: • Stimulate social changes in the society; • Provide goods and services that support to resolve social and ecological problems; • Use innovations for achieving social goals; • Get feedback from the interested parties about social business improvement (Shopify n.d.). In Belarus special legislation of social enterprises regulation are discussed. The group of experts from business, interested government agencies, including Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Taxes and Duties, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, as well as nongovernment public organizations was created. The concept of social entrepreneurship law has to be sent to the government after approval of public-advisory board of the Ministry of Labor (BELTA May 30, 2019). The concept includes main definitions (social entrepreneurs, social investor, social enterprise), answer on such questions like why special regulation for social business is important and what should be regulated (ODB Brussels June 1, 2019). One of the main aspects for social entrepreneurship in Belarus is work with disable people. But there are another very important social aspects in ecological, social and educational spheres. According to the concept there are some restrictions for social entrepreneurs. For example, such companies have to employ certain percent of disable people as well as people from other vulnerable groups (refugees, former drugs users, former convicts and etc.). Moreover, some part of the profit from social oriented business has to go on social goals. It should be noted that in Belarus special programs for small and medium enterprises already exist. At the same time they  are more general and don’t take into account specific futures of social business. New law has to include this necessary information. Despite the absence of special legislation, social business develops gradually in Belarus. The total contribution of social entrepreneurship in GDP is about 0.32%. Very important role for social business development is given by ecosystem creation. In Belarus there is a well-developed IT sector. It explains the social projects existing in IT sphere also. For example, “ABA coach” (ABA Coach n.d.) is an educational application for children with autism. Another very good example  is RecyclingTaxi (Zaharevich Nov. 27, 2017), that helps to separate garbage recycling. In 2019 school of social entrepreneurship “Good Impact” was created. The main

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goal of the project is the supporting of social entrepreneurs by training and financial support (Good Impact n.d.). Favorable environment for social business in Belarus forms due to: • Creation of special crowdfunding platforms, such as MolaMola (work was suspended in 2020) (MolaMola n.d.); • Lending programs establishing for small and medium enterprises; • Development of startups movement and creation of accelerators and incubators; • Holding social competitions, hackathons and seminars; • Support of social entrepreneurs from traditional business. In Russia there is no detailed statistical data about social enterprises but according to different estimations there are about 5000–15,000 entities in the social business. At the same time only 1% of the total number of entrepreneurs can be attributed to social business. Among social entrepreneurs very popular such spheres like homecare for the elderly, social and health rehabilitation for disable children and kindergartens. The popularity of last type for social business can be explained by decreasing of maternity leave duration several years ago. An insufficient quantity of private and public kindergartens stimulated to open new ones by social entrepreneurs. There are several organizations that develop social entrepreneurship in Russia. One of them is foundation of regional social programs “Our Future”. This organization provides financing for training of entrepreneurs as well as loans, grants and equity participation for business development. “Our Future” supports innovation approach and develops partnership with Government, business, non-commercial entities, international foundations and etc. The foundation is a member of Asian Network of Venture Philanthropists, Global Network of Social Investors and Euclid Network (The Foundation of Regional Social Programs “Our future” n.d.). There are also regional organizations of social business development. One of them is Innovation Centre of Social Sphere in Omsk. This organization holds international forums of social entrepreneurship, has School of social entrepreneurship in Omsk and implements  different programs in 20 regions of Russian Federation (Omsk Center of Social Sphere Innovations n.d.). Another institution of social entrepreneurship in Russia is Impact Hub Moscow (branch of international organization - Impact). Among participants of the Impact Hub Moscow community 80% are women, more than 31% of total participants are 46 years old or elder and 51% of Hub members have second (or even third) higher education, business or postgraduate education and etc. (Impact Hub Moscow n.d.). Crowdfunding plays an important role for social business development in Russia. For example, Russian platform “Planeta.ru” allows to find necessary financial resources for social projects. This platform is specialized as in social entrepreneurship, so in financing such spheres like science and technologies, donation projects, creative projects (cinemas, theaters) and other spheres. But today the category of social entrepreneurship becomes more and more popular among investors of the platform (Planeta.ru n.d.).

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Innovation Promotion Center in society “Sol” (“СОЛь” in Rus.) supports instruments and projects for innovation entrepreneurship development in social sphere. This organization creates special maps of innovation leaders in education, leaders of changes in social sphere6 and map of educational projects in Russia. The goals of such maps are presentation of necessary information about the leaders, projects and links between them as well as support to find new partners and ideas (Center for Innovation Promotion in Society “Sol” n.d.). 60% of total leader projects on the map of changes in social spheres are presented by nongovernment and noncommercial organizations. At the same time 20% of total projects are developed by commercial institutions or individual entrepreneurs. 34% of the social projects, that were included in the map, have hybrid financing (they as attract sponsor support so provide paid services). 28% of total projects work without losses or even with profit. So these figures show that social business can be independent from external financial support and be profitable (SoсChain – Map of leaders of changes in the social sphere n.d.). The emerging market of social entrepreneurship in Russia pushed the process of legal environment development. In 2019 changes in the Law “About small and medium entrepreneurship development in Russian Federation” were adopted. Such definitions as “social entrepreneur”, “social entrepreneurship”, special criteria of such activities and forms of state support were given. According to the Law social entrepreneurs are entities of small and medium business that meet at least one of the special criteria. The results of company’s work have to be directed to social problems solutions and achievement of publicly useful goals (New business. Social entrepreneurship July 26, 2019). Spheres of social entrepreneurs activities include: • Services for preservation of languages, culture, traditions of Russian people as well as transnational cooperation development; • Training of employees and volunteers of noncommercial organizations for increasing the quality of their services; • Cultural and educational activities, including activities of private museums, theaters, libraries, botanic and zoological gardens ant etc.; • Recreation services for children; • Services in the sphere of school and general education as well as complimentary education of children. Social entrepreneurship also includes companies where 50 or more percentages of employees can be belonged to vulnerable groups of population (disable people, refugees, people with low income, persons without a fixed place of residence, pensioners, graduates of children homes up to 23 years old and some other groups) or entrepreneurs, that produce goods and services for vulnerable groups of people (the

6  This map is a join project of “Sol”, Fund “Freands” (in Rus. Фонд «Друзья») and Center of Wealth Management and Philanthropy of Management Moscow School Skolkovo.

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share of income from such activities should be 50% or more) (On amendments to the Federal Law of the Russian Federation July 26, 2019). Federal and local government may provide support for social entrepreneurs: • Financial support (including subsidies); • Information support; • Property support (including state and municipal property usage and possession on preferential conditions); • Methodological and consulting support; • Professional education and etc.

Social Entrepreneurship in Other EEC and Baltic States Some of Eastern European Countries and Baltic States are part of European Union and therefore have similar business rules. This is true for social entrepreneurship also. For better understanding the situation with social entrepreneurship development look through the experience of several countries in the region. For example, Social entrepreneurship Law in Latvia was adopted in 2018. According to the Latvian legislation social entrepreneurs have to be registered as a limited liability company and their activity should have a social impact. The business of such companies can pursue one of three goals: 1 . hire people from vulnerable groups; 2. produce goods and services for vulnerable groups of population; 3. do other activities, that have strong social impact in education, health, environment and etc. (ODB Brussels June 1, 2019). But besides these goals all social entrepreneurs have to follow next criteria: profit have to be reinvested or aimed to the social goal achievement; owners of the company agree that their company will work as a social enterprise; representatives of target groups or relevant associations should be in supervisory or executive body; social entrepreneur has to hire at least one payed employee. As in Russia in Latvian legislation there are target groups of population known as “social exclusion risk group”. They include disable people, homeless people, people with additions (alcohol, drugs); refugees, existing or former prisoners and etc. (Social entrepreneurship in Latvia: A brief overview of current situation 2018). Social enterprises in Latvia has special benefits like corporate income tax exemption; preferential procurement procedure; permission on getting gifts and donations; government support attracting, including different types of grants and tax exemptions ant etc. At the same time all social enterprises in Latvia have to provide the report about their activity to the Ministry of Welfare annually. The Ministry takes decision about company registration as social entrepreneur  also. In Latvia in 2018  there  were 52 registered social businesses. But as representatives of social entrepreneurship network noted in reality there were about 200 similar businesses

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in the country. Most of them are situated in the capital of Latvia – Riga. Due to social programs of regional development more and more social entrepreneurs begin to work in other regions of Latvia. But there are barriers of social business development. Among them the following can be highlighted: 1. Absence of research and data about social enterprises that decreases possibilities for understanding needs of society and strengthening the influence of social activities. 2. Lack of business skills of social entrepreneurs. Many of them put the social mission on the first place and don’t take much attention on income and profits. 3. Usually people, other companies and organizations can’t clearly understand the particularities of social entrepreneurship. People don’t know about social enterprises and their goals. Such kind of business can be associated with a charity. 4. As mentioned above some part of social enterprises don’t aim to get their business profitable and use external grants for continuing their activity. 5. Assessment of social impact is usually important but very complex work for many social enterprises. At the same time donors and government often ask to show added value of the business. It creates additional difficulties for entrepreneurs (Social Entrepreneurship in Latvia: a brief overview of current situation 2018). According to Social Entrepreneurship Support Network of the Baltic See Regions social entrepreneurship also develops in other countries of the region. For example, as of the end of September 2021 in Lithuania there were 62 social businesses voluntarily registered on the Network website; in Poland – 114; in Russia – 37 and in Estonia – 64 entities (Social enterprise support network of the Baltic Region n.d.) At the same time, there are organizations that support and participate in social entrepreneurship development (Table 44.2). In Poland questions about social aspect of economic development become more and more important over the last years. There are some reports about social entrepreneurship where the definition of social enterprise are explained (Country report: Poland 2014). Table 44.2  Social enterprise support organizations  as of the end of September 2021 (Social Enterprise Support Network of the Baltic Region n.d.) Country Poland Lithuania Latvia Estonia Russia

Quantity of social enterprise support organizations 17 10 12 7 4

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For example, according to “A map of social enterprises and their eco-system in Europe. Country report: Poland (Country report: Poland 2014)” social enterprises shall meet the following provisions: 1. Business activity should have clear borders and regular financial reports have to be prepared; 2. The Objectives of social business should be as follows: –– Social and labor inclusion of people from vulnerable groups. –– Hiring 50% or more % of people from the vulnerable groups or 30% minimum of disable people. –– Provision of public services; 3. Profit should be reinvested or spent on social integration or public services provision for the community where the company works. 4. Existing of Democratic Public Government where the employees’ interests are taken into account. All these characteristics are very similar to the descriptions of social entrepreneurs in Latvia and Russia. At the same time social entrepreneurship has quite broad meaning in Poland. All services of social enterprises can be divided on paid and no-paid. Social enterprises in Poland also can be involved in business activity. Organizations, which carry out economic and/or business activity, have to operate as a company (Laurizs November 2019). One of the main problems of polish social enterprises is a strong dependence from the state goals (policy) as well as lack of efficiency and blurring of sector’s boundaries. Taking into account that social enterprises carry out any economic activity and try to get revenues from their operations consider the situation in the sector. According to the Country Report: Poland in 2012 approximately 4500 non-government organizations in Poland had revenue creation activities that allows to classify them as social enterprises (Country report: Poland 2014). In Poland main part of social enterprises works as non-government organizations. But there are also two types of cooperatives that can be also classified as social enterprises. The first one is social cooperative. The law about social cooperatives was adopted in 2006 (Ucieklak-Jez and Kulesza 2014). The main goal of this type of entities is to attract to the labor market people that were excluded from economic activity on some reasons (ex-prisoners, former drug addicts, homeless, refugees and etc.). At the beginning of 2014 there were about 900 registered cooperatives. ¾ of them can be classified as social enterprises because they did some economic activities. Second type of cooperatives is cooperatives for disable and blind workers. In 2012 there were 258 such organizations and 75% of them can be classified as social enterprises. Other entities were in the process of liquidation or transformation (Country report: Poland 2014). Plants of the professional activities may be also considered as social enterprises. These entities give the job to disabled people. Such kind of companies can be created by state, community, association, and other social organizations (Table 44.3). There are also Social Inclusion Centers and Social Inclusion Clubs but

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Table 44.3  Characteristics of social enterprises in Poland (Country report: Poland 2014; Ucieklak-­ Jez and Kulesza 2014) Type of social organisation Non-government organisations (data on 2012) Social co-operatives(data on 2012) Co-operatives of disable and blind (data on 2012) Plants of the professional activities (Ucieklak-Jez and Kulesza 2014)

Estimated number of social Total enterprises 75,000 4500 600 450 260 195 68 68

they are less identified as social enterprises. These entities provide educational programs for people and their families that are excluded/have a risk of exclusion from economic life. One more example of social entrepreneurship development can be considered on the basis of Ukrainian experience. In Ukraine, as in Belarus, there is no special legislation concerning to social enterprises or social entrepreneurship. At the same time there are some norms in different regulatory documents that allow to create social enterprises in accordance with international standards. In recent years social entrepreneurship has become more and more popular but compare with EU countries the sector is still underdeveloped. In 2016 there were about 700 companies that can be defined as social enterprises. The largest social entities had around 100 employees. And in some companies the number of volunteers exceeded the number of employed persons. In contradiction to situation in other countries the main part of financial resources Ukrainian social entrepreneurs get from commercial activity. Social enterprises also attract loans and grants as well as use crowdfunding investments. Following the research of Rodnenko V.B. and Prus Yu. I. only 7% of social enterprise specialize on goods production. At the same time 67% of such companies provide services and 26% supply both (goods and service) (Rodnenko and Prus 2017, 75–76). The main spheres of social entrepreneurship in Ukraine are employment, education, environment protection, health care, economic, social and community development and etc. Concerning to management of such organizations there are several the most popular management structures that include management of NGO together with individual entrepreneurs, NGO, individual entrepreneurs and limited liability companies (Rodnenko and Prus 2017, 75–76). So, in EEC and Baltic states social entrepreneurship is on the deferent stages of its development. But there are some common problems for all countries. They include: • Absence or imperfection of national legislation about social entrepreneurship; • Society, traditional business and government have insufficient knowledge about goals of social entrepreneurship and their role in the economy; • Lack of financial resources; • Absence of good infrastructure for social enterprises development; • Lack of well-qualified employees and management of social enterprises.

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Obviously, social entrepreneurship plays one of the main roles in process of business humanizing in Eastern Europe countries. It brings together business goals on getting profit and very important tasks in different social spheres. The growth of social enterprises’ popularity will lead to increase the level of business humanizing. Creation of well-developed ecosystem will support to strengthen this sector as well as will  attract more and more traditional business for cooperation with social entrepreneurs.

For-Profit Companies and Its Humanization in EEC In addition to the development of social entrepreneurship profit-oriented business in the region becomes more human-oriented also. More and more companies try to develop comfortable work conditions and provide attractive wages for their workers. On the one hand this process can be influenced by minimum social guarantees and green standards adopted by national governments. For, example, minimum social guarantees are provided by introducing such indicators as size of minimum wage, length of parental leave, pension age, length of work day and other guarantees. On the other hand companies in the region try to attract specialists not only by competitive wages but also by offering good working conditions and various social benefits. In the century of digital economy we see the growth of automation in different fields of economy as well as increased demand on well-qualified workers. Companies of financial, energy, IT, other high profitable and fast-growing sectors in Russia, Belarus, Poland and other EEC offer different social benefits for their employees including private medicine insurance, professional and language training, sport passes compensations etc. For example, Russian oil company, Transneft, offers for their workers corporate pension provision, medical insurance compensation, corporate housing, interest-­ free housing loans, compensation of leasing expanses. Transneft implements different charity programs also. One of them is classes’ repair in secondary schools. More over, the company provides sponsorship in such areas as: • • • •

Ecology; Science and higher professional education; Sport programs; Historical and cultural projects, art support (Transneft Report 2018).

Similar activities have other for-profit enterprises of the region. For example, one of the largest IT companies in Belarus, EPAM, offers nice condition of work, paid sick days, provides healthcare program, special education activities for employees’ kids, discount program in more than 500 cafes, sport labs and online stores (EPAM Systems n.d.). Some of enterprises from EEC underline human principals as their priorities. For example, one of the most famous Polish shoe manufacture, CCC, announced high

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ethical standards and negative impact minimization on natural environment (CCC Group n.d.). Another evidence of business humanization in the region is joining of companies to UN Global Compact. It was launched in 2000. Global Compact includes 10 principles in such spheres like human rights, labor, environment, anticorruption. As at the end of September 2021 more than 14,000 legal entities from more than 160 countries participated in UN Global Compact (United Nations Global Compact n.d.). All of them agreed to maintain corporate social responsibility in doing business. For example, one of the biggest diary producers in Belarus, Savushkin Product, joined the Global Compact in 2006 (OJSC Savushkin product n.d.). So, we can conclude that the process of for-profit business humanization in Eastern Europe is going. On the one hand it is stimulated by national governments through adoption new legislation, providing special preferences for human oriented companies and creating higher social and ecological standards. On the other hand, progressive companies improve work conditions and social benefits for their employees, spend money on charity and environment protection. Human and environment oriented strategies become competitive advantage for many companies. At the same time there are some challenges. Not all enterprises pursue the policy of environment protection or develop benefit programs for their workers. Imperfection of national legislation or/and lack of information about business humanization processes slow down positive changes.

Conclusion Over the last 25–30 years socio-economic policy in EEC and Baltic states have been changed. Some countries, like Baltic states, decreased overall state penetration in social and economic sphere for relatively short period of time. In such countries like Belarus or Russia significant part of social services are still provided by the Government. At the same time paid social services have impact on households expenditures in all EEC and Baltic States. Many countries of the region have hybrid  pension schemes  based  on guaranteed state pensions, voluntary personal savings and/or mandatory personified accounts as well as enlarged retirement age. All these trends increase social uncertainties for the poor and vulnerable groups of population first of all. In these circumstances social programs and benefits that are provided by companies to their employees, as well as development of social entrepreneurship play very important role. Definitely, development of social entrepreneurship can be a very good example of business humanizing. Social enterpreneurship  exists in all EEC and Baltic States  but it’s role in the economy and society is differ from country to country. Some states, like Latvia or Russia, have special regulation of social entrepreneurship. In other countries, including Belarus or Ukraine, social business works under general legislation, that doesn’t always take into account special features of social entrepreneurship. Other challengers of social business development include lack of

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information about social entrepreneurship, deficit of skilled experts in the sphere, as well as shortage of special educational programs for social entrepreneurs and not well-developed ecosystem. A the same time social entrepreneurship can offer very good solutions for many social challenges including increasing employment rate among vulnerable groups of population, widening social services at affordable prices and etc. Important role in business humanizing process play for-profit companies. Human oriented enterprises provide not only special social benefits for the employees and their families, create good conditions of work and rest but also provide sponsorship, participate in charity and environment protection projects. In order to speed up the process it is necessary to decrease challenges that are related with legislation imperfection, poor social benefits from non-human oriented companies, lack of interest to environment protection and etc. So, the process of business humanizing is going in all countries of the region. But only joint work of government, business and society can accelerate the process by reducing existing barriers and increasing the social responsibility of all economic entities.

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Kursvaliut.ru. Average exchange rate. Dollar USA to Russian Rubble. https://www.kursvaliut.ru/. Accessed 20 Oct 2019. Laurizs, November 2019. The role of stakeholders in development of social economy organizations in Poland: an integrative approach. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/9/4/74. MolaMola. n.d. https://molamola.by/. Accessed 15 Nov 2019. National Bank of the Republic of Belarus. 2018–2020. http://www.nbrb.by/statistics/rates/avgrate. National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus. 2019. https://www.belstat.gov.by/en/. Accessed 12 Nov 2019. New business. Social entrepreneurship. July 26, 2019. The low of social entrepreneurship has appeared in Russia (Rus. В России появился закон о социальном предпринимательстве). http://nb-­forum.ru/news/laws/v-­rossii-­poyavilsya-­zakon-­o-­sotsialnom-­predprinimatelstve. ODB Brussels. June 1, 2019. III Belarusian social business forum: New development.https://odb-­office. eu/expertise_/social-­entrepreneurship/iii-­belarusian-­social-­business-­forum-­new-­developments. OJSC Savushkin product. n.d. http://savushkin.by/about/responsibility/. Accessed 2 Dec 2019. Omsk Center of Social Sphere Innovations. n.d. (Rus. Омский центр инноваций социальной сферы), http://cissinfo.ru/about/. Accessed 1 Dec 2019. On amendments to the Federal Law of the Russian Federation “On the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the Russian Federation” in terms of fixing definitions of “social entrepreneurship” and “social enterprise” # 245- FL, July 26, 2019. (Rus. "О внесении изменений в Федеральный закон «О развитии малого и среднего предпринимательства в Российской Федерации» в части закрепления понятий «социальное предпринимательство», «социальное предприятие», 245-ФЗ 26 Июля 2019 г.) https://www.garant.ru/products/ipo/prime/doc/72232770/ Ortiz Isabel, Duran-Valverde Fabio. 2018. In Reversing pension privatizations. Rebuilding public pension systems in Eastern Europe and Latin America, ed. Urban Stefan and Wodsak Veronika. Geneva: International Labor Organization. Planeta.ru. n.d. https://planeta.ru/. Accessed 20 Dec 2019. Rodnenko, Volodymyr B., and Yuliia I. Prus. 2017. Social entrepreneurship in Ukraine: Problems and prospects. Problems of the Economy 3: 72–78. https://www.problecon.com/export_pdf/ problems-­of-­economy-­2017-­3_0-­pages-­72_78.pdf. Shopify. n.d. Social entrepreneurship. Business encyclopaedia. https://www.shopify.com/encyclopedia/social-­entrepreneurship. Accessed 20 Nov 2019. Social enterprise support network of the Baltic Region. n.d.. http://www.socialenterprisebsr.net/ socent_support_country/lithuania/. Accessed 24 Sept 2021. Social entrepreneurship in Latvia: A brief overview of current situation. 2018. Social entrepreneurship association in Latvia. https://sua.lv/wp-­content/uploads/2019/04/LSUA_report_2-­ENG. pdf. Accessed 11 Oct 2019. SoсChain – Map of leaders of changes in the social sphere. n.d.( Rus. СоцЧейн – карта лидеров изменений в социальной сфере), http://soc-­chain.ru/files/215x280ruWeb.pdf. Accessed 1 Feb 2020. The Foundation of Regional Social Programs “Our Future”. n.d. http://www.nb-­fund.ru/about-­the-­ fund. Accessed 20 Nov 2019. Transneft Report. 2018. Sustainable development. The company in faces. https://www.transneft. ru/u/section_file/39731/otchet-­ob-­ustoychivom-­razvitii-­2018.pdf. Ucieklak-Jez, Paulina, and Kulesza, Marek. 2014. The development of social entrepreneurship in Poland. http://www.ef.umb.sk/konferencie/sev_2014/pdf/Ucieklak-­Jez,%20Kulesza.pdf. Ukaz on voluntary insurance of supplementary saving pension was signed, Sept. 27, 2021 (Rus. Подписан Указ о добровольном страховании дополнительной накопительной пенсии). https://president.gov.by/ru/events/ podpisan-­ukaz-­o-­dobrovolnom-­strahovanii-­dopolnitelnoy-­nakopitelnoy-­pensii United Nations Global Compact. n.d. https://www.unglobalcompact.org. Accessed 23 Sept 2021. Vuzopedia. n.d. www.vuzopedia.ru. Accessed 10 Jan 2020.

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Zaharevich, Nasta. Nov 27, 2017. Minsk “garbage taxi” plans to enter on the international level (Rus. “Минское «мусорное такси» планирует выйти на международный уровень”). Greenbelarus. http://greenbelarus.info/articles/29-­11-­2017/ minskoe-­musornoe-­taksi-­planiruet-­vyyti-­na-­mezhdunarodnyy-­uroven. Anastasiya Luzgina (Associate Professor, PhD in economics) works at the Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Center (BEROC). Anastasiya is the author of research and policy papers in such fields like Green Banking, FinTech, economic and finance literacy, FDI, cryptocurrency market development, E-Government and etc. She has work experience at the Belarusian State University, the National Bank of the Republic  of Belarus and IMF Representative office in Minsk. She participates in different seminar and conferences. In 2015, Anastasiya took a part in the Visiting Researchers Programme of BOFIT (Research Center of the Central Bank of Finland). In 2018 the expert successfully completed the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program (USA).  

Chapter 45

A North American Perspective: Humanizing Business Through Liberal Education Joseph DesJardins

Reflecting on the gap between contemporary business practice and a more humane business climate, one cannot help but consider the role played by business education, especially as it is structured in undergraduate business schools and graduate MBA programs. Educating students for business is too often separated from educating them for life. As a result, much of contemporary business education reinforces this version of the separation thesis, implicitly and explicitly treating business education simply as a means to the ends of job success, career advancement, and income. This transactional model of education provides perceived benefits to three parties. Business receives employees who are already trained and prepared for positions without having to provide, or pay for, the training. Students graduate from school ready to step into jobs, which is especially important in the United States where many students graduate with significant school debt. Colleges benefit by establishing a job placement record which will be used as an important marketing tool for recruiting future students while also creating connections with benefactors, including their own alumnae, within the business community. The goal of business education on this model is to provide students with the knowledge base and skills sought by the labor market. When this occurs, all parties to the transaction benefit. What can be overlooked by this transactional model is that education not only can do things for students, but it also can do things to students. Education not only provides students with a knowledge base and job-related skills, but it also shapes their character, their dispositions, their attitudes, their expectations, and their values. The relationship between the contemporary business climate and education is dynamic: business culture shapes the expectations for hiring, which shapes the business school curriculum, which shapes the people going through that curriculum, which eventually shapes the institutions into which they are hired. If we seek to change those institutions to create a more humane work environment, we would be J. DesJardins (*) St John’s University, Collegeville, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_45

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wise to start by changing the educational model that shapes the people entering those institutions. This essay will explore what liberal arts education might contribute towards closing this gap between educating students for business and educating them for life. Importantly, this essay will suggest that more liberally-educated employees will not only serve the goal of humanizing business, but will also provide business with the type of human resources it will need to meet fundamental and unavoidable challenges to doing business in the twenty-first century. I will suggest that a liberal arts model of education is not only good for students, it can be good for business as well.

Liberal Arts Disciplines and Liberal Arts Colleges It will be helpful to begin with some initial distinctions between the liberal arts, liberal arts colleges, and liberal education. As commonly used in North America, the Liberal Arts are a set of academic disciplines that includes the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the arts. The liberal arts disciplines are typically distinguished from such technical disciplines as engineering, nursing, medicine, and agriculture. Thus, in most large universities in North America, one would find a College of Liberal Arts (or College of Arts and Sciences), which is distinct from separate Colleges of Engineering, Medicine, Nursing, Agriculture, and Business. In general terms the differences between types of colleges rest in the general education requirements, those elements of the curriculum required of all students within the college. To attain a college degree, students must satisfy both general education requirements and the requirements within a major field of study or specialization. In a typical college of business or nursing, for example, a student’s general education requirements might include some courses in the liberal arts disciplines, but they would also include courses considered foundational in the technical fields, e.g., accounting or microeconomics in a business college, pharmacology or microbiology in a nursing college. In contrast, the general education requirements of a liberal arts college would be exclusively, and at greater breadth and depth, in the liberal arts disciplines. Students in either type of college would also pursue a major course of study, involving in-depth learning within a particular discipline or area of study. Typically, but not always, the major field of study exists within the disciplines housed in a particular college, e.g., a student majors in history within the college of liberal arts, or majors in marketing within the college of business. It is also possible that a student could pursue a major field of study, e.g., business management, while satisfying the general education requirements of a college of liberal arts. This hybrid model plays out regularly within liberal arts colleges. Liberal arts colleges, especially as they exist within Canada and the United States, are a particular type of undergraduate institution. While they emphasize the liberal arts in their curriculum, liberal arts colleges are also distinguished by several other important

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characteristics. First, they typically are residential schools where students live on-­ campus for most of their education. In general, liberal arts colleges enroll only full-­ time, traditional college-aged students. These features enable the schools to design co-curricular activities and programs that support a student’s psycho-social development and maturation. Liberal arts colleges are intentional about providing an education that is broader than just the academic learning that takes place within the classroom. Sometimes referred to as educating the “whole person,” liberal arts colleges emphasize individual students’ psychological, emotional, and spiritual development and maturity in addition to their strictly academic development. Enrollment levels and class size are designed to enable close student-faculty interaction. Pedagogy emphasizes small class seminars, and seldom include large lecture classes. It is fair to say that liberal arts colleges are intentionally designed to graduate students who not only have attained a certain knowledge base, but who also have developed a range of intellectual, social, and ethical virtues. Not coincidentally, this type of education is also designed to graduate thoughtful and responsible citizens for democratic societies. Most liberal arts colleges offer courses and majors outside the traditional liberal arts disciplines and many offer business-related majors in such fields as management, finance, accounting, entrepreneurship, and economics. Business education within these schools is embedded within the liberal education model. Students majoring in such business-related fields fulfill the same liberal arts general education requirements, experience the same close student-faculty interaction in small seminars, and benefit from the same broad student development goals. However, liberal arts colleges historically developed on the assumption that professional education and training in such fields as business, law, medicine, and engineering would occur as graduate training after the undergraduate degree is completed. My thesis is that an undergraduate liberal education, the type of learning that has traditionally taken place in liberal arts colleges and that focuses on the liberal arts disciplines, would contribute much to the goal of humanizing business. There are two obvious paths for accomplishing this goal. Business education as presently practiced in business schools could incorporate more of the liberal education goals and practices into their education, and business could increase recruitment of employees from institutions of liberal learning.

Liberal Education: The Traditional Model The model of education that emerges from the liberal arts tradition and practiced at liberal arts colleges is commonly referred to simply as liberal education.1 Liberal education aims for a broad education across academic disciplines and areas of study.

1  “What is Liberal Education,” Association of American Colleges and Universities, accessed January 9, 2020, https://www.aacu.org/leap/what-is-liberal-education

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It seeks to produce broadly educated citizens who have the knowledge and skills to enable them to live fulfilled and meaningful lives. Liberal education thus has two foci: educating individuals for their own good, and educating citizens for the good of democratic society. It supports intellectual, emotional, psychological, social, and spiritual development of the whole person. Liberal education is education for a life well-lived rather than for an immediate application to jobs or careers. Its goals include both educational content and skills development. This approach to education would go a long way towards humanizing business because it is the approach most likely to create more fully humane human beings. It also, I suggest, is best positioned to serve business in the twenty-first century. Historically, the roots of this liberal education are found in Plato, Aristotle, and the classical education model of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) and the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic). Its roots were first introduced in Plato’s Republic as the education path designed for future leaders, the philosopher-kings. According to Plato, this education initially aims for knowledge (episteme) of what is and why it is. It is contrasted with training and education understood as techne, the knowledge possessed by craftsmen or artisans. We might characterize this as the distinction between knowing that and knowing how, or between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Importantly, for both Plato and the education tradition that followed, both techne and episteme aim at knowledge that fundamentally involves values. All practical knowledge, knowing what to do and how to act, aims at some good. Theoretical knowledge of what is good represents the highest end of human nature. Because it was ultimately an education aimed at values, Plato believed that this was the only model of education would produce ethical leaders. It aims at knowing, first, good things, and eventually knowing the very nature of what is good. Leaders, in the “most precise sense” as Plato would say, need to know the end of leadership, not just the means of leading. With first-hand experience of the sophists, Plato understood well the difference between effective leaders and ethical leaders. Good leaders would know and desire the good of the city, or organization, that they lead. But this educated life serves not only the ends of a just polis, but the personal ends of a just person. It is to be valued not only because the good consequences it would have for the city, but also because it good for its own sake. This education also trains the soul (psyche) to become virtuous by training the rational part of our souls to develop the habit of desiring and pursuing goodness. The goal of this education is to help individuals live a fulfilled, meaningful, and good life, in particular by pursuing moderate and rational desires and appetites. This latter observation hints at the sense in which liberal education can be liberating. Education can liberate us from uncritical acceptance of, and obedience and conformity to, the social and cultural expectations that surround us and the immediate short-term desires that tempt us. A liberally  educated person is a fully autonomous person, a person liberated from social, cultural and psychological compulsion. If we do not step back from, and critically reflect upon, our beliefs and values, we will be doomed to live life the way our culture expects and which our immediate and short-term appetites direct. Conforming, fitting in, living the way

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that others expect of us is, as Socrates tells us in the Apology, to live an unexamined life, a life not worth living for human beings. That examined life, as modelled so well by Socrates, busies itself “studying the sky above and earth below,” and examines on a daily basis, “no small matter, but how we should live our lives.”2 Importantly, music and the arts also play a crucial role in liberal education. While Plato himself was skeptical of the arts—he seems to have considered visual art and poetry as only representational for example—he gave music an important role to play in training the soul. Gymnastics and music together would help the soul attain a proper balance between toughness and gentleness. Despite what he says about the visual arts and poetry, Plato’s own writing are replete with images, metaphors, myths, stories, analogies. This was not an accident. As Socrates taught and lived, true knowledge cannot be given to passive students by teachers, but must come from within the learners themselves. In contemporary terms, Socrates would reject the “sage on the stage” model of teaching in favor of “student-centered” pedagogies. At best, teachers can function only as midwives to learning. As Plato knew (albeit he regretted!), the world of our experience is complex and full of ambiguity, nuance, and shades. While he sought philosophical clarity and certainty in the world of the Forms, the rest of us must deal with something less than certainty. An educated person must a creative person, with a strong imagination, to begin to see the full possibilities of life. Aristotle and, later, Aquinas provide examples of other aspects of a liberal education. Both thought that one learns and becomes fully educated by engaging in dialogues with people from other times, other cultures, with other points of view. What we know about several pre-Socratic thinkers exists only because Aristotle opens many of his books—more accurately described as his teaching notes—with an account of the teachings of people who have come before. Aristotle began his lectures by rehearsing early views and engaging with them as he develops his own thinking. Reading Aristotle is to read someone engaged in conversations with those with whom he disagrees. Likewise, before presenting his own thoughts, Aquinas first introduces early thinkers, particularly Aristotle and the early Christian writers. Education, both teaching and learning, takes places as a dialogue with thinkers from other times, other places, other perspectives. These are models for our own understanding of the humanities, those disciplines that engages us in conversations through literature, history, philosophy, with other peoples and cultures. Thus, traditional liberal education emphasized learning in the liberal arts disciplines and rested upon several fundamental elements. It was an education designed to prepare people for future leadership roles by stressing values, social responsibility, and personal development. Liberal education is less concerned with the transmission of information as it is concerned with developing intellectual skills and virtues. Liberal education was rooted in the humanities, those disciplines in which one engages in conversations about the meaning and values of human existence with different people, different cultures, and different historical periods. It was an

 Plato, Apology, G.M Grube, translation, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1981) 28b–30b.

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education rooted in the sciences so that people would understand how the natural world works and why it works the way it does. Liberal education gave birth to the social sciences, helping humans understand how and why the social world functions. Finally, liberal education also emphasized the arts, so that a liberally education person would be practiced at creative and imaginative thinking, while maintaining a healthy tolerance for ambiguity.

Liberal Education: Contemporary Developments While the philosophical roots of liberal education were egalitarian—Plato argued that this education should be open to women!—in practice a liberal education well into the twentieth century was available only to the elites, as determined by family and wealth rather than merit. Too often, educating future leaders meant little more than educating the sons of the wealthy, and the transmission of cultural knowledge meant the transmission of white, male, European assumptions. But liberal education has developed in recent decades to provide a broader, more diverse education, open to a more diverse student population, and featuring important pedagogical innovations. The fundamental educational philosophy and goals of liberal education remain, but its scope and methodology has changed for the better. Most importantly, education in the traditional liberal arts disciplines remains central. Students are expected to graduate with an understanding of both the natural world and of global cultures and societies. The acquisition and development of intellectual and social skills remains at the forefront. Today’s liberal education expands on these traditional goals by exposing students to a wider variety of voices and perspectives. But liberal education in the twenty-first century also adds several significant emphases. Let us consider four.

Diversity of Voices and Perspectives Consistent with the traditional understanding of the humanities, today’s liberal education emphasizes conversations with an increasingly diverse chorus of people and cultures. Part of this commitment to increased diversity expects students to look for and examine assumptions and prejudices that are implicit within the western canon. Cultural self-reflection is a vital component of recent developments in liberal education. But today’s liberal learning also brings students into conversations with voices, literature, histories, and cultures that have been marginalized within the western canon, and those that are simply different and independent of it. No doubt, this movement towards greater diversity is mocked in some circles as “political correctness,” but in fact it results from the recognition of social and cultural reality. The world that today’s students experience is more globally connected than the world that previous generations of college graduates experienced. The

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reality, of course, is that the world has always been diverse place, but the degree to which that diversity is recognized and experienced as part of daily life of any student is new. Students who graduate without this knowledge will not understand their world fully and they will not be capable of fully participating in it, and that would be to live a less full and meaningful life.

Life-Long Learning Not only has today’s world become more diverse, but it is more complex and the pace of change much more rapid than the world into which the previous generation graduated. Education would be doing a great disservice to students if they are not being prepared for change. Contemporary liberal learning is also placing greater emphasis on the goal of helping students become life-long learners. With the world changing as fast as it is, liberal education aims to help students learn how to learn, so that they will be able to adapt and keep pace. Two aspects of this movement deserve mention. First, today’s liberal education places great emphasis on learning intellectual skills as much as content. Gone are the days in which students were expected to learn and memorize large amounts of information. In the era of Big Data, there simply is too much information for that, and too much of it becomes outdated too quickly to spend time with rote learning. Furthermore, technology provides a more accurate, more thorough, and more quickly accessible depository of information than human memory could ever achieve. This is especially true in the sciences, but every academic discipline is experiencing the same explosion of information. In reaction to this reality, students are expected to develop a wide range of intellectual skills that can separate the informational wheat from the informational chaff. Very often this educational objective is served by campus librarians and information technology professionals as well as by faculty. Where librarians once simply helped students find information, today they help them sift through overwhelming amounts of information, evaluate sources and make judgments of credibility. Liberal education today focuses on skills like problem-solving, analysis, written and spoken communication, research skills, listening skills, integration and synthesis. As part of this skills-based approach, a greater emphasis is being placed on “ways of knowing,” which implicitly involves epistemological reflection on how we learn and how we come to know. A second aspect of contemporary liberal education that contributes to life-long learning is the increased reliance on experiential learning. As used in this context, experiential learning refers to an integrated feedback process of learning that involves practical experience, analysis and reflection (Kuh 2008). The range of practical experiences encompassed by this pedagogy is vast, ranging from science experiments and research to internships, from artistic practice to study abroad, and from service learning projects to creative writing.

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The learning model incorporated in experiential learning echoes the philosophical distinction between theory and praxis. Experiential learning begins with exposure to the academic context, usually within a traditional classroom setting. So, for example, within a classroom setting a science student might learn about the scientific method, another student might learn about a foreign culture, or a communication student might learn about digital media. The student then engages in an extended practical experience, out of classroom and most often off-campus, in which they have direct first-hand experience, e.g., conducting a science experiment, studying abroad, working an internship in a marketing company. Importantly, they then return to the classroom, often with a group of similarly situated students, to analyze and reflect on what they learned by the experience, and how that experience added to or differed from their prior learning. This final step is crucial. In returning to a formal academic setting to critically examine their experience under direction of a teacher, students are truly learning how to learn.

Social and Personal Responsibility In what is more a return to its roots than an innovation, contemporary liberal learning is more intentional about social and ethical responsibility as educational goals. Today’s liberal learning makes no pretense about being value-neutral, or values clarification education. Liberal education is explicit about its goal of educating future leaders. Students are encouraged and expected to be civically engaged, both on-campus and in their communities. Often, this is done under the umbrella of educating citizens within a democracy and preparing students to be knowledgeable and active citizens. One crucial student learning goal of contemporary liberal education combines aspects of the humanities, experiential learning, and social responsibility. Intercultural competence is the goal of helping students navigate in situations in which they are interacting with people and cultures different from their own. One definition describes it as “The ability to relate and communicate effectively when individuals involved in the interaction do not share the same culture, ethnicity, language, or other common experiences.”3 The goal, thus, is very much in line with the traditional humanities practice of engaging in conversations with diverse people and cultures, while it also has a clear ethical dimension of sympathetic and empathetic understanding and communication. The goal is best served through experiential learning pedagogies. It is this experiential learning pedagogy that turns a study abroad experience from tourism to intercultural knowledge and education.

3  Gail Samdperil and Christina Gunther, “Intercultural Competence,” Association of American Colleges and Universities, https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/dlss17/CS20Presentation. pdf. Accessed January 9, 2020.

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Developments in Pedagogy Contemporary liberal education also has developed numerous innovative pedagogical practices that improve how students learn and how teachers teach. Most importantly, driven by data on how students actually learn, liberal education has been at the forefront of a movement away from teacher-center pedagogies to focus on student-­centered learning. Two aspects of this pedagogical development are worth mentioning. First is the recognition that learning, especially learning intellectual skills, is a progressively sophisticated process. Students do not just learn how to solve problems simplicter, they learn to solve increasingly challenging problems. Similarly, students do not learn how to write well, reason logically, speak well, or become ethical in a single class. One major recent curricular innovation is to embed increasingly challenging levels of skill acquisition into classes across the curriculum. Thus, for example, rather than a single course on chemical analysis, a chemistry student is introduced to analytical techniques as a first-year, and increasingly more sophisticated analytical techniques in second, third, and senior year courses. Thus a chemistry curriculum is not an established set of courses on specific topics (e.g., organic, analytical, biochemistry), but an integrated series of courses that address several content areas at increasingly challenge levels. In the most well-known example, rather than a single course on writing, students are taught writing across the curriculum with increasingly high expectations as they progress through their college career. A second set of innovations involve what are often referred to as “high impact practices” or “active learning” practices.4 Essentially, these are a set of pedagogical techniques that have been shown to improve student learning by making the student’s own activities central to the learning process. Several of these practices involve bringing students together, often grouped by common interests, as occurs in learning communities, or by age and experience, as occurs in first year seminars and senior capstone seminars. Evidence demonstrates that students learn best when they actively process their experiences together and in conversation with others. In the process, students learn how to function effectively in teams. Other high impact practices rely on some of the experiential learning techniques discussed previously and include writing intensive classes, study abroad, service learning, and undergraduate research. Still other high impact practices include collaborative assignments and research and the use of e-portfolios, in which student work is collected throughout their college years and used to assess longer-term development.

4  George Kuh, High Impact Educational Practices, (Washington DC, Association of Colleges and Universities, 2008).

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Humanizing Business: Lessons from Liberal Education I am not suggesting that these developments in teaching and learning are exclusive to liberal education and cannot be found in business school curricula. It should go without saying that business schools are very much attuned to recent developments in pedagogy and educational theory. But differences remain in how students experience and learn in liberal education settings and business school settings and those differences can impact the beliefs, attitudes, values, and dispositions of the people they become post-graduation. My suggestion is that by paying greater attention to how students are educated, we can shape the institutions and organizations into which they graduate. Not every pedagogical practice nor point of emphasis found in liberal education model will easily translate to, nor prove appropriate in, a business school setting. But several are worth reflecting on, both because of how they would contribute to the education of more humane people, and also because they are well-positioned to prepared students for careers in the twenty-first century. I will consider three interrelated practices. First, I would suggest business education place a stronger emphasis on the humanities. Let me begin with a definition of the humanities used at my own school and which is an amalgam of several different versions. The Humanities disciplines constitute a way of thinking, talking and writing about what it means to be human. Study in the Humanities disciplines introduces us to people we have never met, places we have never visited, times in which we have not lived, perspectives we have never taken, and ideas that may never have crossed our minds. Through careful and rigorous engagement with texts produced by (and about) those other people, places, and ideas, we explore issues of identity, community, and culture, as well as values, purpose, and meaning. With perspectives thus enlarged and enriched, and with the skills to explore these questions further, the Humanities invite and equip us to live an examined life.5

An emphasis on the humanities would contribute to several humanizing goals. First, they help students develop an understanding of, appreciation of, and respect for diverse people, cultures, and histories. The humanities can bring students into conversation with some of the most brilliant, insightful, creative, and humane human beings who have ever lived. The can learn humility about their own point of view and come to understand that differences do not mean better or worse. The humanities also teach important skills of interpretation, sympathetic reading, textual analysis, writing, and communication. The humanities can also instill a lifelong love of reading and writing. Finally, the humanities examine questions of value that include, but are not limited to, ethics. A second feature of contemporary liberal arts education that deserves to be replicated is the intentional focus on life-long learning. An important part of this initiative is served by integrating progressive standards for skill development across the

5  “Humanities,” College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University, accessed January 9, 2020, https:// www.csbsju.edu/common-curriculum/disciplinary-goals

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curriculum. I remember a business school dean who I worked with when I first started teaching business ethics. He supported a two-course philosophy requirement for every student in the school of business: logic and moral philosophy. His rationale, as he once told me, was that he wanted every business graduate to be logical and moral. If only education were so simple. But every skill, whether the intellectual skill of logical analysis, the creative skill of writing prose, intercultural competence, or the athletic skill of shooting a basketball will disappear if it is not regularly reinforced and built upon. These skills, or what the Greeks would have called the intellectual virtues, have to be practiced and developed over time. This is a lesson that liberal education is remembering and that all education should emulate. A second aspect of liberal education that serves the goal of life-long learning is the use of high-impact, experiential learning techniques. In particular, helping student learn how to learn by integrating practical experience within an academic setting is the value-added component of liberal education. Internships and foreign study are valuable, but the experience alone, without prior context and post-­ experience analysis and reflection, is little more than a job or tourism. Finally, the emphasis on educating the whole person that one finds in liberal arts colleges is an important lesson. Schools should never forget that traditional aged college students are very much in a transitional phase of human life. They are no longer children, but they are not yet fully formed adults. Recognizing, and being intentional about their development as adults should be a central role in education. The role played by co-curricular activities in the personal development of college students should not be underestimated, nor should the tacit knowledge and values taught by the institution be ignored.

Liberal Education and Business in the Twenty-First Century At the start of Book II of Plato’s Republic, Glaucon asks Socrates if justice is the kind of thing that should be valued for its own sake, or only for the beneficial consequences that it produces. Socrates responds by claiming that justice is of the finest kind, valued both for its own sake and for its beneficial consequences. So, too, with liberal education. A liberally educated person lives a fuller, more meaning-full life. But a liberal education can also prepare a person for success in the world of twenty-­ first century business. Two features of that world explain why. It seems a truism to say that the rate of change that is experienced today far exceeds the rate of change that past generations experienced. Communications, technology, and global social, political, and economic interaction all combine to introduce new challenges and opportunities for business virtually every day. “The world if flat,” as Thomas Friedman tells us, and it is also more chaotic, smaller and more interconnected. Without question, strategic planning in the future will require managing chaos and planning for the unexpected. Gone are the days when planner could set goals

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and objectives years into the future and assume that a rational, command and control, strategic plan will accomplish those goals. Strategic planning today requires flexibility, fleet-footedness, imagination, and creativity. In light of this reality, successful business will require employees and leaders who can flourish in situations of rapid change and uncertainty. They will require employees and leaders who are inter-culturally competent, for example, who are capable of understanding the world from multiple perspectives and imagine how present decisions will impact an increasingly diverse business environment. A second feature of the immediate future will be a world in which artificial intelligence (AI) plays and greater and greater role. We should assume that any job that can be routinized will be replaced by AI. This observation has been made by many and the implications for human works have been well explored.6 However, the educational implications of these changes are only slowly gaining traction. Indeed, there is even some evidence that education, at least in some state supported schools, may be regressing.7 We can reasonably speculate what human skills will be needed in a business environment in which artificial intelligence will play a larger role. Thomas Friedman, for example, talks about how the need to understand human intentionality as a skill that will not be replaced by machines, yet will be fundamentally important in a world in which humans increasingly interact with bots.8 This contextual understanding requires exactly the type of interpretative and sympathetic communication that is at home in the humanities. In broader terms, there will also be a role for sense-making, the skills of interpretation, explanation, oral and written communication, perspective shifting, and intercultural competence. A variety of skills that might be might be group together under the umbrella of emotional intelligence will also be necessary in this world. Empathy, perhaps especially in situations in which humans interact with machines, will be crucial. Any and all situations requiring relationship building and communication will require humans with those skills and dispositions. No doubt, machines will do a better job diagnosing disease than human doctors, but that diagnosis and any potential prognosis will need to be communicated to humans with empathy, clarity, and understanding. Finally, of course, ultimate responsibility for whatever impacts artificial intelligence has on humans must rest on humans, and business’ need for employees sensitive to this ethical dimension will only increase in the future.

6  Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, (New York: Norton & Company, 2014); Thomas Friedman, “A.I. Still Needs H.I. (Human Intelligence) for Now,” New York Times, February 26, 2019; H. James Wilson and Paul Daugherty, “Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and A.I. are Joining Forces,” Harvard Business Review, July–August 2018. 7  George Anders, “That Useless Liberal Arts Degree has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket,” Forbes, August 17, 2015; Adam Harris, “The Liberal Arts May Not Survive the 21st Century,” The Atlantic, December 13, 2018. 8  Friedman, “A.I. Still Needs.”

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A liberal education can contribute to humanizing business by helping to produce broadly educated, humane people to work in business. It may well turn out that those are exactly the type of people that business in the twenty-first century most needs.

Bibliography Anders, George. 2015. That useless liberal arts degree has become tech’s hottest ticket. Forbes, August 17. Association of American Colleges and Universities. n.d. What is liberal education? https://www. aacu.org/leap/what-­is-­liberal-­educaion. Accessed 9 Jan 2020. Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. 2014. The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies. New York: Norton and Company. College of St. Benedict/St John’s University. n.d. Humanities. https://www.csbsju.edu/common-­ curriculum/disciplinary-­goals. Accessed 9 Jan 2020. Daugherty, Paul, and H. James Wilson. 2018. Collaborative intelligence: Humans and A.I. are joining forces. Harvard Business Review, July–August. Friedman, Thomas. 2019. A.I. still needs H.I. (human intelligence), for now. New York Times, February 26. Gunther, Christina, and Gail Samdperil. 2017. Association of American Colleges and Universities: Intercultural competence. https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/dlss17/ CS20Presentation.pdf. Accessed 9 Jan 2020. Harris, Adam. 2018. The liberal arts may not survive the 21st century. The Atlantic, December 13. Kuh, George. 2008. High Impact Educational Practices. Washington DC: Association of Colleges and Universities. Plato. 1981. Apology (Grube translation). Indianapolis: Hackett. Joseph DesJardins held the Ralph Gross Chair in Business and the Liberal Arts, and is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at St John’s University and the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota. He is the author of several textbooks in business ethics, environmental ethics, and sustainability. He is the past President and former Executive Director of the Society for Business Ethics. He received his B.A. from Southern Connecticut State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.  

Chapter 46

A Latin American Perspective on Humanizing Business Simone R. Barakat and José Guilherme F. de Campos

Introduction The expression “Latin America” refers to a subcontinent comprising various countries in North America, Central America and South America. There is, however, no consensus regarding which countries form part of Latin America. Some classifications consider all those countries located geographically below the United States as part of the region. Encyclopedia Britannica includes in the region only those countries whose official language is one of the Romance languages inherited from former colonizing nations (i.e. Spanish, Portuguese and French). Others, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), recognize two different groups of countries: Latin America and the Caribbean. Others, perhaps the most commonly adopted, consider only those countries which were colonized by Spain and Portugal (also known as Iberoamerica). The difficulty in geographically categorizing the region reflects the diversity and complexity of the subcontinent. Each of the more than two dozen countries has its own particular features that make them unique. There are clear differences in history in Latin American countries and even between regions within each country. They still share, however, a common historical background that has influenced the regional character. Having acknowledged this, in this chapter we discuss the influence of history on management and organizational practices related to pressing problems in society and how business may either reinforce or reduce such problems. Economic inequality is one such pressing societal problem, which leads to poorer physical and mental health, a decrease in trust, added monitoring costs and political system dysfunction (Riaz 2015). Scholars in other disciplines have considered economic inequality to be an important topic, with effects that can persist over time and constrain socio-economic mobility. The role of organizations, however, has received S. R. Barakat (*) · J. G. F. de Campos University de Sao Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Dion et al. (eds.), Humanizing Business, Issues in Business Ethics 53, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_46

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less attention (Riaz 2015). Since companies represent a social microcosm, which reflect society and its features (Rosa 2014), the inequalities found in societies are also present in organizations (Noon 2007; Van Dijk et al. 2012) and this may prevent people from developing their own human capital and limit the full realization of their potential. Increasing the awareness of companies in Latin American countries with regard to the historical process of exclusion and social injustice that most of the populations have suffered represents an important step in tackling inequality in organizations and at society level. It is essential to critically recognize the historical and structural process of inequality that exists between socio-demographic groups in the process of countering inequalities (Rosa 2014; Zanoni et al. 2010) and cultivating a more humanistic management and organizational practices that lead to better individual and organizational outcomes. We argue that aspects related to history in Latin America may provide some insights for theorists and practitioners in management and organizational practices that can act as drivers for changing or reinforcing relative economic positions in society (Riaz 2015). This interdisciplinary approach to management studies is essential for adequately grasping the most relevant contemporary social problems (De Bakker et al. 2019). This chapter is organized as follows. This first section introduced the chapter, including the geographical context and the relevance of the topic. The second section presents a brief historical perspective of Latin America. The third section connects history and management studies, while the fourth section discusses the role of business in tacking inequalities by way of general diversity management and creating and fostering new forms of emancipatory business. Finally, fifth section gives the final considerations.

Latin America: An Historical Perspective As a region currently comprising several, far from homogeneous countries, Latin American nations share similar societal and historical backgrounds. In this section we briefly present some of the main facts and events that characterize the region as a historically distinctive geographical area. The expression “Latin America” refers to a subcontinent comprising several countries whose official languages are mainly either Spanish, Portuguese or French – there are also many local dialects. The fact that these European languages were made official and even defined the denomination of these countries might suggest that the official history and cultural heritage of the region started only with the process of colonization. In fact, not only the denomination, but also most of the textbooks in schools and universities contribute to the belief that Latin American history and memory started a little over 500 years ago. By the time Christopher Columbus arrived on the continent in 1492, however, acting on behalf of the Spanish Crown, it had already been populated by people who had been living in the region for centuries. For a long period they kept their own way

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of life, beliefs, social organization, and technologies, and were thriving societies. The clash of cultures, or rather the imposition of European culture, led to the massacre of native populations. People from many parts of Africa were brought to the Americas and, along with the local natives, they were used as slaves for exploiting the riches found in the region. In the nineteenth century, after more than three centuries of European colonization, Latin American countries started fighting for their independence. Rather than grassroots movements, however, these independence processes were often led by local elites, who retained their economic, political and military power (Coatsworth 2008). Meanwhile, in the same century, movements for the abolition of slavery were successful in Latin America, but the process of “freedom” for the slaves was merely a legal requirement, as they were not given the equal or similar conditions that permitted them to be fully included and thrive in the “free” society. Right after the local independence movements, military dictatorships were stablished in almost every country in the region, which submitted peoples and cultures to deep social disintegration and increased enclaves of poverty and misery. Countries later experienced an alternating pattern of democratic and dictatorial governments, between which there was not always a clear-cut distinction. The consequences of these periods, which were characterized by repressive violence and ideological censorship, are incommensurable and reflected in social, political and economic spheres. Once again, the structures of power remained untouched, as no efforts were made to tackle long-lasting inequalities. After the last wave of dictatorial governments (that comprised roughly the period between 1950 and 1990), the decolonization process increased and led to a higher degree of awareness of native cultures and their legacy, which are being rediscovered and revalued. Nevertheless, a Eurocentric bias still permeates structures and cultures in Latin America, and sometimes plays a dominant role. The colonial background and memory not only shape societies and institutions within those countries, but also business discourse and practices.

History and Management Studies and Practices With the advent of theories such as Corporate Social Responsibility and the Stakeholder Theory, the role of business in society has become more evident. Several decades after the dissemination of these ideas, however, empty discursive practices prevail over the implementation and formalization of efficient management practices (Da Conceição and Spink 2013). Pressing social problems, such as persistent inequality, are highly complex and require systemic understanding. An historical approach, offering a deeper perspective of the context in which businesses are embedded, might assist them in their role of tackling such problems, thus helping with the development of more humanistic management and organizational practices.

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Ignoring the past not only hampers an understanding of the current reality, but also undermines action itself in the present (Bloch 1997). In the business context, this implies that tackling complex issues in contemporary management with incremental changes in management programs or importing models and techniques created elsewhere might be very ineffective. Indeed, businesses often introduce initiatives aimed at tackling important contemporary social issues that barely scratch the surface of the issue, due to their inability to understand the roots of the problems. In order to be effective in its actions – even when tackling a small portion of the problems – business must consider the nuances and local historical idiosyncrasies that are peculiar to each different context. The management field has been stressing the importance of past events when it comes to understanding the persistence of specific patterns in organizations. For example, the notion of path dependence proposes the existence of a causality chain between events in the past and the present that has an influence on organizational failures and strategic choices. By overcoming the ahistorical and unbounded view of rational choice (Sydow et al. 2009), this approach has helped explain not only organizational rigidity and structural inertia but also sustained competitive advantage (Vergne and Durand 2010). Path dependence mainly considers organizational history – including at the micro, meso and macro levels (Vergne and Durand 2010), but it does not reflect on the historical process of broader society. Inequalities and other persistent social problems have national or regional historical roots that may hinder present solutions. In India, for instance, the caste system, which is based on millenary religious beliefs, seems to perpetuate social stratification. Bapuji and Chrispal (2018) showed that the Indian caste system leads to endless inequalities through mechanisms that perpetuate the unequal distribution of economic, social and cultural capital among different groups, differential access to resources and opportunities, and an unequal evaluation and reward system according to these different groups. Dealing with structural inequalities, which prevent people from being successful in organizations, implies focusing on group identities, especially on minorities who have historically suffered discrimination (Kamp and Hagedorn-Rasmussen 2004). Unlike excluded groups in most developed countries, however, where they usually represent a minority, in Latin America countries these groups represent the majority of the population. To illustrate this local idiosyncrasy, Da Conceição and Spink (2013) compare the ethnic composition of the US and Brazil. In the US, Afro-­ Americans are a minority (roughly 12%), while in Brazil the Afro population represents at least 50% of the country (considering the extensive miscegenation that exists).

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Historical Social Justice: The Role of Business In this sections we discuss how business can contribute towards tackling historical structural inequalities in Latin America through (section “Diversity Management”) diversity management, which relates to more general diversity practices; and (section “Alternative Forms of Emancipatory Business”) new forms of emancipatory businesses, which we suggest are more context-specific and thus have greater potential for promoting change in organizational structures.

Diversity Management The organizational perspective on economic inequality refers to “an uneven distribution in the endowment and/or access to resources in a society, which manifests itself in differential abilities and opportunities to engage in value creation” (Bapuji et  al. 2019, 2). Economic inequalities are rooted in demographic characteristics, since access to resources and opportunities are dispersed across the different social categories, such as gender, ethnicity, class, and race (Bapuji et al. 2019). The relationship between economic inequality at the social and organizational levels is bilateral: economic inequality at the social level affects the management of organizations, while organizational practices have an influence on economic inequality at the social level (Riaz 2015). Acknowledging that organizations have a role to play in perpetuating or increasing economic inequality (Bapuji et al. 2019) leads to a reflection about initiatives within the scope of diversity management that might help counter inequality and discrimination. Diversity management refers to “voluntary organizational actions designed to generate a process of inclusion of employees from different backgrounds to the formal and informal organizational structures through particular policies, events and initiatives” (Gotsis and Kortezi 2013, 949). Such initiatives may be related to opportunities for everyone to develop their talents and be successful in the organization (Kamp and Hagedorn-Rasmussen 2004), allowing for an inclusive and participative workplace, or they may refer to specific programs aimed at altering organizational structures, including affirmative action plans, diversity committees, and full-time staff members to monitor diversity (Kalev et al. 2006). A common approach to diversity management is the business case rationale, which focuses on understanding the effects of a variety of identities in the workplace on company outcomes, assuming that if it is well managed, diversity can provide a competitive advantage. Understanding diversity exclusively from a business case perspective might be a hurdle to a more equality-seeking approach whereby deeper reflection and practice is proposed (Noon, 2007; Zanoni et  al. 2010). A more critical approach is often based on ethical foundations (Gotsis and Kortezi 2013; Van Dijk et  al. 2012), in which diversity management only makes

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sense if discrimination is abolished, based on the principles of social justice and fairness (Kamp and Hagedorn-Rasmussen 2004). The business case perspective is limited as it ignores the historically-rooted and persistent inequalities in society and organizations (Van Dijk et al. 2012). Critics of the business case for diversity management argue that it may obscure unequal power relations (Zanoni et al. 2010) and group-based systematic inequalities in access to power and resources (Özbilgin and Tatli 2011; Zanoni et al. 2010), as well as hampering the possibility of actions by not recognizing the need for structural intervention (Noon 2010). A deeper reflection and practice of diversity management means acknowledging that “procedures and structures institutionalized in organizations have led to a particular normalized reference point which has produced inequality” (Kamp and Hagedorn-Rasmussen 2004, 535). By ignoring this fact, existing hierarchies and power structures will be permanently reproduced (Gotsis and Kortezi 2015). The dominant view of diversity as a positive empowering approach that recognizes and values different capabilities in the workplace must go hand-in-hand with considering the unequal power relations in organizations that derive from ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual preference, etc. (Zanoni et al. 2010). Research into diversity management has been dominated by a social-psychological approach that recommends adopting management initiatives, such as sensitivity training, networking to prevent minority isolation and specific policies that regulate human resource practices (Holck 2016; Janssens and Zanoni 2014). This stream of research is often criticized for being too generalist, that it does not capture the complexity of diversity management in organizations (Holck 2016). In contrast, critical diversity studies focus on discrimination and inequality experiences in the context of historical and societal influences. This stream of research plays an important role in understanding persistent inequality at both the organizational and societal levels, albeit it often fails to provide managers and policy makers with practical insights (Holck 2016). Given the structural and persistent inequalities in Latin America, managing diversity in the workplace might not be fully efficient for tackling racial and ethnic inequalities in organizations and at the society level. The commonly ahistorical stance, which frequently approaches the phenomenon as if it were a contemporary issue that is not historically situated (Nkomo and Hoobler 2014, 2), does not explain complex inequalities or help counter them. In the next section, we explore context-­ specific practices that may more effectively contribute towards countering inequality and can promote a more diverse business context.

Alternative Forms of Emancipatory Business Rather than merely improving existing general management practices, there may be context-specific mechanisms for countering inequality and promoting social justice for historically socially excluded groups. This includes fostering or developing alternative emancipating forms of organizing (Zanoni et al. 2010), which may be

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related to grassroots initiatives taken by both ethnic groups and lower income populations in Latin America. Fostering these sorts of business initiatives may help those groups overcome the twofold marginalization process they have undergone: socioeconomic and cultural (Otero 2003). An exemplary form of emancipatory business may be found among indigenous peoples. Fostering the self-managed business initiatives of native people in Latin America implies acknowledging the central role of their own cosmology, which is frequently vilified by Western-rationally-centered managerialism as it does not satisfy economic rationality (Muñoz and Kimmitt 2018). These socioeconomic systems involve a whole different cosmology which dates back many centuries. That is the case of the philosophical stream “Buen Vivir”, grounded on the Andean and Amazonian native people’s cosmology, whose principles are currently extended to the pursue of a new socioeconomic system (Acosta 2019). For instance, De Castro (1998) examines a peculiar way in which indigenous people from the Amazonian region perceive aspects such as gods, spirits, the dead, natural phenomena, objects and artifacts. According to this cosmology, nature and culture are inextricably related to each other, representing a stark contrast to the traditional multiculturalist ‘Western ontology’ that traditionally understands there to be a natural dualism between culture and nature. This very peculiar cosmology shapes all aspects of indigenous life, including its particular ‘socioeconomic system’, where transactions are based on reciprocal exchanges of labor rather than on currency/monetary exchange, and the ownership of the means of production and the production-consumption dynamic are collective and dependent on extended kinship networks (Stephen 1991). Therefore, promoting self-managed initiatives means helping indigenous people thrive within the global system of capitalism while still preserving their historical identity, culture and cosmology. This is the opposite of the commonly exogenous exploitation of indigenous people, for instance, through the production of indigenous crafts for tourists and export markets, which may result in the marginalization of the producers and, thus, the “packaging” of an indigenous identity as if it were monolithic (Stephen 1991). There are also alternative forms of emancipatory business among other historically excluded groups in Latin America, namely lower-income populations. On this matter, the solidarity economy is exemplary for reshaping labor and economic forms of organizing based on the historical development of the region. This popular and informal economy emerged mainly from the mid-twentieth century as a result of significant changes in society. The mass migration of populations to urban settlements, fewer opportunities for agricultural work, and a lack of effective public policies, drove large contingents of populations – in some countries more than half – out of the “formal economy”. Finding no support in government or opportunities in the labor market, poor people managed to thrive based on survival strategies related to broadening communitarian ties and the solidarity that always exists in primary social groups, such as families or small communities (Laville 2010). These principles resonate with the strong religious identity of Latin American people, who are mainly Catholics (Arruda 1997). The Liberation Theology, proposed by Latin American Catholic theologians (e.g. Boff 1978; Gutierrez 1975; Segundo 1976),

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during the 1950s and1960s, was a moral reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region. They called to relocate the focus of church life among the mass of socially and historically marginalized people, instead of centralizing it among religious and secular elites. In order to aid the poor and emancipate the oppressed, the so-called basic ecclesial communities were stablished to both study the Bible and meet the local believers’ physiological needs, such as food, water, and shelter. This collective mass of poor and marginalized includes the “workers exploited by the capitalist system; the underemployed pushed aside by the production process; the laborers of the countryside, and migrant workers with only seasonal work” (Boff 1987, 4). This religious movement is closely associated with the solidarity economy in the region. According to the Liberation theologians, given the gradually deteriorating situation of poor people, the only alternative is to rely on a more participative and supportive-based production that is constructed from the bottom up (Baptista 2014). Alternative forms of organizing that are based on mutual support and communal ownership include small handicraft workshops, community food groups through collective agriculture, cooperatives created to tackle community needs (Laville 2010), and tourism in indigenous communities (Pereiro 2016), or in rural communities that have been set up by the direct descendants of slaves (Montero 2018). Given their emancipatory nature, these grassroots movements offer a more profound and critique-based approach to diversity and inclusion in their ways of doing business by reconfiguring power relations and building identity in a more organic way (Zanoni et al. 2010). In such initiatives, historically-excluded groups are not the subject of affirmative actions, but are the protagonists of their own initiatives. Traditional businesses may play a secondary role in supporting such emancipatory forms of organizing, by facilitating access to power and the resources that are usually restricted to the elites (Rahman Khan 2012). BlackRocks, for example, a Brazilian organization that aims to help Afro-entrepreneurs, is supported by companies such as Oracle and Google. Other companies are supporting excluded groups by engaging them in partnerships or integrating them into the supply chain (Reficco and Marquez 2012).

Final Considerations When organizational theories first started emerging, the dominant belief was that management principles were universal and could be indiscriminately applied in any context. Only over the last few decades has it slowly become evident that national and regional contexts matter in management. In this chapter we argued that taking the history of Latin America into consideration is instrumental in understanding the persistent social injustice and structural inequality that exist at both the organizational and societal levels. Latin America’s historical heritage, discussed in this chapter, has produced effects that are still present in society’s structures, thus deepening poverty, generating struggles in terms of social mobility and preventing the full development of human potential. One of the results of this historical heritage is that Latin America is still the most unequal region in the world (Oxfam 2017).

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There is a strong association between socioeconomic inequality and ethnic and racial groups in Latin America, meaning that race and ethnicity are strongly linked to income and poverty. The consequences of inequality in the region mainly affect the Afro-Latin and indigenous populations, who have historically suffered exclusion and prejudice. When business becomes conscious of the historical injustices that occurred in Latin American countries, particularly regarding the intertwinement of work and racial and ethnic relations, it can play an important role in countering inequalities. We have shown that business in Latin America can tackle inequality in its structures by way of general diversity management practices or by fostering alternative forms of emancipatory business. The lack of a deeper understanding of the historical and societal influences affecting those places where businesses are embedded makes management in Latin America an essentially exogenous product. Latin America countries are not, in general, the producers of the science and technology they employ, which reflects the region’s relative economic and cultural dependence on the developed world. This dependence of Latin American countries is reflected in all spheres, and the field of management is no exception, which leads to the incorporation of imported organizational practices, techniques and concepts (Wahrlich 1979). Reflection and a critical perspective should be pursued by researchers and practitioners aiming to understand a Latin American perspective with regard to humanizing business. Original concepts embedded in the reality of the region and context-specific ideas drawn from Latin American thinkers who have a strong humanistic background may better inform such critical research. Barros (2010), for instance, adopted Freire’s pedagogical perspective (Freire 1970, 1973) to discuss how the practice of emancipation can work in organizations. Native cultures and their legacy may also be rediscovered and revalued. Islam (2012), for instance, alludes to the value of adopting an “anthropophagic culture”, whose roots are found in indigenous culture, to be used as a Brazilian perspective for devising a post-­ colonial theory. We argue that a critical perspective on the role of business in facing up to pressing social problems would benefit from an emic, post-colonial and historically-­ sensitive approach (Gotsis and Kortezi 2015; Holck et  al. 2016). Humanizing business from a Latin America perspective includes helping historical social groups express their identity by shaping social norms and expanding power spaces (Zanoni et al. 2010) and by avoiding discrimination and stereotyping within organizations.

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Simone R.  Barakat is Professor of Strategy at Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil. She holds a PhD in Management from the School of Economics, Management and Accounting, Universidade de São Paulo. Prof Barakat has been a visiting researcher at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, and has published in academic journals such as Management Decision, Journal of Cleaner Production and Organization & Environment. Her present research focuses on value creation for stakeholders, stakeholder responsibility, organizational capabilities and sustainability.  

José Guilherme F. de Campos holds a PhD in Management from the School of Economics, Management and Accounting, University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. Dr Campos has published in journals such as the Journal of Cleaner Production and Organization & Environment. His present research focuses on entrepreneurship in poor urban areas, sustainable business models, sustainability paradoxes, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.