R:ETRO seminars - Reputation: Ethics, Trust, and Relationships at Oxford
Information about upcoming R:ETRO seminars, abstracts from past seminars, and links to complete videos of those that have been organised online, can be found on this page. For further information or to be added to the mailing list, please email reputation@sbs.ox.ac.uk.
Michaelmas term
22 October 16.00-17.00 (BST) - Heart, Mind & Body: #NoMorePage3 and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy (with Lauren McCarthy)
Sarah Glozer, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Business & Society, University of Bath, School of Management
5 November 16.00 - 17.00 (GMT) - Structural injustices, social connection, and corporate political responsibility: the case of business and human trafficking
Judith Schrempf-Stirling, Associate Professor of Responsible Management, Geneva School of Economics and Management
20 November 16.00 - 17.00 (GMT) - Personalizing Prices in E-Commerce: The Ethics of a (Kind of) New Pricing Practice
Jeffrey Moriarty, Professor of Philosophy, Bentley University
3 December 16.00 - 17.00 (GMT) - Against Consumer Boycotts
Amy Sepinwall, Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Past seminars
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Trinity Term 2020
Shaping the new sustainability agenda through online deliberation in Covid times
Itziar Castello, Associate Professor in Digital Economy at Surrey Business School
Transformation in networked whistleblowing: counter-hegemony and moral leadership
Iain Munro, Professor of Leadership and Organisation Change at University of Newcastle Business School
Circular economy and the social: self-organization, planning and trust in industrial symbiosis
Steen Vallentin, Associate Professor in Corporate Social Responsibility at Copenhagen Business School; Academic Co-Director of CBS Sustainability
Beyond COVID-19: the case for human rights in business
Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, Director of the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights (Geneva School of Economics and Management), Research Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights (NYU Stern School of Business)
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Hilary Term 2020
Whistleblowers counteracting institutional corruption - Marianna Fotaki, Professor of Business Ethics at University of Warwick Business School
Professor Fotaki writes: While various forms of corruption are common in many public institutions and businesses around the world, defining wrongdoing in terms of legality and the use of public office for private gain obstructs our understanding of its nature and intractability. To address this, I propose adopting the notion of institutional corruption (IC) developed by political philosopher Dennis Thompson and legal expert Lawrence Lessig, as divergence from the original purpose of the institution, which may not be illegal but may nevertheless cause harm to people who depend on it by creating perverse dependencies and compelling individuals to act against its core purpose. Such work is much needed to provide in-depth accounts of how external political and legislative pressures enable corruption, and to highlight the role of whistleblowing in restoring organisations to their core mission. Specifically, I will demonstrate how whistleblowers’ disclosures are key to bringing organisations back on track, and conclude by arguing for whistleblower protection and reforms that enable them to speak-up in organisations.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication and small and medium-sized enterprises: the governmentality dilemma of explicit and implicit CSR communication - Laura Spence, Professor of Business Ethics in the Department of Human Resource Management and Organisational Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London
In her work with Mette Morsing*, Professor Spence writes: Businesses that promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) through their supply chains by requiring their suppliers to report on and otherwise communicate their CSR are doing a great thing, aren’t they? In this article, we challenge this assumption by focusing on the impact on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) suppliers when their large customer firms pressurise them to make their implicit CSR communication more explicit. We expose a ‘dark side’ to assumed improvements in CSR reporting within a supply chain. We present a conceptual framework that draws on previous research on communication constitutes organisation (CCO) theory, implicit and explicit CSR, and Foucault’s governmentality. We identify and discuss the implications of three resulting dilemmas faced by SMEs: authenticity commercialisation, values control and identity disruption. The overarching contribution of our article is to extend theorising on CSR communication and conceptual research on CSR in SME suppliers (small business social responsibility). From a practice and policy perspective, it is not ultimately clear that promoting CSR reporting among SMEs will necessarily improve socially responsible practice.
*Professor Mette Morsing, Co-Director of the Sustainability Platform at the Copenhagen Business School
Collaborating through constructive ambiguity: a political process view on collective action - Juliane Reinecke, Professor of International Management and Sustainability at King’s Business School
Creating global governance institutions that deliver collective benefits cannot be done by any single entity, but requires collaboration for collective action across multiple parties and stakeholders. While scholars have argued that finding common ground amidst conflicting interests – a key challenge in the formation of collective action – often requires a degree of ambiguity through setting wide-ranging, inclusive goals, it is far from clear how ambiguity affects the translation of collaborative agreements into practice. Based on a six-year process study of the Bangladesh Accord for Fire and Building Safety, a global multi-party agreement to end the series of deadly accidents in the Bangladesh garment sector, we examine the role of ambiguity in building institutions that translate collaborative agreements into substantive collective action despite conflicting interests and the ever-present possibility of watering down the agreement. Contrary to traditional expectations that conflicting interests often lead to symbolic rather than substantive commitment, findings highlight how political conflict was productively leveraged, leading parties to escalate collective commitment and substantive action beyond initial self-commitment.