Jointing's Archiver

Jasmine 发表于 2011-2-4 02:29

What the pope’s words imply for corporate social responsibility

此片文章看看挺有趣~~
[url=http://www.economist.com/whichmba/of-benedict-and-business?fsrc=nlw]http://www.economist.com/whichmba/of-benedict-and-business?fsrc=nlw[/url]|mgt|02-02-2011|management_thinking


IN TOUGH times, many people look to religious authorities for help andguidance; and religious authorities, in turn, rarely miss anopportunity to comment on current events. Pope Benedict XVI releasedhis third encyclical, [url=http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html][i]Caritas in Veritate[/i][/url](Charity in Truth), in July 2009; it was supposed to come out earlier,but the Vatican wanted to be able to respond to the developing economiccrisis. Now, business and law academics have had time to mull overBenedict’s words and decide what they imply for corporate governance.

Antonio Argandoña, a professor of economics at IESE, a Spanish business school (and an institution of Opus Dei), uses Benedict’s treatise to help further define corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a working paper.  Part of the muddle of CSR, he suggests, is the many different approaches its advocates take: ethical (it’s the right thing for companies and their directors to do); social (the company as conscientious “citizen”); strategic (CSR contributing to value creation); and instrumental (CSR as a way to get desired results). In Mr Argandoña’s view, the papal perception of CSR is firmly ethical, outside of short-term results or social expectations. Moreover, it is best determined and enforced not by outside observers and activist groups but by the employees and directors themselves. Similarly, CSR must be “voluntary,” rather than a response to increasing regulation.

。。。。。。。。。
Even the idea that businesses exist to make money is flawed, in the eyes of the pontiff; a concentration on profit, rather than serving society (with profit as the happy benefit), leads to distorted risk-taking. Moreover, the very form of the corporation leads to an abdication of responsibility. Answering only to investors, managers fail to appreciate the larger moral implications of their answers. Benedict apparently falls squarely behind those who speak of a corporation having to answer to “stakeholders,” rather than just shareholders.

。。。。。。。。
This last piece also explicitly addresses the faith of individual managers: “The Christian entrepreneur... makes decisions remembering that [color=YellowGreen]his inner value as a person is not dependent on the result of his endeavours... Rather, he knows that it is the unconditional love of God that holds him in his existence[/color]”. Caritas in Veritate makes Benedict’s views clear: the ethical person, in business or not, is a Christian. That makes it harder to generalise his potential teachings to managers who may not be.

页: [1]

Powered by Discuz! Archiver 7.2  © 2001-2009 Comsenz Inc.