Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Narrative analysis offers a compelling platform that organizations can use to engage with those whose world and worldview may be radically different. A narrative approach places stories as vehicles through which individuals, organizations, and groups socially construct their identity, culture, land, and their inter-relationships through time. Because part of the stakeholder approach includes consideration of stakeholders’ physical, relational, and ethical experiences, narratives hold great promise.

The stakeholder model of the firm (SMF) was originally conceived as a theory of strategic management, intended to remedy the biases of the stockholder model. As the model became more normative, it effectively turned into a theory of business ethics. This paper reproduces material focusing on the contribution of Professor Ed Freeman to stakeholder theorizing. These portions were extracted from a longer manuscript which argues that: 1. SMF generated a series of new questions which constitute some of the defining problems of business ethics at present; yet 2. its inherent company-centered perspective prevents it from resolving these defining problems.

This interactive teaching workshop explored what it means to “teach from the heart.” It adopted the format of the wisdom circle to ask participants to share peak teaching experiences so that they could reflect on what their stories reveal about their inner selves as teachers. The hope was that, by learning how to speak with their “authentic” voices, participants could gain the insight and courage needed to better connect with their students as co-learners.

This article introduces a different insight on the role of leadership in the process to develop sustainability and achieve lasting improvement in quality of life. Authors bring together the societal, organizational and individual levels of sustainability in one conceptual framework and discuss the interconnectedness among these three levels. The conclusion is that an effective approach to sustainability starts from the inside, i.e. from the individual level. This implies a decisive role for personal leadership in the change path towards sustainability. It brings new challenges and responsibilities for higher education in the preparation of a new generation of managers and leaders who can think and act from a sustainability perspective.

In this paper we examine many of the arguments contained in Milton Friedman’s classic essay, in the form of critiques linked with learning objectives forclassroom discussions.

The presentation will illustrate an approach to teaching business ethics.

A modern form of narrative, comic books, are used to communicate, discuss, and critique issues in business and society. A description of comic books as a legitimate medium is followed by a discussion of the pedagogical uses of comic books. The strengths of the pedagogy include crossing cultural barriers, understanding the complexity of individual decision-making and organizational influences, and the universality of dilemmas and values. We provide an initial source for educators on the topics, comic books, plotlines, and other commentary for consideration of use in the classroom from high school to graduate business ethics courses.

Today’s business students are tomorrow’s business leaders. To ensure they have skills in creating profitable, pro-social, ethical organizations, we need to consider alternative methods of teaching CSR. In this proposed symposium, we will present different approaches to international CSR/Service-Learning.

Teaching business ethics and corporate social responsibility should neither be misconstrued as a plea for moral rectitude, nor as a limited utilitarian recipe for managing public interest issues or stakeholders — as it too often is. Rather, teaching CSR should allow students to recognize corporations as social institutions so that they can gauge their impact on a social scale and better weigh the values that inform them.However, this vision of CSR training has not found many supporters in North American schools of management, even as the demand for ethics education continues to increase. Our paper endeavours to clarify the bipolar origins of the rising concern around ethics in the business world and how demand for more ethical corporate management is impacting demand for ethics education in management programs. We have noted that despite the intensity of demand, there is a great deal of skepticism and strong resistance to the integration of ethics and social responsibility into the education of management students. Therefore, while providing a preliminary assessment of ethical training in North American schools of management, we raise questions regarding current objectives and those that could be pursued. With these factors in mind, teaching choices that inspired the development of a new course in economic and social ethics can be presented and justified.

This paper describes a structured approach to the selection of an analytic strategy for cross-case analysis and a method for data display. To this end, criteria will be developed addressing both, aspects of scientific rigor as well as the practicability of application and the application of the decision process will be demonstrated.

This paper explores how meaningful learning in management education can occur when we keep our focus on classroom activities and strategies that fosterconceptual conflict, variation in instructional approaches, and accountability from both instructors and students for the learning process. To that end, we offer the DNA of learning metaphor. This metaphor makes explicit effective pedagogical practices and encourages instructors to take a more challenging and possibly transformative approach to their course design and classroom experiences.

The location for the 2006 annual meeting provides an excellent opportunity to consider the interplay between important topics in our discipline and a new country setting. This paper presents a brief historical overview on how public policy shaped the Mexican film industry since the 1960s. An examination of seven recent Mexican films identifies several themes of interest to business and society scholars.

This paper uses post-structural theory to critically interrogate the question: Does business and society (B&S) scholarship benefit society? Overall I argue that B&S scholarship may make productive contributions to society, but that these are limited in serious ways. Specifically, I argue that B&S scholarship is limited by its engagement with neoclassical discourse which leads to a number of problematic assumptions about how it is linked to social good.