| Sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and self-fulfilling prophecies |
Sustainable development,
It is generally agreed that organizations today should demonstrate a commitment to sustainable development and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Managers want to do their part and are asking questions about best practices in these areas. But are business schools doing their part in providing answers? “That’s a tricky question,” says Bruno Dyck, professor of business administration at the Asper School of Business. “On the one hand, many leading business scholars agree that we need to do more research on these topics, but, when it comes down to it, surprisingly little research about best practices in CSR is actually being published.” For example, a recent review of over 30,000 scholarly articles published in the leading business and management journals over the last 25 years found only nine that mention the words “climate change” or “global warming” in their title, abstract or keywords. Along similar lines, most of the research in the growing area of corporate social responsibility seeks to prove that it improves the bottom line, rather than describing what organizations are doing to improve their behaviours. Corporate social respon-
sibility (CSR) refers to managers’ obligation to act in ways that protect and improve the welfare of society over and above the financial interests of a firm’s owners. Self-fulfilling prophecyScholars do have an explanation about why change has been happening so slowly. They call it a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” and say it works something like this: Mainstream management theory and practice can be characterized by its emphasis on the twin hallmarks of materialism and individualism. The goal is to maximize productivity for the firm in order to maximize financial wealth for the individual shareholder. This way of thinking is built into the theories and concepts used by practitioners and taught to students, who come to believe |
