Social Responsibility Courses Research Articles

The Role of Poetry in Promoting a Sustainability Mindset: Walter Benjamin as a Guide Toward a Slow Journey

The emergence of highly complex sustainability challenges in modern society has led to the necessity of searching for more effective approaches to education for sustainable development. Research has shown that reflection leads toward more profound levels of engagement with respect to sustainable actions. Therefore, higher education has a role to play in stimulating reflection in light of sustainability. Art-based techniques, which have not been included alongside traditional teaching methods, have begun to gain the attention of researchers and teachers in higher education as they produce a deeper impact and involvement and can have a positive influence on the minds and hearts of the students. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that poetry can contribute to integrating the arts and humanities in management education. The potential effect of poetry on business management majors is being explored as a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility course. Poetry has considerable potential as an innovative approach to teach sustainability, but it is rather unusual in business education. Poetry was chosen as an enabler for reflection and emotions. This original teaching project was followed by a research project relying on reflective assignments. A rereading of Walter Benjamin'sIlluminationsfrom the perspective of sustainability studies was a source of inspiration, in particular “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” “The Storyteller” and “Unpacking My Library.” The paper assumes that Benjamin's ideas relate to a slow journey involving “awakening,” “wisdom” and “in a process,” three elements that are at the core of promoting a sustainability mindset. The research project consisted of four reflection assignments students had to comply with: reading and interpreting poetry; searching for a poem which would be most appropriate for the discussed sustainability topic; creating their own poem and reflecting on the whole task. The research took place in the second semester of 2020 and first semester of 2021, all in COVID-19 pandemic context. Students' participation was not mandatory, but the majority joined. Their perceptions and impressions reinforce the existing knowledge about the emotional power of poetry to encourage reflection. The results show that poetry plays a relevant role in encouraging future managers to develop a frame of mind that incorporates sustainability and responsibility. Business students are open to this approach because it adds a new and unexpected dimension to their studies. Despite the urge to integrate reflections, this is still an exception for the majority of management courses. The results suggest that poetry is a relevant instrument to promote a more sustainable mindset among future managers. Paradoxically, by emphasizing a slow journey, i.e., allowing time for integrating reflective practices, a transition toward sustainability in daily managerial processes can be accelerated.

Corporate social responsibility: necessity to integrate into educational programs of economists and lawyers

The purpose of the study is to show the necessity to integrate the Corporate Social Responsibility course into the educational process. The methodological basis of the study are such methods of scientific knowledge as a historical method, method of logical unity of analysis and synthesis, systematic method, and others. The questions of necessity to reflect CSR in educational programs of economists training programs are discussed. The author substantiates the reasons for the growing interest in this issue. A review of relevant practices in the field of CSR knowledge dissemination is given. It was found that the introduction of the proposed educational product in the learning process allows to strengthen main vocational training programs in many areas of training, to improve their efficiency, to have a significant impact on improving the quality of students’ knowledge, and contribute to the development and the formation of a fundamentally new professional competencies.

Change is possible: the effects of a corporate social responsibility course on business student attitudes

Change is possible: the effects of a corporate social responsibility course on business student attitudes

Importance of professional ethics and corporate social responsibility within business studies curriculum within context global economy

Businesses today have to juggle between the need to survive due to increased competition and the pressure to become socially and environmentally responsible business entity. Consistent with the intensification of discussion about the importance of embracing CSR among businesses, the issues now has expanded to the concern over the future of CSR. In view of this, the future of CSR will depend on how the future generations perceive the importance of embracing CSR in business operations. The purpose of the current study is to research the business students’ perception of importance of ethics and corporate social responsibility courses within their curriculum. The quantitative research design is applied in the study – the target group survey using 7-point Likert scale questionnaire, nonprobability purposive sampling (n=131). The research question posed in the current article is the following: Does business students’ attitude towards CSR and ethics depend upon taking these courses as part of BBA and MBA curriculum? The result of the study – the mapping of students perceptions and attitudes towards ethical aspects taught at the university. The practical implications of the current study are of improvement of BBA and MBA curriculum to meet the needs of the 21st century in the globalized business environment.

Change is possible: the effects of a corporate social responsibility course on business student attitudes

The aim of this study was to assess if fourth year undergraduate business students' attitudes towards business ethics and corporate social responsibility changed as a result of taking an elective management course on the topic. Findings suggested that a course on business ethics and corporate social responsibility had significant impact on improving a business student's attitudes towards the long term benefits of sound business ethics and corporate social responsibility, the benefits of addressing stakeholders, the understanding of the social licence to operate, and the use of social responsibility as a tool to address government regulations. The study also found that initial student attitudes (pre-course) were generally “favourable” towards business ethics and corporate social responsibility.

Are Corporate Social Responsibility Courses Effective? A Longitudinal and Gender-Based Analysis in Undergraduate Students

Despite the growing professional and academic interest in sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in recent decades, moral lapses continue to happen in the business arena. Because undergraduate students will be the managers and professionals of the future, training these students to be socially responsible is seen as critically relevant for reducing the likelihood of such moral lapses. However, the question of whether CSR courses can be effective is still debated and little is known about the role that gender may play in this relationship. This study analyzed data from 97 undergraduate students enrolled in a CSR course at a Spanish state university. These data were collected twice, (1) a week before the course had started and (2) a week after the course had been completed. The general lineal modelling (GLM) (repeated measures) procedure in SPSS revealed that CSR courses enhance students’ ethical decision-making. More importantly, the positive impact of these courses is stronger for female students than for male students. Thus, this study demonstrates the positive impact of corporate social responsibility courses on students’ ethical decision making, and sheds light on the target (female students) on which these courses is most effective.

Educating for Peace

The author presents a peace-centered process of teaching marketing that she has implemented during 2001-2016 academic years with her undergraduate and graduate business students in various marketing courses, corporate social responsibility course, and summer seminars in the United States, Hong Kong, and China. The peace-centered process is neglected in the conventional norms of marketing education even though marketing is considered to create values to stakeholders through the exchange processes and creates a peaceful world through business activities. The peace-centered approach is related to the development of a unified world view about human life in a culture of peace and culture of healing, and the development of virtues in a marketing career. She discusses (1) the critique of marketing education, (2) the concept of a peace-centered process of teaching marketing, (3) the role of marketing educators, and (4) the seven pedagogical strategies for this approach.

La formación en responsabilidad social y su impacto en diversas carreras universitarias

La Universidad Francisco de Vitoria (UFV) desarrolla desde 1993, el primer proyecto educativo en el ámbito europeo, que integra en sus planes de estudios una asignatura obligatoria para formar a sus alumnos en la responsabilidad social. Con esta formación pretendemos acercar al universitario al área de irradiación del compromiso social para que él mismo perciba el valor<br />de lo que se le sugiere, lo asuma como propio y comprenda la importancia de plantearse el ejercicio socialmente responsable de su profesión. Nuestro propósito es evaluar el impacto de esta enseñanza en estudiantes universitarios. Para ello empleamos una herramienta fiable y válida, que mediante encuesta personal (muestra total: 757 estudiantes) facilita la recogida de información en dos momentos (pretest-postest). Los resultados indican que la asignatura de Responsabilidad Social tiene impacto significativo en los estudiantes, a nivel general y por dimensiones y es diferente en los distintos Grados universitarios.

The Relationship Between Parental Variables, Empathy and Prosocial-Flow with Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers, Friends, and Family

The goal of this study was to explore the relationship between two different aspects of the parent–child relationship (parental challenge and authoritative parental style) and empathy as well as prosocial flow with prosocial behavior toward strangers, friends, and family. The participants were 422 young adults who were enrolled in undergraduate social responsibility courses at a University. The results show that the combination of parental support and parental challenge has an important influence on prosocial flow and on positive behavior such as prosocial behavior toward friends and family, but no influence on that toward strangers. Moreover, in the same way, empathy and prosocial flow promote prosocial behavior toward these three targets. The interpretations of these findings are delineated in the discussion.

Inclusion of ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability in business school curricula: a benchmark study

The authors examine the course offerings of undergraduate business programs in Canada to better understand the depth and breadth of this educational system’s inclusion of ethics and social responsibility courses. Methodology involved analyzing online programs, curricula, and course descriptions on university websites. Results indicate that only a small proportion of universities are providing a substantial depth and breadth of course coverage in their course offerings. Additionally, barriers to educating ethical managers are discussed and a model of social responsibility concepts is presented.

To What Degree Are the US Elite Business Schools Responsible for the 2008 Economic and Financial Meltdown?

Remarkable changes took place in North American business schools between 1945 and 1970 during which they are documented to have become more academic, more analytic, more quantitative, and the adoption of social-science and management science models to management education emerged. The subsequent changes after 1970 in business schools developing and delivering management education was disciplined around three pivotal questions: (1) How should managerial education connect and infuse its teaching to some version of managerial and business reality? (2) Should business schools concern themselves primarily with experiential knowledge or with academic knowledge? (3) Finally, what vision of managers and management should be reflected by the North American business schools? Robert R. Locke, 1996). The United States, which had generated 40 per cent of the world’s economic growth from 1996 to 2000, went into recession and became a drag on the rest of the world (Roach, 2001).On December 8, 2008 Harvard School Professors Jay Lorsch and Rakesh Khurna wrote in the Business Week Debate Room Financial Crisis: Blame B-Schools segment: We are facing the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression. There is plenty of blame to go around. But as suppliers of ideas and talents to business community, business schools need to accept some responsibility. Ideas and tools -- exotic financial instruments, poorly designed compensation plans, models of corporate leadership that value charisma over substance, an uncritical embrace of laissez-faire models were taught to MBA and executive-education students without considering whether these ideas and tools would contribute to a firm's long-term well being or endanger the legitimacy of the U.S. capitalistic system.Today's U.S. business schools attempt to bolt on ethics and social responsibility courses as merely window-dressing, a public relations move that cannot get to the heart of the matter. The challenges facing the business education marketplace in the 21st century are: Avoiding near commoditization of programs; No cutting-edge education and overemphasis on analytics must be avoided; Leadership failure is the main cause of contributing to the financial crisis, among others; Cross-cultural sensitivity and empathy at home and abroad in the real sense of the mantra: Be Truly Global: and more effective identification of problems and diagnosis in ambiguous environments.It is imperative that business schools must address the arguments of many that the conventional business frameworks students learn in business schools are out of date and flawed in their ability to overall greater good of society, making business professor in those and other schools complicit in the 2008 economic and financial crisis. Mathematical artlessness and human greed of the elite-business-schools-educated MBAs are among the pivotal causes of the 2008 economic and financial meltdown.No form of education is more commercialized than management education. But are business schools teaching the right things? (The Economist: Special Report, May 20, 2004.)

Stand-Alone Ethics, Social Responsibility, and Sustainability Course Requirements

This article analyzes the extent to which Australian and New Zealand marketing educators use dedicated or stand-alone courses to equip students with alternative views of business. A census of marketing programs in degree-granting universities was conducted. Program brochures were obtained via the Internet and were content analyzed. This study reports a lower proportion of universities requiring students to take a course dedicated to society and environmental issues than previous studies have. Only 27% of universities in Australia required students to take a dedicated ethics, social responsibility, and/or sustainability course. Only 8% of universities offered a dedicated core marketing ethical or social responsibility course. Previous sample estimates may have overstated ethical, social responsibility, and sustainability course requirements. There is considerable room for improvement in Australia and New Zealand if universities are to equip their students with the skills, knowledge, and ideas to benefit themselves, the organizations they choose to work for, and society as a whole.

Social Issues and Media Sensationalism: The Effectiveness of Teaching Methods to Affect their Perceived Importance

This study assessed the perceived importance of various social issues and the effect that teaching methods have on business students' perceptions of those issues. Subjects in the test group were shown an educational video that explained how some social issues are reported inaccurately with extensive coverage, or sensationalized in the media, resulting in a “moral panic.” Other issues are not covered as extensively, but may have a more significant impact on business, society and the subject. The importance of five social issues was rated by students who had completed a course that covered business ethics and social responsibility content and those who had not taken the course yet. Results indicated that business ethics and social responsibility course content had no effect on perceived importance of social issues, but that viewing the video did. Subjects who viewed the educational video on social issues in the news media rated those issues receiving extensive coverage as lower in importance than those subjects who did not view the video. Also, subjects who viewed the educational video rated those issues not receiving extensive coverage as higher in importance than those subjects who did not view the video. Implications for business ethics and social responsibility educators are discussed.