Effects of an Employee Volunteering Program on the Work Force: The ABN-AMRO Case

One of the new ways used by companies to demonstrate their social responsibility is to encourage employee volunteering, whereby employees engage in socially beneficial activities on company time, while being paid by the company. The reasoning is that it is good for employee motivation (internal effects) and good for the company reputation (external effects). This article reports an empirical investigation of the internal effects of employee volunteering conducted amongst employees of the Dutch ABN-AMRO bank. The study showed that (a) socio-demographic characteristics from employee volunteers markedly differ from those of non-volunteers and community volunteers and (b) employee volunteering seems to have positive effects on attitudes and behavior towards the organization.     

Conciliating Work and Family: A Catholic Social Teaching Perspective

Although work–family conflict is highly relevant for both families and businesses, scarce attention has received from business ethics perspective. This article focuses on the latter, presenting a set of relevant insights from Catholic Social Teaching (CST). After reviewing the foundations and principles presented by CST regarding work–family relationships, a set of normative propositions are presented to develop work–family policies and for a correct personal work–family balance. It is argued that business responsibility with employees’ family should be considered as a part of Corporate Social Responsibility. In addition, the applications of these principles and propositions can lead to a mutual enrichment of both business and family.     

The Design of GSS-Enabled Interventions: A Habermasian Perspective

This article frames GSS-enabled interventions as electronically supported discourses, designed and evaluated against a gold standard of ideal speech in a perfect communication environment. The objectives are, firstly, to develop a model of GSS-enabled interventions based on Habermas' theory of communicative action, and secondly, to apply the model as a problem-structuring device to the conceptual problem of designing the strategic evaluation of a comprehensive urban plan. The model, known as the VC (validity claims) Model, provides separate evaluative criteria for personal, social and technical aspects. The criteria for successful GSS-enabled interventions may be summarized as personal commitment (validated by personal truthfulness or sincerity), to a social consensus (validated by rightness), for informed action (validated by objective truth). Detailed criteria (viz., goal, strategy, procedure, issues, problems) are developed for each type of validity claim and matched to the technologies available. The result is a detailed brief illustrating the design of a GSS-enabled strategic urban planning intervention, including a sample agenda for the GSS-supported meeting and the GSS tools that will be employed.     

志愿服务的高度

联合国前秘书长安南曾经说过：“志愿精神的核心是服务、团结的理·想和共同使这个世界变得更加美好的信念。”这句话指出了志愿精神的本质,表达了人们对志愿服务的由衷赞美。     

Company Support for Employee Volunteering: A National Survey of Companies in Canada

Company support for employee volunteerism (CSEV) benefits companies, employees, and society while helping companies meet the expectations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). A nationally representative telephone survey of 990 Canadian companies examined CSEV through the lens of Porter and Kramer’s (2006, ‘Strategy and society: the link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility’, Harvard Business Review, 78–92.) CSR model. The results demonstrated that Canadian companies passively support employee volunteerism in a variety of ways, such as allowing employees to take time off without pay (71%) or adjusting their work schedules (78%). These Responsive CSR efforts contribute to the company’s value chain by enhancing employee morale, a perceived CSEV benefit. More active forms of support requiring company time or money are less common; for example, 29% allow time off with pay. Companies perceive that support for employee volunteering enhances their public image, a Responsive CSR strategy when employed to ameliorate a damaged reputation or a Strategic CSR strategy when contributing to a competitive position. A minority perceive challenges like covering the workload. Many companies target and/or exclude particular causes and link CSEV efforts with other philanthropic donations, suggesting a Strategic CSR application of CSEV. Where programs exist, they frequently are neither tracked nor evaluated, suggesting that companies are not using these programs as strategically as they might.     

Consciousness at Work: A Review of Some Important Values,Discussed from a Buddhist Perspective

This article reviews the element of consciousness from a Buddhist and a non-Buddhist (Western) perspective. Within the Buddhist perspective, two practices toward attaining expanded and purified consciousness will be included: the Seven-Point Mind Training and Vipassana. Within the Western perspective, David Hawkins’ works on consciousness will be used as a main guide. In addition, a number of important concepts that contribute to expanded and purified consciousness will be presented. Among these concepts are impermanence, karma, non-harming (ahimsa), ethics, kindness and compassion, mindfulness, right livelihood, charity, interdependence, wholesome view, collaboration, and fairness. This article may be of use to students and workforce members who consider a transdisciplinary approach on human wellbeing in personal and professional environments.     

工作塔设计浅谈

主要对工作塔的设计过程进行阐述,并介绍了工作塔设计中采取的优化措施。     

为公益注入能量:英特尔启动“ICT专业志愿者联盟”

"金蜜蜂2020"之"企业社会责任生态圈建设""项目首次活动志愿者是健康社会的生命之血,他们不仅身体力行地扶老携幼,他们还奉献着自己的聪明智慧及专业技能,应用知识的力量创造出崭新的服务模式……我们愿意,用专业技能、为公益注入能量、以志愿行动,激励亿万人心!"     

Western Parenting:A Personal Perspective

Bonding： Western fathers are keen to take an equal role in parenting. They recognise their responsibility as a new dad, and are committed early to sharing every family task with the mother. It is commo...     

Market-Oriented Management: A Systems-Based Perspective

Market orientation has received substantial academic and practitioner interest over the last decade. However, previous research has not addressed the issue how a company's management systems can be designed in a market-oriented way. Starting from a systems-based perspective of management, the authors develop and validate a scale measuring the extent of market orientation of a business organization's management systems including the organization system, the information system, the planning system, the controlling system, and the human resource management system. Empirical results reveal a substantial positive impact of market-oriented management on market performance which in turn leads to financial performance.     

Organisational Justice: A Senian Perspective

In this paper, we draw inferences from the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s book, The Idea of Justice to inform the organisational justice literature. The extant societal-level theories of justice tend to emphasise aspects that are analogous to either the procedural or distributive dimensions of organisational justice. The Senian idea of comprehensive justice is different in that it synthesises the procedural- and distributive-related dimensions at the societal-level. We theorise that the Senian notion could be applied at the organisational-level to facilitate outcomes that are actually valued by the workforce. Further, we contend that the emphasis on non-parochialism in the Senian notion of justice makes it particularly relevant to the ethics of multi-national corporations (MNCs) operating in alien cultures. To support our contention, we analyse the lean manufacturing practices of a Japanese MNC operating in India. Our case analysis demonstrates how Senian thinking helps one surface unjust outcomes that would otherwise go unacknowledged. Our analysis also offers tentative support to Senian claims about the capacity of human behaviour to undermine well-designed institutions. Concurring with the Senian view, which favours combating manifest injustice rather than fixating over designing perfectly just institutions, we derive some normative implications to advance the cause of striving for outcomes that are actually valued by the workforce.     

Green Marketing: A Theoretical Perspective

The theoretical view of green marketing, derived from within institutional economics, environmental politics, and technological theory, is a multi-disciplinary perspective suggesting that a potential environmental crisis resides not necessarily in specific behaviours but rather within the dominant social paradigm (DSP) of Western industrial societies. Effective policies and strategies then must recognize the crisis as one of paradigms. This paper addresses the failure of contemporary green marketing to move beyond the limitations of the prevailing paradigm. While there are nascent macro developments in marketing thought that might lead to a truly green marketing considering sustainability, holistic thought, and the limitations of the prevailing paradigm, they remain thus far on the periphery of the discipline. They will remain so until a broader, multi-disciplinary approach incorporating the multiple dimensions of the DSP is developed.     

Volunteer Service as Symbolic Consumption: Gender and Occupational Differences in Volunteering

Volunteering is presented as part of the resource attraction function of nonprofit marketing, a type of helping behavior, and a form of symbolic consumption. From a sample of volunteers, findings show that male and non-working volunteers are more likely than female and working volunteers to spend more time on volunteering and to volunteer for more number of organizations. Females and working volunteers are significantly more empathetic than males and non-working volunteers. Male and female volunteers and working and nonworking volunteers are also differentiated in terms of their values. Managerial implications are discussed.     

A Discussion on Competency Management Systems from a Design Theory Perspective

The competencies of employees are a critical success factor for any organization. Competency Management Systems help to develop competencies by supporting processes such as needs identification, intervention planning and implementation, and evaluation. However, the design of Competency Management Systems comes with a broad range of technical and organizational challenges. This study addresses these challenges and discusses the development of Competency Management Systems from a design theory perspective. The prototype evaluation, conducted as part of an action research initiative, involved fifteen companies and identified design recommendations in the areas of organization, user, resources, and competency management software.     

工学结合视域下商务英语人才培养模式创新研究

高职院校以市场为导向设置专业,并基于工学结合、校企合作培养模式来培养专门的技术技能人才。商务英语专业人才不仅应掌握英语听、说、读、写、译等基本语言知识与技能,还需掌握经济学、管理学、法学等相关学科的基础理论知识。提出实现商务英语专业人才培养目标的措施:走工学结合之路,开展基于培养专业能力的课程教学,建好用好实训基地,改革课程评级机制,抓好师资队伍建设,培养学生的专业职业能力,建立起为实施工学结合培养模式服务的保障体系。     

概念设计工作塔

工作塔与立筒仓一起对粮食仓储行业发挥有着非常重要的作用,工作塔是整个物流系统的核心,合理的结构设计首先要满足工艺功能需求,为发挥优质工作性能提供安全保障的同时并实现良好的经济指标。概念设计能帮助我们建立整体结构设计思维,提高效率,事半功倍。     

The Stakeholder Approach: A Sustainability Perspective

This article considers the stakeholder approach (SHA) to organisational management through the lens of what it means for humans to live sustainably on the Earth (that is, for there to be a sustainable world). In particular, the article considers if the SHA, as it is presented in mainstream academic and management literature, is supportive of corporate practices that advance the achievement of a sustainable world. The analysis shows the SHA to have significant failings in this regard when viewed against key sustainable world criteria, with issues of concern evident from the normative core of the SHA through to is practical application in the management setting.     

Sino-Japanese Economic Relations： A Chinese Perspective

The bilateral trade between China and Japan amounted to US$236 billion in 2007, reflecting an increase of 20.6 percent compared with the previous year, 33 times over the trade volume at the beginning of the reform and opening up. This vast volume and fast growth took place amid China＇s accession into the World Trade Organization at the end of 2001 and increased trade disputes between the two countries, not to mention recurrent foreign exchange rate fluctuations in international currency markets and somehow intensified fears in Japan of China＇s enhanced competitiveness.     

Ethical Audit Decisions: A Structuration Perspective

The public accounting profession has long relied on its reputation for integrity and veracity as justification for its professional status and monopoly privilege predicated on claims of acting in the public interest. If such status and privilege are to be justified and sustained, serious consideration of what constitutes ethical behavior, how such behavior is motivated as well as an explicit recognition of the rights and interests of affected parties constitutes an ethical imperative for the profession. Traditionally, work on ethics and auditing is quite narrow, failing to recognize the social context of individual actions, failing to identify the relevant constituencies of the profession, and failing to articulate processes through which the constituencies interests can be identified. Generally, the accounting literature has taken a cognitive perspective on ethical decision making which views the resolution of ethical dilemmas as primarily a function of the moral makeup of the actor responding within the context of the Code of Professional Conduct. The purpose of this paper is to broaden the theoretical base of ethical research, specifically within the area of professional accounting and more generally in the area of business. We propose the application of structuration theory in conjunction with stakeholder theory and a responsibility ethic. The application of stakeholder theory is a means for identifying affected constituencies. A responsibility ethic recognizes the situatedness of an individual within an ongoing professional community. Structuration theory provides a theoretical framework for articulating and investigating both the structures within which action is carried out as well as the interaction between the social structures and the actors. Taken together, the theories allow for an enhanced ability to define ethical behavior within a business context and to understand the contextual antecedents and consequences of ethical acts.     

Corporate Legal Responsibility: A Levinasian Perspective

In this article I will look into Corporate Legal Responsibility taking into account Levinas’s notion of infinite responsibility, as well as his understanding of ethical language. My account of Levinas’s philosophy will show that it challenges – breaking down – deeply entrenched distinctions in the dominant strands of moral philosophy, within which the theory of individual responsibility is embedded, such as between:(1) duty to others on the one hand and supererogation on the other; (2) perfect duty to others on the one hand and imperfect duties to others on the other; (3) insiders and outsiders; kith and kin on the one hand and strangers on the other; Levinas’s moral vision is an inclusive one which embraces all of humanity (at least of those present today) irrespective of historical, linguistic, cultural differences and diversities. In other words, each has responsibilities for and duties towards all others. Of course, one might say that there is nothing new about a universalising ethics – after all Kantianism, liberalism as well as utilitarianism are well known instances. However, more crucially, all these traditional moral philosophies uphold the theory of individual responsibility, which is rooted in the philosophy of individualism. Such a philosophy can make sense only of the concept of individual moral/legal agency but not corporate agency. Therefore, in this article I will attempt to show that the Levinasian vision is able to help us change our view with respect to corporate responsibility.