Ethical Room for Maneuver: Playground for the Food Business

Abstract

In a world of glossy corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, the shallowness of the actual CSR results may well be its counterpart. We claim that the possible gaps between aspirations and implementations are due to the company's overrating abilities to deal with the irrational and complex moral world of business. Many academic approaches aim to lift business ethics up to a higher level by enhancing competences but will fail because they are too rationalistic and generalistic to match the pluralistic and situational practice constituted by the mosaic of values and set of constraints. This is demonstrated by describing and analyzing the CSR development of the multinational caterer Sodexo and in particular its Dutch branch. We explain what they do and why they are not successful. We present a new tool named Ethical Room for Maneuver that centers experiences and concrete situations in a playground of inquiry and experiment to enhance abilities to operate in themoral world and to meliorate business and society with more effectiveness.

The Ethical Responsibility of Companies Towards Animals: A Study of the Expressed Commitment of the Fortune Global 200

“…Do they mention taking animals into account in a more or less neutral way, or do they make statements about real action for the benefit of animals, or even the results of these actions? Pompe and Korthals (2010) highlight a discrepancy between the aspiration to and implementation of corporate responsibility, which in their view has more to do with implementation incompetence than window dressing. Since the aim of this article is not to draw final conclusions about successful implementation but to establish how strong the expressed level of commitment is, we distinguish five "levels of concern".…”

“…t Aspiration. This third level of concern can be discerned when companies make statements that express aspirations or ideals (Pompe and Korthals, 2010). For example, a company announces its ambition to reduce the number of animals that are annually used for research purposes.…”

The Social Responsibility of Managers: Reassessing and Integrating Diverse Perspectives

“…While an emphasis on human dignity and rights underlies many corporate codes of conduct, corporate actions and activities are generally assessed through a relatively broad ethical “lens.” Hence, specific management decisions can be justified by certain ethical principles but not others. Furthermore, any ethical assessment of management's actions is likely to be context‐specific (Pompe and Korthals 2010). For example, utilitarian‐based analysis might lead to concluding that bribery is ethically acceptable in some societies but not in others.…”

Moral Entrepreneurship: Resource Based Ethics

“…These are gaps between ''what we want'' and ''what we can do'' and illustrate the misunderstanding and underestimation of the complexity of the moral world business has to operate (Pompe and Korthals 2010). Conferences on CSR show the appeal of moral concepts and principles and at the same time the embeddedness of the social and economic barriers.…”