The Road Ahead for Research and Education

Abstract

Chapter 4 established that amoral executives who do not recognize the importance of values will direct organizations to be socially neglectful and operate far from the efficient frontier of providing society with the most economic and ecological benefits possible. In contrast, Chapter 5 modeled a new frontier for corporate responsibly in terms of value-attuned organizations. These organizations are led by executives who understand the significance of values and seek to discover those that are important to their stakeholders. Again, stakeholders typically articulate their value preferences in the language of rights and justice, as when consumers assert the right to safety and fair compensation if products cause harm. Discovery executives understand that these ethical values should be incorporated in their quest to serve societal well-being. Chapter 6 elaborated on the practical mechanisms that discovery executives can use in this quest, which is aimed at providing society with economic and ecological benefits and, whenever possible, the simultaneous provision of these benefits in the form of mutualistic economizing or triple bottom-line business. According to Chapter 6, the ability of executives to activate constructive value-adept decision making in organizational culture is paramount to this effort.