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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 08/26/2016 04:36 PM
Axel Springer Ethics Case
1. How do you define the “best practice” of corporate responsibility in a high-tech, global economy? Who are the key stakeholders? What should be the goal?
2. What course of action would you recommend for Florian Nehm, the head of corporate sustainability and EU affairs, at Axel Springer SE?
Defining Best Practice:
Corporate responsibility is ultimately about the reasons and ways in which a company sets its values, moral standards, ethical considerations and states an organizational purpose that is based in greater societal good. After this course, I believe the “best practice” of corporate responsibility in a high tech global economy leverages several course methodologies but ultimately 1) the tenets of Gilligan’s Ethics of Care model which balances care for self (or corporation) and care for others, 2) takes a triple bottom approach to running a company considering financial performance, social practices and environmental impact and 3) ultimately one defined by Porter and Kramer’s Corporate Shared Value (“CSV”) where economic success is based on a model where societies’ needs are addressed and improved. CSV allows the self-interest necessary for a company to thrive in a competitive and fast changing environment. At the same time, CSV considers that the end game is about creating shared value. Altogether, my definition of the “best practice” of corporate responsibility happens when the company’s bottom line and society’s bottom line are simultaneously served because the societal needs are also at the center of the company’s profit driven goals.
Gilligan’s Ethics of Care model can be made a core part of a company’s values and culture and should be a driving component of a company’s corporate responsibility approach. Gilligan’s model, aligned also to Kohlberg’s post-conventional stage of moral development, recognizes that we are all connected. That there are a web of relationships and that in such we have a duty to others,...