Realising Corporate Social Responsibility Through Simulated Learnings: An Action Research Study of MBA Students in a Supply Chain Management Masters

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Author(s)
Houghton, Luke
Stewart, Heather-Jane
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2019
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We argue that modern approaches to teaching Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rely heavily on abstract descriptions of poorly framed problems. Such problems often point to a reality that does not favour the development of CSR. Instead it creates a level of abstraction between “business” and “social responsibility” because there is no real experience of the challenges of integrating CSR into business practice. The number one challenge of making CSR work is integrating it into culture and business practices. To assist in helping the future leaders of tomorrow understand their studies, we propose that a deeper integration ...
View more >We argue that modern approaches to teaching Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rely heavily on abstract descriptions of poorly framed problems. Such problems often point to a reality that does not favour the development of CSR. Instead it creates a level of abstraction between “business” and “social responsibility” because there is no real experience of the challenges of integrating CSR into business practice. The number one challenge of making CSR work is integrating it into culture and business practices. To assist in helping the future leaders of tomorrow understand their studies, we propose that a deeper integration between theory and practice is important. In this paper it is argued that this deeper integration can be achieved using small simulations in which students attempt to integrate CSR into real world situations and reflect on this experience. The reflection enables them to capture insights that are often absent from abstractions such as case studies. We offer an action research study to demonstrate how this reflective cycle works in two separate courses where this approach was applied. From this, these lessons are developed into a discussion where future directions are discussed.
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View more >We argue that modern approaches to teaching Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rely heavily on abstract descriptions of poorly framed problems. Such problems often point to a reality that does not favour the development of CSR. Instead it creates a level of abstraction between “business” and “social responsibility” because there is no real experience of the challenges of integrating CSR into business practice. The number one challenge of making CSR work is integrating it into culture and business practices. To assist in helping the future leaders of tomorrow understand their studies, we propose that a deeper integration between theory and practice is important. In this paper it is argued that this deeper integration can be achieved using small simulations in which students attempt to integrate CSR into real world situations and reflect on this experience. The reflection enables them to capture insights that are often absent from abstractions such as case studies. We offer an action research study to demonstrate how this reflective cycle works in two separate courses where this approach was applied. From this, these lessons are developed into a discussion where future directions are discussed.
View less >
Journal Title
Journal of Business Ethics Education
Volume
16
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Neilson Journals Publishing. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
Subject
Strategy, management and organisational behaviour
Specialist studies in education