Dear Frederic, thanks for that very helpful contribution. I will follow up on the chapter you mention which looks interesting. My take on business ethics is to understand the moral rules in use (a phrase coined by Robert Jackall), which for me means trying to identify the moral approach in social enterprises from the perspective of moral philosophy. From there we can seek to make sense of it in different contexts, and ultimately explain empirical observations. For me, an ethic of care is a front-runner but more research is certainly needed. For sure a great deal of the issues are definitional, and we have the challenge of ethics/social/moral being used synonymously in some cases and with highly specified definitions in others. One of the problems I think is that relevant research appears across a range of disciplines, making synthesis and integration a real challenge. I guess in some ways it is still early days for social entrepreneurship research - though not necessarily if you take in the bigger picture. Still a lot of research contribution to be made though!

Thanks again, Laura

Dear Laura at the risk of self promotion you might like to look up my PhD thesis titled Narratives Beyond Civility: the role of moral protest and cooperation in ethical communities (2006). I raised the same questions around cooperatives and the assumptions that they might always be ethical or result in ethical practices. To explore this I fleshed out a distinction between moral and ethical communities. In another publication I also talk about the uneasy terrain between corporate funding and community development linked also with the social entrepreneurship field.

Hope you find these of use, there's numerous references within, Victoria Palmer.

Thanks Victoria and Rafael, I appreciate your responses and also the honing of understanding around ethical, moral and social. It seems that social enterprise has a kind of ethical exceptionalism to it - a sort of halo effect in more simplistic terms, that indeed warrants investigation. Thanks for the steer to your thesis Victorial (self-promotion not a problem at all!), and Rafael I also am in favour of a descriptive approach to help unpack what is the situation (if you have any references to suggest do let me know). Then others can perhaps look to what SHOULD be the situation in social enterprises. Thanks again, I really value your perspectives and it is helping me think things through. Any other contributors would be very welcome. Regards,Laura

Very many thanks Rafael, that is terrific!

Laura

Hi,

You may be interested by this paper:

.The Exposed Self: A Multilevel Model of Shame and Ethical Behavior.

By: Murphy, Steven; Kiffin-Petersen, Sandra. Journal of Business Ethics. Apr2017, Vol. 141 Issue 4, p657-675. 19p. 1 Diagram.

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3185-8. Ajouter au dossierSupprimer du dossierTexte intégral en PDF (608KB

Best regards.