Managers are increasingly confronted with issues of sustainability, responsibility and ethics. Managing responsibly is an integrative approach to sustainability, responsibility and ethics, which allows you as a manager to deal competently with such challenges. This course will facilitate your learning process to engage in changing practices to make them more sustainable, responsible, and ethically informed. We will first introduce the context of the trend towards responsible management practices (week 1). We then explore the basics of each set of issues, sustainability (week 2), responsibility (week 3), and ethics (week 4). In week 5 you will work on your own responsible management issue/task and explore responsible management practices in an area of professional interest (e.g. strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, organization, operations, supply chain, human resources, marketing and communication, international management, accounting and finance). In week 6 we will try to understand and experience what managing responsibly means in practice, including opportunities and challenges, and with a focus on transformative change. During these last two weeks you will work in a problem-oriented way, based on a challenging topic you have come across in your own management practice. In the course we will form multicultural teams to learn about problems you bring forward. The course also facilitates the formation of peer networks that allow you to continue this learning experience after finishing the MOOC. The MOOC is an initiative in collaboration with the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative. Overall Learning Outcomes 1) To provide an introduction to the three constituting fields of managing responsibly: sustainability, responsibility and ethics. 2) To help apply the knowledge and insights gained from these three fields to real life problems in your own setting. 3) To identify, understand and facilitate individual action that can lead to change at the organisational and system level ...to ‘act is to move’ 4) To learn to appreciate and bring together different points of view, and negotiate collective solutions to pressing problems. Who is this MOOC for? (Recommended Background) While this course is primarily designed for executives who want to work on particular responsible management issues and create responsible management practices, also advanced business students will find it helpful. Suggested Readings There are no specific required texts. However, the contents and assignments of this course have been based on the following book which might be helpful as complementary materials: Laasch, Oliver, and R. Conway (2014). Principles of responsible management: Global sustainability, responsibility and ethics, Cengage Learning: Mason.
Week 5 Lecture: Functions, Professions and Competences
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En provenance du cours de University of Manchester
Managing Responsibly: Practicing Sustainability, Responsibility and Ethics
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University of Manchester
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À partir de la leçon
Professions and Occupations
In this week you will self-select groups of people with similar responsible management issues and tasks to discuss coping approaches. You will also pick an area of professional interest (e.g. strategy, entrepreneurship, organization, operations, supply chain, human resources, marketing and communication, international management, accounting, finance) to further explore and to innovate responsible management practices in the professional context.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Oliver LaaschMarie Curie Research Fellow
Manchester Institute of Innovation Research
Dr Sally RandlesSenior Research Fellow
Alliance Manchester Business SChool
Prof Frank BoonsProfessor of Innovation and Sustainability
Alliance Manchester Business School
Welcome to the presentation of week five of the course Managing Responsibly,
Practicing Sustainability, Responsibility, Ethics.
In week one, we had introduced responsible management, as a management centered
on sustainability, responsibility, and ethics.
Then we explored these three topics together, from week two to four.
In this fifth week, we are thinking about how sustainability, responsibility, and
ethics come together as responsible management.
We do so by looking at the different business functions
at management as a profession and
finally at what competence is it might need to become a responsible manager.
Just in a moment, I would like you to pause the video, to take a piece of paper
and a pen, and to write down your answers to the following questions.
Please pause the video now.
Welcome back,
I'm sure that answering these questions has given you a good idea on how
complex it is to put all of the different pieces of responsive management together.
This week's presentation is designed to get to deeper answers to these questions.
However, if you want to make it simple,
what is the underlying theme of this week that connects all of these questions?
In a nutshell, this week five is about how it all comes together, It is about
how different functions and contributions to responsible management come together.
To form a responsible business.
About how different management occupations like accountants, marketeers, and
strategists made together contribute to a responsible management overall.
It is also about how distinct management competencies come together
to make a competent responsible manager.
This week is about putting it all together.
About how many elements need to come together to form a whole
of responsible management.
We will find out how to put responsible management together
by going through three larger areas.
First, we will try to understand how to embed
Responsible Management across all of the functions together form a business.
Then we will have a taste of the discussion around what management
would need to actually be considered a profession.
Like the ones of law or medicine, and
what this question has to do with Responsible Management.
In the second part, we will also try to understand what different management
occupations look like.
The ones that accountants and
marketers can contribute to responsible management as a whole.
And then in the third topic of this week which is focus on the understanding of
the distinct response of management competences like systemic thinking or
stakeholder communication.
That may help you to be a competent, responsible manager.
Let's first look at the embedding of responsible management of sustainability,
responsibility and ethics, across business functions.
Embedding sustainability, responsibility and ethics, or SRE, as the domains of
responsible management across a business is often understood as two main tasks.
SRE has to be embedded into the strategy and strategies of a company and across all
of the business functions in order to make the strategy to come true in the life.
This SRE embedding into business functions has been compared to make and
sustainable response and build ethics part of the DNA of your business.
To make it part of its underlying core logic or to mainstream it so
that it is not something outside the norm in mainstream business as usual.
To make it the new normal or business as unusual, so to say.
How are companies doing on these two tasks of embedding
responsible management into strategy and across functions?
The United Nations Global Compact is network of over 10,000 companies
that have committed to ten principles of corporate responsibility sustainability.
Since 2007,
a survey has been conducted every three years to follow up on their progress.
The survey consistently showed that the company CEOs agree on the importance of
embedding CRS in strategy.
And into business functions,
however, they all agree that it is a very challenging thing to do.
So what does embedding corporate responsibility sustainability
across functions actually look like?
Michael Porter's value chain model is a description of the functions of a business
this, and of how they create value together.
As we have done it here, the model can be adapted to show how each of these
functions can also contribute to create three-dimensional values, so to say.
Not only economic, but also social and environmental value.
This idea's well captured through the idea of the triple bottom line.
For instance the R and
D department may engage in sustainable innovation activities.
For instance a soft drink company like Coca Cola might develop new recipes for
their drinks to be less sugary.
This in turn might decrease sugar related diseases among their customers.
And therefore improve the social bottom line of the company.
We can find similar activities across all of the functions of our business.
Michael Porter and Mark Krammer have placed a number of particular corporate
responsibility sustainability issues across these functions.
Examples of transportations impacts involve logistic and
diversity in human resource management.
Is integrating response or
management activities across all of these functions enough then.
Do we automatically create sustainable, responsible,
and ethical companies by doing so.
The answer's most likely, no.
And the reason is that a very, very important aspect for achieving these goals
is to coordinate all of these efforts integrated across the company.
To make them work together.
So coordination between responsible management activities
is the second main goal of embedding responsible management.
Together with the integration of activities across business functions.
To summarize,
in the topic of embedding responsible management across functions of a business.
All comes together by understanding how to make all of these functions work
Together as one organization.
There's a second area of responsible management in which we need to understand
how things come together.
How do the different management occupations such as accountants,
strategists, and marketeers contribute to responsible management as a whole?
However, before we talk about occupations,
I would like to think about a related question together.
Namely, the question if management is a profession, like the legal, or
medical professions, and
how this question plays a role particularly in responsive management.
What do you think about this cartoon?
Will this be done, and the second Dean of Harvard Business School said as early as
1927, that business and management should be a profession.
He argued that managers have an important role to play in society,
just as doctors, lawyers and firefighters.
Managers provide the very goods and services that a society needs to thrive.
However, his own son Paul Donham,
35 years later asserts that management is not a profession.
This statement represents a larger discussion asserting the same statement
that management is not a profession.
Paul Donham suggests that the main reason for why management isn't and
can not be a profession.
His management failure to fulfill the very same social role
his father had hopefully referred to.
However, if management was able to live up to its potential social role and
responsibility it could actually become a profession.
If response for management became a new normal, wouldn't that be a chance for
management to become a new profession.
Korana Anora in 2008 suggested that management could actually become a true
profession if managers could be sworn in to a hypocratic oath.
To make them commit to their social role and to responsible contact.
Please pause the video now to have a closer look at the oath they
are proposing.
Korana and Noria furthermore suggest the following aspects of their activity
which managers should pay close attention to.
Do you think these aspects look promising?
Is there anything you would change or possibly add?
Please pause now and have a close look.
Well, it might actually not be as easy as making managers swear an oath.
Professions not only require service to society but
also recognize process of qualification based on a recognized body of knowledge.
All three of which would have to be enforced by an organization
powerful enough to do so.
On the other hand, we also have seen that make and
managed profession that fulfills all this criteria
would be very important to make sure that managers fulfills their role in society.
So we can confirm that management is not a profession yet but rather an occupation.
The word occupation here refers to someone who is occupied in a certain type of job.
So someone in a particular occupation may also belong to a profession.
But only a minor number of occupations qualify as a profession.
Due to the four criteria that we have just seen above.
So far we have talked about management as an occupation.
However, there are a number of managerial occupations under the bigger umbrella of
management.
We can understand, for instance, human resources, accounting, or
marketing as different occupation in business and management.
Ultimately, in order to achieve a truly responsive management
occupation, as a whole.
We have to understand and
achieve what responsive management means in all of these occupations.
In management from accounting to marketing.
So far, we have spoken about all of the different company functions and
different management occupations have to come together to achieve responsible
management.
On the level of the individual manager, what has to come together however is a set
of different competences to meet the demands of being a responsible manager.
You might remember this gentleman on the left.
It is Wallace B Donham who had stressed the importance of the management
profession for society as early as 1927.
In the very same year, he actually stated almost prophetically, that if the business
leaders who are competent to solve problems of society are missing.
Our civilization may well head for one of its periods of decline.
His call for
responsible management competence was largely unheard of until the early 2010's.
When a number of practitioner organizations and
also research began to define competence profiles for responsible managers.
Just a bit later, we'll have a close look at
the responsible management competence as suggested by research.
But right now,
we will have a look at the three competence profiles developed in practice.
The first competence profile has been proposed by the Institute for
Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, also titled ICRS.
Which was trying to build a professional body for corporate responsibility and
sustainability in the United Kingdom.
Please stop the video and have a look at what they considered important for
a corporate responsibility and sustainability manager to be able to do.
The second competence profile has been established by Business in
the Community, BITC.
This is an organization that partners with businesses in their corporate
responsibility programs.
Please pause and have a look now and compare with the previous profile.
The third and last profile is based on a survey by
ethical corporation whereas work knowledge areas were considered important for
corporate responsibility professionals to cover.
Please pause and have a look.
These three examples appear to be quite wild
lists covering different characteristics of managers that are deemed beneficial for
managing sustainability, responsibility, and ethics.
While you looked at these confidence profiles you might have seen
different types of items on these lists.
You might have seen items that relate to knowledge
that can be symbolized by the head.
Practical skills symbolized by the hands and
certain attitudes symbolized by the heart.
A core piece of competence thinking is that in order to be competent,
all three of these areas have to fit what you want to be competent in.
For a chef to be competent, it's not enough to only know recipes.
A chef also has to have practical skills to put them together, and
an attitude of love of food to create just the right composition.
The same thing holds true for
a responsible manager, who has to have the head, hands and heart to get the job done.
My colleague and I wanted to know what
particularly the types of sub competence are that a responsive manager needs.
So we looked at the research that proposes competence deemed helpful for
managing sustainability responsibility.
We found that the literature mentioned not only in three areas of sub-competence
groups, such as knowledge, skills and attitude,
so short KSA, or hats, hands and heart, but six of them.
Responsible managers have to know about sustainability, responsibility and ethics
and to apply this knowledge by being able to think like a responsible manager.
They have to be able to act alone, and interact with others, for
responsible management goals.
Responsible managers also have to be a responsible manager.
Regarding their personal characteristics, and to become one by being able to adapt.
Know and think are part of intellectual competences, while act and
interact are two distinct practical competences.
Be and become are part of a larger personal competences area.
In reality, these three areas are an unpacked version of the two other triptych
frameworks that we have seen before.
Intellectual competence correspond to knowledge and hat.
Practical competence to skills and hands.
Personal competences to attitudes and heart.
These six areas of sub-competences, however, only make sense
if you know what particular competences can be found under them.
On the following three slides,
you will find an extensive list of all of the different competences proposed by
the literature under the know, think, act, interact, be, become areas.
Please pause on each slide and have a brief look to get a first idea of
what particular competences are potentially important under each label.
What exactly do we need to be able to do to be a responsible manager?
The answer is, as so often, it depends.
You will probably have seen that the sub-competence is proposed for
response in managers.
We're partly related to the ones you would expect for
a competent, normal, commercial, mainstream manager.
And partly very unusual as they relate to the more unique characteristics of
responsible management.
For instance, the typical managerial skill of innovativeness appears to be right
next to the solving social problems skill.
Entrepreneurial thinking is in the same competence group as moral imagination.
So finding the right mix of subcompetences to enable
a competent response manager depends on the person and his or her environment.
The resulting competence profiles either way would have to be a balance between
mainstream management competence and specialized responsible competence.
Let's wrap up now,
we have seen how responsible management comes together in three different forms.
First, we had looked at the embedding of the topic into different business
functions, then we discussed how different management occupations.
And competence types have to be put together to ensure responsible management.
This week is all about how it all comes together.
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