A Humanistic Ontology for Responsible Management

Abstract

Why has responsible management been so difficult and why is the chorus of stakeholders demanding responsibility getting louder? We argue that management has been framed within the structural confines of corporate governance. Corporate governance in turn has been developed within the frame of agency theory (Blair, 1995; Eisenhardt, 1989). Agency theory in turn is based on ontological assumptions that do not provide for responsible actions on behalf of management (Jensen, 2001; Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Jensen & Meckling, 1994). As such, we argue that managers need to be aware of the paradigmatic frame of the dominant economistic ontology and learn to transcend it in order to become truly response-able.

Citation

Pirson, M. and Steckler, E. (2019), "A Humanistic Ontology for Responsible Management", Business Ethics (Business and Society 360, Vol. 3), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 295-322. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2514-175920190000003011