Social Issues in Management: Comments on the Past and Future

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (7) ◽  
pp. 1406-1412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archie B. Carroll

This essay comments on the past and the future of the Social Issues in Management (SIM) Division of the Academy of Management (AOM). The essay addresses the two major questions posed to the commentators on this special issue: First, does the past of the SIM Division provide any clues as to its future? Second, where is the SIM Division going or where should it be going? The author has been a member of SIM since 1971 and served as program chair in 1975 and division chair in 1976 to 1977. SIM is certainly a field at the community and administrative levels, and you could argue that SIM is a discipline, though we are interdisciplinary. It is not as certain that we are unique or distinctive at the intellectual level because we are not always that different in kind or quality from what is being done elsewhere in AOM, and there are more and more scholars in other divisions now working on topics that we once worked on exclusively. However, it is equally unlikely that many of the other AOM divisions could meet a test of intellectual uniqueness. The essay emphasizes some ideas that might help improve the intellectual rigor of the SIM meetings, and the value of alliances with Society for Business Ethics (SBE) and International Association for Business and Society (IABS). A division name change, even if desirable, is not a compelling issue.

Sexualities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 136346072110136
Author(s):  
Caroline Bem ◽  
Susanna Paasonen

Sexuality, as it relates to video games in particular, has received increasing attention over the past decade in studies of games and play, even as the notion of play remains relatively underexplored within sexuality studies. This special issue asks what shift is effected when sexual representation, networked forms of connecting and relating, and the experimentation with sexual likes are approached through the notion of play. Bringing together the notions of sex and play, it both foregrounds the role of experimentation and improvisation in sexual pleasure practices and inquires after the rules and norms that these are embedded in. Contributors to this special issue combine the study of sexuality with diverse theoretical conceptions of play in order to explore the entanglements of affect, cognition, and the somatic in sexual lives, broadening current understandings of how these are lived through repetitive routines and improvisational sprees alike. In so doing, they focus on the specific sites and scenes where sexual play unfolds (from constantly morphing online pornographic archives to on- and offline party spaces, dungeons, and saunas), while also attending to the props and objects of play (from sex toys and orgasmic vocalizations to sensation-enhancing chemicals and pornographic imageries), as well as the social and technological settings where these activities occur. This introduction offers a brief overview of the rationale of thinking sex in and as play, before presenting the articles that make up this special issue.


1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagmar Divjak ◽  
Natalia Levshina ◽  
Jane Klavan

AbstractSince its conception, Cognitive Linguistics as a theory of language has been enjoying ever increasing success worldwide. With quantitative growth has come qualitative diversification, and within a now heterogeneous field, different – and at times opposing – views on theoretical and methodological matters have emerged. The historical “prototype” of Cognitive Linguistics may be described as predominantly of mentalist persuasion, based on introspection, specialized in analysing language from a synchronic point of view, focused on West-European data (English in particular), and showing limited interest in the social and multimodal aspects of communication. Over the past years, many promising extensions from this prototype have emerged. The contributions selected for the Special Issue take stock of these extensions along the cognitive, social and methodological axes that expand the cognitive linguistic object of inquiry across time, space and modality.


Literator ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlies Taljard

This article aims to illustrate how Hans du Plessis, in his novel Die pad na Skuilhoek [The path to Skuilhoek] (a place of shelter), subverts the way in which history had been presented in historical novels in the past by addressing social issues that contemporary readers find relevant. The first part of the article deals with the social codes that shape the identities of the main characters and how these identities are relevant in terms of the social framework within which the novel is received. In the second place the focus will shift towards Du Plessis’s representation of cultural and national identities. The question: ‘Who were the Afrikaners at the time of the Great Trek?’ will be answered with reference to these identities. In conclusion it will be pointed out how Du Plessis avoids dated practices of historical interpretation by choosing ecocrticism as the ideological framework for his novel and is, in this way, constructing a new social myth about the Great Trek.


Philosophy ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 58 (224) ◽  
pp. 215-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. L. Clark

Philosophers of earlier ages have usually spent time in considering thenature of marital, and in general familial, duty. Paley devotes an entire book to those ‘relative duties which result from the constitution of the sexes’,1 a book notable on the one hand for its humanity and on the other for Paley‘s strange refusal to acknowledge that the evils for which he condemns any breach of pure monogamy are in large part the result of the fact that such breaches are generally condemned. In a society where an unmarried mother is ruined no decent male should put a woman in such danger: but why precisely should social feeling be so severe? Marriage, the monogamist would say, must be defended at all costs, for it is a centrally important institution of our society. Political community was, in the past, understood as emerging from or imposed upon families, or similar associations. The struggle to establish the state was a struggle against families, clans and clubs; the state, once established, rested upon the social institutions to which it gave legal backing.


Author(s):  
Giovanni B. Bazzana

This chapter attends to the social and ethical functions of the religious experience of possession in the Pauline groups. Recent ethnographic literature has illustrated how spirit possession can have a truly “productive” role in shaping social structures, ways of knowing, moral agency, and even the formation of individual subjectivities. This chapter shows that these same traits are recognizable in the Pauline Christ groups. Specific attention are given to the forms in which possession enables a poiesis of the past. The sense of temporality underlying such an experience is remarkably different from the archival and academic study of history typical of western modernity. Through his very embodiment of the πνεῦμα‎ of Christ, Paul (and arguably the other members of his groups) could make the person of Christ present in a way that affectively and effectively informed not only their remembrance of and interaction with the past but also their moral agency and even their subjectification as Christ believers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Shook ◽  
Sara Goodkind ◽  
Rafael J. Engel ◽  
Sandra Wexler ◽  
Kess L. Ballentine

Social work has long been committed to eliminating poverty, which is at the root of many of the social issues and challenges we address. Over 40% of the U.S. workforce makes less than $15/hour, and the accumulating evidence suggests this is not enough to meet basic needs. In this introduction to a special issue about low-wage work, we describe what is known regarding the experiences and well-being of low-wage workers, as well as promising policy and practice ideas to better support working families. We provide an overview of the included articles and conclude with encouragement for social workers to move beyond a narrow focus on poverty and more broadly consider the struggles and well-being of low-wage workers and their families.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inna Blam ◽  
Katarína Vitálišová ◽  
Kamila Borseková ◽  
Mariusz Sokolowicz

Purpose The paper aims to analyze actual issues of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in monofunctional towns in Russia, Slovakia and Poland. The process of social investment restructuring is obviously under way in these countries. However, there can be identified a few examples where the dominant employer with the long tradition (from the soviet period, even longer) has initiated and directly influenced by the social policy the local and regional development. The paper analyzes their development during the past decades, with the special emphasis on social issues. It identifies its strengths and weaknesses and defines future research areas. Design/methodology/approach The first part of the paper defines the CSR with focus on the social sphere and relationships between local dominant employer, local government and community. Refer to the theory, the paper adopts a case study methodology to explore the specifics of CSR with a focus on monotowns, especially the role of local dominant employer and its relationship with local government and community in three selected post-communist nations – Russia, Slovakia and Poland. The research uses also the secondary data (the strategic documents, statistical data) and own observation during the study visits to the selected cities. The authors analyze the town’s development during the past decades, with the special emphasis on the social issues. Findings It is shown that maintenance and development of essential living conditions in many monofunctional towns depends upon the direct participation of large dominating companies. The paper argues that there is a principal difference between the current social policy conducted by these dominant local employers and the policy that was conducted in the past. What is more, most of the engagement of large in the social affairs in monotowns refers to the CSR concept. The paper summarizes the common features and differences in functioning monotowns in selected states, from the perspective of social responsible behaviors of dominant companies, suggests the practical implications and identifies future research areas. Originality/value The paper maps the specific kind of social responsibility interconnected with the issue of local and regional development – monotowns in Russia, Poland and Slovakia – in the countries with common political and social history. It brings in the form of case studies the detailed overview of the selected examples from Russia, Ukraine and Poland dealing with the CSR. Based on the collected data, it summarizes the advantages and disadvantage of these towns and opens the new research areas.


1970 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 82-90
Author(s):  
Michael Drake

In recent years the quest for the proper form and content of social science studies has been a major preoccupation of academics. The reasons for this are numerous: the very rapid expansion of higher education generally and the particularly marked demand for the social sciences has led to a proliferation of new departments; brash young men have been promoted early (too early, many would say) to positions of power within the universities; the increasingly vocal criticism by the consumers of education – the students themselves – and, perhaps most important of all, a growing desire to re-aggregate human knowledge to counter the trend towards ever narrower degrees of specialism. All these factors have contributed to a mounting dissatisfaction with the traditional ways of studying the social sciences – that is, in almost hermetically sealed departments of economics, of politics, of sociology, and so on. Instead attempts have been made to draw the various social sciences together in studies of particular areas (Britain, Latin America, the underdeveloped world, the ‘new nations’); or of particular processes such as industrialisation, or urbanisation; or of particular problems as associated with, for instance, poverty or race. Each of these represents, of course, a multi- or inter-disciplinary approach to the study of the social sciences. Over the past four years I have been associated with two attempts to produce an integrated, inter-disciplinary course in social sciences. One was a failure; the other, my current preoccupation, is, I think, promising. What I have to say tonight is concerned with an analysis of these two intellectual experiments.


2020 ◽  
pp. 027614672097826
Author(s):  
Christos Livas

Despite the lack of consensus in existing literature regarding the societal functions of advertising, brands have been increasingly incorporating aspects of their stance on key social issues and/or contributions to societal wellbeing, into advertising messages. However, notable failures of contemporary societal advertising campaigns indicate that their effectiveness in achieving marketing objectives and advancing social causes remains ambiguous. To appraise the commercial and social consequences of societal advertising, the present research proceeds to examine its interrelationship with the social value system and conceptual differences with similar concepts. Although advertising is able to reflect and also reinforce a subset of existing social values, effective contribution to positive social change is likely to necessitate synergies between elements of the entire marketing process. Overall, given its risks and limitations, there is not sufficient evidence to posit that the practice of societal advertising is always for the best interest of business and society.


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