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Dear All,

Please join us online on Monday, 29 May, at 4pm BST, for the third R:ETRO seminar of this term, hosted by the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.

Thomas Donaldson (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) will be giving a paper entitled "CSR: Trapped in a Language Illusion."

Abstract:

A language illusion haunts our area. The peculiar reality of knowing and doing, of theoretical and practical reason, makes this language illusion wicked. What animates the illusion is a conflict between two forms of specialized language. The conflict is between the language of efficiency, whose terminology delivers concepts of profit and optimization, and the language of deep values, whose terminology delivers concepts of integrity, environmental sustainability, and non-discrimination. These specialized languages are not inter-translatable. Dispelling the illusion requires a shift in conceptual vision from an object-centered to agent-centered perspective, and from theoretical to practical reason. Practical reasoning makes it possible to integrate the languages of efficiency and values into a single flow model without requiring inter-translatability. This, in turn, makes it possible to plot a "value gap," using Cartesian coordinates, between ideally efficient corporate actions and ideal, all-things-considered corporate actions.

Click here to register.

I hope to see many of you there!

All the best,
Rita

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Rita Mota
Assistant Professor
ESADE Business School
Barcelona
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