Re-imagining responsibility: critical narratives from a derangement of 'messers"

Importance and Key Contribution The impact of the Global Financial Crisis has left few countries or institutions untouched over the past decade. As it ends, there is a seductive draw to go back to the future – a comfort in... [ view full abstract ]

Importance and Key Contribution
The impact of the Global Financial Crisis has left few countries or institutions untouched over the past decade. As it ends, there is a seductive draw to go back to the future – a comfort in the familiar even though its flaws have been demonstrated. Fighting this inducement is difficult as we take comfort in the devil we know rather than the unknown alternative. Yet, if we are to create an economic, social, and environmentally sustainable future we need to find alternatives. There is popular belief in the notion that crises create an environment for change. There is some truth in this. But the change that emerges in crises happens within accepted frames of knowledge. While the crisis creates an impetus to reduce waste, leverage resources, and even pull together in the face of adversity, it also robs us of the time and mental freedom to imagine new futures. We have seen enormous efforts from all citizens to overcome the recent challenges. Perhaps now is the time to see some leadership; leadership with vision for a sustainable system.

Our objective in this paper is to explore the challenge. We believe the time is right to gather our thoughts, look to the future. We cannot achieve this by ignoring our past, as in that past lies the roots of conditions we may seek to change. We must understand what brought us to where we are, while we plot our new course; but neither are we hostages of history. In addressing this challenge we articulate and hold the tensions that naturally exist rather than try to resolve them.

In setting the context for our critique we believe that we have reached a point in our development where many of our big, many presumed permanent, solutions have reached the limits of their effectiveness. For a while, it appeared that the fall of communism left us with a truth that capitalism and free market economies are the ultimate form of resource allocation. We focussed our private organisations on shareholder value, built management hierarchies as though they were the only form of organisation, and used bonus systems to reward “agents” aligned with the shareholding principals. What happened, well it worked, in a fashion. If one externalises the enormous cost burden placed on the environment and on society, then it was a huge success. Indeed it was so successful in private industry that we brought it to the aid of the public service in the form of New Public Management. We replaced shareholders with governance structures, customers with Key Performance Indicators, and made public servants accountable agents. Of course that is, accountable to the governing structure, not the public. Somewhere in this, we lost sight of the fact that the markets are a tool of society, not the other way around. At the same time we lost values built on public service, seemingly forgetting that public service is a valuable focus for a public servant to hold. For a while, we heaved a sigh of relief, the burden of making difficult decisions had been removed and the market would do it for us.

Research Questions and Method
The authors come from different spheres of influence and expertise and begin a quest that is determined ‘face down the devils we know’ from our combined experience of over a century and a half of spawning ideas in a variety of interfaces between business, society, organisations and academic life. Their caffeine-fuelled playfulness reveals an intention to adopt a different stance and invite further conversation by daring to tickle the imagination and show that it’s possible to engage with the unknown and rediscover a sense of solidarity and hope.

The paper does not necessarily follow the usual academic conventions. Rather, the work is crafted with a spirit of rigorous intent and a desire to see what will emerge from thinking and writing together. From a framing as both strangers and colleagues to each other in the first instance, we acknowledge different threads of connection and begin the mischief by venturing into what is both familiar and unknown at the same time.

As we proceed, we engage with a voice of conscience, providing constant reminders of the urgency of our explorations. We point out the ‘wicked’ challenges that are upon us and we invite a broadening of perspectives on the need for meaningful responses, as for many people around the world, this is a life or death moment. They do not have the luxury of time to wait.

Implications
The invitation to ourselves and to others to take up a playful disposition is deliberately and self-consciously provocative. It counters the ever increasing emphasis on the deadly ‘Cs’ – compliance, competition and competencies in our respective crisis-ridden and chaotic worlds. Our playful derangment allows us to be untrammelled by academic, discipline related conventions that might otherwise constrain the content or format of our discussion. Play and creativity are inseparable. Picasso said that ‘the chief enemy of creativity is good sense’ and any opportunity to escape the stifling tyranny of rational logic has to have possibilities for difference.

Post the Global Financial Crisis, the interactions between different spheres of society, business, communities, politics and public governance is changing significantly, often leading to new and unsettling forms of cross-fertilisation and fragmentation. Ideas, practices and methods developed in one sphere will more frequently be adopted in the other sphere in order to address difficult problems and conflicting choices. Not only are ideas and practices going to be borrowed but, people and organisations from different spheres will be drawn in as partners, when they share the knowledge and influence necessary to make things happen.

This paper considers a potential inflection point as we wonder if can forge our way back to the future or whether we can grasp the challenge of finding new ways. The answers are nuanced, we don’t even know if we are asking the right questions but we are being shaped and reshaped through processes of deliberation, acceptance of interdependence and recognition that different communities cannot achieve their goals without a significant degree of involvement from others.

Our ‘play dates’ are a permission to be more generous with ourselves as we dare to think together and re-imagine our responsibilities.

References
Boal, A. (2002) Games for Actors and Non-Actors. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge.
Hill-Collins P 2013 On Intellectual Activism Philadelphia Temple University Press
Hodge B et al 2010 Chaos Theory and the Larrakin Principle Working with Organisations in a Neo-Liberal world Copenhagan, Copenhagan Business School PressHussey, P.
Ryan, A. and Walsh, T. (eds) 2004 ‘Notes for Imaginers’ in Unsettling the Horses: Interrogating Adult Education Perspectives. Maynooth: MACE Press. Pp13-32.

Responsibility Sustainability Business and society [ view full abstract ]

Responsibility
Sustainability
Business and society