The Cognitive Side of Social Responsibility

Individuals sit on the board of directors and set organizational goals, individuals make the product, push new marketing campaigns, make tough decisions, create new products, and so on. What is the role of social responsibility (SR) in their thinking? Do individuals need to behave responsibly to liv...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Secchi, Davide (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2009
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2009, Volume: 88, Issue: 3, Pages: 565-581
Further subjects:B Decision Making
B Social Responsibility
B Cognition
B distributed cognition
B Docility
B advice giving and taking
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Individuals sit on the board of directors and set organizational goals, individuals make the product, push new marketing campaigns, make tough decisions, create new products, and so on. What is the role of social responsibility (SR) in their thinking? Do individuals need to behave responsibly to live in a social environment? Could this be grounded in their cognition? Furthermore, is there room for SR in our cognitive processes? And then, how can this analysis help studies on socially responsible business? The article presents how the distributed cognition approach provides a viable explanation for SR in human thinking. The exploitation of external – both social and nonsocial – resources shapes cognitive processes such that the idea of the “isolated brain” is definitely abandoned. Our social cognition uses responsibility as a support mechanism that sustains or discharges distributive processes. The article uses the notion of docility to keep cognition and social behavior together. The conclusion is that SR is (1) a mechanism that allows individuals to maintain cognitive advantages and (2) it emerges when the same social channel is exploited for extended periods of time.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-009-0124-y