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A Model of Social Consciousness and Socially Responsible Behavior Modelling Socially Responsible Behaviour knowledge transfer and translates into behaviour through deliberate action. Consciousness, on the other hand, is triggered primarily by external stimuli and produces behavioural outcomes without necessarily the intercession of will and deliberation. Therefore, one can expect awareness of the answers to questions like “what is CSR?” and “why is it important?” to raise via a classic classroom experience, but the development of social consciousness requires a lot more than the understanding of the answers to what, why and how questions. It requires changes in deeply rooted psychological mechanisms: emotional attitudes (care, trust, altruism, courage, etc.), tacit decisionmaking heuristics (what criteria do I instinctively apply when I have to make a difficult tradeoff), personal values (e.g. what matters most to me as a guiding principle in my life), etc. 2. These type of deep personal changes are, in principle, achievable through the development of selfknowledge (understanding of one’s own traits, strengths and limitations) and of a profound commitment to think and feel differently in given situations or subject to specific stimuli. This is at the basis of clinical psychology and psychotherapy. But introspection also has its limits, since it is essentially a cognitive effort that is supposed to counter deeply rooted cognitive routines. It is cognition against cognition. 3. These limitations might not apply, in theory, to meditative practices. In its traditional form, meditation is designed to reach a state of mental silence where cognitive activity is actually significantly reduced, with supposedly positive benefits for psychophysical health and personal growth (Neki, 1975). In that particular consciousness state, a metacognitive shift is typically described by practitioners where thoughts, feelings and actions, rather than occupying the person’s full attention, can be observed from a detached witnessing awareness from which they can be dealt with in a more efficient manner. When this state is routinized and integrated with normal mental and physical activity, not only a deep understanding of one’s own emotional traits, cognitive biases and subjective beliefs is apparently reachable, but significant and lasting changes to those traits might be possible (Rael Cahn and Polich, 2006) 4. Evidence in high quality academic medical and neuroscience journals has been produced to show that (selected) meditation techniques influence specific psychological, physiological and pathological states (for a very recent review, see Rael Cahn and Polich, 2006). Perhaps the most interesting evidence relates to recent advances in our understanding of neuroplasticity, the capacity of the brain to redesign its own neural circuitry consequent to wilful attention and practice (Schwartz and Bailey, 2003). Lazar et al. (2005), for example, show neuroplasticity effects in long term Buddhist meditators. The mechanisms through which these changes occur are seem to relate to the activation of the limbic system, the same responsible for activities connected to the notion of “emotional intelligence”, as well as specific systems connected to higher consciousness functions (anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal areas). 5. In addition to the neuroplasticity effect, certain types of meditative practice appear to produce longterm effects on the practitioner’s psychoemotional stability (lower positive and negative mood swings), together with higher dispositions for positive emotions such as compassion and care. Aftanas and Golosheikin (2003), for example, show that experienced meditators (compared to novices) exhibit stronger “long distance” links between different areas of the brain connected with the production of positive emotions, even before they started meditating. This might be due to the development of specific capacities to produce positive emotional states and coherently positive behaviour. 15 6. Finally, there are reasons to believe that meditation practice might influence the likelihood of socially responsible behaviour through its positive effects on occupational 15 see Aftanas and Golocheikine (2000, 2001, 2003, 2005) for a series of studies on the neural correlates of a specific type of yoga meditation, similar to the one utilized in our experiments <strong>RESPONSE</strong>: understanding and responding to societal demands on corporate responsibility 62
A Model of Social Consciousness and Socially Responsible Behavior Modelling Socially Responsible Behaviour stress (Van der Klint, 2001). Why is occupational stress important to the development of social consciousness in business managers? A number of reasons: a. A high level of occupational stress strengthens the prevalence of shortterm orientation as a criterion for decisionmaking, since subjects perceive the long term implications of their behaviour less relevant than the satisfaction of their immediate needs. b. High levels of occupational stress also reduce the breadth of search for solutions to problems and orients the search towards known territory, therefore reducing the likelihood to identify truly innovative solutions. This is particularly serious in the context of ethical dilemmas or decisional tradeoffs, where the willingness to explore paths different from normal habits is crucial to the successful handling of these situations. c. Occupational stress reduces the relevance of other’s interests in one’s own decisionmaking priorities, since the focus is increasingly placed on the immediate satisfaction of one’s own needs. This is, in a way, the essence of the psychological disposition to behave in a socially responsible manner. If a manager does not give relevance to societal counterparts with which there is no direct interaction and/or interest, no amount of codes of conduct, corporate value statements or training programs will suffice in affecting the type of debisions and behaviours enacted. This is especially true for the proactive type of socially responsible behaviour, aimed at “doing good” for societal counterparts, rather than simply “avoiding harm”. The combination of shortterm orientation, localized search for solutions and selfinterest seeking can produce a “tunnel” vision in the decisionmaker, with negative implications for the likelihood of engaging in socially responsible behaviour. All together, the considerations made above appear to offer sufficient support for the hypothesis that we are interested in testing through appropriate experimental designs. In the next chapter, we describe the research experiements we conducted to test the hypothesized effect and assess its robustness visàvis other training interventions. <strong>RESPONSE</strong>: understanding and responding to societal demands on corporate responsibility 63
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SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME PRIORITY
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Contents Executive summary 6 1 Intr
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Tables Table 1. Typology of factors
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Executive summary Recommendations c
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Executive summary Recommendations l
Page 11 and 12: Executive summary Recommendations r
Page 13 and 14: Introduction Aims of this study “
Page 15 and 16: PART I: CSR AND COGNITIVE ALIGNMENT
Page 17 and 18: A model of cognitive alignment and
Page 25 and 26: Methodology Scope 3 Methodology 3.1
Page 27 and 28: Methodology Company case studies Th
Page 29 and 30: Methodology Case comparison Analysi
Page 31 and 32: Methodology CrossPair Comparison
Page 33 and 34: Findings: Managers’ understanding
Page 45 and 46: Findings: External factors and cogn
Page 51 and 52: Findings: Internal factors and cogn
Page 59 and 60: A Model of Social Consciousness and
Page 61: A Model of Social Consciousness and
Page 65 and 66: Methodology Experiment Settings 8.3
Page 67 and 68: Methodology Experiment Protocols ev
Page 69 and 70: Findings: Developing Social Conscio
Page 77 and 78: Conclusions from study findings Ass
Page 79 and 80: Conclusions from study findings Dev
Page 81 and 82: Conclusions from study findings Dev
Page 83 and 84: Recommendations Recommendations for
Page 105 and 106: Recommendations: Recommendations fo
Page 107 and 108: Recommendations: Recommendations fo
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RESPONSE - Insead

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