Abstract
As the world is getting increasingly connected and interdependent it becomes clear that the world’s most pressing public problems such as poverty or global warming call for cross-sector solutions. The paper discusses the idea of business leaders acting as agents of world benefit, taking an active co-responsibility in generating solutions to problems. It argues that we need responsible global leaders who are aware of the pressing problems in the world, care for the needs of others, aspire to make this world a better place, and act in word and deed as global and responsible citizens. The argument is structured as follows: first, in highlighting some leadership challenges we discuss why it takes a responsible, global, and ultimately cosmopolitan mindset to enhance human values on a global scale. Second, we define more specifically responsible global leadership and the (potential) role of business leaders acting as agents of world benefit. Third, drawing on latest research on cosmopolitanism, we discuss the hallmarks of contemporary cosmopolitanism. Fourth, and concluding our argument, we propose key cosmopolitan business principles to help leaders build a more inclusive world.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adler, N.J.: 2006, ‹The Arts & Leadership: Now That We Can Do Anything, What Will We Do?’, Academy of Management Learning & Education 5(4), 486-499.
Appiah, K.A.: 2006, Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in a World of Strangers (W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London).
BAWB (Business as an Agent of World Benefit’): 2006, First conference on ‹Business as an Agent of World Benefit’, held by Case Western Reserve University (Academy of Management & UN Global Compact, Cleveland OH).
Beck, U.: 2008, ‹Reframing Power in the Globalized World’, Organization Studies 29(5), 793-804.
Beetham, D.: 1998, ‹Human Rights as a Model for Cosmopolitan Democracy’, in D. Archibugi, D. Held and M. Köhler (eds.), Re-imagining Political Community. Polity Press: Cambridge, 58-71.
Benhabib, S.: 2006, Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York).
Bennis, W. and B. Nanus: 1985, Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge (Harper & Row, New York).
Bohman, J. and M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds.): 1997, Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (MIT Press, Boston).
Brock, G. and H. Brighouse (eds.): 2005, The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge).
Burns, J.M.: 1978, Leadership (Perennial, New York).
Chatterjee, D.K. (ed.): 2004, The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge).
Cheah, P.: 2006, Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA/London).
Ciulla, J. (ed.): 1998, Ethics, The Heart of Leadership (Praeger, Westport, CT, London).
Ciulla, J.: 2006, ‹Ethics. The Heart of Leadership’. in Th. Maak and N.M. Pless (eds.), Responsible leadership. Routledge, London/New York, 17-32.
Crosby, B.C. and J.M. Bryson: 2005, Leadership for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World, 2nd ed. (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA).
Dallmayr, F.: 2003, ‹Cosmopolitanism. Moral and Political’, Political Theory 31(3), 421-442.
Delanty, G.: 2006, ‹The Cosmopolitan Imagination: Critical Cosmopolitanism and Social Theory’, The British Journal of Sociology 57(1), 25-47.
Donaldson, T. and L.E. Preston: 1995, ‹The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications’, Academy of Management Review 20(1), 65-91.
Driver, J.: 2007, ‹Cosmopolitan Virtue’, Social Theory and Practice 33(4), 595-608.
Elkington, J.: 1998, Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21 st Century Business (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC/Stony Creek, CT).
Frankfurt, H.G.: 1988, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York, NY).
Freeman, R.E.: 1984, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman Publishers, Boston).
Freeman, R.E.: 1994, ‹The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions’, Business Ethics Quarterly 4(4), 409-422.
Freeman, R.E., Martin, K., Parmar, B., Cording, M. and P.H. Werhane: 2006, ‹Leading Through Values and Ethical Principles’, in R.J. Burke and C.L. Cooper (eds.), Inspiring Leaders. Routledge, London/New York, 149-174.
Friedman, T.L.: 2005, The World is Flat (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York).
Gilligan, C.: 1982, In a Different Voice (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA).
Greenleaf, R. K.: 1977/2002, Servant Leadership. A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness, 25th Anniversary Edition (Paulist Press, New York/ Mahwah, NJ)
Held, D.: 1995, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Polity Press, Cambridge).
Held, D.: 2005, ‹Principles of Cosmopolitan Order’, in G. Brock and H. Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp.10-27.
Held, Virginia: 2005, Ethics of Care (Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford).
Hooijberg, R., Hunt, J.G. and G.E. Dodge: 1997, ‹Leadership Complexity and Development of the Leaderplex Model’, Journal of Management 23, 375-408.
Jones, T.M., Felps, W. and G. Bigley: 2007, ‹Ethical Theory and Stakeholder-Related Decisions: The Role of Stakeholder Culture’, Academy of Management Review 32(1), 137-155.
Kant, I.: 1795, ‹Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in H. Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994), pp. 93–131
Küng, H.: 1991, Global Responsibility: In Search for a New World Ethic (Crossroad, New York).
Küng, H. and K.-J. Kuschel: 1995, A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions (Continuum, New York).
Kuper, A. (ed.): 2005, Global Responsibilities. Who Must Deliver on Human Rights? (Routledge, New York/London).
Kymlicka, W. (ed.): 1995, The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford University Press, Oxford).
Levy, O., Beechler, S., Taylor, S. and N.A. Boyacigiller: 2007, ‹What We Talk About When We Talk About ‹Global Mindset’: Managerial Cognition in Multinational Corporations’, Journal of International Business Studies 38, 231-258.
Lodge, G. and C. Wilson: 2006, A Corporate Solution to Poverty (Princeton University Press, Princeton/Oxford).
Lord, R.G. and D.J. Brown: 2001, ‹Leadership, Values, and Subordinate Self-Concepts’, The Leadership Quarterly 12, 133-152.
Maak, Th.: 2007, ‹Responsible Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement and the Emergence of Social Capital’, Journal of Business Ethics 74(4), 329-343.
Maak, Th. and N.M. Pless: 2006a, ‹Responsible Leadership: A Relational Approach’, in Th. Maak and N.M. Pless (eds.), Responsible leadership, (Routledge, London/ New York), pp. 33-53.
Maak, Th. and N.M. Pless: 2006b, ‹Responsible Leadership in a Stakeholder Society’, Journal of Business Ethics 66, 99-115.
Maak, Th. and N.M. Pless: 2008, ‹Responsible Leadership in a Globalized World: A Cosmopolitan Perspective’, in A.G. Scherer, and G. Palazzo (eds.), Handbook of Global Corporate Citizenship Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 430-453.
Maccoby, M.: 2007, The Leaders We Need And What Makes Us Follow (Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA).
May, L.: 1993, Sharing Responsibility (Chicago University Press, Chicago).
Miller, D.: 2005, ‹Distributing Responsibilities’, in A. Kuper (ed.), Global Responsibilities. Who Must Deliver on Human Rights? Routledge, New York/London, pp. 95-115.
Mitchell, R.K, B.R. Agle and D.J. Wood: 1997, ‹Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts’, Academy of Management Review 22(4), 853-886.
Nagel, Th.: 1991, Equality and Partiality (Oxford University Press, New York).
Noddings, N.: 2003, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, 2nd Rev. Edition (University of California Press, Berkeley)
Nussbaum, M.C.: 1996, ‹Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’, in J. Cohen (ed.), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Cosmopolitanism (Beacon Press, Boston, MA), pp. 3-17.
Nussbaum, M.C.: 2004, ‹Women and Theories of Global Justice: Our Need for New Paradigms’, in D.K. Chatterjee (ed.), The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 147-176.
Nussbaum, M.C.: 2005, ‹Beyond the Social Contract: Capabilities and Global Justice’, in G. Brock and H. Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 196-228.
Nussbaum, M.C. and A. Sen (eds.): 1993, The Quality of Life (Clarendon Press, Oxford).
O’Neill, O.: 2004, ‹Global Justice: Whose Obligations’, in D.K. Chatterjee (ed.), The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 242-259.
O’Neill, O.: 2005, ‹Agents of Justice’, in A. Kuper (ed.), Global Responsibilities. Who Must Deliver on Human Rights?. Routledge, New York/London, pp. 37-52.
Pless, N.M.: 2007, ‹Understanding Responsible Leadership: Roles Identity and Motivational Drivers. The Case of Dame Anita Roddick’, Journal of Business Ethics 74(4), 437-456.
Pless, N. M. and Th. Maak: 2005, ‹Relational Intelligence for Leading Responsibly in a Connected World’, in K. M. Weaver (ed.), Proceedings of the 65 th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM, Honolulu, HI)
Pogge, Th.: 2002, World Poverty and Human Rights (Polity Press, Cambridge/Malden, MA).
Pogge, Th.: 2005, ‹A Cosmopolitan Perspective on the Global Economic Order’, in G. Brock and H. Brighouse (eds.), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 92-109.
Pogge, Th. (ed.): 2007, Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right? (Oxford University Press, Oxford).
Porter, M. E. and M. R. Kramer: 2006, ‹Strategy & Society. The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility’, Harvard Business Review December, 78–92
Post, J.E., Preston, L.E. and S. Sachs: 2002, Redefining the Corporation: Stakeholder Management And Organizational Wealth (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA).
Prahalad, C.K.: 2005, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits (Wharton School Publishing, Upper Saddle River, NJ).
Price, T.L.: 2005, Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership (Cambridge University Press, New York).
Rawls, J.: 1999, The Law of Peoples (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA/London).
Rost, J.C.: 1991, Leadership for the 21 st Century (Quorum, Westport, CT/London).
Sachs, J.: 2008, Common Wealth. Economics for a Crowded Planet (Allen Lane, London).
Scanlon, T.M.: 1998, What We Owe to Each Other (The Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA/London).
Schneider, M.: 2002, ‹The Stakeholder Model of Organizational Leadership’, Organization Science 13(2), 209-220.
Sen, A.: 1999, Development as Freedom (Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York).
Smith, A.: 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Glasgow Edition (Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, IN)
Vertovec, S. and R. Cohen (eds.): 2002, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York).
Walzer, M.: 1994, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN).
Wheeler, D. and M. Sillanpäa: 1997, The Stakeholder Corporation (Pitman Publishing, London).
Young, I.M.: 2004, ‹Responsibility and Global Justice’, Journal of Political Philosophy 12(4), 365-388.
Yunus, M.: 2007, Creating a World without Poverty (Public Affairs, New York).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Maak, T., Pless, N.M. Business Leaders as Citizens of the World. Advancing Humanism on a Global Scale. J Bus Ethics 88, 537–550 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0122-0
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0122-0