Prelims

Half Title Page

A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics

Endorsements

The post-pandemic world presents leaders with unprecedented levels of dynamism and uncertainty, leaving top management teams no choice but to engage in critical thinking – higher order analyses in which assumptions are questioned and disconfirmation is no less important than confirmation. With critical thinking coming to the forefront of leadership development, we as educators need to reflect on our present MBA curriculum in terms of both content and delivery. These three monographs are a must-read for anyone interested in developing graduate-level critical thinking skills and teaching future corporate leaders how to take a more nuanced perspective on the paradigm-shifting challenges they are likely to face when transitioning into their managerial career.

— Peter Bamberger, Prof Simon I. Domberger, Chair in Organization and Management, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, Israel, Vice President, Academy of Management

Organizational leaders continually tell us that what they need most are employees that know how to think and learn. Such skills are necessary for identifying problems, collaborating on solutions, and driving organizational change. Including these monographs on critical thinking in the MBA curriculum will go a long way to providing this essential need for the market.

— Dr Kevin Rockmann, Professor of Management, George Mason University, USA, Editor, Academy of Management Discoveries

As someone who teaches business leadership and human values and courses introducing and providing frameworks for analyzing healthcare markets, critical thinking is essential for me and my students. These authors clearly motivate the importance of critical thinking and present techniques to encourage students' development. I could envision these books enhancing my preparation of students, who will become business leaders so they sharpen interpretations and decisions regarding the production and delivery of healthcare services, to create value for those with a financial stake in their organizations' successes and for stakeholders including suppliers, patients, employees, and the community in which healthcare organizations operate.

— Kevin D. Frick, Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, USA

Title Page

A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics: Critical Thinking in Unpredictable Corporate Business Contexts (Volume 3)

By

Fr Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, SJ

XLRI – Xavier School of Management, India

Prof Munish Thakur

XLRI – Xavier School of Management, India

And

Dr Payal Kumar

Indian School of Hospitality, India

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2024

Copyright © 2024 Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83753-347-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-346-6 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-348-0 (Epub)

Dedication

To all teachers who believe in critical thinking as the ultimate differentiator, and to all students who have a penchant for analyzing, assessing, and improving in all that they do.

This volume is lovingly dedicated to the late Father Edward McGrath SJ who gave his best to XLRI for over 45 years, and who inspired all three authors during the time they served at XLRI.

List of Figures and Tables

List of Exhibits

List of Critical Thinking Exercises

About the Authors

Fr Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, SJ is a Jesuit Priest from Karnataka, India, with priestly training in scholastic philosophy (1959–1962) and systematic theology (1963–1967). He has an MA in mathematical economics (University of Detroit, 1971), an MBA (Wharton School of Finance, 1974), and a PhD in business economics (University of Pennsylvania, 1976). He served as a Professor of Marketing and the Director of Public Systems Research at XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur (1977–1983) and as Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing Research, in the University of Detroit, Michigan, for 27 years (1983–2010). He last served as the JRD Tata Chair Professor in Business Ethics, XLRI, Jamshedpur (2013–2021). His current areas of research are corporate ethics and critical thinking. He has authored eight books and published over 75 articles in domestic and international business journals.

Prof Munish Thakur is a Professor of strategy at XLRI – Xavier School of Management. He has nearly two decades of experience. Professor Thakur teaches strategy, entrepreneurship, philosophy of research, and research methods. He is passionate about Nature, student-centered teaching, and holistic education, especially in management. Throughout his teaching career, he has experimented with a variety of pedagogical learning techniques, such as simulation, case studies, discussions, and reflections. At XLRI, he has been the Chairperson of Xavier's Admission Tests (XAT) and Fellow Program in Management. He is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Dr Payal Kumar is the Dean of Research and Management Studies, Indian School of Hospitality, India. She completed her MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, UK, and Fellow Program from XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur. She was formerly a Professor and the Chair HR/OB and Associate Dean – International Affairs at BML Munjal University, Gurugram. Dr Kumar is on the editorial board of several prestigious international journals and is a senior reviewer in A category journals, such as Journal of Organizational Behavior and Personnel Review. She has published extensively, including 14 books, with Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, and Emerald Publishing. Dr Payal Kumar was recently conferred with the Andre Delbecq & Lee Robbins MSR Retreat Scholarship, 2019 (Academy of Management, USA). She is also an Emerald Brand Ambassador and South Asian ambassador for the Academy of Management Discoveries. In an earlier avatar, Payal was Vice President, Editorial and Production, SAGE Publications Ltd.

Foreword

Business schools as the major global institution for educating future leaders in business are under fire for at least two reasons. On the one hand, they are accused of not educating their students in a way that prepares them for core management tasks awaiting them in later organizational life. “What” and “how” skills and competences taught in major areas such as accounting, finance, logistics, and marketing are inadequate to help graduates grapple with the problems they face in practice. On the other hand, an arguably more fundamental accusation is the existence of a massive blind spot: the education of leaders fails in going beyond optimizing organizational performance according to traditional items of the balance sheet and take into account the role of organizations as corporate citizens with a co-responsibility to make the world a better place.

A common thread runs through major organizational scandals of the past decade, e.g., German payment processing company Wirecard revealing in 2020 what they argued was an “accounting error” that grossly inflated the balance sheet by about $2.3 billion, German car maker Volkswagen being accused in 2015 of implementing software that could cheat emission tests (“dieselgate”), and international soccer association FIFA being the target of the United States Department of Justice's accusation of money laundering conspiracy, racketeering, and wire fraud in 2015: not only did their upper echelon have insufficient technical skills and competencies to successfully manage their respective organizations, but also made conscious decisions that led their organizations down the dark route of shady business. In a simplistic version of events, finger-pointing, identifying scapegoats, and highlighting personal deficiencies such as greed or lack of a moral compass to navigate the turbulent and dynamic waters of doing business in today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world serves as explanation. However, a more refined effort would point toward the fundamental problem outlined above: the lack of comprehensive education that many future leaders get in business schools and, more broadly, in universities and other higher education institutions around the globe that goes beyond a traditional “facts and figures approach.”

A major part of a more comprehensive education involves skills and competencies that revolve around reflecting the status quo, questioning assumptions taken for granted, making choices in ethically charged situations, and thinking out of the box. In particular, this comprises critical thinking and aspects of business ethics addressing various facets of doing business. Typical examples at different levels of social complexity include personal and often contested choices in one's career, such as foreign assignments heavily affecting stakeholders in one's life, interpersonal leadership issues such as in-group versus out-group dynamics that emerge when working in face-to-face groups, organizations externalizing costs by (ab)using natural resources and polluting the environment, grand-scale organizational layoffs affecting whole regions (if not countries), equality and poverty within and between countries, and, arguably, the multiple effects of doing business on the globe and in interstellar space.

The contributions in this book tackle these issues head on. They put critical thinking – in a nutshell “careful goal-directed thinking [whereby…] conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one's criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses” (Hitchcock, 2020) – front and center as they explore both the foundation and the application of ways of reflecting on what we find in (and how we construct) reality, what this means, and how we act accordingly. Of course, critical thinking as such is not new. Some trace it back at least to titans of Greek philosophy such as Plato or Socrates, as well as different schools of Greek skepticism. Others point to the work of John Dewey who has established critical thinking as a potential educational goal. What makes this volume particularly interesting is its comprehensive approach, both in the sense of “horizontally” encompassing a broad range of topics and “vertically” containing phenomena at different levels of social complexity, including the spiritual as well as temporal dimensions of organizing in turbulent and unpredictable contexts (Hitchcock, 2020; Vogt, 2022).

Against this backdrop, the volume is timely and laudable. In it, the authors approach critical thinking like sustainable ethics as an ethics of limits, an ethics of conservation. They examine topical subjects such as ethics and critical thinking in relation to poverty, outer space advances, cosmic sustainability, ecofeminism, and animal welfare. Chapters are devoted to critical thinking applied to empower human dignity violated by global poverty, to finding an alternative management system based on human dignity and equality, self-respect and self-esteem, dialog and sharing, love rather than fear, truth rather than compromise, transparency rather than secrecy, and executive duty rather than privilege. At the end of this volume, the authors examine the normative role of critical thinking normatively, positing that it should aid social progress and social well-being for all humanity, especially the poor and the marginalized.

I hope the readers will not only better understand critical thinking in its various facets but also include it organically in their own praxis of personal and professional lives. It is a must-read for faculty around the world. My compliments to the authors Oswald Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur, and Payal Kumar, who are all senior academics and authors in their own right.

–Dr Wolfgang Mayrhofer

Dr Wolfgang Mayrhofer is a Full Professor and Head, Interdisciplinary Institute of Management and Organisational Behavior, WU Vienna. He is a prolific author-editor, including Developing Leadership: Questions Business Schools Don't Ask (SAGE, 2015).

Preface

By now, it should be evident to readers, students, and scholars of critical thinking that by nature, domain, scope, and relevance, critical thinking is vast and ever expanding. There are no fixed themes or disciplines, no bounds or boundaries, and no limits or barriers for its probing research and development. There are no deadlines, closures, or foreclosures to its conceptualizations, theorizations, and to its imaginative exploration and investigation systems and paradigms. There are not even fixed inputs, processes, or outcomes to its growth and development. Any thought, tradition, paradigm, theory, hypothesis, or research question, any development or discipline, course or curriculum, program or project can be open to a systematic and intellectually rigorous investigation, based on various models, methods, and methodologies of questioning, probing, doubting, and restating. We have discussed most of these methods and models with newly designed Critical Thinking Exercises in Volume 1 of this series on critical thinking.

Acknowledgments

This book represents the latest research and thinking in the domain of critical thinking as applied to corporate ethics and morals of business management. It has taken several years from conception to execution. The contents of this multivolume book and the plan for it have been presented and discussed while conducting several graduate courses on corporate ethics and managerial ethics at various colleges of business administration, such as the University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Michigan (1983–2010), T. A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) Manipal, Karnataka (2010–2011), St. Aloysius (Autonomous) College School of Business, Beeri, Karnataka (2010–2013), and XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand (2013–2021).

As the first author, my academic background is philosophy, theology, economics, marketing, e-business, and internet marketing, with an emphasis on ethical and moral market challenges and responses. Several professors molded me during my management studies and over the course of more than 40 years of teaching and research. I am especially indebted to Russell Ackoff, Paul Green, Len Lodish, and Howard Perl Mutter of the Wharton School of Business, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I obtained my MBA. My PhD professors, Michael Bernacchi and Ram Kesavan, were also my colleagues in the marketing department at the College of Business Administration, University of Detroit Mercy, during the 27 years I taught there. I have published over a dozen articles in refereed journals with them, and they have always supported and stimulated my intellectual efforts and research ventures. I regularly use our joint publications in these books, and I am grateful for their friendship and demanding scholarship.

The second author, Prof Munish Thakur's academic background includes management, strategy, human behavior, entrepreneurship, research, data, and philosophy. He has an MBA from the University of Indore and is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He teaches strategy, entrepreneurship, and research methods at XLRI – Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. He is extremely grateful to XLRI for giving him the opportunity to experiment and try new things. His education has been significantly influenced by Nature, mistakes, and failures in life, as well as through exposure to great professors and institutions. He is also grateful to all those who have directly or indirectly influenced his thought process through criticism or support, love or resistance. He would like to thank Father Oswald Mascarenhas for giving him an opportunity to coauthor this volume. Although he says his contribution to the book is limited to gathering reading material and having in-depth discussions with me, his impact on the book is no less significant. He would also like to express his gratitude to his wife, mother, children, and the rest of his family for allowing him to devote time to this endeavor.

The third author, Dr Payal Kumar, is a prolific, prize-winning author who has published 14 books with Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, and Emerald Publishing and several journal papers. Her research interests include diversity and inclusion, leadership and followership, and also mentoring. She would like to thank Nick Wallwork of Emerald Publishers for adeptly navigating these three volumes to the publication stage.

Over the last decade, the first two authors had the privilege of teaching at XLRI, the premier school of management in Jamshedpur, India. They have taught more than a 1,000 postgraduate students, covering all programs of business management. The encouragement and critical feedback from students on chapters, assignments, and cases have helped us rethink and redesign this book to its current level of readability and assurance of learning. We are beholden to them.

We are also grateful to Ms Shruti Vidyasagar, for excellent stylistic editing and proofreading of all the chapters, and Ms Neha Upadhyay, Senior Research Associate at XLRI, who generously served as Google researcher and format editor, liberally devoting a great deal of quality time to check, review, and correct all the references.

We are grateful to the staff at Emerald Publishing for their superb development of the subject indices for the three volumes in this corpus. The third author, Prof Payal Kumar, Emerald's Brand Ambassador, ably negotiated with the Board and Review Editors at Emerald to design and market position all the volumes.