Mark Brown

Alm, Kristian & Brown, Richard Mark (2020)

John Rawls' concept of the reasonable: A study of stakeholder action and reaction between British Petroleum and the victims of the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico

Journal of Business Ethics, Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04474-9 - Full text in research archive

In his political philosophy, John Rawls has a normative notion of reasonable behaviour expected of citizens in a pluralist society. We interpret the various strands of this idea and introduce them to the discourse on stakeholder dialogue in order to address two shortcomings in the latter. The first shortcoming is an unnoticed, artificial separation of words from actions which neglects the communicative power of action. Second, in its proposed new role of the firm, the discourse of political CSR appeared to offer a promising synthesis of deliberation and action. However, the discourse has been criticized for its shortcoming in failing to provide a regulatory environment for corporation—stakeholder dialogue. Through our interpretation of Rawls’ notion of reasonableness in citizens, the article makes two important theoretical contributions to the debate on stakeholder dialogue. First, we transfer Rawls’ injunction in insisting that dialogues between business corporations and their weaker stakeholders must be understood as consisting of both verbal exchanges and actions. Second, we propose that the coercive power of government ought to provide a necessary context for stakeholder dialogue, and that by doing so, it can provide a way forward for the discourse of political CSR. We illustrate the usefulness of this contribution from Rawls in an analysis of BP’s behaviour towards thousands of victims following the Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010.

Alm, Kristian; Brown, Richard Mark & Røyseng, Sigrid (2016)

Kommunikasjon og ytringsfrihet i organisasjoner

Cappelen Damm Akademisk

Brown, Richard Mark & Alm, Kristian (2016)

Tillit til sannheten. En utfordring for BBC.

Kommunikasjon og ytringsfrihet i organisasjoner, , s. 275-304.

Brown, Richard Mark (2015)

Managing nature-business as usual: Resource extraction companies and their representations of natural landscapes

Sustainability, 7(12) , s. 15900-15922. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/su71215791

In moving society towards more sustainable forms of consumption and production, social learning must play an important role. Making the assumption that it occurs as a consequence of changes in understanding, this article presents a methodology for mapping meanings in sustainability communication texts. The methodology uses techniques from corpus linguistics and framing theory. Two large databases of text were constructed by copying material down from the websites of two different groups of social actors: (i) environmental NGOs and (ii) British green business, and saving it as .txt files. The findings on individual words show that the NGOs and business use them very differently. Focusing on words expressing concern for the natural environment, it is proposed that the two actors also conceptualize their concern differently. Green business‘s cognitive system of concern has two well-developed frames; good intentions and risk management. However, three frames—concern for the natural environment, perception of the damage, and responsibility, are light on detail. In contrast, within the NGOs‘ system of concern, the frames of concern for the natural environment, perception of the damage and responsibility, contain words making detailed representations.

Brown, Richard Mark (2013)

A Methodology for Mapping Meanings in Text-Based Sustainability Communication

Sustainability, 5(6) , s. 2457-2479. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/su5062457

In moving society towards more sustainable forms of consumption and production, social learning must play an important role. Making the assumption that it occurs as a consequence of changes in understanding, this article presents a methodology for mapping meanings in sustainability communication texts. The methodology uses techniques from corpus linguistics and framing theory. Two large databases of text were constructed by copying material down from the websites of two different groups of social actors: (i) environmental NGOs and (ii) British green business, and saving it as .txt files. The findings on individual words show that the NGOs and business use them very differently. Focusing on words expressing concern for the natural environment, it is proposed that the two actors also conceptualize their concern differently. Green business’s cognitive system of concern has two well-developed frames; good intentions and risk management. However, three frames—concern for the natural environment, perception of the damage, and responsibility, are light on detail. In contrast, within the NGOs’ system of concern, the frames of concern for the natural environment, perception of the damage and responsibility, contain words making detailed representations

Brown, Richard Mark (2018)

Støtte til studenter med sosialangst - erfaringer fra et BI prosjekt

[Lecture]. Event

Brown, Richard Mark & Alm, Kristian (2017)

John Rawls' concept of the reasonable - a key to Stakeholder Dialogue. British Petroleum's compensation for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

[Conference Lecture]. Event

Brown, Richard Mark & Kamsvåg, Ratna Elisabet (2016)

Hvordan blir ytringsfrihet hemmet av organisasjoner?

[Lecture]. Event

Brown, Richard Mark & Alm, Kristian (2016)

Stakeholder Dialogue and Rawls' Reasonable Disagreement

[Conference Lecture]. Event

Brown, Richard Mark (2016)

Temavideoer for å oppnå dypdelæring i interkulturell og etisk bevissthet

[Lecture]. Event