Well-being as a staged social responsibility process: exploratory testing of a new theory

Lance Richard Newey, Rui Torres de Oliveira and Archana Mishra

Social Responsibility Journal, 2022, vol. 19, issue 2, 286-304

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to extend the conceptualization of well-being as a staged social responsibility process by undertaking further conceptual development of these ideas as well as exploratory, small-scale international testing. Design/methodology/approach - The sample comprised 117 leaders from Alaska, India and Norway. Cluster analysis was used to determine systematic differences in the way leaders think about societal well-being (well-being action logics), and regression analysis was used to test positive and significant relationships between well-being action logics and stages of consciousness. Findings - Cluster analysis confirmed the three theoretically derived well-being action logics of top managers: compensatory, integral and hybrid. The authors found preliminary empirical support for a systematic relationship between well-being action logics and stages of consciousness as per constructive-developmental theory. Practical implications - Better adoption of societal well-being as a normative ethic hinges on building the capacity of top managers to process more complex understandings of the range of components of societal well-being and how these components interact, conflict and synergize. Social implications - Being asked to embrace more complex views about societal well-being can be overwhelming, leading top managers to retreat into defensiveness. The result is resistance to change, preferring instead to stay with familiar yet outmoded conceptions. Societal well-being can thus suffer. Originality/value - This paper opens the black box to find systematic differences in the way managers think about societal well-being. Further, the research has uncovered that these differences follow a staged developmental process of greater complexity.

Keywords: Exploratory; Constructive-developmental theory; Action logics; Societal well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:srjpps:srj-09-2021-0394

DOI: 10.1108/SRJ-09-2021-0394

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