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37615 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1480 of 1881

  • 12 - Ethics in organisations

  • from Part 4 - Personal Ethical Decision-Making
  • Gael McDonald
  • Book:
    Business Ethics
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    29 October 2014, pp 377-408

  • Summary

    ‘We judge companies and managers by their actions, not their pious statements of intent.’

    Sir Adrian Cadbury, 1929–, author of the Cadbury Report (1992)

    Chapter aim

    To investigate organisational strategies that can be used to enhance an ethical culture.

    Chapter objectives

  • Contrast the differing perspectives of ‘bad apples’ versus ‘bad barrels’ that result in unethical behaviour.

  • Identify the features of an ethical organisational culture.

  • Determine the motivations and benefits for developing an ethical climate.

  • Prioritise the four tiers for developing a strong ethical culture.

  • Formulate the common elements of an integrated ethics program.

  • Critique the common problems as well as the characteristics of a good code of ethics.

  • Generate a profile of the different types of ethical climates which could exist in an organisation.

    • Introduction

    A popular current saying in business circles is that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. Given the vast amount of attention that has been given to the importance of strategy and strategic planning, rather than culture, this quip attempts to redress the imbalance between strategy and culture. What is being presented is that, unless an organisation’s culture is appropriately aligned, it will ultimately frustrate strategic initiatives. For example, an organisation may have an innovative strategy, but unless it has a culture that promotes creativity and risk-taking, the culture is not aligned to the strategy – the culture could eat the strategy. Similarly, an organisation may have a number of strategic initiatives to promote a moral climate in the organisation, but, if the ethical culture is one of bending the rules, and tolerance for wrongdoing, then the strategies will be useless. It is interesting to think that the basic philosophy, spirit and drive of an organisation may have far more to do with its relative achievements than its technological or economic resources, organisational structure, innovation and timing.

  • Preface

  • Gael McDonald
  • Book:
    Business Ethics
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    29 October 2014, pp xi-xiv

  • Summary

    After the popularity of the movie The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, a lot of people, shall we say in the ‘older age bracket’, started making up bucket lists. Activities, usually involving travel to exotic locations, featured prominently on these lists. I also made up a bucket list but, intriguingly, on mine was that I’d always wanted to write a textbook on business ethics, which has been my preferred research area for more than 25 years. So, when Cambridge University Press approached me, I was rather reluctant to turn the task down as I knew that if I didn’t do it then it would probably haunt me in the future.

    When initially conceptualising the project, I was cognisant of and guided by various models of moral behaviour, with the intention of delivering on four key dimensions that I wanted the text to develop:

  • Moral sensitivity – the ability to recognise that a moral dilemma exists, to interpret the circumstance and assign recognition of what ethical issues are contained in the situation.

  • Moral motivation – the ability to prioritise moral values in relation to other personal values.

  • Moral judgement – the ability to make a morally justifiable decision and judge whether an action is morally right or wrong.

  • Moral action – the ability to provide, in the face of situational pressure, an ethical outcome.

    • More specifically, I wanted to:

  • examine the current factors which are driving an increased awareness of business ethics in today’s business environment

  • provide some clarity to the lexicon of business ethics and related terminology

  • engage with current issues in the business environment and society at large, as presented in the media

  • investigate ethics in a variety of functional areas of business including information technology, human resource management, marketing, accounting, entrepreneurship and international business

  • present ethical principles which are of relevance in these key functional areas

  • review the theoretical foundations of ethics

  • provide guidelines to assist with ethical decision-making

  • discuss the strategies that can be used to strengthen the ethical climates of organisations.

  • 6 - Ethical issues in accounting and finance

  • from Part 2 - Business Ethical Issues
  • Gael McDonald
  • Book:
    Business Ethics
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    29 October 2014, pp 178-205

  • Summary

    ‘Earnings can be pliable as putty when a charlatan heads the company reporting them.’

    Warren Buffett, 1930–, American investment entrepreneur

    Chapter aim

    To identify current ethical issues in accounting and finance.

    Chapter objectives

  • Recognise the dominant ethical principles that relate to accounting and finance.

  • Describe some of best known recent corporate collapses and evaluate them from the perspective of ethical mismanagement.

  • Identify the primary areas where misrepresentation and inaccurate reporting often occur.

  • Compare the various forms that fraud can take.

  • Discuss insider trading from the perspective of fairness.

  • Understand how conflict of interest and objectivity relate to each other.

  • Clarify the distinction between tax minimisation, tax avoidance and tax evasion.

  • Describe the key features of a Ponzi scheme.

  • Identify what investments are commonly avoided in socially responsible investments.

    • Introduction

    The information accountants provide is vital to aiding managers, investors and others in making rational economic decisions. As such, ethical improprieties by accountants can be detrimental to society, resulting in distrust by the public and, on a broader scale, disruption of efficient capital markets (Williams & Elson 2010). When reporting financial data, accountants act as intermediaries in the capital markets and are expected to exercise their primary obligation to the public interest. But on occasions it is not public interest, but self-interest that prevails.

    When we think of accountants we think of those belonging to professional associations and bound by professional standards and codes of ethics. However, if we were to take a broader view, ethics in accounting and finance also relates to those who do not belong to the accountancy profession but are individual managers and employees both directly, and indirectly, involved in this functional area, as well as, individuals that are in associated regulatory or stakeholder organisations such as: banks, auditors, lending agencies or trading houses.

  • 11 - 1947 and After

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 436-466

  • Summary

    India's ‘tryst with destiny’ began at the stroke of midnight of 14 August. While the world slept, India awoke to ‘life and freedom’; the ‘soul of a nation, long suppressed’ found utterance. A ‘period of ill fortune’ ended and India discovered herself again (Nehru 1950: 3). Nehru's speech, delivered at the Constituent Assembly in New Delhi on the midnight of 14 August 1947, articulated the first Prime Minister's enthusiasm and exuberance at the birth of free India.

    Nehru possibly could not have used a better phrase for his speech. Tryst it was indeed, with parts of the country barely recovering from the effects of a devastating famine and some others reeling from the magnitude of the violence occasioned by the partition. Nehru, too conscious of the calamity to ignore it, referred to ‘all the pains of labour’ Indians had to endure to give birth to ‘free, sovereign India’ and stated that ‘some of the pains continue even now’. Nevertheless, he hastened to add, ‘the past is over and it is the future that beckons us now’ (Nehru 1947).

    What was this future that beckoned, and what were the pangs of the past that still continued? To understand this, we need to track the ideologies, policies, elements and processes that have crucially shaped India's democratic career for over 65 years of its existence.

    The political partition of the country was a central fact of this birth—it critically marked the ‘present’ of the two nations and shaped the future in crucial ways.

  • 8 - Difficulties and Initiatives

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 304-345

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the critical years between 1922 and 1935—the time between the suspension of the Non-Cooperation movement and the passing of the Government of India Act by the colonial state as a step towards self-rule. It is a period in which criss-crossing and contradictory processes and energies, often stimulated by the institutional reforms of the colonial state and moulded by the interface of ‘imperialism’ and ‘nationalism’, gave meaning to nation, community and identity and shaped the nationalist struggle in vital ways. It takes a quick look at the activities of peasant organizations prior to, during, and after non-cooperation, examines business attitudes toward nationalism, imperialism, and labour and tracks the evolution of the labour force in the context of both Communist and Congress activities and the effect of world economic processes. Finally, it discusses the Government of India Act of 1935 and its ramifications for colonial and independent India.

    The efficacy of the Non-Cooperation movement in involving the ‘masses’ lay in its ability to draw in a diverse range of local struggles. The active participation of the peasants, in particular, was crucial for the movement. Chapter 7 discussed the critical role played by peasants in the United Provinces (UP), Bihar and several other regions. The annexation of Awadh in 1856 and consequent increase in the power of taluqdars in the region had brought the peasants under extreme strain and made them restive; members of UP's Home Rule League had taken the initiative in organizing the peasants.

  • 7 - The Mahatma Phenomenon

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 260-303

  • Summary

    ‘In my opinion it [the Hind Swaraj] is a book that can be put into the hands of a child. It teaches the gospel of love in place of that of hate. It replaces violence with self-sacrifice. It pits soul force against brute force.’

    These ‘words of explanation’ written by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) in his journal New India in 1921, about Hind Swaraj (1908), a work of his that had drawn considerable attention by the time, bears testimony to the ironies of history. A man who ‘taught the gospel of love in place of that of hate’ and urged his countrymen to replace ‘violence’ with ‘self-sacrifice’ was forced to die a violent death, and his ‘greatest aim and achievement’—India's independence from colonial rule—‘was marred by the bloody episode of the Partition’ (Arnold 2001: 1).

    Is Gandhi emblematic of the contradictions of history? How is it that Gandhi, who almost never held any political office, commanded no army, and was not even a compelling orator, made a great mark on his time, and is perhaps the only figure of the twentieth century who has ‘stood the test of time’? (Markovits 2003: 1) This chapter explores Gandhi's ideology and strategies of struggle together with the diverse understandings of his message in order to understand his great influence and his continued significance.

  • 10 - The Tumultuous Forties

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 386-435

  • Summary

    The theme of battles, wars and struggles dominates this chapter: the Second World War and India's reaction to being involved in it; the all out ‘do or die’ Quit India movement against the British, the effort of Netaji Subhas and his Indian National Army to liberate India by means of an armed struggle, the final battle to win freedom without territorial division. Alongside, there is an examination of British overtures at conciliation and the hurried decision to transfer power that occasioned frenetic negotiation, contestation and turbulence and eventually culminated in the enormous tragedy of the partition.

    In September 1939, India was declared a ‘belligerent’ against Germany in the Second World War along with Britain (Farley 1942: 99). India's automatic and arbitrary involvement, without consultation with the provincial ministries or nationalist leaders, was bitterly resented by the Congress and Indian nationalists, even though the Congress had been much more consistent in its hostility towards fascist aggression than Britain. It is worth remembering in this connection that Jawaharlal Nehru had attended the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities at Brussels in 1927, where revolutionaries and political exiles from Asian, African and Latin American countries had come together to develop a strategy for united struggle against imperialism. The founding of the League against Imperialism had been a result of this Congress and Nehru had been elected its member (Chandra et al. [1972] 1975: 203-04).

  • 9 - Many Pathways of a Nation

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 346-385

  • Summary

    The story of nationalism and nationalist struggle that we have tracked so far is riddled with contention and negotiation. This is because, on the one hand, there were distinct ways of imagining the nation, and on the other, there were diverse understandings of Indian society that generated an array of visions with regard to individuals, groups and communities who peopled the society and were to inhabit the independent nation.

    The Indian National Congress, established consciously as a ‘national’ organization, constantly accommodated contending groups and ideas in order to provide shelter to all factions and project itself as an all-encompassing consolidated entity representing Indian interests. Over time, fissures within the Congress became pronounced, and its claim as the political representative of all India came to be challenged and interrogated by a variety of associations and groups. The reforms introduced periodically by the British Raj from the second half of the nineteenth century, exacerbated this tension and competition.

    The reforms, intended to give educated Indians some share in the governance of their own country, assured the Indians that they would eventually be given the responsibility of a representative self-government. The notion of representation, in conjunction with measures that categorized different groups and communities of Indians numerically and socially, came to engage the attention of different social groups, and a lot of energy was invested in trying to secure equal representation for all communities.

  • 4 - Creating Anew

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 134-177

  • Summary

    Maharani Victoria

    Ei bhaja khae roj kinia

    Bhaja kheye bojhena se

    Keba Raja keba praja

    (The great queen Victoria snacks on this savoury every day, It makes her forget who is the king and who the subject)

    Thus ran a song in a popular Bengali film of the late 1970s, a poignant reminder of Queen Victoria's hold over the Indian middle classes, and possibly, the ‘people’ in general. In this chapter, we track the various processes spread across the late-nineteenth and the early-twentieth century that made Queen Victoria the imposing icon she continues to be.

    Queen Victoria became the ruler of India after the Revolt of 1857, although she formally assumed the position in 1877. The recapture of Delhi by British troops on 20 September 1857, and the imprisonment and later deportation of Bahadur Shah signalled a reversal of fortune for the rebels, even though they put up strong resistance till early 1859. Governor-General Lord Canning gathered British forces in Calcutta and sent them first to Delhi and then to Benares, Allahabad, Kanpur and the rest of Awadh. By the beginning of 1859, Gwalior, Doab, Rohilkand, Lucknow and central India had been recaptured, owing to the unlimited men and resources that the British commanded and their ruthlessness in killing the rebels. The sipahis and other rebels, on the other hand, suffered from a chronic shortage of cash; moreover, they did not have the sophisticated weapons of the British army.

  • 6 - Challenge and Rupture

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 220-259

  • Summary

    Bidhir bandhan katbe tumi eman shaktiman tumiki emni shaktiman?

    Amader bhanga gada tomar hate eman abhiman tomader emni abhiman?

    (You will cut the bond decreed by Providence you are that powerful, are you? Your arrogance is such that you think you can destroy and build us at your will, do you?)

    A humanist poet-philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore, put an angry rhetorical question to the government of Lord Curzon, which had decided to partition the province of Bengal in 1905. The sensitive song articulated anger as well as determination—the colonized were ready to challenge and unsettle the ‘settled’ decisions made by the overbearing colonial government drunk on its own sense of power. This chapter explores the evolution of the nationalist struggle in the early decades of the twentieth century, keeping in view its entangled interaction with colonial policies, as well as its configuration on discursive and material planes. It also pays attention to the criss-crossing and contrasting identities, sentiments and passion that the struggle generated, leading to unwarranted and unfortunate consequences. Ironically, by the middle of the century, the colonized themselves authorized the colonial state to construct and divide India, and turned the poet's insightful allegory into a tragic reality.

  • Prologue

  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp xiv-xxxii

  • Summary

    The photograph that serves as the cover to this book depicts Gandhi as walking towards a distant horizon, leaning on the shoulders of a young man and a young woman. Under an overcast sky, does Gandhi appear tired? Or, is there determination in his posture and gait? Is Gandhi exhausted on account of shouldering the burden of freedom, worn down by the enormous cost of Indian independence? Or, is he confidently walking towards a new beginning, the birth of an independent nation?

    There is purpose in beginning A History of Modern India with the uncertainty that marks the photo on the cover of the work. For, this book is aimed as an open-ended account that both unravels the making of modern India yet questions the intimate linkages between the writing of history and the narration of the nation. Here, I wish to engage students and scholars of history (as well as general readers) in a dialogue and debate concerning the nature of pasts and formations of the present. This is to say that, instead of a singular, seamless story, the chapters ahead offer a tapestry of diverse pasts and different perceptions that shaped modern India.

    The open-ended account in itself has a past, formed and transformed over the last five years over which the book has taken shape. On the one hand, there is much owed here to hermeneutic traditions of history writing that emphasize interpretative understandings of the past and the present.

  • 1 - The Colourful World of the Eighteenth Century

  • from A HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
  • Ishita Banerjee-Dube
  • Book:
    A History of Modern India
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 2-41

  • Summary

    Jab chod chale Lucknow nagari (As/when I leave the city of Lucknow)…, lamented the poet Nawab Wajid Ali Shah on the eve of his departure from Lucknow when the East India Company formally annexed Awadh in 1856. What was this nagari of Lucknow and how had it become so dear to the nawab? To understand this lament, we need to enter the Lucknow of late-eighteenth century, the buzzingly dynamic capital set-up by Asaf-ud-Daula in 1775. Asaf-ud-Daula succeeded his father, the courageous warrior-king Shuja-ud-Daula, who had joined forces with the Nawab of Bengal, Mir Qasim and the Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II, to fight the East India Company in the Battle of Buxar in 1764, and had zealously guarded Awadh's autonomy till his death.

    Asaf-ud-Daula, the young nawab, ‘fat and dissolute’ and averse to politics, left the tiresome affairs of the state to his chief steward Murtaza Khan, packed up the court at Faizabad and moved to the small provincial town of Lucknow. This enabled him to evade the influence of his powerful mother and his father's retainers. The move turned Awadh's administration on its head and shattered the autonomy nurtured by Shuja. Yet, the lack of political prestige was compensated by the cultural prominence that Lucknow came to acquire. The simultaneously ‘debauched, corrupt and extravagant’ and ‘refined, dynamic and generous’ nawab founded a city that echoed his flamboyance; Lucknow was ‘awash with extravagance and excess’ and attracted pioneers, drifters and people on the make.

Page 1480 of 1881