Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not a new area for academics or practitioners, but one that has gained momentum in the past three decades. Despite a proliferation of academic research focusing on CSR, much of the literature is either normative in nature, focusing on what organisations 'should do' in terms of CSR, or is centred on identifying the relationship, if any, between CSR and an organisation's financial performance. This has led to a paucity of research exploring the 'how' and 'why' of CSR. Ultimately, whilst the level of academic and practitioner activity in the area is increasing, our knowledge and understanding of CSR in practice is in its embryonic stages. This thesis explores CSR in practice, in-depth. It presents three case studies, based on evidence gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus groups from three UK-based organisations. Each organisation has been recognised as an exemplar of CSR in practice. This research programme presents a number of findings which make a contribution to our knowledge and understanding of CSR. It found that whilst at times being portrayed in the literature as relatively homogeneous, CSR in practice actually consists of a series of disparate, highly heterogeneous activities, which range from being-'business as usual' to peripheral. The research identifies and explores the antecedents to this heterogeneity, including the impact of an organisation's sector, CEO and culture. Furthermore, organisational motives for engaging in CSR play a much greater role in determining its manifestation in practice than previously thought. Contrary to existing studies, this research found the implementation of CSR to be non-linear, and highlights the importance of engaging in both 'implicit' and 'explicit' CSR. CSR in practice is much more convoluted, complex and counter-intuitive than existing research suggests, with academia and practice having developed thinking and arguments on CSR on entirely separate trajectories.

Organizational trust and trust repair are topics that have primarily been considered from a cognitive perspective. Although a number of scholars have called for further investigation into the role of emotions and individual differences in these processes, little empirical research has been conducted. A reason for this may concern how trust is usually measured in the organizational literature, through measures relating to the trustworthiness characteristics of others. This thesis argues against such a “perceived trustworthiness paradigm” (Möllering, 2013a) and empirically tests the approach conceptualised by Dietz and Den Hartog (2006) which asserts that that trust is a process consisting of attitudinal and behavioural processes comprising of belief, decision, and action. It primarily investigates the influence of emotion and emotion-related individual differences in repairing trust, and whether they are integral to the proposed process model. Three studies are conducted to investigate these questions. Studies 1 (N = 82) and 2 (N = 253) are experiments carried out to determine to what extent change in affect influenced participants’ change in perceptions of a coach company from post-violation (a coach crash) to post-trust repair effort (CEO’s response), and their willingness to trust in it. Study 3 (N = 135) is a cross-sectional survey of Volkswagen vehicle owners in the aftermath of the 2015 Emissions Scandal undertaken to measure the trust process in its entirety with people actively involved in a trust violation. Results indicate that negative emotions are influential predictors of trust repair effects and relate strongly to distrusting acts. Individual difference effects were generally not found, but the proposed process model of trust was supported, with willingness to trust mediating the relationship between perceptions of trustworthiness and distrusting acts. Emotions appeared to become more influential as the trust process developed, and findings imply that purely cognitive models are not sufficient to fully understand the nature of trust and its repair.

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Purpose: This research examines the proposition that ethics in business functions as part of legitimising narratives, rather than as a normative framework to guide or assess behaviour. Methodology: The applied ethics context of the acquisition of UK military capabilities is employed as a case study to test the proposition. Adopting a critical realist paradigm, Bourdieu’s theory of practice is applied in two stages. Quantitative (survey) and qualitative (narrative interview) data are collected, from which a Weberian ideal type is developed via narrative analysis. Findings: The results reveal that the public/private sector interface should be understood as a Bourdieusian practice, in which people use narratives involving normative ethical claims as a means of delegitimising options that threaten their field positions and capital accumulations. It is argued that akrasia – acting against one’s best interests – can be explained in these terms, and that even if a normative ethics of Defence acquisition is one day possible, any theory of ethics should – for completion – attempt to take account of how ethics serves to support or delegitimise specific narratives in the business of acquisition. Research limitations/implications: The research builds on the literature on akrasia, suggesting that the options available to people in business are behaviourally as well as cognitively limited. Moreover, potential codes of ethics are overruled by symbolic power within a practice and hence have no effect. The research is not longitudinal and is limited to a case study that necessarily involved unrepresentative populations, although the methodology facilitates generalisation. Further work on public/private sector interfaces is needed to explore how other populations narrate challenges to convention. Originality/value: The research represents a novel application of Bourdieu’s theory of practice to the context of public/private sector integration and uniquely to Defence acquisition, disputing the viability and utility of codes of ethics as part of professionalising the acquisition function. It also offers a sociological explanation of akrasia.

As medical technology has advanced, so too have our attitudes towards the level of control we can expect to hold over our procreative capacities. This creates a multi-dimensional problem for the law in terms of access to services which prevent conception, access to services which terminate a pregnancy and recompensing those whose choices to avoid procreating are frustrated. These developments go to the heart of our perception of autonomy. In order to evaluate these three issues in relation to reproductive autonomy, I set out to investigate how the Gewirthian theory of ethical rationalism can be used to understanding the intersection between law, rights, and autonomy. As such, I assert that it is because of agents’ ability to engage in practical reason that the concept of legal enterprise should be grounded in rationality. Therefore, any attempt to understand notions of autonomy must be based on the categorical imperative derived from the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC). As a result, I claim that (a) a theory of legal rights must be framed around the indirect application of the PGC and (b) a model of autonomy must account for the limitations drawn by the rational exercise of reason. This requires support for institutional policies which genuinely uphold the rights of agents. In so doing, a greater level of respect for and protection of reproductive autonomy is possible. This exhibits the full conceptual metamorphosis of the PGC from a rational moral principle, through an ethical collective principle, a constitutional principle of legal reason, a basis for rights discourse, and to a model of autonomy. Consequently, the law must be reformed to reflect the rights of agents in these situations and develop an approach which demonstrates a meaningful respect of autonomy. I suggest that this requires rights of access to services, rights to reparation and duties on the State to empower productive agency.

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We can improve the ethical decisions made by engineers by altering what information they perceive as relevant when making their decisions. If we want engineers to make better ethical decisions it is essential that they can “see” ethically pertinent information. We can think of how engineers view the world as shaped in two ways; the narratives that they use to define the world and the metaphor of photographic vision. Narratives shape engineers’ thinking and decision making by suggesting that certain roles and beliefs about the world are true. This can lead to filtering - as a result of the narrative the engineer believes that certain information can be safely ignored. Photographic vision (metaphorically viewing the world through a camera) demonstrates that with the limited human ability to perceive information we lose potentially important information as a result zooming past it, zooming too far out to see the detail and by filtering out particular types of information, or by focussing on the wrong parts. Engineers’ perception of what information is pertinent is influenced by their view on what an engineer is, or should be, along with their experience as an engineer and their engineering education. We can alter this perception by changing the environment they experience (professional and educational), by providing them with new information, highlighting information they already have, and by encouraging personal reflection. Encouraging engineers to develop narratives of engineering as a profession, with an awareness of their role as risk imposers and as constituents of professional bodies can alter how they approach their decision making. Developing new ways to describe what an engineer does will provide educators with a different understanding of their role which can influence how future engineers are taught.

The ethics literature to date has suffered from an inadequate empirical base on which to support discussion about practice, policy and education. Research in the area of ethical decision-making has been inconclusive because of unclear conceptualisations of moral problems, and different methods to investigate the extent to which nurses are confronted with them. In particular, the contextual influences on the formation of moral conflicts and nurses' responses to them have not been explored. In cancer care, there is anecdotal evidence that such influences have a powerful effect on the interaction between individual nurses and perceived moral problems. The study aims to redress previous inadequacies by exploring individual nurses' engagement with perceived moral problems as they occur on an acute cancer unit. The surrounding influences and effects on patient care are studied as part of a fieldwork analysis involving 18 months of participant observation. The researcher worked alongside individual nurses in order to deepen understanding of their perception of moral conflicts. Findings involve the central concern that ethical decisions are not made, and that this can, in part, be attributed to nurses' evident pattern of emotional distancing. The function of emotion in enabling moral engagement is a central argument of this thesis. The lack of a credible ethical language in practice and the effects of hierarchical decision-making are also explored. Against a backdrop of the frequently mismanaged border between acute and palliative care, these issues appear to combine to leave patients and their relatives unsupported as death approaches. By studying ethical decision-making in the context of its application, this study can reliably suggest ways forward in practice. The implications are far-reaching and offer recommendations which improve on those contained in recent policy literature. They will be of direct relevance to those involved in pre- and post registration, and to those responsible for acute cancer services in the UK.

The thesis makes a distinctive contribution to the field of professional ethics; offering a more nuanced understanding of the role of a profession’s ethos in relation to its ethics. In so doing, it also offers a valuable insight into GP thinking at what proved to be a unique moment in the history of that branch of the medical profession. Using historical and empirical data, the thesis first traces the development of the medical profession’s ethos - Its belief in itself as a noble, superior profession, of special dignity and worth. It then shows the influence of that ethos in areas of professional decision-making that have had a particular impact on the provision of health care within the LJK over the past 50 years. Taking the profession’s ethos as a benchmark, the study explores the nature of the profession’s response to the creation, control and, in recent years, major reform of the NHS which reform introduced a new emphasis on management. The latter provides a case study that relates the theoretical material to an historical situation This includes a number of interviews with GPs that point to the beliefs and values influencing their decisions in relation to the reforms, as they affected general practice. The study concludes that, although a profession dependant on attracting clients may find it necessary to subscribe to a set of ethical principles that draws on outside beliefs and values, it is the ethics derived from its own internal ethos that will take precedence in guiding everyday thinking and practice

This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the feasibility of voluntary moral bioenhancement through an ethico-legal exploration of three motivators: money (and financial incentives in general), health, and duty. These motivators are explored in turn over the course of three papers and it is concluded that while none offer a motivator that could encourage broad participation in voluntary programmes of moral bioenhancement, they do provide insight into things that will be important to note in advance of the advent of such an intervention and (especially) of attempts to promote it. In addition, this thesis identifies and explores areas of discussion not previously addressed in the literature, including issues such as: taboo trade-offs in the use of financial incentives to promote participation in programmes of moral bioenhancement, the use of medical definitions in order to classify moral bioenhancement interventions as medically indicated, and the question as to whether there could be a duty to undergo moral bioenhancement interventions. Moral bioenhancement, though currently a hypothetical notion, is considered by many to be a desirable endeavour due to its potential to bring about good consequences and to avoid instances of significant and even ultimate harm. However, unlike other enhancements, moral bioenhancement is something that does not seem to directly benefit the enhanced individual and so there are concerns that people would be disinclined to undergo the intervention. Some writers have proposed that this therefore demonstrates a need for compulsory approaches to the endeavour, but in the introductory chapters of this thesis I demonstrate that such an approach would be ethically and legally problematic and, therefore, a voluntary approach would be required. If moral bioenhancement is considered as something that is good to have (and it seems that such a case can be made, certainly on a societal level), then a method of encouraging participation in programmes of the endeavour will be required. This thesis aims to identify that method by exploring the three possible motivators already mentioned and, in doing so, to analyse the feasibility of voluntary moral bioenhancement in a broader sense.