Exploring and Expanding Supererogatory Acts: Beyond Duty for a Sustainable Future

Abstract

Supererogation has gained attention as a means of explaining the voluntary behaviours of individuals and organizations that are done for the benefit of others and which go above what is required of legislation and what may be expected by society. Whilst the emerging literature has made some significant headway in exploring supererogation as an ethical lens for the study of business there remain several important issues that require attention. These comprise, the lack of primary evidence upon which such examinations have been made, attention has been given to only singular pro-social acts of organizations, and the focus has been upon the actions of large organizations. Furthermore, Heyd’s (Supererogation, Cambridge University Press, 1982) original taxonomy of six supererogatory acts, comprising Moral Heroism, Beneficence, Volunteering, Favour, Forgiveness and Forbearance, has been considered to be complete and other forms of supererogatory acts have not yet been explored. In order to address these gaps this study poses the research questions: First, it studies how a single, contemporary SME performs multiple supererogatory acts in its attempts to address its social and environmental goals that go beyond CSR. Second, it seeks to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of Heyd’s (Supererogation, Cambridge University Press, 1982) taxonomy of six forms of supererogation through the capture of primary data. This research makes a three-year case study examination of a single SME that has been formally recognized for its work in addressing social and environmental issues at local, national and global levels. Primary data are acquired of the supererogatory acts that it performs through a three-year participant observation case study, utilizing 61 interviews and 3 focus groups with internal and external stakeholders. In doing so, it addresses the empirical limitations of the extant research, substantiates each of the forms that supererogatory acts may take, and makes a contribution to the theory of supererogation by identifying a further class of act that is ‘Sharing’.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05144-8
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Marketing & Strategy
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School
Additional Information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Favour,Supererogation,Forgiveness,Sharing,Sustainability,Other-regarding,Forbearance
Publication ISSN: 1573-0697
Last Modified: 16 Dec 2024 08:40
Date Deposited: 19 Jul 2022 08:30
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://link.sp ... 551-022-05144-8 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2022-06-24
Published Online Date: 2022-06-24
Accepted Date: 2022-05-06
Submitted Date: 2021-02-03
Authors: White, Gareth R T
Samuel, Anthony
Thomas, Robert J

Download

[img]

Version: Published Version

License: Creative Commons Attribution

| Preview

Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record