MGF5020 responsible sustainable

Recognition, relationality, & representation-
Participation in responsible & sustainable business
practices
MGF5020 S2 1, 2025
Presentation title 1
Questioning production patterns to
ensure responsible consumption.
2
Learning outcomes (1, 2, 3, &5).
Department unit learning outcome (ULO) for all Units:
Demonstrate knowledge or skills for crafting sustainable futures for
people, organisations, communities, and/or the environment
? Discuss the concept of recognition and the relational approach. -struggles for
recognition
? Explain the perspectives of feminist and Indigenous ethics of care.
? Describe how these ethical perspectives interact with the concepts of relationality,
responsibility, rights, and equity -the ideas that are underpinned by the idea of
recognition .
? Interpret and elaborate on representation , struggle for Recognition and innovative
ideas for participation
Week3: Learning Objectives
Discuss the concept of recognition and the
relational approach -struggles for recognition
by bringing back the idea of global constituency
-why we need to grasp the meaning of global
constituency
-How this perspective interacts with the idea of responsibility
& ethical decision-making

• Recognition
• Relationality
• Responsibility and rights
  Presentation title 3
  Global constituency : The Rana Plaza Accident& Compliance
  based approach
  4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0fr4O1_M1s
Ethical Trading Initiative in case of the global
supply chain of apparel - Example of
relationality and responsibility in relation to
others.
:
Should MNCs be required to observe
fundamental human rights (and be liable
for their violation)?
?Why is this an issue now? (Are
companies really behaving worse?)
?Should we extend human rights
responsibilities to corporate actors?
?(Will discuss more in week 8)
Global constituency : The Rana Plaza Accident& Compliance
based approach
5

The reality of workers of the
Rana plaza Tower
Should MNCs be required to
observe fundamental human
rights (and be liable for their
violation)?
?Why is this an issue now?
(Are companies really
behaving worse?)
?Should we extend human
rights responsibilities to
corporate actors?
?(Will discuss more in week 8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0fr4O1_M1s
Ethical Trading Initiative in case of the global supply chain
of apparel - Example of relationality and responsibility in
relation to others.:
Political Consumerism / the notion of global constituency
? The activities of MNCs have raised moral questions in relation to sweatshops, child labour, human rights and
environmental degradation
? Collected /global responsibility (Sen.,2000/2013).
Marketization and globalism are the contextual conditions of the emergence of this consumer society if this is the
dominant sphere.
? Unit of analysis: Supply chain and recognition of vulnerable stakeholders
Actions are: the functioning of multiple stakeholders by mobilizing multiple channels or the public sphere for
recognition that is underpinned by the idea of equity.
We notice the functioning of the multiple public spheres that exemplify the care for others or women
workers. Herein lies the implications of the term global constituency.
Political consumerism or代写 MGF5020 responsible  sustainable responsible consumption

6
Challenges of Globalisation: Global ethics issues
The emergence of the Accord and Alliance implied the enacting of compliance measures by the
multi-level stakeholders- as the official public sphere that included brands, suppliers and the
NGOs working on workers’ rights.
.
In a similar way, the Accord and Alliance emerged because of the recognition of women workers’ plight
by the global constituency.
Fraser and Spivak discuss relational recognition or situated aspects of recognition.
This recognised nonrecognition is an institutionalized social relation and exemplifies a status injury -
the expendable life of the women workers
.
Presentation title 7
key characteristics of fast fashion and how they contribute to sustainability issues
within the industry
Fast fashion is low-cost, low-quality, on-trend apparel, and it dominates the modern fashion industry.
Retailers such as H&M, Zara, Topshop, Forever 21, and Old Navy are examples.
? Within the fast fashion model of production, the concept of “seasons” is practically obsolete
? The use of low-quality materials and manufacturing processes, leading to rock-bottom prices.
Unlike a traditional retailer, the markups between wholesale and retail prices are minimal—with the companies relying on high
sales volume for-profit and banking on selling almost all their stock.
Fast fashion is also, unfortunately, the driver behind much of the human rights and environmental
challenges present within the fashion industry.
? Labour and Human Rights Abuses in the Fashion Industry
? Environmental Consequences of the Fashion IndustRY - textile manufacturing facility uses 1.6 million litres of water per day
(Kahn & Malik, 2014)
Presentation title 8
Political Consumerism / the notion of global constituency
Four major forms of political consumerism:
? Boycotting through pressure tactics that included boycotts the anti-sweatshop campaign took place
back in 1990s
? Buycotting: Juxtaposing campaigns urging consumers to not buy particular brands or purchase from
certain retailers,
buycotts encourage consumers to “buy better” and support “good” companies and products.
? Lifestyle: s underlying campaigns focused on buying socially and environmentally
? responsible fashion Both the slow fashion movement and fashion-related product service systems
are consumer lifestyle strategies gaining traction in response to fast fashion.
? Discursive strategies: In the fashion industry, discursive strategies (communicative and
noneconomic actions intended to generate consumer understanding about an issue) as a form of
political consumerism can be effective. European campaigns tend to focus more on discursive
strategies.
Presentation title 9
Global constituency from relational recognition and struggles for recognition
Slowly, global consciousness evolved or evolved surrounding the issue increased and a transnational, grassroots
network of activists advocating for improved human rights in garment factories emerged demonstrating political
consumerism activity
By the end of the twentieth century, the antisweatshop movement had successfully contributed towards
initiating change within the fashion industry.
Presentation title 10
As human beings we are inherently relational and responsive beings.
? Ethical Awareness may arise
-Empathy- Relationality and situatedness in recognition
-Reflexivity or reflexive thinking –cause and effects (eg, where our clothes come
from)?Responsibility: Engagement & involvement or avoidance

Feminist and indigenous Perspectives of Ethics
of care: Recognition and relationality
Presentation title 11
Integrating recognition as a matter of ‘the right’ and equity- participating as a peer in social life
and addressing the injustice

Integrity-based approaches are mainly rooted in the situated concerns and demonstrate Praxis: aligning
concerns/ genuine commitments to performative actions and for constituting the common good.
The Ethic of Care: Four Key Elements
An ethic of care implies
a. Attention to particular others in actual contexts
b. Empathetic understanding
c. Relationship Awareness: this is an issue of recognition by going our
own accounts , so accountability
d. Harmony: one must respond in a way that balance is preserved and
nurtured.
A commitment to dialogue as the primary means of moral deliberation
Presentation title 12
Three Conditions:

1. A relationship exists.
2. A need for care exists.
3. We have the ability to provide care
   (Spivak, )
   The Ethics of Care
   ? The ethics of care stresses the moral force of the responsibility to respond to the
   needs of the call – who sends the call
   “To care and to be cared for”.
   ? It values moral emotions such as “sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and
   responsiveness,” and even “anger may be a component of the moral indignation that
   should be felt when people are treated unjustly or inhumanely. (Held, 2006, 10) .
   In the Ethic of Care, one seeks to develop a skill at giving care appropriately all the while
   balancing the amount of care necessary to sustain oneself. Since there is a goal:
   Presentation title 13
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1bxBWfwelk
   https://www.benjerry.com/values
   Feminist Ethics and ethics of care
   14
   One is not born, but rather
   becomes, a woman.” The Second
   Sex –(1949).
   Simone de Beauvoir
   ? One's life has value so long as one attributes
   value to the life of others, by means of love,
   friendship, indignation and compassion.
   ? All oppression creates a state of war.
   ? Sensitivity to the needs of others
   ? the feeling of responsibility for taking
   care
   Joan Acker –1989).
   Doing comparable worth:
   gender, class,
   and pay equity
   Questions of inequality & identity
   Inequality regimes in the
   organisational context –
   Application of feminist ethics
   The ethics of care
   15

In a Different Voice-
? Different voice”—a voice that joined self with relationship and reason with emotion.
? Focuses on actual rather than hypothetical situations
?it is the ethic of a democratic society – recognition and representation
-Invokes “asymmetrical reciprocity”

• shared” expectations
  “ -ethics of representation” can sensitize
  ?An ethics of care is key to human survival and also to the realization of a global society.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W_9MozRoKE
  , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvZGkqZtueM
  Held, 2006
  Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice,
  Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
  Press, 1982
  Presentation title 16
  Fraser and Spivak - Current critical feminist scholars
• address and attend to the voices of others – that is, focusing on recognition
  ? The concept of recognition as the ultimate foundation of ethical and political
  sustainability
  Questioning institutionalized status. Because institutionalized patterns as cultural values already
  constituted some actors as inferior, excluded, wholly other or simply invisible, hence as less
  than full partners in social interaction, that is, misrecognition and status subordination. [ fyi
  Additional readings ]
  Justice Model
  Emphasis on Autonomy
  Rule & principle directed
  Appeal to what is just
  Focus on integrity

Ethic of Care
Emphasis on Relationships
Context dependent
Appeal to “compromise &
accommodation”
Focus on caring
responsiveness
Traditional ethical theories tend to be individualistic, the ethics of care,
Gilligan : says that
The roots cause is
humans we are by nature
empathic and responsive
beings
Jake: “Stealing is wrong”
Amy: “It depends,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfxwf-or3qg
Insights from Feminist ethics

1. Relationality
   ? ethical self-other relations are intersubjective and interdependent
   ? identity is relational, not autonomous
   ? relational intimacy is more important than autonomy
2. Responsibility:
   ? sensitivity to the needs of others as overriding concern
   ? taking rather than having responsibility
3. Affectivity and representation : developing a critical friendship
   ? interest in the perspectives of marginalised groups and individuals
   ? broader awareness of the multitude of human interactions possible (social sensitivity)
   ? broader awareness of the multitude of ethical dimensions of human behaviour (ethical
   sensitivity)
   ? reaction to oppression and systematic subordination
   17
   Feminist ethics and business ethics-
   Do you find anything problematic here ?
   .1.Does it offer a business case for
   creating relational well-being and
   wealth?
   2.Do you think inter-connectedness is a
   'massive illusion?
   Wisdom values through an ethic of care kaitiakitanga
   (stewardship)- indigenous perspectives
   Maori English translation
   aroha Love, care, compassion
   hau Promote, and maintain vitality
   hapai Uplift others
   kotahitanga Create alliance; unity, connectedness
   manaaki Respect, kindness
   matauranga Knowledge, understanding, skill
   m?hio Realize, recognize
   pono Honesty, truthfulness
   tawhito Expert, authority
   tika Just, right, correct, appropriate behaviour
   whakapapa honouring of ancestors, recognition of the human
   connectedness to all of creation
   whanaungatanga Relationship
   ? Spiritual -conscious wellbeing: Rimú , and Miro,
   Miro , a guide saw a spiritual contribution in being able to 'give of yourself
   Rimu explained the contribution Maori could make to the world through the
   energy of togetherness
   ? Cultural well-being: fostering economic activity that does not erode culture in the
   process and basis is ethic of right way.
   ? .Social wellbeing- Social-Mana - the ethic of power for creating the common good
   ? Environmental wellbeing -kaitiaki, a steward and guardian of the earth's resource
   ? Economic- long-term equivalence is by adding value.
   ? Hence meaning well-being that is consciously created.
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7oxLaYsvP0
   Five well-being- Relational Well-Being and Wealth
   Describe how perspective of ethics of care
   interact with the idea of responsibility and rights,
   and justice
   Presentation title 21
   We denote transitions:
   From the narrow focus on individual virtues, values, and behaviour” towards
   stakeholders [the contractual relations with a business, such as their
   employer), and with the rules of governance[ the laws and regulations that
   dictate rights and duties within and for this business]
   Feminist perspectives of ethics of care structure recognition and relationality in
   ethical practice and ask to consider-
4. beyond corporate governance and the "beyond-compliance" norms [beyond so-
   called stockholder and stakeholder perspectives of governance and management]
   & shows that the responsibility links equity [recognition and right] and principles
   of justice beyond compliance obligations.
   Presentation title 22
   Constructing of common values of responsibility based on the four ethical principles of
   protection of the human person: autonomy, dignity,
   integrity, and vulnerability (Rendtorff & Kemp, 2000).
   Recognition and relationality : Fraser and from the feminists' perspectives
   The recognition orientation seeks to develop a new normative paradigm that puts recognition at its centre.
   It -Claims for the recognition of difference imply how paradigms of justice usually aligned with ‘morality’ can
   handle
   Construing the first as a matter of ‘the right’ and the second as a matter of ‘the good’,
   Social movements, particularly for scholars who understand gender as a social relation, look at the recognition
   of gender differences.
   Requires decoupling of cultural politics from social politics, of the politics of difference from the politics of
   equality
   Recognition works for redistribution
   Recognition denotes how the idea of responsibility works based on the relational
   approach.
   Presentation title
   Cont…
   Recognition works for redistribution.
   And from ‘redistribution’ to ‘recognition
   While the former concept is tied to a vision of justice, which aims to achieve social equality through a redistribution of the
   material necessities for existence as free subjects, in the latter concept, the conditions for a just society come to be
   defined as the recognition of the personal dignity of all individuals (Fraser, 1995).
   Then ‘dignity’ or ‘recognition’-
   the current phenomenon of a ‘politics of identity’- is here treated as a normative category, which corresponds to all those
   political demands raised today under the banner of a ‘politics of identity’.
   OUR FOCUS:
   Struggles for recognition
   Recognition denotes how the idea of responsibility works based on the relational approach
   Presentation title 24
   Interpret, translate and elaborate on
   representation, struggle for
   Recognition and innovative ideas
   for participation
   Presentation title 25
   Child labor still exists in soccer ball
   production in Pakistan in 2007
   For example, two young girls, approximately 16 and 14 years
   of age, had been stitching for the last 5 years. These girls
   hailed from a relatively affluent background. Their father had
   been a worker in Saudi Arabia and had managed to
   accumulate some savings. Then illness struck their mother.
   The medical bills accumulated and their savings dwindled.
   Eventually, to just make ends meet and put food on the table,
   both girls entered the labor market .
   “ [I] stitch because I have to take care of the family. Father
   died [due to sudden illness]. [I am] Supporting my siblings.
   We can either earn at home or we can go ahead to school.
   But how can we go ahead? How can we get out of our
   situation? How can we go ahead when we have to earn”.
   . –( Khan, 2007) [ week 5]
   23
   Example: corporate ethics - CSR approach and complaince, rights & socio
   economic reality and non-recognition and non-representation
   Contested compliance regimesThe Rana Plaza Disaster:
   ? Competing Governance Mechanisms in MSIs:
   ? The Accord is seen as having stronger worker representation. It aims to ensure the safety and rights of workers by requiring a
   legally binding commitment from brands to address worker safety concerns. The Alliance, on the other hand, is a more CSR-
   based approach, primarily favored by US corporations, and emphasizes corporate social responsibility over direct worker
   involvement.
   ? The Accord was designed to emphasise worker representation, specifically improving safety conditions through engagement
   with labour unions and workers’ organizations.
   ? The Alliance, by contrast, leans more on corporate compliance, with limited involvement/representation of trade union
   federations in the advisory board.
   Key Issues:
   ? Lack of Worker Representation: It has been argued that the Accord did not reflect the principles of a tripartite system, which
   implies active participation by workers in decision-making and safety management processes & fails to effectively represent
   women workers, who are often marginalized in these compliance frameworks.
   27
   ? Misrecognition of Women Workers:
   ? There was no representation of women workers/trade union leaders in the Accord
   and the Alliance. This exclusion is a critical issue, as it leaves the specific needs of
   female workers unaddressed in efforts to improve safety and working conditions.
   The Accord's Aims and Limitations:
   ? The Accord aims to promote sustainable development of “all “across the garment sector,
   but it does not clearly address the sustainable development needs of women workers,
   who form a significant portion of the workforce in this industry [Non-recognition]
   ?There is a need for a more inclusive approach that incorporates the voices and needs, but it
   does not clearly address the sustainable development needs of women workers, who form a
   significant portion of the workforce in this industry.
   MSI of compliance needs a more inclusive approach that recognizes the voices and needs of
   women workers to ensure truly sustainable and effective improvements.
   Presentation title 28
   Alamgir & Banerjee (2019). Contested compliance regimes in global production networks: Insights from the Bangladesh garment industry. Human Relations, 72.2:272-297
   Compliance Codes and Women Workers’ (Mis)representation and (Non) recognition in the Apparel Industry of Bangladesh Fahreen Alamgir1 · Ozan N. Alakavuklar2 Received: 9 October 2017 / Accepted: 29
   November 2018 / Published online: 4 December 2018
   Sustainability and Business Ethics and Praxis [
   week 1, 2 & 3 ]
   ? The approach to sustainability and business ethics is based on a comprehensive theory
   of responsibility, ethics, and legitimacy, or it implies integrative business ethics.
   ? Unpacking integrative aspects reveals:
   The relationship between business and capitalism by bringing in responsibility
   aspects and the functioning of business and society
   Feminist perspectives unpack:
   Relational recognition and issues of equity and justice to address "domination and
   oppression" for a society that recognizes the equal moral worth of all persons by
   involving the states and businesses [ corporations].
   Under the condition of globalization and its transnational governance, we mark the
   emergence of the Multilevel stakeholders’ form of governance.
   The role of multinational companies (MNCs) and global organizational assemblages as
   we see the formation of ETI, or EITI for the extractive industry –the MSI form of
   WX：codinghelp