Maribel Blasco

Corporate Social Responsibility in Mexico and France Exploring the Role of Normative Institutions

Scholarship on corporate social responsibility (CSR) shows both that the concept itself is interpreted in a multitude of different ways and that significant cross-cultural differences exist in the way that business approaches the question of social responsibility and ethics. Little comparative work, however, has yet been carried out that investigates the reasons behind such differences. The authors analyze the cases of Mexico and France by drawing on Enderle’s practical, semantic, and theoretical dimensions of business ethics. The authors further integrate the concept of “normative institutions” to explore attitudes toward CSR and assess the likely future adoption of CSR practices in each country. The article concludes that despite similar institutional conditions in Mexico and France, the interplay of those institutions combined with the historical role of business and its relationship with society produces quite different articulations of CSR in each country. The article highlights the need for further studies that explore how institutions enable and constrain business’ articulation of social responsibility.

Exiled to the home: Masculinity and ageing in urban Mexico

This study addresses the relationship between ageing and masculinity in urban Mexico. We examine the meaning of home for older men, asking why some live alone and what life at home is like for men whose working lives were largely spent elsewhere. We argue that the growing literature on men has neglected ageing because later life is associated with a subordinate form of masculinity. Although recent work on masculinity in Mexico has rejected the negative stereotyping of machismo, revealing the importance of the provider role to hegemonic masculinity, this role is gradually lost in later life. We conclude that its loss, together with the legacy of difficulties poorer men face in meeting family responsibilities throughout their life, disadvantages older men.

If only cultural chameleons could fly too: A critical discussion of the concept of cultural intelligence

The article offers a critique of the concept of cultural intelligence (CQ) from a semiotic perspective. It addresses three assumptions that underpin the CQ concept: that CQ exists, that conflict and misunderstandings are antithetical to CQ and that metacognition involves a cultural dimension. The analysis focuses in particular on the dimension of cultural metacognition which has recently been claimed to be the CQ concept’s main contribution compared to earlier concepts such as cross-cultural or intercultural competence, a claim which is found to be overstated. The article uses the example of CQ training to illustrate the need for greater attention to context and motivation when CQ is deployed for business purposes, as well as to the role of experience in cultural learning processes. At a broader level, the article urges caution in assuming that all human attributes can be trained for business purposes, especially through short-term interventions.

Intact or in tatters? Family care of older women and men in urban Mexico

This article asks how family relationships affect the living conditions of low-income elderly people in urban Mexico. There is little State provision of accommodation for the elderly, forcing older people to rely on their families for care. Yet many poorer families cannot afford to provide care, and some are unwilling to do so. In addition, families treat elderly men and women differently, with significant consequences for womens and mens housing conditions and wellbeing in later life.

Aligning the Hidden Curriculum of Management Education With PRME: An Inquiry-Based Framework

This article argues that mainstreaming responsible management education in line with the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) requires close attention to the hidden curriculum (HC), that is, the implicit dimensions of educational experiences. Altering formal curricular goals and content alone is not enough to improve students’ sense of social responsibility. Business schools are conceptualized in this article as multilevel learning environments comprising various message sites where students undergo moral learning and socialization processes. Using perspectives from HC research combined with transformative learning and communities of practice theory, the article offers an inquiry-based framework for PRME implementation that takes these moral learning and socialization processes into account. It provides suggestions for how to address the hidden curriculum both in the diagnostic phase of assessing a school’s PRME needs and in the implementation phase where PRME is integrated into business school learning environments. The concept of meta-messages is introduced to account for how students apprehend the HC at business schools.

On Reflection: Is Reflexivity Necessarily Beneficial in Intercultural Education?

This article explores how the concept of reflexivity is used in intercultural education. Reflexivity is often presented as a key learning goal in acquiring intercultural competence (ICC). Yet, reflexivity can be defined in different ways, and take different forms across time and space, depending on the concepts of selfhood that prevail and how notions of difference are constructed. First, I discuss how the dominant usages of reflexivity in intercultural education reflect and reproduce a Cartesian view of the self that shapes how ICC is conceptualized and taught. I discuss three assumptions that this view produces: that the self is accessible and transcendable, that reflexivity is universal across space and time, and that the self can act as its own remedial change agent or ‘inner consultant.’ I argue that because reflexivity is understood in many different ways, attention to definition is crucial, both in designing learning objectives in intercultural education and in devising ways to attain them. Greater attention is also needed in intercultural education to the ways in which selfhood, and hence also reflexivity and constructions of difference, differ across space and time.

Making the tacit explicit: rethinking culturally inclusive pedagogy in international student academic adaptation

The article proposes an approach, broadly inspired by culturally inclusive pedagogy, to facilitate international student academic adaptation based on rendering tacit aspects of local learning cultures explicit to international full degree students, rather than adapting them. Preliminary findings are presented from a focus group-based exploratory study of international student experiences at different stages of their studies at a Danish business school, one of Denmark’s most international universities. The data show how a major source of confusion for these students has to do with the tacit logics and expectations that shape how the formal steps of the learning cycle are understood and enacted locally, notably how learning and assessment moments are defined and related to one another. Theoretically, the article draws on tacit knowledge and sense-making theories to analyse student narratives of their encounter with the Danish system. A framework is offered to help teachers conceptualise, and excavate, the tacit dimensions of local learning culture of which they may not be aware, and reflects on how and when these might best be communicated to international students.

Cosmopolitan Aspirations: New Media, Citizenship Education and Youth in Latin America

A wide variety of supranational organizations and networks are currently promoting educational initiatives aimed at disseminating particular values and notions of citizenship in Latin America via new media and in particular the Internet. These organizations exercise a growing influence on educational objectives and techniques in the region. Despite the fact that access is still modest among many sectors in Latin America, the hope is that these new media will contribute to the eradication among young people of undesirable behaviour such as delinquency and political apathy, and instead foster a stronger sense of civic responsibility. That sense might underpin a more constructive, entrepreneurial global youth culture espousing universal, multicultural values rather than particularistic, parochial ones. The Internet is presented in such initiatives as possessing intrinsically educational, entrepreneurial and democratizing properties. The article explores the activities of supranational organizations and networks operating in Latin America, and seeks to provide a glimpse of the idealised youth identities that they envision. It is argued that the new roles assigned to education are shaped by new media optimism, cosmopolitan aspirations and a post-national rather than nationally anchored conception of citizenship. Theories of governance and governability are used to understand how these developments can be seen in terms of the globalization of politics and the ensuing changes in the forms, rationalities and techniques of governance in a wide range of issue areas, including education.