Talk:Corporate social entrepreneurship/Archives/2016

COIncidence?

About a third of the citations involve C. A. Hemingway (WP:UNDUE?). Meanwhile, many edits to this article are by @Chemingway: (WP:COI?) Dl2000 (talk) 00:49, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

There are no coincidences (see: Special:Random for proof). This entire article has an essay problem. I'm concerned the reliance on one author and a handful of obscure journals means this doesn't actually meet WP:GNG. Far too many of the sources which aren't by Hemingway predate the term's coinage and are used for tangential points, or are general commentary about social entrepreneurship. This is acceptable practice in some academic papers, but not here. Using multiple sources to outline claims about this concept's significance is WP:SYNTH. Is this the academic-business equivalent of a WP:FRINGE article? Is anybody commenting on this concept from the outside? Stripping away to business-speak, the underlying concept itself is simple (it's a term for people who use their corporate positions to ethically advance a social agenda), so this should be supportable. With social entrepreneurship in general we have many examples using the term and talking about what it means from multiple perspectives. The extreme example is Impact of microcredit, which has sources talking about debt-traps and suicide rates and such. I'm not seeing anything like that here, but many of these sources are inaccessible, so maybe I'm missing something. If not, maybe this article should merged with social entrepreneurship. Grayfell (talk) 00:13, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:CRY and WP:EW. There is also a content dispute, here, which is holding up the editing process.

I am a subject specialist. I created the page, back in 2010. It meets notability guidelines WP:N. The page was written in good faith. In the last 6 years I have not experienced any edit warring, but then I have restricted my contributions to where have subject expertise.

WP:COI says that: ‘Subject matter experts are welcome to contribute within their area of expertise.’ WP:CRY ‘Experts and paid editors alike are criticised frequently, having their edits reverted on sight and getting harassed on their talk pages. This is detrimental to Wikipedia. Experts frequently have the most knowledge of subjects that non experts would know little about, such as nuclear physics. A non-expert would have a hard time editing these subjects and could inadvertently introduce misleading information.’

Business and management is a scientifically researched subject. It is part of social science. My experience of organizations spans over four decades and I have a PhD in business and management (University of Nottingham, UK). My field is, broadly, business ethics. Prior to becoming a university lecturer and academic researcher, I worked as a manager in multi-national corporations, working in various consumer-driven industries. The page was created with all kinds of readers in mind, but I tend to reference books and academic papers, because these are what I use most for university teaching and research.

New categories of knowledge emerge from existing categories. Knowledge builds upon knowledge. So, social entrepreneurship (SE) is mentioned in the Entrepreneurship (E) Wiki page. That does not mean we should merge SE into E, or that we should merge E with the page on strategic management or management or organizational theory. In the same way that we would not merge electrical engineering with civil engineering on the basis that they are about engineering.

As entrepreneurship can be regarded as a branch of strategic management, then the phrase ‘strategic direction of the firm’ is relevant on a page within the subject of business and management. But it has been deleted. The point, here, is that if one is not aware of, or fully understand something: it does not mean that it is irrelevant or even not valid. So, scholarly journals Academic journal may be ‘obscure’ to non-academics. However, the journals referenced on the CSE page are by no means obscure to members of the Academy. For example, The Journal of Business Ethics is a peer-reviewed international journal which leads the field of business ethics, regularly publishing articles by members of the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management, amongst others. Journals and academic books deal with facts. My own book on CSE was published by the Cambridge University Press, based on verifiable information. Again, it was peer-reviewed. It contains 25 and a half pages of secondary source references, equating to approx. 450 references. PDFs of chapters and summaries are available. See WP:IRS In general, the most reliable sources are: Peer-reviewed journals, Bbooks published by university presses, University-level textbooks Magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses, mainstream newspapers

The page has been left in a mess with references to sources having been removed and things attributed to me that I am not happy about. The business ethics section is now particularly problematic. This is a theoretical background section but it has been mixed up with the examples of ‘Doing it’. So, for example, the research by Summers and Dyck (2011) belongs in the ‘Encouraging CSE’ section. I can see that the word ‘encouraging’ is not sufficiently neutral so it could be changed to ‘How it is done’ and all the empirical work listed there.

Another example of a lack of subject knowledge affecting the quality of the page is the charge of WP:PEA and removal of my edit referring to ‘Championing’. It is what entrepreneurs do and was found in research to be particularly associated with CSE. Check out Anderson and Bateman, Academy of Management Journal 43(4) 2000: 548-570. See also a reference “from outside”: http://www.futurpreneur.ca/en/category/blog/championing-entrepreneurship/

Accessibility of sources: students access academic e-journal articles via their university and college libraries. But there has been a big shift towards Open access, now. So highly credible, secondary (peer-reviewed) academic sources can be obtained free of charge via academics’ web pages and social media sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu. I note the availability of some PDFs on the CSE page and more could be attached. I also note a number of URLs to articles and consultancies. There are more to add which can be found on a simple internet search.

WP:NPOV. I do accept Grayfell’s point about the need for more critical perspectives and so I understand the expressed concerns re neutrality. The section called ‘Threat or Opportunity’ was a start at this and could be expanded. However, it is important to understand what the concept is, before jumping into the critique. One angle for beefing up the critique comes from the concept of CSE as an alternative perspective to the very dominant one in organization theory re the domination and repression of employees (e.g., Robert Jackall, Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers, 1988/2010). For Jackall, ‘bureaucracy is never simply a technical system of organization. It is also always a system of power, privilege, and domination (Jackall, 2010, p. 10). This stems from the work of Max Weber (1949) who wrote about the rational, de-personalized, efficient system of coordination and control in the bureaucratic system. Weber’s perspective is absolutely seminal in management and organization theory. See Critical management studies (CMS). So the CMS perspective could be added on the page as the framework within which CSE is sometimes understood/misunderstood.

As the originator of the page I concentrated on explaining the background to this emerging phenomenon of CSE, how it came about and what we know so far. How the CSE operates and what they do, not only gives an alternative view to the dominant CMS perspective of what goes on in organizations (or at least more nuanced view of it): research shows how it is distinct from social entrepreneurship (SE), too. But we do need more empirical research. It is a point that all academics make at the end of every paper they write, regardless of what discipline they come from, because knowledge in every subject area needs to be developed…science moves on. I did make this point on the page, but it has been deleted. In this sense, you can always charge academic researchers with lack of neutrality, because they have chosen to research (drill down) into a particular aspect of a subject (the phenomenon).

More research into when CSE does not work, or happen (see Barraquier, A. Ethical Behavior in Practice: Decision Outcomes and Strategic Implications. British Journal of Management, 22, S28-S46, 2011; see also ‘Conformist’ and ‘Disassociated’ modes of moral commitment to corporate social responsibility, who were not found to be CSEs). What about CSE that fails? Who judges it? More critique of the concept would not go amiss. This point connects back to the dominant view of managers as self-interested and employees who just do as they are told (see above), i.e. all in the interests of business. This is why Grayfell’s contribution on the lead (based on her personal opinion) that CSEs progress ‘business ventures’ is misleading. Research into employee personal values has shown there are some who are doing other, perhaps more covert things, which are not motivated by the business agenda.

So explaining the theoretical background first is important, i.e., where the notion originated. Then we need to move into the section on evidence and then the critique.

Back to my earlier point about new knowledge emerging from the existing. Because CSE is a relatively new area, this does not mean it does not deserve its own page. On the contrary, people turn to Wikipedia to learn about new things. An example from an unrelated field is a new state of hydrogen. See Wiki page ‘Metallic hydrogen is a phase of hydrogen in which it behaves as an electrical conductor. This phase was predicted theoretically in 1935[2] but has yet to be unambiguously observed, but a solid phase possibly close to a metallic and atomic state has been reported in highly compressed hydrogen and hydrogen deuteride[3]’ Also: ‘Liquid and solid metallic hydrogen is thought to be my [my italics] present in large amounts in the gravitationally compressed interiors of Jupiter, Saturn, and in some extrasolar planets.’ Note how the researchers have couched their empirically-produced findings in a provisional way, because we can never know the answers for sure. It is good practice. Particularly qualitative research results which may be regarded as exploratory research. But do not make the mistake of assuming that qualitative research is any less ‘factual’ than quantitative research. See Theory and Empirical research. Note also that this new discovery, with its relatively little research compared to research into hydrogen, has not been merged into the hydrogen page.

After I first created it, the CSE page used to contain a banner at the top to the effect that it was a good example of a well referenced page. This has disappeared over time with the development of the page (not removed by me). I was subsequently invited to a Wikipedia conference (was it in Iceland? Or Poland? I am sorry, I cannot remember) although I was, unfortunately, unable to attend.

My edits are highly visible and attributable. This is due to a personal preference not to ‘hide’ behind an anonymous username, a practice which has been associated with bad behaviour (see http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/30/online-aggression)

The multiple edits in my name are largely due to my infrequent, but intense bouts of tinkering on the page: writing and then editing and often re-editing what I have previously written. The fault, here, lies with my long-standing and bad practice of hitting the ‘Save Page’ button repeatedly in one editing session, after every minor edit, no matter how small, instead of the ‘Preview’ button, or, using the Sandbox when I first created the page. Mistake. For so many of us, Wikipedia editing is not our day job.

We are in agreement that the page needs to be based on facts. We also agree that the page needs improving. However I cannot contribute if my edits are reverted on sight. WP:PSCOI ‘Practices not regarded as COI: Employees at cultural and academic institutions: We want experts editing Wikipedia articles. Merely being employed by an institution is not a conflict of interest.’

I hope that this is helpful.

Chemingway (talk) 09:23, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I respect your transparency about your identity (and yes, your COI). In this case, it would be pretty obvious anyway from your edit history. While anonymity is associated with bad behavior, it's also an important protection for editors. Wikipedia has many articles on very contentious subjects with their own histories of bad behavior, and exposing editors who work on those subjects to the public eye introduces a lot of complications (I can speak from personal experience that this is a very serious issue). This is part of why we say Wikipedia:Comment on content, not on the contributor. With that in mind, this isn't the place to discuss Wikipedia conferences you've been invited to, and even implying that it matters suggests a misunderstanding of Wikipedia's philosophy. I may be missing something, but I don't see any indication in the article's history that it was ever a WP:GOODARTICLE or WP:FEATURED, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

WP:CRY and WP:PSCOI are essays, not policies. You are repeatedly cited here and elsewhere, and are not merely an employee of a relevant institution. You absolutely do have a conflict of interest. As Wikipedia's policies make clear, having a COI doesn't preclude you from editing, but it does bring with it many pitfalls. It looks like you've fallen in some of these pitfalls.

Sticking to an area of expertise is sensible, but there is a flip-side to this. Individual articles must follow the larger needs of the encyclopedia, and this article isn't doing that. Expertise in a topic, which nobody is denying, isn't the same as expertise in writing an encyclopedia article. On a strictly superficial level, there are many technical and WP:MOS issues with this article which keep being reinstated. Section titles are supposed to be sentence case, not title case, for example. Another is the lack of wikilinks, which leads to a lot of redundancy as basic info is filled in for context. If you don't know how to fix these problems, or can't be bothered, fine, that's why this is collaborative. That means you will have to accept different viewpoints, sometimes drastically different ones. If you can't do that, than we've got an WP:OWN problem.

I'm familiar with academic journals (most experienced editors are), and I stick with the label obscure in this context. It's impact factor is 1.3, which is less than the lowest IF journal cited in metallic hydrogen. If you don't think that's a fair or meaningful comparison (and I would agree, it really isn't), than neither is comparing this article to metallic hydrogen. Different topics have different histories, and not everything which can be cited belongs in Wikipedia. More importantly -actually, vitally important: Wikipedia favors secondary sources, meaning that when possible, papers should be used as WP:ANALYSIS, and research papers should only be directly cited with caution. In this article papers are being cited to advance a viewpoint about this concept. They are not independent analyses which are being impartially summarized. This is a problem I see here, but not at the metallic hydrogen article.

The section on the Co-operative Group may help explain this more clearly. Why was that lengthy example being used in the lead of the article? The lead is intended to be a straightforward summary of the body. You added: So, even though the majority of corporations, nowadays, claim to be fully committed to CSR, it is pushing the boundaries to describe even the most hybrid of companies (such as those dedicated to the growth of fair trade or environmentally sustainable production), as social enterprises staffed by social entrepreneurs. That one sentence contain's multiple subjective points being presented in Wikipedia's voice. Starting it with "even though [they] claim" uses loaded language to imply the majority of corporations are misrepresenting the truth. This is your professional subjective assessment, which is supported by your previously written sources. I'm not disagree with the substance of this, by the way, but this isn't neutrally presented. I also appreciate the effort to distinguish CSE from "regular" SE, but you still need to attribute this assessment to the source instead of presenting it in Wikipedia's voice. If almost every assessment ends up being attributed to you, then we have a notability problem. Is this really about CSE, or is this about you? Or about your book? This is why we're talking about a conflict of interest. The article must present the topic from a dispassionate outsider's perspective.

Given the choice, I would prefer many small edits to few large ones, but I've found striking a balance to be tricky. A familiarity with Help:Diffs is useful for figuring out what other people are going to see, but again, I'm pretty bad about that myself, and the end result is what matters most anyway. Grayfell (talk) 00:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

See the Chartered Association of Business Schools Journal ranking guide for 2015. JBE is ranked 3 out of a total ranking of 4. [1]. I repeat that the article needs improving but I cannot make the improvements if my content is deleted on sight. All for now. Work beckons.Chemingway (talk) 11:47, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

About your Third Opinion request: Third Opinion, like all other forms of moderated content dispute resolution at Wikipedia requires thorough talk page discussion before seeking help. There is no thorough discussion of merger here, and your request has been removed/denied for that reason. Indeed, Grayfell's last post, above, suggests that he's more than willing to help improve this page a few small edits at a time. That needs to be discussed and, preferably, tried. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:57, 1 February 2016 (UTC) (3O volunteer)

Cleanup revisited

The article is still a mess, so I have made a partial revert of just the lede as a starting point. Rather than WP:EDITWAR, I'm hoping we can discuss this point by point. If compromise isn't possible, and we can't work incrementally to make this more encyclopedic, then we have a more serious problem and will have to seek additional outside assistance. Grayfell (talk) 05:54, 10 March 2016 (UTC)