Free Business Dissertations - Baudrillard (1970, Cited In Heath, 2002) Argues That We Are Living In A
Baudrillard (1970, cited in Heath, 2002) argues that we are living in a consumer society, were materialism is at its pique. Also other writers are noting on the phenomenon of our materialistic Western society. Hoffman (1996) argues that nowadays in America, success of life is all defined in materialistic terms. Arguably not only in America this is the case, but generally all Western societies seem to have made a move towards a more materialistic value system. The ethics of consumerism has gradually replaced traditional values and promoted instant gratification and hedonism (Crane and Matten, 2004).
Hendry (2004) in his book Between Enterprise and Ethics, Business Management in a Bimoral Society notes that the morality of self-interest has gained much more social legitimacy in recent years, compared to the traditional morality.
Consumption has grown significantly and the per capita private consumption in Western Europe has grown by over 50% since the 1980’s (Crane and Matten, 2004). Whether this growth in consumption is desirable, and most of all sustainable would be an entire dissertation topic for itself. Not only is the move of consumerism a questionable one when it comes to ethics, but arguably also is this trend of large multinational corporations with their enormous power influence that have come with it. It is not about how to conduct business, but whether to continue to sustain an enterprise that is based on increased consumption (Westra and Werhane, 1998). Of particular interest and relevance to the dissertation will be how much this trend of consumerism and materialism is affecting people individually, and how much in turn this will affect people’s attitude towards corporate social responsibility, and thus willingness to forego certain consumption patterns for a more ethical business environment.
4. Research Methodology Proposal:
a.) Research Strategy and design
There are two different research theories, namely the deductive; theory testing, and inductive; theory building (Saunders et al., 2003). The dissertation will walk on both paths in regards to the research theory, as the outcome will not be able to build a theory, but however it will also not be a theory testing research, as there is not much theory existing on this field of research. Therefore, it will be a combination of both, but the inductive theory should be predominant.
As for the research philosophy, there are two different corners of thoughts, the Realist (Objectivist) corner and the Relativist (Subjectivist) corner. The Realist approach is positivistic and with the viewpoint of a natural scientist, it believes in external reality and quantitative data research. The Relativist approach believes in the social construction of reality and therefore focuses more on qualitative data and interpretivism (Saunders et al 2003). This research will be based on a relativist philosophy.
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