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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Keeping corporations accountable : the role of empathy Hunter, Kimberley

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the potential role of empathy within the corporate entity. Consciously building empathy through an interactive and reciprocal communicative process could carry substantive importance for improving corporate capacity and morality. I argue that empathetic relationships are those in which each party attempts to understand and respect the other’s point of view, creating a platform of reciprocity from which further cooperation can be undertaken (despite dissenting viewpoints). Achieving this is only possible through corporate accountability at multiple levels of operation, to ensure the moral functioning of all the parts within the whole. In nations like Peru, which is particularly vulnerable to conflict between corporate and stakeholder interests, empathy has enormous potential to improve the quality of the engagement throughout the exploration, extraction, and exploitation of its natural resources. This requires interactive two-way dialogue between company and community to help define the needs of the community and inform the values of the company.

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Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada