Description
The author discusses the nature of the Social Conscience and the moral values that it embodies. Seeking to do what is right, motivated by a sympathetic awareness of others, driven by the instinct to care and acknowledging the necessity to share, the Social Conscience expresses innate moral values. In these troubled times, satisfactory solutions to economic and social problems will not be found through either capitalism or socialism. The Social Conscience is the third way to defining social policy that reconciles economic progress, social justice and individual freedom.
Glautier argues that, driven by profit seeking and emphasising shareholder value as the primary objective of business, the market economy undermines traditional values of caring and sharing. By identifying family values as those that explain, sustain and justify a caring society, he reaches out to man’s fundamental nature and to what is common to all beliefs.
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Author Details
Michel Glautier, a graduate of the Universities of Manchester and London, has a doctorate in Management Sciences from the University of Paris. He was on the faculty of the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, Professor of Accounting and Control at INSEAD, Fontaine-bleau, and at ESSEC, Paris, and Professor of Public Accounting at Ohio University. He has been Visiting Professor at universities in the US and Australia. He is the author of numerous books and articles (Glautier & Underdown, Accounting Theory and Practice, Financial Times/Prentice Hall is in its 7th edition) and has extensive experience as a business consultant.
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Reviews
‘In his impressive new book, Michel Glautier asks a simple question: can a caring society exist in a market economy? His analysis suggests a market economy and a caring society are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but that recent and continuing changes to the configuration of the market economy are putting the achievement of a caring society beyond reach.’
The Guardian online, 26 August 2007
‘I have frequently thought of accountants as green eye-shade types who work in back offices making sure that resources are, well, accounted for. A surprise it is, then, to read a book by an established professor of accounting that reaches to the most challenging and wide-ranging issues of our contemporary world.’
H W Batt PhD. – Common Ground August 2007
‘There will be much of interest here, especially to academics, on a wide range of topics including: policy objectives for a caring society; empowering a caring society; the implications for education; market behaviour; accounting, accountability and shareholder value; the State, society and government; citizenship and the democratic deficit; authority and freedom; conflict resolution and crime control…’
James Robertson- Working for a Sane Alternative June 2007
