7.1 Value profile: responsibility

Introduction: the root meaning of responsibility

The College of Business Administration at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez has recently adopted a Statement of Values. Rather than allowing this document to become static, this community is committed to challenging the Statement of Values. The first challenge, brought about by students, was to translate the Statement of Values into Spanish. (The original was drafted in English in order to be integrated into Business Administration's efforts at AACSB accreditation.) This module forms part of a series of modules that profile in detail each of the constituent values of Business Administration's Statement of Values: justice, responsibility, respect, trust, and integrity. Its purpose is to provide the basis for a conceptual challenge to the Statement of Values. Different constituents or stakeholders of Business Administration, students and staff, have expressed interest in more sharply distinguishing key values (e.g. trust and responsibility) and in exploring the overlap and distinctions between values (e.g., integrity and responsibility). This module profiles responsibility. Others will profile the remaining values, justice, respect, trust, and integrity. Finally, an introductory module will introduce students to value-based decision making while a concluding module will present a value realization framework taken from software engineering. This module profiles responsibility by providing its root metaphor, key features, kinds and senses, and useful frameworks. It concludes with exercises designed to help students understand responsibility's root metaphor, response to relevance, and how it has been metaphorically projected onto increasingly "higher" moral spaces, moving from the negative to the positive, the minimal to the exemplary, and the reactive to the prospective.

Root meaning: response to relevance