Privileged Irresponsibility
Privileged Irresponsibility in Social Innovation
Line of reasoning:
- Living creatures, including human beings, have no other option but to move. (See the principles and the foundation.) We depend on each other and by means of mutual influence we shape each other. This is the way how our personal identity as well as our group identities and our cultural identity at large evolve.
- The Ethics of Care philosophy is based on the mutual dependency principle and put forward a caring democracy (Joan C. Tronto, 10 januari 2015) society.
- The consequence of this dependency and therefor the notion that no one can stand on his or her own in reflected in ground rule 1: co-dependency implies care responsibility.
- Not everyone is willing or able to take on the caring responsibility towards each other thereby inhibiting progress to be made in societal challenges. In the facilitator guide, a process is discussed based on mutual understanding and shared meaning to gain understanding in the nature of a societal challenge by investigating worldviews and the options for change. This usually requires, as is reflected in ground rule 2: diversity in opinions is a basic and essential right, that stakeholders must look beyond their own or their organizations interest and take other interests into account in order to move collectively in the right direction.
- Privileged Irresponsibility (PI) is a concept stemming from EoC that describes the underlying motivation to not take on care responsibilities. We apply PI in the realm of the Social Theory (ST) to expose various forms of PI and remedies to overcome them.
- PI is (almost) always a result of power abuse and to get away with it. Power is a factor that is at play because it gives someone the privilege to ignore the needs of others. PI can be manifested in many ways and it takes a close eye and know what to look for to recognize it. We investigate PI from different angles:
- Cornering: to use power to force someone or an organization to do something against their will or principles versus neglecting: to fail to pay enough attention to someone or something or to not do enough to properly care for someone or something.
- Deliberate, with intention versus unaware in the sense of not realizing that a certain action or the lack thereof causes abuse.
Towards a Responsible Setting for Social Innovation
Line of reasoning:
- We have discussed PI in many disguises that can inhibit progress. The question is: can we devise a setting in which PI can be eliminated as much as possible to create a fruitful setting for social innovation? We are convinced that this question can be answered positively, but it requires that every stakeholder adhere to EoC principles.
- Suppose a number of stakeholders are willing to address a societal challenge. The stakeholders could be individuals but also representatives from companies and organizations including the government. They have at least one thing in common namely there is something at stake for each of them. However, this does not necessarily mean that each stakeholder is committed to make progress together. In the most negative case, stakeholders could participate to disrupt the social innovation process in order to protect their own interests.
- Before even tackling the challenge, the social innovation process and the ground rules have to be established. The three principles (1 - we got to move, 2 - create room for change, and 3 - determine the right direction) and the two ground rules provide the basis. Especially the two ground rules (1 - co-dependency implies care responsibility, and 2 - diversity in opinions is a basic and essential right) can be seen as a kind of meta rules. For instance, if during the process things become tense and some stakeholders are perhaps on the brink of giving up, the other parties can point to the ground rules as a code of conduct. But there is also a consellation