Ethical responsibilities of R&D organizations: networking business and society

This empirical research contributes to the understanding of how actions of networking companies are going beyond their networks picture and impact on society. For the structural analysis of this phenomenon the concept of ethical embeddedness is applied which assumes that business organizations are embedded in a broader social network and have mutual interconnection of their functions. The research proposes that embeddedness of businesses may be exemplified via ethicality of responsibilities that specific business actors employ. Therefore, the research adopts Industrial network approach to investigate ethical embeddedness of business organizations in society and their impact on its current and future development. The ?social face? of industrial markets has being extensively discussed in the works of K. Polanyi (e.g. 1968) who collaborated on the concept of social embeddedness of the economic interaction. Granovetter (1985) has developed this idea even further by emphasizing that companies interact in social environment and the social networking is not dividable form the business networks. The concept of ethical embeddedness is adopted for this study (Lindfelt & Törnroos, 2006) which can be explained as ethical values in relations to economic values that are created in a particular business network.Empirically, this framed as a case-study research is grounded on the interviewed representatives of R&D organizations engaged in medical devices R&D activities. They excellently exemplify ethical considerations of embedded ethical responsibilities toward society as their general aim along profit achievement is to improve social welfare. Additionally, those organizations are highly dependent on the network of business partners, governmental and other institutional actors which make them perfectly suitable for this research. The research question of this study is articulated as the following: how embedded ethicality of businesses impact on interconnection between society and business organizations? In general, conceptually, this research paper contributes to the development of the concept of ethical embeddedness and to Industrial network approach theory. From the practical perspective, it aims to illustrate the attractiveness of investment in development technologies that are able to improve social welfare; the ethical value embedded in business activities and its impact on society and business partnership. Current interest to the ethical issues requires filling a research gap in lacking empirical evidences of ethical and, consequently, socially significant managerial practices executed in business networks that influence on general public good.