¹HEC – Paris and Templeton College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Correspondence: R Ramírez, Templeton College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Tel: +44 1865 422 765; E-mail: rafael.ramirez@templeton.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

This paper proposes that responsibility is better understood as an aesthetic rather than as an ethical construct. It suggests that aesthetics is a distinctively European way of conceptualizing 'cooperation and responsible management', but nevertheless finds conditions that will internationalize this conceptualization soon. It also maintains that it is how responsibility is secured that determines whether cooperation is seen as appealing or repulsive. Finding in aesthetics a measure to determine whether managers enable cooperation responsibly, it argues that the aesthetics of managing cooperation responsibly can no longer be ignored.