Employee Volunteering and Social Capital: Contributions to Corporate Social Responsibility

As employee volunteering (EV) is increasingly regarded as a means of improving companies' community and employee relations, we investigate the contribution of EV to corporate social responsibility, specifically whether and how it contributes to social capital. We investigate the dynamics of EV in three UK companies. We explore the social relations and resources which underpin social capital creation; the roles of opportunity, motivation and ability in bringing the actors together and enhancing their capacity for cooperation; and the ways in which alternative EV modes inform the different dimensions of social capital – networks, trust and norms of cooperation. Our paper contributes to our understanding of EV and the factors that enable it to create social capital. Finally we assess the contribution of EV to the overall corporate social responsibility agenda of companies.     

Organization without actorhood: Exploring a neglected phenomenon

Most scholars explicitly or implicitly build on the assumption that organizations have to be externally recognized as actors to become constituted as organizations. Although recently some scholars have reported on instances of organization without actorhood, the phenomenon still remains widely neglected. Moreover, so far, organization without actorhood is seen as something very limited in terms of complexity and permanency. In this paper, we will draw a different picture. Drawing on the concept of degrees of organizationality (Dobusch & Schoeneborn, 2015) and a decision-based understanding of organization (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011; Luhmann, 2003), we develop a framework that allows us to explore how much organization is possible without actorhood. Drawing on a qualitative case study of an inter-organizational collective concerned with ensuring public safety, we illustrate that highly complex organization is possible without constituting an actor. Our study presents evidence contradicting the common assumption that complex organization relies on the external attribution of actorhood. We also add to debates on responsibility of organizations and inter-organizational relations by pointing out that organization without actorhood has certain implications, i.e. it allows for a specific avoidance of responsibility.     

并购后高管变更、合法性与并购绩效——基于制度理论的视角

并购后的高管变更对于企业的并购绩效具有重要的影响,但目前的研究结论没有取得一致性。本文基于制度理论的视角引入合法性的概念,通过123份并购样本实证分析了并购后高管变更、合法性以及并购绩效之间的关系。研究结果显示:并购后高管变更与并购的外部合法性和内部合法性之间均存在显著的负相关;而外部合法性和内部合法性对于并购绩效具有显著的积极作用。本研究结论对于我国企业的并购后高管变更决策以及如何提升并购绩效具有理论指导意义。     

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting as Substantive and Symbolic Behavior: A Multilevel Theoretical Analysis

This article describes a multilevel theoretical framework that examines the multiple causes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in the social environment of business. We argue that substantive and/or symbolic reporting flows from individual‐, aggregate‐, organizational‐, and institution‐level phenomena, and is thus a complex outcome of CSR and corporate social performance (CSP). Theoretical lenses range from reinforcement theory at the microlevel to legitimacy and stakeholder theories at the macrolevel, and include a discussion of the emergence of lower‐level CSR‐relevant characteristics to higher level constructs. Our goal is to clarify how this behavior develops from microlevel, mesolevel, and macrolevel processes with a view toward assisting corporations to better enact CSR reporting, and their stakeholders to effectively promote substantive reporting behavior.     

How lesbians learn to negotiate the heterosexism of corporate America

The purpose of this study was to understand how lesbians learn to negotiate the heterosexism of corporate America. The sample consisted of ten women at the management or executive level who were over the age of 30, identified as lesbians, had worked in their organization for at least two years, had at least two people who report directly to them and had budget responsibility. The primary data collection strategy was in-depth interviews and data were analyzed using the constant comparative method. Lesbians who have learned to negotiate the heterosexism of the corporate setting successfully have learned: a) to pre-screen individuals and groups for their receptivity toward the issue of lesbianism, b) to come out as individuals/lesbians in a strategic way, and c) to educate others about the unique issues that lesbians face in corporate settings. This learning occurred informally and incidentally through: a) dealing with human resources, b) participating in committees and groups, and c) participating in social/corporate events.     

From zero-sum to win-win - Organisational conditions for successful shared value strategy implementation

The number of publications on shared value strategies (SVSs) is continuously increasing. Literature does not answer the question which organisational conditions are necessary and which conjunctions of conditions are sufficient for the successful implementation of SVSs. This research aims at filling the gap by condensing empirical evidence found in the literature on successful SVSs, stakeholder management, corporate social responsibility, and positive social change. The article synthesises the findings of these streams of research into a set-theoretical framework and proposes five complex conditions necessary for successful SVS implementation: shared value-oriented entrepreneurial vision, strategic alignment (STA), shared value-oriented innovation (SVI), networking capabilities (NCs), and impact monitoring. Additional empirical evidence from cases claiming successful implementation of SVS allows the suggestion of several simple conditions constituting the complex conditions. Qualitative comparative analysis can be used for empirically testing the necessity of the suggested conditions and the sufficiency of conjunctions of complex conditions for SVS implementation success. The proposed framework enhances theoretical knowledge concerning successful SVS implementation and is an important step to support management efforts in reorienting their companies from zero-sum strategies to win-win SVSs.     

Strategy-as-Practice: Taking Social Practices Seriously

This article reviews research in Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) and suggests directions for its development. The power of this perspective lies in its ability to explain how strategy-making is enabled and constrained by prevailing organizational and societal practices. Our review shows how SAP research has helped to advance social theories in strategic management, offered alternatives to performance-dominated analyzes, broadened the scope in terms of organizations studied and promoted new methodologies. In particular, it has provided important insights into the tools and methods of strategy-making (practices), how strategy work takes place (praxis), and the role and identity of the actors involved (practitioners). However, we argue that there is a need to go further in the analysis of social practices to unleash the full potential of this perspective. Hence, we outline five directions for the further development of the practice perspective: placing agency in a web of practices, recognizing the macro-institutional nature of practices, focusing attention on emergence in strategy-making, exploring how the material matters, and promoting critical analysis.     

Managing Co‐creation Design: A Strategic Approach to Innovation

Co‐creation offers firms and their network of actors significant opportunities for innovation, as each actor offers access to new resources through a process of resource integration. However, despite the significant advantages that co‐creation can offer, there is surprisingly little research providing a strategic approach for identifying the most advantageous co‐creation opportunities, especially when many possible options are available. Recently, scholars have called for research that develops tools and processes related to co‐creation. This study addresses these priorities, making two contributions. First, in contrast to previous work considering co‐creation more generally, or focusing on one specific form only, e.g. co‐production, this paper offers a detailed and granular approach to co‐creation design. A co‐creation design framework is developed, which incorporates multiple design dimensions and categories that can reveal new co‐creation opportunities. Second, the research extends the application of a design approach, specifically within the context of co‐creative activities. The authors use field‐based research with senior executives to develop a framework that includes key co‐creation design elements. A morphological approach is used to explore how a lead firm can identify attractive co‐creation opportunities. An innovation solution in one organization provides an illustration of how the co‐creation design framework can be applied.     

The integration of sustainability into the theory and practice of finance: an overview of the state of the art and outline of future developments

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive view of the current state of the literature in sustainable issues in financial research. Progress in these areas has generally been slow, and the concept of sustainable finance has not yet fully settled in the academic literature. We introduce corporate social responsibility as the underlying framework for sustainable finance and review key strands from the diverse literature on sustainability in finance. We suggest how this research field might advance in the future and propose a number of open questions that require further analysis.     

Managing stakeholder pressures: Toward a typology of corporate social performance profiles

Why do some firms ignore some stakeholders while courting others? We propose two key drivers of firms' social postures and derive from this analysis a novel typology of corporate social performance (CSP) profiles. Although we expect that other drivers exist, we argue that a useful starting point for understanding any given CSP profile is to consider the pressure exerted on an organization by its stakeholders in conjunction with its level of resource endowment. Our preliminary typology identifies six distinct CSP profiles that reflect different opportunities and risks for stakeholder management: the CSP Vanguard, Opportunist, Generalist, Minimalist, Specialist, and Laggard. All else equal, the first two CSP profiles imply more nonmarket opportunities than risk, whereas we expect Laggards and Specialists to face greater risk in their responses to social and environmental issues. According to our framework, Generalists and Minimalists probably operate between these two extremes of business risk. Our conceptual analysis seeks to advance research and practice for more strategic stakeholder management.     

Ownership and corporate social responsibility: "The power of the female touch"

Using a sample of 26,029 firm-year observations over the period 2002–2017 from 4,479 firms and 44 countries, we examine the relationship between ownership concentration and corporate social responsibility by focusing on the mediating role of board gender diversity and the moderating role of family shareholding. We find that ownership concentration negatively affects corporate social responsibility, and the board gender diversity partially mediates this negative effect. Our results indicate that the mediating effect of board gender diversity leads to a 10.65 percent decrease in the impact of ownership concentration on corporate social responsibility. Furthermore, moderated path analysis indicates that family shareholding weakens the direct effect of ownership concentration on board gender diversity and its indirect effect on corporate social responsibility. In post hoc analysis, we also document that the effect of gender diversity on the board is more prevalent in high gender-egalitarian societies where women are more involved in decision-making. Our study addresses the strategic role of female board members in increasing firms’ respect for corporate social responsibility, especially in family-controlled firms. Thus, our results may provide insights to regulators and policymakers to enhance firms’ corporate social practices by encouraging women’s participation on corporate boards.     

The Primary Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethicality in Corporate Reputation: An Empirical Study

We examine three assumptions commonly held in the corporate reputation literature: (1) reputation ratings of owners and investors are generally representative of all stakeholders; (2) stakeholders will generally provide a higher reputation rating to firms that emphasize corporate social responsibility versus firms that do not; and (3) profitability is the primary criterion of importance to all stakeholders when rating a firm's reputation. Using an exploratory in‐class exercise, our findings suggest that: (1) there are significant differences among stakeholder groups in their reputation ratings; (2) firms that emphasize corporate social responsibility are not rated more highly across all stakeholder groups; and (3) for all stakeholder groups, the ethicality criterion explained more of the variance in firms' reputation ratings than the profitability criterion.     

Strategic CSR for innovation in SMEs: Does diversity matter?

Both corporate social responsibility and diversity influence firms' innovation, yet their relationship and links to innovation remain uncertain, especially among small to medium-sized enterprises. Relying on strategic and institutional CSR perspectives and a value-in-diversity approach, this study examines the mediating roles of gender and nationality diversity on the CSR–innovation link at the organizational level. With a sample of 1348 SMEs from Luxembourg, the results show that strategic CSR can promote both types of diversity, but only nationality diversity triggers technological innovation. Nationality diversity emerges as a partial mediator of the relationship between CSR and SMEs’ technological innovation. Thus, strategic CSR, through the genuine pursuit of such diversity, can help SMEs attain positive returns on their product or process innovation. These results have important theoretical and managerial implications.     

An Integrational Framework of Organizational Moral Development,Legitimacy, and Corporate Responsibility: A Longitudinal,Intersectoral Analysis of Citizenship Reports

In this article, we outline a unique conceptual framework connecting legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995 ), theories of corporate responsibility (Brummer, 1991 ), and levels of organizational moral development based on Kohlberg's ( 1971 ) moral development stages. In addition, based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) categories, we found empirical support for our framework, by content analyzing Fortune 500 corporate citizenship reports from four different industries (i.e., chemicals, motor vehicle/auto parts, pharmaceutical, and utilities), at three data points (i.e., 2002, 2007, and 2012). Our analysis indicates that motor vehicle/auto parts and chemicals industries are at a higher developmental level, and portray moral legitimacy along with social demandingness corporate responsibility in recent years; while the pharmaceutical and utilities sectors are at a lower developmental level, showing signs of pragmatic legitimacy, alongside classical and stakeholder corporate responsibility strategies. This article contributes to the current organizational moral development literature by developing and finding empirical support of a conceptual framework of organizational moral development, legitimacy, and corporate responsibility. In particular, our findings provide a deeper understanding of the differences in moral development levels across four focal industries over a 10‐year timespan.     

Corporate responsibility: A review of international management research from 1998 to 2007

Our review of corporate responsibility (CR) research in International Management journals during the past decade identified 321 articles of interest. We categorized and bibliographically referenced these articles to provide a foundation for future research in this arena. Our categorization scheme consisted of categorizing articles into one of the four major CR themes: corporate social responsibility, environmental responsibility, ethics, and governance. We also categorized according to orientation (theoretical and empirical), and empirical studies were further categorized according to methodology and internationalization (countries included in the study). We provide a detailed analysis of the prevalence of CR research in International Management journals, the prominence of the major CR themes, the degree of emphasis placed on empirical versus theoretical research, and the breath of international coverage in these articles.     

Conceptualizing the Development of Strategic Ideas: A Grounded Theory Analysis

This paper presents the findings of a grounded theory study on the development of strategic ideas in a multinational organization. By drawing on the rich data generated from this longitudinal in‐depth field study, this paper provides a theoretical framework for the development of strategic ideas. The theoretical framework developed offers an interesting and useful way of understanding and explaining the complex process of the early steps of the strategic decision process. This research illustrates the development of strategic ideas through strategic debate, the key theme that emerged from the study and the interaction of its four constituent themes: strategic warriors, patterns of interaction, strategic language and strategic syntheses. Drawing on the empirical findings, this study also discusses some implications for developing strategic ideas in managerial practice.     

媒体关注下的CSR信息披露与企业财务绩效关系研究及启示——基于我国A股上市公司CSR报告的实证研究

企业社会责任(CSR)及信息披露已成为当前社会各界共同关注的热点问题。本文利用独立机构发布的我国A股上市公司CSR报告的评级数据,验证了当前时代背景下我国企业社会责任信息披露与企业财务绩效的关系,以及作为信息传递媒介和"公众日程设置者"的媒体的关注对于二者关系的影响作用。研究发现,高水平披露社会责任信息的企业的绩效明显高于低水平企业,但是这种作用关系是在媒体关注度这一变量的完全中介作用之下实现的。这一新发现不仅丰富和拓展了企业社会责任及信息披露的理论研究框架,对于基于战略性CSR思维制定相关战略的企业管理者也深具启发意义。     

Sozialkapital als theoretische Fundierung relationaler Forschungsans?tze

The concept of social capital has recently emerged as a paradigm in social sciences. It builds on the assumption that network embeddedness can be a source of advantage for both individuals as well as corporate actors. Originating in sociology, social capital has also found its way into management studies. The aim of this paper is to introduce the different concepts of social capital, to describe and to evaluate the state-of-the-art of applications in business research, and to develop a conceptual framework for an integrated theory of social capital. As a result, a significant contribution of social capital theory and related empirical studies in the field of business research can be observed. Nevertheless, further research is needed to develop a theory which connects the different concepts of social capital. Moreover, a closer link between relational and attribute-based explanations is required.     

考虑社会责任的供应链定价与碳减排决策

由于企业社会责任对供应链的可持续发展具有重要影响，所以，针对考虑企业社会责任的供应链管理进行深入研究是十分必要的。在碳总量控制与交易制度下，针对由一个制造商和一个零售商组成的二级供应链，分别分析零售商、制造商领导情形下供应链成员的定价和碳减排决策，并着重探讨零售商的社会（福利）责任关注行为、低碳技术投资效率和消费者环保意识对企业决策和利润（效用）、总消费者剩余以及社会福利的影响。研究表明：零售价格、碳减排水平以及产品销售量可能随着零售商的社会（福利）责任关注度的提高而同时增加；在零售商领导型供应链中，零售商利润的增加并不总是依赖于低碳技术投资效率（消费者环保意识）的提高；在制造商领导型供应链中，零售商的社会责任关注度的提高可使制造商和零售商同时获益，且制造商可能存在先动劣势。