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Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Reclaiming the Societal Dimension

Volume 25
Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting

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Displaying: 1-20 of 42 documents


1. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
About These Proceedings
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2. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Andrew Crane, Bryan W. Husted, Hari Bapuji, Robbin Derry Income Inequality in Business and Society Research
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Income inequality research in the business and society field is incipient. This workshop gathered relevant scholars in order to share current interests as well as to define future directions for research. Three groups discussed theory and methods, stakeholders and the value chain, and developing-country issues.
3. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Malcolm McIntosh, Sandra Waddock, R. Edward Freeman, Chellie Spiller, Edwina Pio Evolution, Shamans, and Adaptation: What Is/Could Be the Role of Academics in System Change? A Workshop
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We describe a workshop that issued a call to action for and as academics through the work of intellectual shamanism and wayfinding so that we can do the work of healing, connecting, and sensemaking—and providing hope—that we believe is needed in the world today.
4. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Janet E. Palmer, Anthony R. Grace The Homogeneity of Society: The Role of Franchising
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This paper explores the impact of franchising on society by debating both the positive and negative aspects of the business model. Research from both Australia and India reveals the role franchising has played on influencing local customs and culture. Emphasis is placed on the homogeneity of society and franchising’s role in embracing uniformity over diversity. The theory of McDonaldisation provides a framework for understanding some of the negative ways that franchising affects many aspects of society, not just the restaurant industry. Social franchising highlights the positive potential of the model. The authors’ conclude that franchising is a powerful tool that can be used for corporate profit or for social benefit. The aim of this paper is to increase discussion around the topic of franchising and its impact – positive or negative – on the homogeneity of society.
5. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
James Weber, Anke Arnaud SYMPOSIUM – Victor and Cullen’s Ethical Work Climate Construct Revisited: Emerging Themes and Research Questions
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This symposium focuses on theoretical, methodological and empirical advances to the ethical work climate (EWC) construct introduced by Victor and Cullen (1988). James Weber proposes a new, stronger, inherently normative, and more empirically viable theoretical framework for identifying and understanding EWCs.Anke Arnaud adds collective moral values to the original Arnaud and Schminke (2011) model, where collective moral values give rise to EWCs and interact with collective moral emotions to affect the relationship between EWCs and ethical behavior. (Two other authors presented their ideas as part of this symposium at the 2014 IABS Conference: Craig VanSandt combined the focus on managerial orientations with the observation that different types of organizations will likely have different EWCs by incorporating “dominant logics” and the Mental Model Style Survey; and Satish Deshpande emphasized addressing the research gap focusing on the impact of organizational factors on ethical decision-making and turns to China and the impact of guanxi and ethical dissolution within an organization for his empirical exploration. The Van Sandt and Deshpande essays are not included in this Proceedings.)
6. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
John Holcomb, Stephen Schlieman Corporate Governance: The Roles and Importance of Board Committees on Legal Compliance and Ethics
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This paper examines the extent and formation of legal compliance and ethics committees on the corporate boards of the top 200 companies within the Fortune 500. It first suggests possible reasons for the formation of such committees, including heightened legal exposure, overburdened audit committees, and legal incentives that reward companies for effective efforts to establish and monitor internal controls. The paper secondly examines the more prevalent existence of public responsibility committees of corporate boards and explains their jurisdiction and responsibilities. Thirdly, the paper examines the presence of women on audit committees, versus less powerful committees, in order to ascertain their real power in corporate governance.
7. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Thomas André Corporate Social Responsibility Boosts Value Creation at the Base of the Pyramid
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Multinational enterprises (MNEs) have embraced the possibility to find growth opportunities by targeting the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) segment, while contributing to alleviate poverty. Taking stock of the notorious early BoP initiatives that were relegated to philanthropic programs highlights a tension to combine both societal and financial sustainability. The paper questions why and how MNEs reposition the value creation of their BoP initiatives in regards of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy. We provide an empirical analysis of present BoP initiatives, based on a multiple-case study of seven MNEs’ initiatives and seventeen of their projects. The paper highlights three levels of CSR engagement at the firm level, which will translate into different strategies,organisations and types of value creation for BoP initiatives. We deliver novel insights for the study of the “business cases” of BoP strategies, which aim at gaining legitimacy, incubating strategic change and reaching profitable growth.
8. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Patcharaporn Bunlueng, Ken Butcher, Liz Fredline Local Communities’ Perceptions of Hotel Activities in Corporate Social Responsibility
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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to attract interest from tourism businesses, and many hotel companies are now substantially engaged in social and environmental responsibilities. This paper investigated local community perceptions of hotels undertaking CSR activities in provincial areas of Thailand. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with local community members. Results show a hotel’s CSR activities had been perceived to affect local communities’ quality of life (QOL), which influences their perception of the hotels and CSR activities.
9. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Tyron Love Corporate Philanthropy Research: On the Value of the Recipient Actor, Time and Narrative Analysis
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This paper highlights the value of the recipient actor, time and narrative analysis to theory building in corporate philanthropy research. For corporate philanthropy, a system of gift/counter-gift is envisaged whereby recipient becomes donor in a re-occurring continuous spiral of giving activity over time, motivating the economy of gift exchange. Narrative methods can assist in the theory building exercise because they help build context by examining elements of managers’ lives as causally connected episodes of experience.
10. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Linda M. Sama, R. Mitch Casselman Ethical Foresight in Business: Interpreting Societal Cues for Better Ethical Management
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This paper applies concepts of foresight to the ethical decision-making and the strategic management of organizational ethics programs. The approach views the intersection of business and society as a permeable frontier in which there is an iterative, ongoing exchange of information between various stakeholders. We view the ethical culture of an organization as an anticipatory system in which a predictive model of the systems future plays a role in the current behavior of the participants. This suggests that network or feedback causality can provide a theoretical link between a strategic vision of a future ethical state and behavior within the current ethical culture. Using this theory we develop a model for organizational ethics programs that argues for a long-term and widely dispersed view of the organization within its environment. The theory and the resulting model suggest a role for ethical foresight as a method to stave off ethical crises of societal import and to encourage a business-society interface that is ongoing, rather than one enacted only when a major ethical disaster emerges. This redefines the business-society relationship and puts the onus on the organization to continually interpret societal cues through dialogue and interaction and to reflect on internal organizational processes and decisions that may have contributed to ethical digressions in the past.
11. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Harshakumari Sarvaiya CSR for HR: Embedding CSR in Workplace Practices
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Based on data from interviews with CSR and HR professionals, this paper discusses possibilities for embedding corporate social responsibility (CSR) into human resource management (HRM). It examines how employee-related aspects can be addressed under the remit of CSR and how such interfaces work. Further, it argues that although HRM is responsible for employee issues such as diversity, equality, work-life balance, CSR has some implications for HRM. Thus, CSR helps to embed the social and ethical concerns of employees within HRM policies and practices and promotes socially responsible HRM. However, such a relationship is subject to CSR-related variables, such as the scope of CSR and variation among industries. If these factors are not favourable,disconnections may exist between CSR and HRM.
12. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Daraneekorn Supanti, Ken Butcher, Liz Fredline Understanding Managers' Engagement with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Thai Hotel Sector
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Corporate Social Responsibility (hereafter CSR) continues to draw substantial interest from both academics and business. While most of this research attention has emphasized the benefits to be derived from CSR, there is less evidence to explain why firms adopt CSR activities. That is, what are the firm’s motivations? This project extends on the current CSR and hospitality literature and on CSR antecedents related to the context of a developing country. The primary focus of this paper is to explore the nature of staff benefits as a motivating factor for undertaking CSR. A sequential mixed methods research design was used to collect data. This paper presents preliminary findings from semi-structured interviews and reveals new insights relating to staff benefits, which is expected to offer beneficial opportunities to the hotel industry. It should be noted that this paper presents material which is part of a broader project.
13. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Duane Windsor Corporate Social Responsibility: Defining the Societal Dimension
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This paper addresses the 2014 conference theme in aiming to define the “societal” dimension. The key finding is that society is a vague and contestable term. A societal dimension maintains CSR against reductionoriented substitutes such as corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, and stakeholder theory. Literaturesuggests five conceptions. (1) Society might be decomposed into external stakeholders of a firm with differing salience. (2) Another approach is internal to the firm: managers have pro-CSR or anti-CSR values shaping salience. (3) A third approach combines external and internal considerations: all stakeholders pressure top management. (4) Society is an aggregation of interests possessing theoretically informed prioritization independent of relative power and of specific stakeholder status. (5) Public policy is not necessarily reflective of society in either the prioritization sense or a general will sense, but might reflect bare majority opinion exercised through governmental arrangements. A hybrid solution combines virtuous managers and external controls.
14. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Lisa DeAngelis Creating A Global Community: Facilitating Discourse Among Engaged Stakeholders
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If we are to enact a global community such as Scherer and Palazzo’s model of deliberative democracy (2011), each of the actors within this community needs to be willing to break with existing norms and beliefs and experiment with new ways of thinking, working collaboratively to achieve a common set of objectives (Austin, 2000; Mackey & Sisodia, 2012). Yet there appear to be indications that support a more neo-institutional perspective, one poised to maintain and reinforce current structures of power (Lounsbury, Fairclough, & Paul Lee, 2012). Key to enacting this global community is understanding and giving voice to the varied stakeholders (Barrett, Thomas, & Hocevar, 1995; Freeman, Wicks, & Parmar, 2004; Freeman, 1994; Hardy, Sargent, & Thomas, 2011; Obstfeld, Sutcliffe, & Weick, 2005). Critical management studies may offer a platform for exploring this as it seeks to identify alternative approaches to addressing complex issues (Banerjee, 2012) by engaging varied constituents.
15. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Geoff Edwards, David Marlow Allocation or Regulation: Reasserting Society’s Control over Corporations through Tenure
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Corporations are a social and legal construct. They cannot exist without limited liability and other protections deemed necessary for modern commercial activity. The original justification for corporations was to supply goods and services at a scale beyond local enterprise. This notion of serving the community has been lostand corporations’ duty is now seen as increasing shareholder value, which can reduce to funnelling wealth from society to the investor class. Given this modern business orthodoxy, in the absence of statutory directions otherwise, a company is obliged to prioritise commercial forces over ethical ones. Corporate social responsibility becomes an appeal to morality and is doomed to fail. It is open to the legislature to adjust the statutory regime. Serving the public interest can be made a purpose or an objective. By analogy with land law, the simplicity of embedding responsibilities as a condition of registration is contrasted with third-party regulation.
16. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Melissa Edwards, Adam J. Sulkowski Shaking Stakeholders to Leverage a Firm’s Unique Capacity in Issue Networks
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Firms are often seen to react to stakeholder pressure. However, if one changes the unit of analysis to a social or environmental issue, a firm emerges as a key influencer in mobilizing and connecting other stakeholders. For a variety of reasons, including the firm’s raison d’etre of creating value, a firm may be a critical leader or lynchpin in a movement, especially where it bridges gaps in a previously disconnected network. Two previously underappreciated aspects of stakeholder ties are highlighted in this paper. First, the firm can be seen as shaking otherwise latent stakeholders out of complacency, inasmuch as a firm informs and stimulates concerns, emotions, and actions among stakeholders in relation to a particular issue. Second, the firm can be seen as shaking-up theconnections between stakeholders, catalyzing new contacts and relationships within an issue network.
17. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Michael O. Erdiaw-Kwasie, Khorshed Alam, Md Shahiduzzaman Bettering Corporate Social Responsibility through Empowerment and Effective Engagement Practices: An Australian Mining Perspective
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Stakeholder literature has affirmed the importance of stakeholder engagement to CSR, but little research has investigated the saliency of weak stakeholders or the development of relationships between weak stakeholders and businesses. The proposed study investigates how empowerment and engagement can influence CSR practices and outcomes. The case study approach for this proposed study uses a naturalistic and interpretivist paradigm. Qualitative primary data will be collected via focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with sampled communities, representatives of case companies, and sampled stakeholder institutions. Content analysis will be done on secondary data from sampled companies. The study aims to develop a framework that makes empirical, policy, and theoretical contributions to the discourse on stakeholder salience, corporate-community partnerships and CSR practice.
18. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Robert Mitchell, Ben Wooliscroft, James Higham Investigating the Place of Stakeholder Relationship Management in an Institutional Sustainability Orientation
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Academic research into the application of sustainable development principles in organisation management has concentrated on how environmental responsibility advances competitiveness, economic efficiency and profitability. There has been comparatively little assessment of the value of managed social relationships as part of an institutional sustainability orientation. This paper draws on exploratory research investigating the value of a sustainable market orientation in strategy management. The research context is organisations operating in the economically important New Zealand tourism sector. In-depth interviews were conducted providing rich data from business, government and community stakeholders. Findings indicate that synergies occur through formalintegration of a social orientation with economic and environmental management. This suggests that improved outcomes would result from using a management model such as sustainable market orientation (SMO). Implications include: planning and implementing constructive and principled coordination of institutional of social relationships to assure resources for socially and economically important enterprises, applying equity in business and governmentresponsiveness to stakeholder needs and the imperative to adopting effective international performance and reporting frameworks for sustainability oriented management. The research provides a valuable foundation for further study in this domain.
19. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Preeda Srinaruewan, Colin Higgins, Wayne Binney Consumer Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Thailand: The Moderating Effect of Competitive Positioning
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The aims of this paper are twofold. First, it contributes to understanding the business case for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in developing countries by focusing on the consumer-organizational relationship. Second, it tests the conceptual framework of Du, Bhattacharya and Sen (2007) which suggests that determinants and consequences of consumers’ CSR beliefs vary depending on the extent to which CSR initiatives are integral to the competitive positioning. Using survey data from 250 Thai mobile phone service provider consumers, findings show that a CSR brand is more likely than non-CSR brands to accrue consumer CSR awareness, positive attitude to company motivations, and beliefs in the CSR of that company. Although beliefs are associated with consumers’greater identification and advocacy behaviors towards the CSR brand than the non-CSR brands, they are not associated with loyalty. These results demonstrate some support for a business case for CSR in developing countries.
20. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Wan Noraini Wan Mansor, Steven L. Grover, Paula O’Kane Voices of the Neglected Society: Do They Need to Be Entertained or Ignored?
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This study focuses on the transitional living experience of the partners of international Doctoral of Philosophy (PhD) students. This population has received very little research attention despite the prevalence of international education, and it is particularly relevant because these trailing partners often experience the doublewhammy of significant status change from worker to homemaker coupled with landing in a foreign culture. Qualitative interviews with 30 international PhD student couples (60 people) identified three core cross-cultural challenges: situational living hardships, multiple roles demand and mid-career switch. Trailing partners need living, employment and academic support to enhance their transitional living experience. Thus, the study provokes the urgency for relevant stakeholders to proactively assist them to enjoy a pleasant and successful settling-in experience abroad.