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Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Pura Vida: Realizing Eudemonia in Business and Society

Volume 26
Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting

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Displaying: 1-20 of 25 documents


1. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
D. Kirk Davidson, Monroe Pray Jr. The Case for Complementarity in CSR: Business and Society on a Neo-Freudian Couch
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In this paper we bring a psychiatrist’s expertise – specifically using the concept of complementarity – to bear on the many seemingly irreconcilable contentious issues in the Business and Society field. Such issues are prevalent at all levels of inquiry and study in the managerial domain: for individual managers, for firms, for entire industries, and even for the capitalistic system itself. They are prevalent also for scholars in the related fields of corporate social responsibility and business ethics. An appreciation for complementarity in the study of managerial decision-making -- and here we use the word to mean the existence of two (or more) ways of perceiving a particular set of circumstances, both of which are valid, both of which are legitimate – leads to a richer and more complete under-standing of the problems facing managers and scholars. It results in less confrontation and better decision-making.
2. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Mark Schwartz Ethical Decision-Making Theory: Identifying Gaps and Deficiencies
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Ethical decision-making (EDM) descriptive theoretical models often conflict with each other and typically lack comprehensiveness. This paper examines these conflicts, gaps, and deficiencies in current EDM theory which would need to be addressed in any future comprehensive EDM model. The gaps and deficiencies include the following: (1) lack of consolidation of individual EDM variables; (2) lack of broader issue-related characteristics; (3) lack of moral awareness (or amoral awareness); (4) lack of integration of intuition and emotion; and (5) lack of integration of moral rationalization. The paper concludes with its implications for future EDM descriptive theory building.
3. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Isabel Sebastian Business and Corporate Social Responsibility in a Gross National Happiness Economy: Insights from Bhutan
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The current debate around better measures of progress and going ‘beyond-Gross Domestic Product (GDP)’ raises the question of implications for businesses and their sustainability efforts. Bhutan, with its Gross National Happiness (GNH) development approach provides an interesting case to investigate businesses in an economy focused on improving the conditions for wellbeing and happiness in society, alongside the goal of growing GDP. This study explores if and how GNH influences business conduct and sustainability efforts in Bhutan. It also investigates Bhutanese business and government leaders perceptions of the concept of GNH in relation to concepts such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Sustainability (CS). Some preliminary findings include that the Bhutanese value-system forms the foundation of business leaders’ world-views and influences their business conduct and decision-making more than the recent formulation of the GNH framework. A comparison of the CSR, CS and GNH frameworks shows however that the GNH model has the potential to offer a sustainability framework that goes beyond-CSR.
4. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
James Weber Discovering the Millennials’ Personal Values Orientation: A Comparison to Two Managerial Populations
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Values theory posits that individuals have values, formed by upbringing and life’s experiences, and influence an individual’s cognitive processes, decisions and behavior. Emerging onto the business scene is a new population group, the Millennials. This research seeks to explore Millennials’ values from the viewpoint of their personal value orientation (PVO). Managerial PVO from the 1980s and 2010s are used as comparative populations. The Millennials’ PVO is generally consistent with managerial PVO from past research. They tend toward a Personal, rather than Social, and Competence, rather than Moral, value orientation. Yet, some subtle differences emerged. Millennials are more self-focused and less other-focused than managers from the 1980s or 2010s. They emphasize competency skills more than today’s managers but less than the managers of the 1980s and place more worth on moral values than managers of the 1980s but less than today’s managers.
5. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Arturo Briseño, Bryan Husted The Diffusion of CSR Practices: Past Research and Future Directions
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This paper identifies the connections between the diffusion of innovations, social network, and institutional literatures to the study of the diffusion of managerial practices in general and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in particular. We demonstrate that each literature has contributed to explaining the diffusion and adoption of CSR practices but that there are still unexploited opportunities specially in combining the concepts and methods from diffusion, institutional, and networks literatures. We also argue that social network theory is a natural bridge that connects diffusion and institutional literatures providing richer explanations
6. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Nancy Kurland, Bobby Banerjee, Sandra Waddock, James Weber A Dialogue about Corporate Social Responsibility: Effective Guidance or Rhetorical Tool?
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In this symposium, panelists discussed the degree to which corporate social responsibility (CR) is an effective guidance or a rhetorical tool. Panelists organized their comments around three themes: the normative role of CR, descriptive outcomes of CR initiatives, and the ability of CR to effectively address contemporary global, social, economic, and ecological crises. Proceeding from a normative view, Weber contrasts a “child view” and “adult view” of CSR. Waddock argues from an instrumental perspective that current conceptions and implementations of CR are primarily ineffective rhetoric. Last, from a descriptive point of view, Banerjee discusses delusions of CR.
7. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Josetta McLaughlin, Gerald McLaughlin Company Towns, Industrial Welfare/Betterment, and CSR: Lessons from the “Satanic Mills”
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This paper describes the principle of service used to guide operations in W.M. Ritter Lumber Company towns, whether this principle supports early attempts at industrial betterment, and whether research on company towns located in remote areas of Central Appalachia during the early 1900s can enhance our understanding of CSR emergence. Many company towns in Central Appalachia are described as “Satanic Mills,” a term reflecting exploitive working conditions. Ritter’s 1920 book (The Lumberman), employee newsletters (The Hardwood Bark), and other resources paint a different picture of company town life and describe a management approach based on Ritter’s principle of service.
8. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Mariana Nóbrega, Gesinaldo de Ataíde Cândido Corporate Social Performance Assessment: Stakeholder’s Perspective on a Multidimensional Approach
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Corporate Social Performance (CSP) is an important construct in business-and-society study field; yet there is a mismatch between theoretical and empirical research. This article aims at contributing to solving this problem by presenting a methodology for CSP assessment that builds on CSP theoretical grounds promoting a combined analysis of the three CSP dimensions, describing: a) motivations that lead companies to assume social responsibilities (CSR principles); b) their posture towards these responsibilities (processes of responsiveness); and c) effects of corporate actions on stakeholders (policies, programs and social impacts), from the stakeholders’ point of view. The proposed methodology is a comprehensive tool that shall provide useful insights for academia, companies and stakeholders about business-and-society relationships. Besides, it can contribute to validation and refinement of the CSP construct.
9. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Rajat Panwar, Erlend Nybakk, Jonatan Pinkse, Eric Hansen Competitive Strategies and Small Firms’ Social Responsibilities
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The literature has long addressed the question if corporate social responsibility (CSR) can help a firm differentiate from competition and reduce its costs of doing business, ultimately leading to a sustainable competitive advantage. These two possible CSR outcomes, differentiation and cost leadership, also represent the two paths that firms could take in their strategic pursuits. Despite this apparent synergy between a firm’s strategic path and CSR, previous studies have not explored whether firm strategic choices have a bearing upon their level of CSR engagement. The present paper examines that question in the context of small US manufacturing firms.
10. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Linda Rodriguez, Patsy Lewellyn, Deborah Hazzard-Robinson Let’s Get Married: Tri-sector Collaborations in Small Communities: (Physical Activity & Obesity Reduction)
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This study looks to help reduce overweight and obesity in small towns by qualitatively examining public, private, and non-profit entities that possess aligned competences to form a tri-sector collaboration
11. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Angelique Slade Shantz Methodological Fit in Measuring Corporate Social Impact: A Contingent Approach
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Society is increasingly utilizing a firm’s social and environmental performance as a primary metric in evaluating legitimacy. As a result there is a growing scholarly need for more precise and socially relevant measures of the social impact of corporations, or corporate social impact (CSI), as opposed to broader or more firm-relevant metrics, such as financial or reputational impacts. I propose that a contingent approach, which explicitly examines the methodological fit between research scope and research method, can be a useful framework to aid CSI scholars in navigating the conceptual messiness of measuring CSI. The aim of this article is to contribute a framework that can be used to effectively address questions of CSI measurement by guiding the use of appropriate research methods and design to fit a given research scope.
12. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Kimberly Tribou, Patsy Lewellyn, Jeanne Logsdon Legal and Ethical Performance of US Government Contractors: A Façade or Compliance?
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This paper analyzes cases of procurement fraud by government contractors for the period, 2000-2014. The exploratory study provides information on which industry sectors were most likely to settle cases of procurement fraud and which types of violations occurred most frequently in these sectors. We develop two hypotheses that examine whether Ethics and Compliance processes for federal contractors, established in 2008, reduced the number of cases and whether political administration might increase or decrease the number of settled cases. Further research questions are suggested to learn more about the phenomenon of government contractor fraud.
13. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Duane Windsor Public Policy Avoidance: Economic Patriotism and Social Responsibility in Corporate Inversion, Other Tax Avoidance, and Regulatory Haven Decisions
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This paper explores whether and if so why virtuous behavior, good citizenship, and justice theory reach a limit when applied to legal tax and regulatory avoidance. A general conception of public policy avoidance includes such instances as corporate inversion, other tax avoidance, and regulatory haven decisions. These instances are legally permissible choices, but subject to moral and political criticism intended to promote voluntary self-regulation and changes in public policy strengthening regulatory controls. Economic patriotism and corporate social responsibility arguments call for voluntary self-regulation by companies in advance of public policy changes.
14. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
John Holcomb, Katherine Wear Corporate Political Activities: Evaluating the Criteria Applied by the Center for Political Accountability in Rating Corporate Policies
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This paper examines and criticizes the criteria developed by the Center for Political Accountability (CPA) to rank the political responsibility of corporations and their response to the demands for greater disclosure of their political activities to investors. It first examines the underlying rationale for greater disclosure and offers five overall criticisms of CPA criteria, including especially five elements of corruption not included in the criteria. Based on an examination of the websites of the top 100 corporations in the CPA rankings, to ascertain the level of disclosure on those five elements of corruption, this paper then develops new scores and rankings for those corporations, which demonstrate significant changes in the original scores and rankings.
15. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Holly Fairbaim, Stephen Pavelin, Haiming Hang The Effects of a Social Context on Reputational Judgments of Corporate Social Responsibility
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In this article we aim to build on an emergent literature that recognizes a corporate reputation as an aggregation of individual reputational judgments. We apply insights from social influence theory in order to develop a set of testable propositions to explain how various aspects of a social context – the visibility of judgments and the anticipation of discussion – affects individuals’ reputational judgments of CSR.
16. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Yves Fassin The Status of CSR and Sustainability Reporting at Universities in Europe: a Survey
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The results of a survey carried out in 2014 around the status of CSR and sustainability practice and reporting at the European Universities show this to be a recent phenomenon. While 82% of the 73 responding European universities (response rate 11,5%) had adopted CSR and sustainability in their strategy, 70% declared to report on sustainability, half of them after 2010, and with varying level of comprehensiveness and integration. It is the sustainability dimension that overhauled university management to communicate and to report on these issues with 20 years of delay as compared to business. As commonly with innovation, it are not always the most reputed universities that are innovators in sustainability, but less known universities in a competitive strategy of differentiation. Drawing on institutional theory and on the innovation literature, our study allows us to deduce that sustainability reporting at universities has reached its phase of dissemination and institutionalization.
17. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Annie Powell, Johanne Grosvold, Andrew Millington Trying and Failing: Understanding Adoption and Enactment Processes of Organizational Sustainability Commitments through Unintended Decoupling
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Organizations that do not implement espoused policies in practice face the risk of societal disapproval if the decoupling is exposed in an era of increased transparency and accountability expectations. While policy-practice decoupling remains an observed organizational outcome, organizations are becoming less inclined to deliberately adopt strategies of decoupling. Our first contribution to theory is an extended conceptual model which integrates both original accounts and recent developments in decoupling theory. Secondly we propose that decoupling is more often an unintended outcome of attempts to tightly couple, than a cynical evasive organizational act. Finally we propose three key conditions under which attempts to implement the policy yield decoupled or tightly coupled organizational outcomes, explicitly incorporating the role of individual agency into the decoupling frame.
18. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Tara Ceranic, Mark Peters The Seas of Change: Exploring the Impacts of Semester at Sea on Students’ Personal and Professional Growth
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Study abroad has the power to be a transformative experience for students and there are few programs as unique as Semester at Sea (SAS). In order to empirically investigate the impacts, if any, this program had on former students we surveyed 107 alumni. A variety of themes emerged from the coding of the qualitative data, but many of them clustered around the emergence of compassion. From our findings we believe there is potential to recreate the parts of the SAS experience that fostered compassion in our own classrooms for students unable to study abroad.
19. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
William Smith, Barrie Litzky, Kathleen Fadigan The Pursuit of Pura Vida in the Educational Experience
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Motivated by the desire to make our courses more relevant to students, we use experiential techniques that highlight the importance of civic and environmental causes. In three courses, across three disciplines, at three institutions, we are each grappling with issues of measuring student outcomes and assessment in sustainability themed courses. The purpose of this research is to compare the experiential mechanisms used across courses, in particular, service-learning and engaged scholarship, and with the help of IABS colleagues, to create relevant student outcome metrics. Our goal is to impact the scholarship of teaching by documenting pedagogical processes and outcomes that highlight best practices in the teaching of sustainability, and more broadly, business and society courses.
20. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2015
Vanessa Hill Conference Chair Remarks
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