International Accountability Standards have become the primary instruments for supporting firms in becoming more accountable in terms of their sustainability performance. However, there is evidence suggesting that firms who adopt such standards, frequently fail to achieve compliance. Rather, the formal policies prescribed by these standards tend to be decoupled from daily practice. Such decoupling may lead to situations where standards are not effectively implemented or regularly violated. The purpose of this study is to comparatively assess the risk of decoupling across a sample of 50 well-known standards. We find that certain types of standards are more prone than others to being decoupled. Furthermore, we identify three main components explaining the relative differences between standards with regard to decoupling risk, notably comparability, measurability and implementability. We conclude by contextualising our findings and elaborating on their implications for the quality and effectiveness of International Accountability Standards.

The purpose of this paper is to begin a discussion of the ethical aspects of corporate espionage by examining the behaviour of a major accounting firm (Deloitte) with respect to its acquisition of a rival consulting firm (BearingPoint) through the use of competitive intelligence. The techniques used by Deloitte were questionable. But where they unethical? Arguments are presented both pro and con with the overall conclusion that Deloitte did not act in the public interest.

Nonprofits today face increasing demands for programming, evaluation, and transparency while still needing to raise funds for operations. In an increasingly competitive funding environment, how can or should nonprofits diversify their revenue streams, add earned income initiatives or pursue other efforts to achieve financial sustainability? Focused on institutions in the U.S., this qualitative research presents a discussion of subject matter experts’ perceptions on earned income, resource diversification, and characteristics of financially sustainable nonprofit organizations.

As business continues to globalize, diversity in the workplace becomes even more important. Because a graduate business degree is often used as a criterion to set candidates apart for leadership roles, a low number of women and people of color in MBA, IMBA, DBA, and PhD programs can impact their representation in leadership. The following research is a case study of a global business school based in Europe to determine if different types of students, including women and those from non-western countries, are succeeding at the same rates as male students from Europe and North America. Overall, the research revealed that there is no statistically significant difference between the graduation rates of male or female students but that students from nonwestern countries were less likely to complete their degrees than students from Europe and North America.

The majority of Americans utilize mainstream banks and credit unions to complete basic financial transactions, however, many rely upon informal, alternative financial service providers, thus remaining unbanked or underbanked. The presence of brick-and-mortar check cashing and payday loan storefronts in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods remains controversial, as reliance on these services may present a financial hardship to consumers. This study utilizes geographic information systems and binary logistic regression to test the hypothesis that sociodemographic characteristics have a predictive relationship on the presence of banking deserts—census tracts where check cashing outlets are more prevalent than mainstream banks—in southeastern Pennsylvania. Results reveal that banking deserts are predicted by comparatively higher population density, lower levels of median household income, higher proportion of Black and Latinx residents, and higher levels of mortgage application denial. This study aims to better understand the two-tiered financial service system in the interest of promoting financial inclusion.

This paper examines appropriate definition of responsible capitalism in relationship to business tax avoidance and tax policy lobbying (as distinct from illegal tax evasion). Extant literature on this topic tends to assert or assume that tax avoidance and tax policy lobbying are irresponsible, especially with respect to developing countries. The argument is that developing countries have a legitimate need for tax revenues in the public interest. This paper discusses objections to the assertion and the argument. The author separates legal and moral notions about taxation. Generally, in reasonably clean constitutional democracies, businesses and households do not have a moral duty to overpay taxes or to avoid engaging in tax policy lobbying. The decision problem is strategic (for taxpayers) and political (for elected representatives), not ethical. In corrupt regimes, businesses and households arguably face a condition of justifiable civil disobedience.

This paper examines definition and interpretation of corporate hypocrisy. There are two different kinds of hypocrisy. One form is objective and universal: a business actor states an ideal or standard and anyone else can see reasonably that the actor’s behavior deviates substantially from this espoused ideal. The other form is subjective and thus is not universal: someone else states an espoused ideal or standard and argues that the business actor’s behavior does not match that prescribed ideal. The paper provides a proposed model in which hypocrisy and cynicism interact in a vicious circle such that both increase. A dimension of this model is that demand (need) for corporate financial altruism is (effectively) unlimited, while the supply (provision) of corporate financial altruism is strictly limited. This imbalance is ripe for generating hypocrisy and cynicism.

Environmental sustainability initiatives offer a promising pathway to achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals. Firm engagement is sought through a competitiveness logic by emphasizing environmental sustainability initiatives will enhance firm competitiveness. Our aim in this paper is to carefully articulate the proposed link between environmental sustainability initiatives and firm competitiveness. In doing so, we conduct an interdisciplinary, systematic review of literature that examines links between different types of environmental sustainability initiatives and different dimensions of firm competitiveness.

The Chinese owned Jiuxing Mine withdrew from Madagascar due to community protests against its operations. This research considered the theoretical constructs of Carrol’s Pyramid of Social Responsibility (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2006: 39) and the Continuum of Community Engagement (Bowen, Newenham-Kahindi and Herremans, 2010: 304) in three comparative mining case studies in South Africa, China, and Madagascar. The case studies identified possible reasons for Jiuxing Mine’s failure to engage the local population’s approval, and proposed a range of recommendations for mining companies to effectively engage with their local communities.The case studies confirmed that transformative community engagement in the mining sector provided the opportunity to identify negative externalities from land acquisition and mining operations; encouraged collaborative engagement with national and local government, other industry players, community representatives, community members, and community organisations; facilitates collaborative agreements for the benefit of all parties; and encourages an integrated strategy that maximises social investment outcomes.

Big data analysis is sweeping the natural sciences, industry, and the digital humanities, but what about business and society? The purpose of this session is to facilitate a conversation about the relationship of big data and data science analytics and their relevance to the business and society community in our roles as researchers, reviewers, editors, and scholars. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of big data analysis, and comparisons of big data methods with traditional quantitative and qualitative methods. We will offer a brief example of a topic modelling analysis, and will invite participants to consider the possibilities for using big data analysis in their business and society research.

This paper develops the outlines of a research proposal asking how do environmental managers engage in organisational ambidexterity in order to bridge the competing institutional logics defining and affecting their roles and practices? Drawing on a conceptual framework of organisational ambidexterity we seek to explore how environmental managers manage the competing institutional logics defining and affecting their roles and practices. Using qualitative inductive analysis on interviews with a multitude of UK firms undertaken at the height of the global financial crisis, we plan to examine the organizational capabilities required for dealing with the ethical and strategic trade-offs between meeting economic and ecological organizational objectives, and thus address questions around how companies can move from ambition to more lasting impact.

This paper explores the dramatic changes in the employer-employee relationship over the past several decades and the implications for the concept of employee rights.

The fields of applied and professional ethics have accepted the Ethics of Care as the definitive feminist ethics for nearly three decades. Feminism has moved on to embrace the intersectional study of gender, race, and class in identifying key issues and methods, but scholarship in business ethics has not yet adopted intersectional feminism. Further, our understanding of gender is rapidly shifting. Whereas second wave feminism was articulated on the basis of widely accepted norms of gender as a dichotomous variable, gender is now understood to be less essential, more fluid, and entirely socially constructed. This raises challenging questions about what feminism represents, and therefore what feminist ethics is.

In general, hedge fund activist investors primarily seek to increase their equity value; however, such actions can arise from other intentions and can result in unforeseen consequences. We examine how hedge fund activism during the 1994-2007 period has impacted US companies and their subsequent environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Specifically, we compare prior company ESG performance with that occurring after being targeted by a hedge fund activist investor. We use ESG ratings in a panel data analysis with stakeholder dimensions of the natural environment, the community, diversity, employees, consumers, and specific governance elements. For those firms targeted by hedge fund activists, we found that the number of environmental concerns decreased while the number of corporate governance strengths increased. Social performance was generally worse after being targeted, as targeted firms had fewer strengths in the employee, community, and product dimensions and more concerns in the employee and diversity dimensions.

Two 2016 events highlighted the rise of nationalism: (1) the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and (2) Brexit, the UK vote to withdraw from the European Union. We as scholars and teachers and our students as global citizens entering the workforce were and are experiencing increased political and social tensions in both hemispheres and amplified uncertainty. In this presentation, we sought to open a dialogue on the language we use in business and society research and teaching as well as the underlying, often unmentioned, assumptions underlying our studies and pedagogy.