Business & Society

Corporate accountability is central for dealing with environmental and health effects in complex supply chains. When companies hold their suppliers accountable to certain rules or standards, these become disseminated in the supply chain. This study analyses how voluntary restrictions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in paper-based food packaging in Sweden are translated as they travel down the supply chain and their relationship to supplier practice. The multidisciplinary approach draws on both interviews with key actors and chemical analysis of PFAS in food packaging. It shows how demands for accountability for chemicals are translated both horizontally in the industry and vertically in supply chains resulting in a set of interrelated voluntary standards and rules. The chemical analysis detected PFAS in almost half of the samples, but at levels indicating non-intentional use, thereby complying with the disseminated rules. The result shows that the standards largely institutionalize established practices in support of “laggards” rather than push the industry to more radical phase-out of PFAS.

Hybrid organizing scholarship has considered various effects of organizational configurations, including evaluations from external audience members. Due to the particular focus of hybrid scholarship on organizations that are subject to market logic, however, it is difficult to determine whether hybrid form or market logic is most relevant to evaluators. We therefore conduct two online vignette experiments, one of which is preregistered. We confirm our hypothesis that the presence of market logic decreases evaluators intent to transact with the organization, mediated through moral legitimacy. We do not confirm our hypothesis, however, that hybrid form decreases intent to transact, mediated through cognitive legitimacy. We further find that the negative market logic effect does not vary by organizational field. Our explicit focus on market logic, and its moral legitimacy evaluations, forms our core contribution to hybrid organizing scholarship, which tends to heavily lean upon the categories scholarship to explain negative audience evaluations.

This Special Issue explores the vital connection between business and public health, highlighting their interdependence in addressing today’s global challenges. First, we demonstrate how firms are both contributors to and recipients of public health outcomes. Second, we examine the complexities business faces in defining its public health responsibilities, particularly when navigating diverse and often ambiguous stakeholders, such as communities. Third, we emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary research in addressing the multifaceted challenges at the intersection of business and public health, calling for a holistic approach that integrates insights from public health, medical research, management, and policy. The contributions affirm that public health is everyone’s business — both a societal concern and a business imperative that demands attention from all sectors. We hope the insights from this Special Issue spark ongoing dialogue and inspire firms to take a more proactive role in shaping a healthier, more sustainable future for all.

The issue of growth of Social and Solidarity Economy organizations has become a focus of analysis in response to the extensive case studies documented which recount processes of degeneration (or loss of original values) of the organizations in question. In this article, the case study of a non-profit cooperative (Agintzari S. Coop.) in the field of social services in the Basque Country (Spain) demonstrates the possibility of activating ecosystemic scaling processes, by way of inter-cooperative strategies, which do not result in the growth of the organization itself. The research question seeks to inquire to what extent inter-cooperation strategies, understood as ecosystemic scaling models, help to strengthen cooperative entities without weakening the maintenance of cooperative principles. The article aims to advance some results regarding the theoretical relationships between scaling strategies, the foundational motivations (or “interest orientation”) of the organizations, and the ecosystemic structures adopted to sustain these scaling processes.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often criticized for being undertheorized, contested, and largely redundant in the field of business and society. Yet limited attention has been paid to diverse ways of theorizing CSR. Driven by the identified weaknesses in the theoretical development of CSR, this research aims to explore the potential of theory elaboration implemented via grounded theory (GT) in strengthening CSR theorization. In doing so, the study offers a unique contribution by being the first study to offer actionable steps and guidelines for implementing theory elaboration via GT in CSR research. The study also offers a typology that can serve as a decision-making tool for researchers seeking to implement theory elaboration through GT in their CSR studies. Lastly, as a result of conducting two sets of literature reviews, the study outlines a number of CSR topics that can benefit from the proposed research pathway, and the particular theoretical CSR benefits theory elaboration via GT can offer. Hence, the study aspires to serve as a “stepping stone” for offering enhanced CSR theory.

This article examines how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and firms can collaborate on a contested corporate social responsibility (CSR) issue in lobbying the government to regulate businesses. Previous research has established how various contextual, organizational, and interactional factors affect cross-sector collaboration. However, there is little research on specific strategies that organizations can use to collaborate on contested and divisive issues. While research on CSR has introduced decontestation as a way of establishing dominant interpretations or depoliticization of CSR, through an empirical study, we suggest that decontestation can be used as a means of constituting cross-sector collaboration around contested issues and as a strategy for lobbying politicians and the public. We identified different mechanisms of decontestation employed by a Finnish cross-sector coalition in lobbying for human rights due diligence regulation. Our findings expand the literature on CSR decontestation and contribute to a better understanding of how NGOs and firms can form and collaborate in a cross-sector coalition to advance a contested issue.

This study examines how firms’ socially responsible behavior relates to the timing of their share repurchases, considering share mispricing and the resulting wealth transfer between sellers and ongoing shareholders. We hypothesize that firms with a stronger commitment to societal goals prioritize the interests of all stakeholders more equally than those with a weaker commitment. Therefore, their managers are less likely to take advantage of the wealth transfer from selling to ongoing shareholders, which occurs when the firm is undervalued. Our results show that firms with higher corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement, ceteris paribus, announce repurchases during periods of lower undervaluation. Additional analyses show that this effect is more pronounced when investor protection is stronger at the country level. Moreover, higher institutional ownership increases the relevance of undervaluation in buyback decisions and the distribution of excess cash is a relatively more important reason for share repurchases when firms display higher CSR engagement. Overall, our findings demonstrate that firms that generally act in a socially responsible manner also refrain from exploiting sellers for the benefit of ongoing investors. JEL classification: G15, G35, M14

This article complements company-level approaches on the explicitization of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), zooming out to the national institutional level. We draw on qualitative data collected during several research stays in Japan, a case with a recent uptake of “explicit” CSR, where, historically, companies focused on “implicit” CSR. We present an empirically grounded framework for CSR explicitization at the national institutional level, involving three dimensions of changes: (a) ideas around CSR, (b) modes of evaluation of CSR, and (c) structures of control over CSR. In Japan, this process has been driven by the government, orchestrating these changes. Our framework contextualizes earlier understandings of CSR explicitization, allowing critical examination in relation to socio-political developments and providing the grounds for future comparative analysis of CSR explicitization. Furthermore, we add to the literature on the government-CSR nexus, introducing the notion of ideational steering as a new mode of government orchestration and shedding light on the role of financial market actors as co-regulators of CSR.

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) have gained popularity in recent times as stakeholders strengthen pressure on private firms to address the climate crisis. In this article, I analyze a type of VEP with increasing importance within the private sector: environmental coalitions. Focusing on US publicly traded firms, I show that the firms that join a green coalition are greener than others and that they were also greener before becoming members. I apply a difference-in-differences design, using the fact that different firms became members at different points in time, and find no effect of membership on different measures of environmental performance. Why, then, do firms incur the costs of creating and maintaining these coalitions? I show that shareholder pressure, in particular from liberal and active individual shareholders, can explain this behavior. Taken together, the findings suggest that membership in a green coalition can be a tool for firms to signal their environmental credentials when faced with pressure from pro-environmental stakeholders.

Scholarship on corporate political activity (CPA) has remained largely silent on the substance of information strategies that firms utilize to influence policymakers. To address this deficiency, our study is situated in the European Union (EU), where political scientists have noted information strategies to be central to achieving lobbying success; the EU also provides a context of global norm-setting activities, especially with its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Aided by recent advances in the field of unsupervised machine learning, we performed a structural topic model analysis of the entire set of lobby documents submitted during two GDPR consultations, which were obtained via a so-called Freedom of Information request. Our analysis of the substance of information strategies reveals that the two policy phases constitute “shifting battlegrounds,” where firms first seek to influence what is included and excluded in the legislation, after which they engage the more specific interests of other stakeholders. Our main theoretical contribution concerns the identification of two distinct information strategies. Furthermore, we point at the need for more attention for institutional procedures and for the role of other stakeholders’ lobbying activities in CPA research.

Green human resource management (HRM) leverages the workforce to advance environmental sustainability. While prior research predominantly examined green HRM’s impact on employees’ environmental dedication, this study takes a more comprehensive approach by investigating employees’ broader commitment to the organization and examining a potential boundary condition. We posit that employees’ perceptions of green HRM, along with their beliefs in its authenticity, interact and relate to both pro-environmental behavior and affective organizational commitment. Results from a vignette experiment indicate that these effects are stronger when green HRM is perceived as authentic rather than inauthentic. A subsequent time-lagged field survey study extends these findings, suggesting that green HRM fosters pro-environmental behavior, which in turn spills over into affective organizational commitment. This indirect relationship is more pronounced among employees with stronger authenticity beliefs. These results offer novel insights into green HRM’s role in promoting commitment to both the environment and the organization, highlighting the importance of adopting this role authentically.

Organizations are increasingly adopting “Emotional AI” to monitor and influence employee emotions, aiming to create more empathetic workplaces. However, we argue that automating empathy risks fostering empathy skepticism, alienating employees, exacerbating mental health issues, and eroding trust. We call on organizations to address the root causes of negative workplace emotions and leverage AI as a tool to complement—rather than replace—empathy, fostering workplaces that genuinely prioritize care and trust.

This article develops the argument that the interplay between emotions and cognitive biases influences corporate decision-making on climate change adaptation. Our theoretical analysis examines how emotions can change the effect of cognitive biases on adaptation decisions by influencing how firms select, access, and process complex and uncertain climatic information. We draw on research on climate adaptation, social psychology, and managerial cognition and focus on three forms of bias: availability heuristic, framing, and anchoring. We explain how each bias shapes the decision-making process on adaptation and theorize how emotions of different valence and arousal affect this process. We shed light on the underlying mechanisms that explain how emotions influence the effect of cognitive biases as a source of inaction on adaptation in firms. Our analysis provides a new perspective on how firms approach the strategic decision to adapt to climate change by considering both cognitive and emotional aspects.

Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) can play a prominent role in tackling wicked sustainability problems. In particular, cities are critical venues for testing the potential of CSPs as agents of systemic change. However, the effectiveness of CSPs in orchestrating resources to drive systemic change in urban contexts is still not fully understood. We fill this gap through the longitudinal study of an action research case of a CSP offering urban food assistance. Our process model synthesizes how the resource orchestration activities put in place by the CSP spur phases of systemic change in the urban food system through different yet interrelated lifecycle stages of the initiative. Our results extend the literature on CSPs and systemic change showing the relationship between resource orchestration and the delivery of systemic change in urban contexts by CSPs, with significant implications for the design and management of CSPs dealing with wicked sustainability problems in cities.

Collaborative Governance Organizations (CGOs) are commonly established to manage Socio-Ecological Systems (SESs). Collaborative processes are designed to gather information relevant to SESs from a diverse set of actors and to foster shared learning in the face of ecological adversity. Little is known, however, about how CGOs develop attention to emerging ecological adversity, which is critical for providing effective and timely responses that enhance SES resilience. The biophysical mechanisms driving emerging ecological adversity cut across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Developing attention to these mechanisms requires identifying cross-scale interdependencies and allocating limited attentional resources between local vs. global concerns, and short-term vs. long-term issues. This study explores the process of developing organizational attention to climate change in French river basins. We propose a model in which CGOs’ systemic attention develops through key interactions with the State, scientific councils, and their biophysical environment.

This study investigates how essential retailers responded to the COVID-19 pandemic through stakeholder communications. Based on a comprehensive text analysis of the corporate websites of the 20 largest U.S. essential retailers during the first 19 months of the crisis, we categorize the public health measures communicated by these retailers and assess how these retailers adapted their messaging to address the concerns of different stakeholders over time. This analysis allowed us to create a framework for understanding the flow of retailer/stakeholder communication during a health crisis, highlighting the important role businesses can play in alleviating stakeholder concerns when public health is on the line. We discuss the implications of our findings for retailers and public policy, aiming to enhance preparedness and response for future health emergencies.

In addition to their conduct, organizations can be stigmatized for conduct they did not engage in. Advancing a conceptual foundation of illusory conduct stigma, I explain how it stems from a perceptional process that is distinct from the one underlying conduct stigma. I use conspiracy theory as an illustrative source of illusory conduct stigma and explain how the former evolves in the absence of evidence, differs from an official narrative, and incorporates organizations. The study proposes that organizations are likely targets when they have higher status, larger size, and recent media coverage, and the targeting is persistent when organizations are complex, diversified, and carry strong emotional appeal. Moreover, organizations are at times participants in the production, facilitation, and forbearance of illusory conduct stigma. The study contributes by explicating how organizations are affected as well as how they participate in the development and propagation of illusory conduct stigma.

Scientific research and progress come with hidden environmental costs along the entire research cycle. A holistic, environmentally sustainable approach is important, urging researchers to consider environmental impact alongside scientific value for more sustainable research.

To understand ethical consumer choice, it should be studied from a holistic, configurational perspective. We use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) ( N = 715) with a randomized experiment in the context of animal welfare to examine (a) the interdependencies of factors aiding or impeding ethical choice, and (b) whether ethical choices occur differently in a loss frame than in a gain frame. We identify several alternative pathways to ethical choice and non-choice, and within these pathways, we reveal substitution effects, complementarities, and contingencies, reflecting the complexities of consumer choice. Furthermore, we demonstrate how ethical choice results more easily in a loss frame, and non-choice more easily in a gain frame, but how framing can also be irrelevant in certain situations. We contribute theoretically to ethical consumer choice in general and to food choice in particular by showing how it is the interplay of several factors in complex configurations that determines whether the situation favors ethical choice or non-choice. We outline important management and policy implications of our findings.

What drives the visibility of fake business news? We investigate this timely question by analyzing the framing and content of fake news targeting Fortune 500 companies. Our research reveals that fake business news employing episodic frames—characterized by highly dramatized and unambiguous information—gains more visibility than thematic frames, regardless of an organization’s reputation, its web or media visibility. Additionally, we find that fake news about corporate governance is particularly visible because it presents a detailed narrative about unmet organizational obligations, reducing the ambiguity of the message. In contrast, fake news about corporate social responsibility does not show this effect. These insights enrich existing literature by demonstrating that the visibility of fake news in social media depends not only on emotional dramatization but also on detailed portrayal. In the business context, fake news is an emotionally and cognitively driven phenomenon depending on stylistic and content frames to enhance its visibility.

We posit and find evidence consistent with a new mechanism of intra-firm enforcement spillovers: the leakage of scarce compliance resources across facilities within a firm. Using a facility-level panel data set of Clean Air Act (CAA) enforcement actions from 2005 to 2017, we find a facility is more likely to violate the CAA following penalties on its same-industry-same-state siblings. In contrast, there is no significant spillover across firms. We show that the intra-firm spillover is not due to changes in regulatory attention or production shifting. Instead, our results suggest it may result from the redeployment of scarce compliance resources across siblings. Consistent with this mechanism, we find compliance leakage only occurs at privately held firms and facilities that lack the resources to invest in pollution prevention. The findings contribute to understanding the efficacy of environmental enforcement and have important implications for intra-firm management of environmental performance and regulatory enforcement approaches.

Conducting ethnographies in the business and society (BAS) domain is often a lonely odyssey for early-career researchers (ECRs), whose emotional struggles are frequently concealed behind celebrated research outcomes. I highlight the emotional stress during their research and call for solutions beyond their personal responsibility. I offer five suggestions to combat negative emotions and help ECRs navigate these challenges through collaborative efforts and systemic changes.

This article examines the impact of sustainability-oriented governance factors on companies reporting on due diligence requirements of conflict minerals (DDRCM). We use the rating scores that are assigned by the Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN) on a sample of multinational companies between 2015 and 2019. We consider whether the existence and type of an independent external audit, the existence of sustainability reports to communicate a firm’s message, the inclusion of sustainability-related targets in executive compensation contracts, and the existence of board-level sustainability committees are associated with DDRCM reporting. We find that the combined effect of sustainability-oriented governance factors is associated with higher DDRCM reporting suggesting that sustainability governance plays an effective role in shaping the corporate response to conflict mineral risks. We also find that effective boards moderate the association between sustainability governance and DDRCM reporting suggesting that effective boards can substitute for the resources that are required for sustainability governance.

We investigate the association between a wide range of community-level environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes and the credit risk of U.S. municipal finance fixed-income securities. We develop a novel dataset of multiple ESG outcomes for U.S. counties and connect it to a 2001-2020 panel of municipal bonds issued within those counties. Overall, we find supportive evidence that collective increases in community-level ESG factors (i.e., ESG outcomes) are associated with reductions in credit risk for U.S. municipal finance instruments over time. We theorize that these associations arise from variations in investor perceptions and manifested changes in fiscal health over time as a function of changing ESG outcomes. Post hoc analyses leveraging quasi-exogenous shocks to uncertainty, as well as connecting ESG outcomes to various measures of fiscal health at the county-year level, and credit ratings at the bond-year level, help validate this theory. Our research suggests that even socially agnostic investors should investigate the environmental and social performance of a municipality as part of their credit due diligence.

Although the simultaneous presence of multiple ambitions is inherent in hybrid venturing, pursuing social and/or environmental missions while securing commercial viability can generate ambivalence among stakeholders. In this study, we draw on the notion of “holism” to show how venture founders both embrace tensioned ambitions and sustain hybridity during critical venture development phases. Based on 6 years of data on The People’s Supermarket in the United Kingdom, we identify three distinct practices—fantasizing, bartering, and conjuring—used by founders to harness tensions productively, without compromising their venture’s multiple ambitions. These practices demonstrate the founders’ ability to maintain a venture’s hybrid nature throughout the ideation, organizational, and scale-up phases, thereby shedding light on the application of “holism” within the realm of hybrid venturing.