Ralph Hamann

University of Cape Town | UCT · Graduate School of Business

We explore the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on companies’ sustainability strategies and practices. Prior research has identified a number of factors that shape such effects, including crisis severity, resource slack, and prior investments, but their interactions have not been given much attention. We thus collected qualitative data on 25 companies in...

Discusses the diverse contextual manifestations of Covid-19 in Africa, including a focus on the informal sector and inequality.

Discusses the increasing prominence of the phrase "Building Back Better," its origins, and both the associated risks and possible benefits.

Founder identity is a burgeoning field of study; however, we know little about how founder identities emerge and change. We explore this question using an extreme case of a nascent business context in Northern Kenya through a longitudinal, qualitative study of 51 pastoralists newly introduced to business. Applying identity theory and social identit...

Formal, compliance-focused governance for supply chain sustainability initiatives has a mixed empirical track record. We build on classic research on bureaucracy to examine how “enabling” and “coercive” formalization at the buyer–supplier interface affect attitudes, an important precursor to behavioral engagement. We conduct a randomized field expe...

This article aims to disseminate our research on the role of social entrepreneurs and solidarity networks in alleviating the Covid-19 hunger crisis to the general public. We also invite government and other large organisations to recognise the complementarity between their own efforts and those of emergent solidarity networks.

Formal, compliance-focused governance for supply chain sustainability initiatives has a mixed empirical track record. We build on classic research on bureaucracy to examine how 'enabling' and 'coercive' formalization at the buyer-supplier interface affect attitudes, an important precursor to behavioral engagement. We conduct a randomized field expe...

Formal, compliance-focused governance for supply chain sustainability initiatives has a mixed empirical track record. We build on classic research on bureaucracy to examine how 'enabling' and 'coercive' formalization at the buyer-supplier interface affect attitudes, an important precursor to behavioral engagement. We conduct a randomized field expe...

We explore why and how corporations seek to build community resilience as a strategic response to grand challenges. Based on a comparative case study analysis of four corporations strategically building community resilience in five place-based communities in South Africa, as well as three counterfactual cases, we develop a process model of corporat...

We express our unease with one-sided invitations into the Northern mainstream, as well as with Southern critics' retreat into indigenous enclaves of organizational scholarship. We use this dichotomy to theorize the role of context in organizational theorizing by linking scholarly conversations on context, analogical reasoning, and problematizing as...

Discusses a partnership between a multinational mining corporation and a conservation NGO to explain limitations to such partnerships in an area of limited statehood.

I contribute to the "political CSR" debate on whether companies can or should fill public governance gaps by exploring how related business-government interactions may result in corporate social irresponsibility. I studied interactions between mining companies and the government in South Africa between 2002 and 2012, focusing on processes that cont...

Addressing food insecurity in South Africa requires innovative responses that fundamentally reconsider its causes, particularly because challenges facing the food system cut across issues, sectors, and scales. We discuss our experience in the Southern Africa Food Lab, a transformative space for diverse stakeholders from across the food system to en...

The environment and natural resources constitute a particularly urgent and complex governance domain. A linear relationship is commonly assumed between statehood and environmental performance, but this is not supported by the data, nor the expansive literatures on other actors and modes of environmental governance, focused on communities and social...

Case B follows up with VITALITE two years after VITALITE (A), in November 2017, to see how the company has addressed its challenges with business model innovation. The case presents the process of this innovation from the ideation phase through to implementation, the products of which are namely mobile money integration, a customer awareness strate...

There is ambivalence and uncertainty surrounding the stakeholder value impacts of increasingly influential collaborative consumption (CC) business models. While we observe such models expanding from developed to emerging economies we lack an understanding of the role played by the local context in which they are embedded. It can be assumed that sta...

Cross-sector partnerships have the capacity to bring together partners from very different backgrounds and circumstances toward collective prosocial efforts. We conducted a longitudinal inductive field study of eight cross-sector partnerships formed as new ventures addressing a variety of fundamental social challenges in the context of deep inequal...

Social inequality is underpinned by exploitative labour institutions, yet the agency of employers in establishing and maintaining such institutions remains underexplored. We thus adopt the lens of institutional work in analysing South African mining employers' purposive efforts to ensure reliable access to cheap labour from the 1860s through until...

We analyze two research-practice collaborations, in which we have been intimately involved: the Network for Business Sustainability (South Africa) and the Southern Africa Food Lab. We argue that knowledge co-production will likely be frustrated unless the intersection between knowledge and participants' underlying interests is understood and catere...

In view of a global trend of industry disruption by players in the new sharing economy, this case documents the path of Uber as one such disruptor in the emerging market context of South Africa (SA). It follows various stakeholders in Cape Town, SA, as they experience the opportunities and challenges presented by Uber’s transportation model from th...

Early inquiries into the contribution of performance-based cultural norms to growth-oriented entrepreneurship render their influence not significant. In a similar effort to explain crosscountry differences in growth-oriented entrepreneurship, we propose and test a midrange, contingency-based model receiving strong support in analysis of 267 country...

The question of how multinational enterprises (MNEs) respond to local corporate social responsibility (CSR) expectations remains salient, also in the context of many African governments’ attempts to define and regulate business responsibilities. What determines whether MNEs respond to such local, state-driven expectations as congruent with their gl...

This chapter describes the Southern Africa Food Lab (SAFL) as a proactive social innovation, and explores the challenges and opportunities encountered in setting up such an initiative. Food insecurity and hunger persist in urban and rural areas in South Africa, with high levels of reported hunger and persistent chronic and micronutrient malnutritio...

This chapter seeks to understand key obstacles to companies efforts at developing and implementing a base of the pyramid BoP) strategies. Critical in companies efforts to service the BoP is the development of mutually beneficial relationships with the consumer base given that a high degree of social embeddedness fosters trust, knowledge-sharing and...

Innovative responses are necessary to address persistent and intertwined problems such as poverty, resource degradation, or food insecurity. There is a growing expectation for business to play a proactive role in this, but there are still remarkable gaps in our understanding of how exactly business can generate social and environmental innovation....

How and why do business organizations make strategic commitments to sustainability and develop the organizational capabilities for achieving them in innovative ways? We seek to contribute to the debate by exploring the development of Woolworth relational approach to sustainability innovation. Woolworths is an illustrative case study because of its...

Purpose and problem: Governments through their policy support of new and growing enterprises continue to emphasise economic incentives as if most members of the population prioritise material gain. This article argues that high levels of government policy support for new and growing enterprises crowd out the population’s need for autonomy when pote...

Studies on why small and medium enterprises (SMEs) engage in proenvironmental behavior suggest that managers’ environmental responsibility plays a relatively greater role than competitiveness and legitimacy-seeking. These categories of drivers are mostly considered independent of each other. Using survey data and comparative case studies of wine fi...

In the face of limited progress toward meeting Millennium Development Goals or addressing climate change and resource degradation, increasing attention turns to harnessing the entrepreneurial, innovative, managerial and financial capacities of business for improved social and environmental outcomes. A more proactive role for business in sustainable...

Extant literature provides contradictory findings on how multinational enterprises (MNEs) respond to local CSR expectations. We argue that both firm-internal and external factors need to be taken into consideration, and we focus in particular on MNEs’ global CSR commitment and the regulatory distance between their home and host countries. Using the...

Mining companies' community relations capabilities still require much improvement.•An ‘overlapping consensus’ between mining companies and mine-affected communities is faced with significant difficulties.•The challenge is not just patient dialogue, but helping create a legitimate platform for such dialogue.

The management literature has given relatively little attention to companies’ embeddedness in social-ecological systems and the potential for companies to have positive environmental impacts. Based on two in-depth case studies of innovative corporate initiatives in South Africa, we define “systemic engagement” as strategically committed efforts to...

We are pleased to announce the 9th edition of the Annual Review of Social Partnerships (ARSP) 2014. ARSP is a unique international publication that is transdisciplinary and bridges the theory-practice divide by profiling multiple types of scholarship (discovery, integration, engagement, and teaching & learning). The aim of the ARSP is to bring toge...

We are pleased to announce the 9th edition of the Annual Review of Social Partnerships (ARSP) 2014. ARSP is a unique international publication that is transdisciplinary and bridges the theory-practice divide by profiling multiple types of scholarship (discovery, integration, engagement, and teaching & learning). The aim of the ARSP is to bring toge...

In this paper we review current approaches and recent advances in research on climate impacts and adaptation in South Africa. South Africa has a well-developed earth system science research program that underpins the climate change scenarios developed for the southern African region. Established research on the biophysical impacts of climate change...

The Praxis Section (previously the Events Section in earlier issues) broadens the section’s scope through incorporating a range of initiatives and activities to help bridge the theory-practice divide. The new sub-section, “Lessons from Partnership Practice” provides a range of perspectives from the partnership world. Estelle Colete, Programme Facil...

This paper examines the variations in country-level entrepreneurship rates due to the interplay between economic development, government regulations, and national culture. Since economic development represents abundant resources and opportunities for potential entrepreneurs, we argue for an overall positive trend between economic development and en...

This article investigates the interplay between institutional, organizational and individual levels in influencing the success of cross-sector partnership. Based on eight comparative case studies, it develops a model of intra- and inter-level interactions among key success factors. Conditions of institutional turbulence give rise not only to the “s...

We explore the opportunities and constraints in the development of a localised wind energy industry in South Africa by analysing four wind energy projects representing different models of wind turbine production as suggested by Lewis and Wiser. We find that each model has strategic challenges and opportunities, and that particularly in the early gr...

This article discusses opportunities and challenges in the governance of urban sustainability transitions, with an emphasis on the role and necessary capabilities of collaborative intermediary organisations (CIOs). CIOs are defined as a particular type of intermediary organisations that create platforms for deliberation and collaboration between di...

South Africa is not only Africa’s largest economy, it is also the continent’s biggest polluter, and it ranks among the 15 largest emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide. In February 2012, the South African government announced the introduction of a carbon tax to reduce high levels of harmful greenhouse gas emissions. ‘To minimise adverse impacts on...

Climate change and related social and environmental changes present societies with increasingly urgent problems at multiple spatial scales. A diverse range of social actors is involved in contributing to climate change, and an even broader range is suffering and will suffer its manifold consequences. In this book we focus on business organisations...

The human rights related controversies surrounding Anglo Platinum's Mogalakwena mine in South Africa's Limpopo Province hit the world stage in 2008, attracting public scrutiny and instigating much debate in the realm of international business and human rights discussions. We provide an in-depth analysis of the controversies at Mogalakwena, and Angl...

There is growing interest in the potential for business to make proactive contributions to food security, particularly as part of some form of cross-sector collaboration. Such collaboration can improve value chain efficiency and may also begin to address some of the ‘wicked problem’ characteristics of food insecurity. Our interviews conducted durin...

In this chapter we contribute to the overarching theme of this book with a focus on the African context, arguing that corporate responsibilities can be better understood and acted upon when seeing corporations as part of a broader governance system. Recognizing, of course, that the African continent provides for a wide array of circumstances (as is...

Industry transformation related to environmental stewardship has received significant scholarly attention over the past decade. However, limited theoretical and empirical work examines the motivations for improving environmental performance in an industry in different countries. In this paper, we develop a set of hypotheses, based in the theory of...

This chapter begins by emphasising its personal nature. This is because my thoughts on this subject are necessarily based on personal experience, and because my work on corporate responsibility is premised on two disconcertingly questionable assumptions: first, that business can make a positive contribution to sustainable development, even in south...

The purpose of the present article is to analyse South African listed companies’ public reporting in order to contribute to our understanding of how and why companies consider human rights. The empirical analysis is placed in the context of the increasing prominence of human rights as a business issue, premised in part on the activities of the Unit...

One of the most prominent illustrations of the challenges and complexities faced by companies operating in weak governance zones has been that of AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A payment made by AGA exploration staff to a rebel group accused of committing extensive human rights abuses was seen by leading non-gove...

This chapter discusses the context and practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in South Africa. It argues that the country's complex and painful history has significant implications for how CSR is understood and implemented. On the one hand, big business has been implicated in human rights abuses committed under apartheid; on the other h...

Responsible competitiveness clusters are cross-sector collaboration initiatives focused on identifying and acting upon synergies between sustainable development and economic competitiveness objectives. By means of three case studies in southern Africa this paper investigates the incentives, opportunities and challenges encountered in the emergence...

This article considers the South African black economic empowerment (BEE) programme, with an emphasis on the sector charters in mining and finance, to investigate the extent to which these developments may be characterised in terms of collaborative governance. It argues that the genesis and content of the charters do represent important elements of...

This Introduction provides an overview of the topic covered in this special themed issue and discusses the contributions.

This article argues that the trend to decentralise the Global Compact is an important step forward in order to spread the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Decentralisation, taking the form of establishing regional offices and local networks, is crucial to the adaptation of the principles of the Global Compact at the local level. This...

This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of the extent and manner in which corporate citizenship and related topics are taught to business students in South Africa. It argues that there are increasingly prominent drivers for integrating these topics in business education, but we know little about how South African business schools are respondi...

This introductory article considers the increasingly prominent expectation that business can and will make a significant contribution to sustainable development under the banner of corporate citizenship or related terms. It suggests a research agenda that questions the underlying assumptions of this discourse and addresses some of the practicalitie...

This article investigates the institutionalisation of corporate citizenship (CC) at Barloworld Limited, a diversified industrial enterprise. It describes a model that relates corporate identity, stakeholder engagement, internal structure and accountability and applies this model to a case study of Barloworld. The case study illustrates the importan...

The JSE Limited (JSE) in South Africa is the first bourse in an emerging market to develop a sustainability index for its top 160 listed companies. This article provides an overview of the Index methodology and uses the first and second rounds of the Index to assess the state of sustainability reporting among participating companies. It describes g...