Business Ethics the Environment & Responsibility最新文献

Many organizations have adopted an organizational ethics program to prevent unethical behavior within the organization. Decoupling the adoption of ethics programs from their implementation has been identified in the literature as an explanation for the ineffectiveness of such programs. In addition to this so-called policy–practice decoupling, means–ends decoupling may also occur when a well-implemented ethics program is nevertheless ineffective. This study investigates whether team ethical culture (TEC) acts as a coupling mechanism that mediates the effects of a well-implemented ethics program on unethical behavior in teams. We conducted a survey of 202 teams working in a business organization in the UK. The results of a structural equation analysis support the claim that TEC mediates this relationship. Based on this team-level case study, we argue that organizations that aim to implement an effective ethics program should acknowledge and manage TECs to avoid means-ends decoupling.

This study represents an empirical, comprehensive investigation of two different inter-organisational collaborative approaches, offering a novel perspective on collaborative circular business models in the modern economy. In this vein, we explore how open innovation strategies foster the implementation of circular economy practices within a circular supply chain and a circular ecosystem. In addition, we identify and characterise stakeholders' roles in facilitating the translation of circular principles into a viable business. An inductive theorising approach was employed, leveraging an explorative multiple case study methodology. Data were collected from 13 organisations involved in two collaborative networks, designed to establish upcycling practices to recover waste from the food and beverage industry. A critical realist philosophical positioning underpinned researchers' data collection and analysis. As a result, we outline the nature of two different collaborative approaches to pursue a regenerative production system through open innovation strategies: a circular supply chain and a circular ecosystem architecture. The characterisation of the coordinator and orchestrator of collaborative circular business models is also highlighted in our findings. In sum, this study contributes to the literature on circular economy by unveiling the role of open innovation in fostering circular business development. From a practical standpoint, it offers insights for managers of sustainability-oriented companies willing to implement upcycling practices.

In a context of growing environmental challenges, circular economy (CE) business models appear necessary for business to contribute positively to the ecological transition. While platform business models have been identified as a new and promising model in CE, we still lack a fine-grained understanding of the critical capabilities involved in developing and scaling them. To fill this gap, we build on a single case study of Phenix, a French-based fast-growing start-up in the food industry, tackling the issue of food waste. We identify three core managerial capabilities involved in the successful scaling of Phenix's business model. In addition to ecosystem orchestration capabilities, we identify two types of ambidextrous capabilities – forms of ambidexterity operating both at the organizational and at the institutional level. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering these capabilities in a bundle as they collectively contribute to the performance and scaling potential of the business model. We also call for an increased consideration of the role of institutional factors in shaping opportunities to design and scale profitable business models.

Globally, consumers are increasingly turning to sustainable consumption practices. This article emphasizes the importance of social and cultural context in the study of sustainable consumption, drawing on social representations. It attempts to explain and empirically demonstrate how sustainable consumption is socially represented. The aim of the study was to investigate the construction of representations of sustainable consumption as knowledge and its appropriation in relation to the purchase and consumption of food. Online focus groups were employed in a cross-sectional study conducted in Slovenia and Austria. The results of the study not only show how the “global” concept of sustainable consumption is appropriated and reflected in practices in a specific national and cultural context, but also highlight the importance of social representations in terms of how their meanings can influence the emergence of new practices. Furthermore, they show how sustainable consumption can occasionally be seen in actions that precede reflection or exist in a more abstract form unrelated to actions. The results offer several implications for practitioners seeking to promote sustainable consumption.

Despite their central role in the construction and development of the market for virtues as well as in the design, implementation, and evaluation of corporate sustainability strategies and governmental sustainability policies, sustainability consultants remain at best “hidden” corporate change agents. In this paper, we bring sustainability consultants back to the fore to account for how these actors discreetly regulate and shape contemporary sustainability transformations from the outside-in. We do so first by unpacking various roles of consultants as engineers, market builders, power vehicles, boundary workers, issue translators, and soft regulators; then we conceptualize how, through these roles, they contribute to empowering, legitimizing but also potentially supplanting and undermining the activities of corporate change agents operating inside corporations. We finally propose some research orientations for studying further the role of sustainability consultants in corporate transformations toward sustainability.

Organisations are increasingly expected to respond to societal and environmental issues within their supply chains. The nuances of this expectation necessitate the consideration of the disparities in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices within supply chains. Drawing on the stakeholder theory, this paper examines the meanings and influences on socially responsible purchasing (SRP) in supply chains. It adopts an interpretivist qualitative methodology, relying on data from semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with practitioners from multi-national and indigenous organisations in Nigeria. Our findings present a useful understanding of SRP based on the specific endogenous-level and exogenous-level influences. In particular, we develop an encompassing scope for SRP's meaning, outlining its key components, clarifying its boundaries and highlighting inconsistencies in its description. Our study provides a fresh understanding of SRP, with attendant contributions to the broad literature on CSR, corporate governance and supply chain management. It also offers insights to managers, purchasers, suppliers, financial analysts and policy-makers in embedding SRP.

How Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) engage with stakeholders on their sustainable practices remains an under-researched topic in extant business research. This occurs even though SMEs play a tremendous role across all economies, and they often engage stakeholders on sustainability issues to foster their competitive advantage. In this article, drawing on stakeholder and innovation ecosystem theories, we use empirical evidence from multiple case studies of made in Italy firms operating in the fashion, food, and furniture industries to explore the proposed research model in the SME context. Our case studies analysis reveals the specific stakeholder engagement levels activated by SMEs to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for circular value co-creation. Furthermore, we find that the stakeholder engagement levels revolve chiefly around open dialog with local community and customers, involvement of employees, customers, and community, and cooperation with suppliers, Government, and Academy. Implications of the findings for researchers, managers, and policymakers are discussed.

Stakeholder scholars have long explored how stakeholder relationships differ from economic transactions. We contribute to this ongoing inquiry by developing a conceptual framework of relationality in stakeholder theory that encompasses a stakeholder-theoretic extension of Williamson's contracting schema and a new typology of stakeholder relationships. Premised on understanding relationality as the need for informal human relationships beyond formal governance, our framework locates the key difference between transaction cost economics and stakeholder theory in their treatment of informal relationships. While transaction cost economics perceives informal relationships to be shaped by formal governance structures and enforced by contractual safeguards, stakeholder theory is open to the possibility that some informal relationships between stakeholders may be genuinely moral and thus irreducible to formal governance and contractual safeguards. These stakeholder relationships may lead to unique economic effects described by instrumental stakeholder theory. The difference that we identified between the two literatures shows how stakeholder theory's embrace of relationality surpasses that of transaction cost economics.

Traditionally, the consequences of employees' behavior (teleology) and the norms attributed to the behavior (deontology) have been two familiar determinants of ethical decision making (EDM). More recently, emotions have also gained considerable attention for their ability to affect EDM. Marketing ethics literature overlooks how emotions are related with norms and consequences. Hence, this study investigates how normative, consequentialist, and emotional factors interactively influence EDM in a sales ethics context. Using scenarios with a 2 × 2 between-groups factorial design, we collected data online from 303 sales professionals. Then we used independent samples t tests and hierarchical regression models to analyze the hypothesized relationships. Results indicate that violation of and obedience to deontological norms stimulate negative and positive anticipated emotions, respectively, leading to stronger EDM. However, to a lesser extent, when violation of and obedience to deontological norms do not stimulate anticipated emotions, those emotions lead to weaker EDM. Moreover, consequences do not stimulate any anticipated emotions. Instead, consequences moderate the relationship between anticipated emotions and EDM. In addition, deontological and teleological evaluations mediate the relationship between anticipated emotions and EDM. These findings highlight the importance of considering the interplay between normative, consequentialist, and emotional factors in the formation of ethical judgments and intentions. The article discusses the implications of these results for sales professionals and organizations and suggests future research directions.

Recently, a number of scholars have warned against the risk of a new form of deliberately deceptive communication companies use to assure stakeholders of their good intentions in the adoption and development of digital technologies and advanced information systems based on artificial intelligence. This corporate behaviour, defined as machinewashing, in an attempt to empower engagement processes in the stakeholders’ network and satisfy stakeholder expectations with regard to the ethical implications of the use of artificial intelligence, has, in the final instance, the prevailing purpose of achieving better levels of corporate performance and reputation. However, thus far, scholars have not provided any empirical studies on the existence of corporate machinewashing strategies, and there is a significant lack of clarity as to how to measure machinewashing. Utilising the corporate digital responsibility theory, this paper offers an original methodological contribution to the nascent research field dedicated to machinewashing behaviour. Particularly, this paper provides considerations for detecting machinewashing through an analysis based on the comparison between the information capacity of the reporting and the information reliability level as a proxy for machinewashing strategies and, thus, for the real impact of digitalisation strategies on stakeholders. To this end, we conducted an exploratory content analysis of the reports of 10 Italian-listed companies from 10 different industries. Overall, looking at the gap between what companies say about the impact of digitalisation from an ethical perspective, and what really happens, our results define a possible path for identifying machinewashing, the fields where it happens and the practices that companies use in order to realise these strategies.