Pub Date : 2023-03-13DOI: 10.1177/00076503231157715
Özgü Karakulak, Moira V. Faul
Refugee crises are one of the grand challenges of the 21st century. Despite the theoretical importance attached to value created for beneficiaries in the partnership literature, research tends to focus on internal processes and value created for partners and partnerships, leading to widespread calls to further specify the value created by partnerships for beneficiaries. Applying an analytical framework from the value creation and social impact literatures, we report on a study of multiple social partnerships of a nongovernmental organization in the refugee issue field. Our results demonstrate that frames of refugees held by partners and in partnerships’ implementation contexts shape the value creation activities undertaken for beneficiaries, and determine whether value is created and what types of value. The dual contribution of this article comprises a rare empirical study of value creation activities for beneficiaries (here, refugees) and theorization of how and when implementation context affects value creation by partnerships.
{"title":"Value Creation for Refugees by Social Partnerships: A Frames Perspective","authors":"Özgü Karakulak, Moira V. Faul","doi":"10.1177/00076503231157715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503231157715","url":null,"abstract":"Refugee crises are one of the grand challenges of the 21st century. Despite the theoretical importance attached to value created for beneficiaries in the partnership literature, research tends to focus on internal processes and value created for partners and partnerships, leading to widespread calls to further specify the value created by partnerships for beneficiaries. Applying an analytical framework from the value creation and social impact literatures, we report on a study of multiple social partnerships of a nongovernmental organization in the refugee issue field. Our results demonstrate that frames of refugees held by partners and in partnerships’ implementation contexts shape the value creation activities undertaken for beneficiaries, and determine whether value is created and what types of value. The dual contribution of this article comprises a rare empirical study of value creation activities for beneficiaries (here, refugees) and theorization of how and when implementation context affects value creation by partnerships.","PeriodicalId":409752,"journal":{"name":"Business & Society","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114604674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-31DOI: 10.1177/00076503221114021
Heidi Reed
This study examines how individual members of the public make moral sense of the potentially conflicting “economic problem” or “public health problem” representations of the COVID-19 crisis when judging responsible business behavior. The data are based on a qualitative survey involving a thought experiment with 119 participants in the United States conducted at the initial stage of the pandemic. This article proposes a typology matrix using the theories of cognitive polyphasia and cognitive dissonance to understand better individual moral sensemaking of responsible business behavior in the context of a societal paradox in which there are contradictory and interdependent demands between important social objectives. The typology, referred to as the 4R Model of Moral Sensemaking of Competing Social Problems, provides insights for how companies may be perceived when responding to competing social problems, expanding the micro-CSR (corporate social responsibility) and paradox literatures.
{"title":"When the Right Thing to Do Is Also the Wrong Thing: Moral Sensemaking of Responsible Business Behavior During the COVID-19 Crisis","authors":"Heidi Reed","doi":"10.1177/00076503221114021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221114021","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how individual members of the public make moral sense of the potentially conflicting “economic problem” or “public health problem” representations of the COVID-19 crisis when judging responsible business behavior. The data are based on a qualitative survey involving a thought experiment with 119 participants in the United States conducted at the initial stage of the pandemic. This article proposes a typology matrix using the theories of cognitive polyphasia and cognitive dissonance to understand better individual moral sensemaking of responsible business behavior in the context of a societal paradox in which there are contradictory and interdependent demands between important social objectives. The typology, referred to as the 4R Model of Moral Sensemaking of Competing Social Problems, provides insights for how companies may be perceived when responding to competing social problems, expanding the micro-CSR (corporate social responsibility) and paradox literatures.","PeriodicalId":409752,"journal":{"name":"Business & Society","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124528828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-28DOI: 10.1177/00076503221110486
Bennet Schwoon, Dennis Schoeneborn, A. Scherer
While today it is universally acknowledged that COVID-19 has generated immense challenges for businesses and societies worldwide, public perceptions varied significantly at the time of the pandemic’s initial appearance, even among democratic societies with comparable media systems. The growing scholarship on grand societal challenges in management and organization studies, however, tends to neglect the initial social construction of issues as complex, uncertain, evaluative, and widespread. We address this shortcoming by exploring the initial communicative enactment of COVID-19 in the media-based public discourse in Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom. By applying a social problem work lens, we identify three mechanisms that explain the maturation of COVID-19 into a grand challenge, further showing how these are contextually dependent on differences in discourse quality. We add to research on grand challenges, issue maturation, and framing dynamics by theorizing how issues become constructed and acknowledged as grand challenges in the first place.
{"title":"Enacting a Grand Challenge for Business and Society: Theorizing Issue Maturation in the Media-Based Public Discourse on COVID-19 in Three National Contexts","authors":"Bennet Schwoon, Dennis Schoeneborn, A. Scherer","doi":"10.1177/00076503221110486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221110486","url":null,"abstract":"While today it is universally acknowledged that COVID-19 has generated immense challenges for businesses and societies worldwide, public perceptions varied significantly at the time of the pandemic’s initial appearance, even among democratic societies with comparable media systems. The growing scholarship on grand societal challenges in management and organization studies, however, tends to neglect the initial social construction of issues as complex, uncertain, evaluative, and widespread. We address this shortcoming by exploring the initial communicative enactment of COVID-19 in the media-based public discourse in Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom. By applying a social problem work lens, we identify three mechanisms that explain the maturation of COVID-19 into a grand challenge, further showing how these are contextually dependent on differences in discourse quality. We add to research on grand challenges, issue maturation, and framing dynamics by theorizing how issues become constructed and acknowledged as grand challenges in the first place.","PeriodicalId":409752,"journal":{"name":"Business & Society","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125322107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-20DOI: 10.1177/00076503221101882
Katherine R. Cooper, Rong Wang
Refugee concerns may be perceived as controversial or outside the business domain, yet some corporations publicly engage these issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This article relies on institutional and constitutive approaches to CSR to explore why organizations might declare their engagement in refugee issues, and utilizes decoupling to explore the relationship between reported CSR policy and CSR activity. We utilize a mixed-method, content analysis approach to draw on Fortune Global 500 CSR reports between 2012 and 2019, a period in which refugee activity increased around the world. Our research suggests that few corporations offer refugee programming and fewer still feature programs that are “coupled” with either CSR policies or impacts. We introduce a typology that depicts these corporations as reactionary, recurring, relevant, or revelatory, and offer constitutive implications for CSR programming in response to other emerging social issues.
{"title":"From Reactionary to Revelatory: CSR Reporting in Response to the Global Refugee Crisis","authors":"Katherine R. Cooper, Rong Wang","doi":"10.1177/00076503221101882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221101882","url":null,"abstract":"Refugee concerns may be perceived as controversial or outside the business domain, yet some corporations publicly engage these issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This article relies on institutional and constitutive approaches to CSR to explore why organizations might declare their engagement in refugee issues, and utilizes decoupling to explore the relationship between reported CSR policy and CSR activity. We utilize a mixed-method, content analysis approach to draw on Fortune Global 500 CSR reports between 2012 and 2019, a period in which refugee activity increased around the world. Our research suggests that few corporations offer refugee programming and fewer still feature programs that are “coupled” with either CSR policies or impacts. We introduce a typology that depicts these corporations as reactionary, recurring, relevant, or revelatory, and offer constitutive implications for CSR programming in response to other emerging social issues.","PeriodicalId":409752,"journal":{"name":"Business & Society","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134448660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-02DOI: 10.1177/00076503221086849
Rebekka A. Böhm, U. Orth
Getting consumers to adopt infection prevention measures is important for society to overcome the coronavirus pandemic. This research adopts a moral decoupling perspective to examine how consumers in Germany respond to perceived transgressions of COVID-19 infection prevention regulations. Focusing on two nonpharmaceutical measures (mask wearing, social distancing) as well as a pharmaceutical one (vaccination), two empirical studies indicate that transgression relevance influences intention to adopt the measure (in parallel) through judgment of performance and judgment of morality. Type of transgression moderates the effect of transgression relevance on morality, but not on performance. In addition, effects weaken as a person’s fear of infection increases. Effects are robust, though, when controlling for moral decoupling and moral delegation (Study 1), and additionally for psychological reactance and political orientation (Study 2). Implications for research and practice evolve around new insights into how to get consumers to adopt infection prevention measures more effectively.
{"title":"Understanding German Consumers’ Intention to Adopt COVID-19 Infection Prevention Measures: A Moral Decoupling Perspective","authors":"Rebekka A. Böhm, U. Orth","doi":"10.1177/00076503221086849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221086849","url":null,"abstract":"Getting consumers to adopt infection prevention measures is important for society to overcome the coronavirus pandemic. This research adopts a moral decoupling perspective to examine how consumers in Germany respond to perceived transgressions of COVID-19 infection prevention regulations. Focusing on two nonpharmaceutical measures (mask wearing, social distancing) as well as a pharmaceutical one (vaccination), two empirical studies indicate that transgression relevance influences intention to adopt the measure (in parallel) through judgment of performance and judgment of morality. Type of transgression moderates the effect of transgression relevance on morality, but not on performance. In addition, effects weaken as a person’s fear of infection increases. Effects are robust, though, when controlling for moral decoupling and moral delegation (Study 1), and additionally for psychological reactance and political orientation (Study 2). Implications for research and practice evolve around new insights into how to get consumers to adopt infection prevention measures more effectively.","PeriodicalId":409752,"journal":{"name":"Business & Society","volume":"2001 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128302134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1177/00076503221084647
Heather Hachigian
The COVID-19 crisis has renewed interest in alternative forms of organizing business and investment but our understanding of how these organizations can transform social systems is limited. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this understanding. In the context of one of the greatest transfers of wealth in global retail history that could see unprecedented numbers of businesses close or sold to distant, private interests, the article performs a thought experiment using the analogy of a commercial trust to encourage new ideas and critical reflection on community wealth building. The article introduces systems hijacking—a process of leveraging incumbent forms and systems in which they are embedded for new purposes—as an analytically useful concept for understanding how alternative organizations can transform social systems. The article finds organizational governance is necessary to transcend structural deficiencies in inherited or borrowed forms to make way for transformation.
{"title":"Alternative Organizations as Systems Hijacking: The Commercial Trust as a Thought Experiment","authors":"Heather Hachigian","doi":"10.1177/00076503221084647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221084647","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 crisis has renewed interest in alternative forms of organizing business and investment but our understanding of how these organizations can transform social systems is limited. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this understanding. In the context of one of the greatest transfers of wealth in global retail history that could see unprecedented numbers of businesses close or sold to distant, private interests, the article performs a thought experiment using the analogy of a commercial trust to encourage new ideas and critical reflection on community wealth building. The article introduces systems hijacking—a process of leveraging incumbent forms and systems in which they are embedded for new purposes—as an analytically useful concept for understanding how alternative organizations can transform social systems. The article finds organizational governance is necessary to transcend structural deficiencies in inherited or borrowed forms to make way for transformation.","PeriodicalId":409752,"journal":{"name":"Business & Society","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130373628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}