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101. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Melissa S. Baucus Shortcut to Success: How Ponzi Entrepreneurs Establish & Grow Ventures Quickly
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This study examines the business models of highly successful Ponzi entrepreneurs. Results indicate that these entrepreneurs clearly articulate their customer value proposition, profit formula, key resources and processes that support their value proposition. Thus, Ponzi entrepreneurs appear quite adept at applying coreentrepreneurship concepts for illegal and unethical purposes. The results highlight the need to broaden the definition of “value creation” so it encompasses legal and ethical behavior in addition to the traditional and somewhat narrow economic use of the term. This study adds to the growing interest in measurement of business models (e.g., Zott et al., 2011) and it will hopefully foster more empirical research of illegal entrepreneurship.
102. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Lucien Dhooge, Bruce Klaw, Anne Barraquier, John Holcomb Globalizing the Business & Society Curriculum: Integrating Ethics, Law and Public Policy
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This paper discusses both the content of a global business and society curriculum, as well as comments on course delivery. Lucien Dhooge discusses the content of his global business ethics course in three parts, including the cases he uses and has developed in health policy, safety, and human rights. Bruce Klaw addresses the unique way his course addresses the issue of global corruption, as well as how the presence of international students may enrich the course, and how study abroad might be improved. Anne Barraquier focuses on the hurdles posed to business ethics instructors in teaching both in and about China, as well as the challenges in teaching students from China. John Holcomb discusses how various frameworks of public policy and ethical analysis might be applied inteaching a global business and society course, and various content items such as competition and environmental policies, corporate governance, and crisis management.
103. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Deborah L. Kidder Working Together Is in the Best Interests of Society: Teaching Restorative Justice Skills to Business Students
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This paper presents the results of an empirical study examining whether business students’ restorative justice skills, specifically empathy and perspective taking, can be improved. Data were collected at the beginning and the end of the semester. The results showed no change in empathy but a significant increase in perspective taking ability for both undergraduate and graduate students.
104. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Helene de Burgh-Woodman, Amitav Saha The Role of Business Education in Building Business Leadership for 21st Century Responsiveness and Environmental Stewardship: Should Business Education Be Re-Developed?
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21st century business graduates need to be well equipped with skillsets that enable them to apply their commercial knowledge in organisations where profit maximisation is not the sole purpose. However, business students continue to be taught classic commercial business principles that predominately value profit and performance, resulting in a significant skill shortage for businesses embracing ethical responsibility, social justice and environment issues. The aim of this project is to blueprint a cutting-edge commerce degree that fills this skill shortage by developing an Integrated Business Education Model with extensive literature review and consultation with a wide range of stakeholders. Using the Integrated Business Education Model a traditional commerce degree curriculum will be re-designed and piloted in a business school. Findings and implementation materials will be disseminated to all Australian business schools. Eventually, graduates of this contemporary commerce degree will be skilled to contribute and grow in any form of hybrid organisation.
105. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Wendy Stubbs Exploration of an Emerging Sustainable Business Model: The B Corp Model
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Hybrid business models are an emerging phenomenon that employs market tactics to address social and environmental issues. The B Corp model is one form of a hybrid model. It is a for-profit, socially obligated, corporate form of business, with traditional corporate characteristics but also with societal commitments. Thispaper reports on the experiences of fourteen early adopters of the B Corp model in Australia. The primary aim of the B Corps can be summarised as profit with a purpose – making profits to create positive social and/or environmental impacts. The key motivation for certifying as a B Corp was the alignment of values and a formal validation of the companies’ business philosophy and approach. Success was not gauged by maximising profits for owners/shareholders, but the impacts the businesses are making. Profits are a means to achieve positive social and environmental contributions.
106. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Sophie Clark, Megan Woods, David Adams Balancing Social and Commercial Objectives within Business Organisations: What Can We Learn from Social Enterprise?
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This article explores how social enterprises, as hybrid organisations that combine social benefit and commercial logics, manage these logics internally. Utilising data collected through a case study of six social enterprises operating within the Australian education and training industry, we show that social enterprises mayadopt a number of practices through which to manage their contrasting logics. These include challenging conceptualisations of profit internally, implementing participatory and integrated models of decision-making, as well as creating performance standards that account for multiple objectives. These findings provide insight into how other organisations may reconcile contrasting demands arising from the need to reconcile multiple logics, whilst also further developing our knowledge about how social enterprises operate internally.
107. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Nick Barter The Environment and Textbooks: Are They Enabling Sustainable Outcomes?
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A central claim within the sustainable development literature is that realizing sustainable outcomes requires a move away from a conceptualization of the environment as a separate, bounded, independently given entity. In this paper, the conceptualization of the environment within bestselling strategy textbooks in the UK and Australia in 2011 is reviewed. A focus on strategy textbooks is taken as it is argued that corporate strategists are key actors in the realization of sustainable outcomes. Thus the constructs those individuals may learn from texts are potentially key to their ability to realize sustainable outcomes. The findings show that the constructs in the textbooks offer a sclerotic, dehumanized view of the environment that is partitioned into external and internal categories by an organizational boundary. Thus if strategy textbooks are tools to help corporate strategists learn strategy, who will then enable sustainable development, changes are required.
108. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Susan E. Mate Patterns in Professional Roles: Sustainability Narratives
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This paper explores patterns in professional narratives over a period of six years. The purpose of this study was to explore patterns in narratives of change agents and discuss how narratives of sustainability develop over time. Narrative inquiry plays a role in bringing about inclusive environments by talking and writing about experience. In this study, stories were examined for insight into social organization within the workplace, and what motivates and sustains professional identity. Over the period of time narratives were collected for this study, there was an increase in the themes associated with sustainability leadership for the participants who were in senior and middle management roles. The senior management group shared a greater number of narratives associated withsustainability leadership than the middle management participants. Further consideration is given to how the workplace culture impacts on shared narratives.
109. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Mary Bonich, Louise Metcalf Can Organisations Pave the Way for Sustainability in Communities?
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Organisations are increasingly asked to respond to local environmental issues, however, due to competing interests, initiatives they can often be viewed with skepticism and mistrust. Research on organisationally led initiatives to respond positively to environmental issues is lacking. Using qualitative methodology, this case explores the drivers of a successful sustainable water allocation strategy in the town of Griffith NSW, part of the Murray Darling Basin, facilitated by the local irrigation authority. Data indicated that community engagement in planning and scoping was important in fostering support and project success. Equity in engagement, and facilitation via a combined top-down/bottom-up management style, increased trust. Understanding of the needs of each stakeholder group generated better engagement in the project, regardless of project outcomes, indicating that authentic consultation was a significant factor. This research suggests that given the appropriate stimulus, communities can ‘emerge’ their own sustainability.
110. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Burcin Hatipoglu Sustainability Management: A new career path?
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The need for including sustainability in higher education curricula and defining the role of higher education institutions in teaching for sustainability has been much discussed in literature. A rather new career has emerged with the advancement of sustainability change programs in organizations. Which key capabilities constitute a good sustainability manager and how best to educate them is yet to be defined. Based on the recent developments in the field there is a need to define this new career; including the competency requirements and the current roles in sustainability leadership. The current research is based on a qualitative inquiry involving ten sustainability managers of publicly listed companies in Turkey. A competency map is used for guiding the questions. The findings address the issues on the role of business schools on education for sustainable development. It defines sustainability management as a new career path for future graduates.
111. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Frederik Dahlmann Evolutionary systems theory of corporate sustainable strategy
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Drawing on complex systems theories this paper outlines a theory of why companies need to make more determined efforts to develop genuinely sustainable corporate strategies. The paper integrates the notions of coevolutionary systems change, fitness landscapes and corporate sustainable strategies in an attempt to synthesise our understanding of how and why organisations evolve over time with the observation of increasing rates of wider systemic changes. The aim is to illustrate that there is a much deeper (and arguably ‘natural’) reason for why firms will and must make greater efforts towards implementing sustainability strategies. By framing sustainability challenges through this evolutionary complex systems perspective, this paper hopes to contribute to more instrumental discussions about firms’ wider impact on nature and society.
112. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Anne Norheim-Hansen From Large to Small Environmental Reputation Asymmetry and Strategic Alliance Performance: A Theoretical Investigation
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Strategic alliances between firms with disparate environmental reputations are not uncommon. Yet, the potential implications for alliance performance have received little attention in the research literature. This, despite the growth in firms’ dependence on alliances in a business context with increasing environmental sustainability pressures facing them. Building on the well-established notion that reputation asymmetry affects alliance outcomes, this paper theorizes on how going from large to small environmental reputation asymmetry affects alliance performance. The analyses cover effects on key alliance success indicators in three major alliance phases – formation, design, and postformation – while drawing from the natural-resource-based and strategic cognition perspectives. A conceptual model is presented, proposing that environmental reputation asymmetry reduction between the allying firms is inversely related with indicators in each phase. In other words, it proposes that there are positive effects on alliance performance.
113. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Wan Noraini Wan Mansor, Steven L. Grover, Paula O’Kane Voices of the Neglected Society: Do They Need to Be Entertained or Ignored?
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This study focuses on the transitional living experience of the partners of international Doctoral of Philosophy (PhD) students. This population has received very little research attention despite the prevalence of international education, and it is particularly relevant because these trailing partners often experience the doublewhammy of significant status change from worker to homemaker coupled with landing in a foreign culture. Qualitative interviews with 30 international PhD student couples (60 people) identified three core cross-cultural challenges: situational living hardships, multiple roles demand and mid-career switch. Trailing partners need living, employment and academic support to enhance their transitional living experience. Thus, the study provokes the urgency for relevant stakeholders to proactively assist them to enjoy a pleasant and successful settling-in experience abroad.
114. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Frederik Dahlmann, Stephen Brammer Disclosure and Organisational Learning in the Context of Environmental Performance
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In this paper we explore the influences on firms' environmental performance within a conceptual framework that draws upon theories of organisational and institutional learning. More specifically, our study investigates companies’ changing levels of greenhouse gas emissions over time by controlling for the differentiated options of reporting available to companies. Drawing on CDP corporate emissions data we find that while on average between 2003 and 2012 the carbon emissions levels for our sample of global companies have been falling, this trend is not borne out at individual firm level. Instead, our conclusion has to be there is widespread stagnation in terms of emissions levels and contrary to our second hypothesis, we also do not find evidence of the traditional learning curve effect applying to carbon emissions levels following a firm’s first year of reporting.
115. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Michael O. Erdiaw-Kwasie, Khorshed Alam, Md Shahiduzzaman Bettering Corporate Social Responsibility through Empowerment and Effective Engagement Practices: An Australian Mining Perspective
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Stakeholder literature has affirmed the importance of stakeholder engagement to CSR, but little research has investigated the saliency of weak stakeholders or the development of relationships between weak stakeholders and businesses. The proposed study investigates how empowerment and engagement can influence CSR practices and outcomes. The case study approach for this proposed study uses a naturalistic and interpretivist paradigm. Qualitative primary data will be collected via focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with sampled communities, representatives of case companies, and sampled stakeholder institutions. Content analysis will be done on secondary data from sampled companies. The study aims to develop a framework that makes empirical, policy, and theoretical contributions to the discourse on stakeholder salience, corporate-community partnerships and CSR practice.
116. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Preeda Srinaruewan, Colin Higgins, Wayne Binney Consumer Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Thailand: The Moderating Effect of Competitive Positioning
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The aims of this paper are twofold. First, it contributes to understanding the business case for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in developing countries by focusing on the consumer-organizational relationship. Second, it tests the conceptual framework of Du, Bhattacharya and Sen (2007) which suggests that determinants and consequences of consumers’ CSR beliefs vary depending on the extent to which CSR initiatives are integral to the competitive positioning. Using survey data from 250 Thai mobile phone service provider consumers, findings show that a CSR brand is more likely than non-CSR brands to accrue consumer CSR awareness, positive attitude to company motivations, and beliefs in the CSR of that company. Although beliefs are associated with consumers’greater identification and advocacy behaviors towards the CSR brand than the non-CSR brands, they are not associated with loyalty. These results demonstrate some support for a business case for CSR in developing countries.
117. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Melissa Edwards, Adam J. Sulkowski Shaking Stakeholders to Leverage a Firm’s Unique Capacity in Issue Networks
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Firms are often seen to react to stakeholder pressure. However, if one changes the unit of analysis to a social or environmental issue, a firm emerges as a key influencer in mobilizing and connecting other stakeholders. For a variety of reasons, including the firm’s raison d’etre of creating value, a firm may be a critical leader or lynchpin in a movement, especially where it bridges gaps in a previously disconnected network. Two previously underappreciated aspects of stakeholder ties are highlighted in this paper. First, the firm can be seen as shaking otherwise latent stakeholders out of complacency, inasmuch as a firm informs and stimulates concerns, emotions, and actions among stakeholders in relation to a particular issue. Second, the firm can be seen as shaking-up theconnections between stakeholders, catalyzing new contacts and relationships within an issue network.
118. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Tyron Love Corporate Philanthropy Research: On the Value of the Recipient Actor, Time and Narrative Analysis
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This paper highlights the value of the recipient actor, time and narrative analysis to theory building in corporate philanthropy research. For corporate philanthropy, a system of gift/counter-gift is envisaged whereby recipient becomes donor in a re-occurring continuous spiral of giving activity over time, motivating the economy of gift exchange. Narrative methods can assist in the theory building exercise because they help build context by examining elements of managers’ lives as causally connected episodes of experience.
119. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Daraneekorn Supanti, Ken Butcher, Liz Fredline Understanding Managers' Engagement with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Thai Hotel Sector
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Corporate Social Responsibility (hereafter CSR) continues to draw substantial interest from both academics and business. While most of this research attention has emphasized the benefits to be derived from CSR, there is less evidence to explain why firms adopt CSR activities. That is, what are the firm’s motivations? This project extends on the current CSR and hospitality literature and on CSR antecedents related to the context of a developing country. The primary focus of this paper is to explore the nature of staff benefits as a motivating factor for undertaking CSR. A sequential mixed methods research design was used to collect data. This paper presents preliminary findings from semi-structured interviews and reveals new insights relating to staff benefits, which is expected to offer beneficial opportunities to the hotel industry. It should be noted that this paper presents material which is part of a broader project.
120. Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society: 2014
Geoff Edwards, David Marlow Allocation or Regulation: Reasserting Society’s Control over Corporations through Tenure
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Corporations are a social and legal construct. They cannot exist without limited liability and other protections deemed necessary for modern commercial activity. The original justification for corporations was to supply goods and services at a scale beyond local enterprise. This notion of serving the community has been lostand corporations’ duty is now seen as increasing shareholder value, which can reduce to funnelling wealth from society to the investor class. Given this modern business orthodoxy, in the absence of statutory directions otherwise, a company is obliged to prioritise commercial forces over ethical ones. Corporate social responsibility becomes an appeal to morality and is doomed to fail. It is open to the legislature to adjust the statutory regime. Serving the public interest can be made a purpose or an objective. By analogy with land law, the simplicity of embedding responsibilities as a condition of registration is contrasted with third-party regulation.