This paper applies concepts of foresight to the ethical decision-making and the strategic management of organizational ethics programs. The approach views the intersection of business and society as a permeable frontier in which there is an iterative, ongoing exchange of information between various stakeholders. We view the ethical culture of an organization as an anticipatory system in which a predictive model of the systems future plays a role in the current behavior of the participants. This suggests that network or feedback causality can provide a theoretical link between a strategic vision of a future ethical state and behavior within the current ethical culture. Using this theory we develop a model for organizational ethics programs that argues for a long-term and widely dispersed view of the organization within its environment. The theory and the resulting model suggest a role for ethical foresight as a method to stave off ethical crises of societal import and to encourage a business-society interface that is ongoing, rather than one enacted only when a major ethical disaster emerges. This redefines the business-society relationship and puts the onus on the organization to continually interpret societal cues through dialogue and interaction and to reflect on internal organizational processes and decisions that may have contributed to ethical digressions in the past.

This paper demonstrates how the theoretical framework of white-collar crime, grounded in the "Fraud Triangle" provides a useful theoretical foundation for research in academic dishonesty.

This literature review article aims to bring a better understanding to the field of corporate sustainability (CS) as studied by management scholars from 1995 to 2013. The authors summarize the different definitions and measures that have been adopted by management scholars working in the CS field in both academic and practitioner management journals. The results show that the CS field is still evolving and different approaches to define and measure CS have been used. Differences are also found between the literature that targets scholars versus the one targeting practitioners. The authors also provide a set of recommendations on how to advance the CS field.

If we are to enact a global community such as Scherer and Palazzo’s model of deliberative democracy (2011), each of the actors within this community needs to be willing to break with existing norms and beliefs and experiment with new ways of thinking, working collaboratively to achieve a common set of objectives (Austin, 2000; Mackey & Sisodia, 2012). Yet there appear to be indications that support a more neo-institutional perspective, one poised to maintain and reinforce current structures of power (Lounsbury, Fairclough, & Paul Lee, 2012). Key to enacting this global community is understanding and giving voice to the varied stakeholders (Barrett, Thomas, & Hocevar, 1995; Freeman, Wicks, & Parmar, 2004; Freeman, 1994; Hardy, Sargent, & Thomas, 2011; Obstfeld, Sutcliffe, & Weick, 2005). Critical management studies may offer a platform for exploring this as it seeks to identify alternative approaches to addressing complex issues (Banerjee, 2012) by engaging varied constituents.

This paper examines and criticizes the criteria developed by the Center for Political Accountability (CPA) to rank the political responsibility of corporations and their response to the demands for greater disclosure of their political activities to investors. It first examines the underlying rationale for greater disclosure and offers five overall criticisms of CPA criteria, including especially five elements of corruption not included in the criteria. Based on an examination of the websites of the top 100 corporations in the CPA rankings, to ascertain the level of disclosure on those five elements of corruption, this paper then develops new scores and rankings for those corporations, which demonstrate significant changes in the original scores and rankings.

Corporate Social Performance (CSP) is an important construct in business-and-society study field; yet there is a mismatch between theoretical and empirical research. This article aims at contributing to solving this problem by presenting a methodology for CSP assessment that builds on CSP theoretical grounds promoting a combined analysis of the three CSP dimensions, describing: a) motivations that lead companies to assume social responsibilities (CSR principles); b) their posture towards these responsibilities (processes of responsiveness); and c) effects of corporate actions on stakeholders (policies, programs and social impacts), from the stakeholders’ point of view. The proposed methodology is a comprehensive tool that shall provide useful insights for academia, companies and stakeholders about business-and-society relationships. Besides, it can contribute to validation and refinement of the CSP construct.

In this symposium, panelists discussed the degree to which corporate social responsibility (CR) is an effective guidance or a rhetorical tool. Panelists organized their comments around three themes: the normative role of CR, descriptive outcomes of CR initiatives, and the ability of CR to effectively address contemporary global, social, economic, and ecological crises. Proceeding from a normative view, Weber contrasts a “child view” and “adult view” of CSR. Waddock argues from an instrumental perspective that current conceptions and implementations of CR are primarily ineffective rhetoric. Last, from a descriptive point of view, Banerjee discusses delusions of CR.

Ethical decision-making (EDM) descriptive theoretical models often conflict with each other and typically lack comprehensiveness. This paper examines these conflicts, gaps, and deficiencies in current EDM theory which would need to be addressed in any future comprehensive EDM model. The gaps and deficiencies include the following: (1) lack of consolidation of individual EDM variables; (2) lack of broader issue-related characteristics; (3) lack of moral awareness (or amoral awareness); (4) lack of integration of intuition and emotion; and (5) lack of integration of moral rationalization. The paper concludes with its implications for future EDM descriptive theory building.

In this paper we bring a psychiatrist’s expertise – specifically using the concept of complementarity – to bear on the many seemingly irreconcilable contentious issues in the Business and Society field. Such issues are prevalent at all levels of inquiry and study in the managerial domain: for individual managers, for firms, for entire industries, and even for the capitalistic system itself. They are prevalent also for scholars in the related fields of corporate social responsibility and business ethics. An appreciation for complementarity in the study of managerial decision-making -- and here we use the word to mean the existence of two (or more) ways of perceiving a particular set of circumstances, both of which are valid, both of which are legitimate – leads to a richer and more complete under-standing of the problems facing managers and scholars. It results in less confrontation and better decision-making.

This study looks to help reduce overweight and obesity in small towns by qualitatively examining public, private, and non-profit entities that possess aligned competences to form a tri-sector collaboration

Values theory posits that individuals have values, formed by upbringing and life’s experiences, and influence an individual’s cognitive processes, decisions and behavior. Emerging onto the business scene is a new population group, the Millennials. This research seeks to explore Millennials’ values from the viewpoint of their personal value orientation (PVO). Managerial PVO from the 1980s and 2010s are used as comparative populations. The Millennials’ PVO is generally consistent with managerial PVO from past research. They tend toward a Personal, rather than Social, and Competence, rather than Moral, value orientation. Yet, some subtle differences emerged. Millennials are more self-focused and less other-focused than managers from the 1980s or 2010s. They emphasize competency skills more than today’s managers but less than the managers of the 1980s and place more worth on moral values than managers of the 1980s but less than today’s managers.

Organizations that do not implement espoused policies in practice face the risk of societal disapproval if the decoupling is exposed in an era of increased transparency and accountability expectations. While policy-practice decoupling remains an observed organizational outcome, organizations are becoming less inclined to deliberately adopt strategies of decoupling. Our first contribution to theory is an extended conceptual model which integrates both original accounts and recent developments in decoupling theory. Secondly we propose that decoupling is more often an unintended outcome of attempts to tightly couple, than a cynical evasive organizational act. Finally we propose three key conditions under which attempts to implement the policy yield decoupled or tightly coupled organizational outcomes, explicitly incorporating the role of individual agency into the decoupling frame.

Motivated by the desire to make our courses more relevant to students, we use experiential techniques that highlight the importance of civic and environmental causes. In three courses, across three disciplines, at three institutions, we are each grappling with issues of measuring student outcomes and assessment in sustainability themed courses. The purpose of this research is to compare the experiential mechanisms used across courses, in particular, service-learning and engaged scholarship, and with the help of IABS colleagues, to create relevant student outcome metrics. Our goal is to impact the scholarship of teaching by documenting pedagogical processes and outcomes that highlight best practices in the teaching of sustainability, and more broadly, business and society courses.

This paper describes the principle of service used to guide operations in W.M. Ritter Lumber Company towns, whether this principle supports early attempts at industrial betterment, and whether research on company towns located in remote areas of Central Appalachia during the early 1900s can enhance our understanding of CSR emergence. Many company towns in Central Appalachia are described as “Satanic Mills,” a term reflecting exploitive working conditions. Ritter’s 1920 book (The Lumberman), employee newsletters (The Hardwood Bark), and other resources paint a different picture of company town life and describe a management approach based on Ritter’s principle of service.

This paper analyzes cases of procurement fraud by government contractors for the period, 2000-2014. The exploratory study provides information on which industry sectors were most likely to settle cases of procurement fraud and which types of violations occurred most frequently in these sectors. We develop two hypotheses that examine whether Ethics and Compliance processes for federal contractors, established in 2008, reduced the number of cases and whether political administration might increase or decrease the number of settled cases. Further research questions are suggested to learn more about the phenomenon of government contractor fraud.

This paper identifies the connections between the diffusion of innovations, social network, and institutional literatures to the study of the diffusion of managerial practices in general and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in particular. We demonstrate that each literature has contributed to explaining the diffusion and adoption of CSR practices but that there are still unexploited opportunities specially in combining the concepts and methods from diffusion, institutional, and networks literatures. We also argue that social network theory is a natural bridge that connects diffusion and institutional literatures providing richer explanations

Society is increasingly utilizing a firm’s social and environmental performance as a primary metric in evaluating legitimacy. As a result there is a growing scholarly need for more precise and socially relevant measures of the social impact of corporations, or corporate social impact (CSI), as opposed to broader or more firm-relevant metrics, such as financial or reputational impacts. I propose that a contingent approach, which explicitly examines the methodological fit between research scope and research method, can be a useful framework to aid CSI scholars in navigating the conceptual messiness of measuring CSI. The aim of this article is to contribute a framework that can be used to effectively address questions of CSI measurement by guiding the use of appropriate research methods and design to fit a given research scope.

The current debate around better measures of progress and going ‘beyond-Gross Domestic Product (GDP)’ raises the question of implications for businesses and their sustainability efforts. Bhutan, with its Gross National Happiness (GNH) development approach provides an interesting case to investigate businesses in an economy focused on improving the conditions for wellbeing and happiness in society, alongside the goal of growing GDP. This study explores if and how GNH influences business conduct and sustainability efforts in Bhutan. It also investigates Bhutanese business and government leaders perceptions of the concept of GNH in relation to concepts such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Sustainability (CS). Some preliminary findings include that the Bhutanese value-system forms the foundation of business leaders’ world-views and influences their business conduct and decision-making more than the recent formulation of the GNH framework. A comparison of the CSR, CS and GNH frameworks shows however that the GNH model has the potential to offer a sustainability framework that goes beyond-CSR.

The literature has long addressed the question if corporate social responsibility (CSR) can help a firm differentiate from competition and reduce its costs of doing business, ultimately leading to a sustainable competitive advantage. These two possible CSR outcomes, differentiation and cost leadership, also represent the two paths that firms could take in their strategic pursuits. Despite this apparent synergy between a firm’s strategic path and CSR, previous studies have not explored whether firm strategic choices have a bearing upon their level of CSR engagement. The present paper examines that question in the context of small US manufacturing firms.

Study abroad has the power to be a transformative experience for students and there are few programs as unique as Semester at Sea (SAS). In order to empirically investigate the impacts, if any, this program had on former students we surveyed 107 alumni. A variety of themes emerged from the coding of the qualitative data, but many of them clustered around the emergence of compassion. From our findings we believe there is potential to recreate the parts of the SAS experience that fostered compassion in our own classrooms for students unable to study abroad.