Privacy has played substantial roles in culture and commerce for centuries, but its political and economic impacts have intensified as utilizations of information technologies have expanded. Businesses should consider whether their increasing investments in data collection and analysis are indeed worth their costs in erosion of trust between themselves and their customers (and other stakeholders). This paper examines specific kinds of data, including from geospatial systems and “Internet of Things” applications. It also discusses potential expansion of US privacy discourse from the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution to the Third (which may be interpreted to involve limits on residential “quartering” of intelligent computer agents as well as human soldiers). Businesses may find that privacy-related products and services can provide strategic advantages as privacy concerns intensify. However, opportunistic business exploitations of privacy fears without provision of effective solutions may backfire as households share experiences via word-of-mouth and social media crowdsourcing.

The relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and society is at a crossroads. In particular, multinational enterprises (MNEs) must operate in multiple host environments while maintaining a social license to operate, and increasingly adopt CSR strategy relevant to stakeholders in these environments. This study examines MNE employee perceptions of CSR from one multinational in Indonesia and Australia, and determines their identification with and engagement in the organization’s CSR Social Initiatives (SIs). The results reveal perceived CSR has a significant effect on identification with SIs for Indonesian employees but not for Australian employees. Second, the importance of CSR has an effect on employee’s identification with SIs (SI-I) and SI-I has a significant effect on engagement with SIs in both countries. This suggests that MNEs need to educate employees generally in developed and developing countries on the importance that companies practice CSR. However for developing countries like Indonesia, managers may need to focus more on employee perceptions of the organization’s perceived CSR, as this affects SI-I and subsequent engagement. These findings provide a unique contribution toward combining business and society under the umbrella of one MNE in two different countries.

This conceptual paper maps the process of identification between Corporate Responsibility Coalitions (CRCs) and their member companies. CRCs are business-led, membership-based groups created to advance sustainable business practices. We draw from social identity theory and the group identity literature to develop a theoretical model of identification between CRCs and member companies. We propose that membership in CRCs can reduce uncertainty about the implementation of sustainability practices as well as increase competitive advantage for organizations. The theoretical model developed in this article shows a four-stage process of identification between member companies and CRCs that includes: (1) membership, (2) socialization, (3) identification, and (4) changes in behavior. This study contributes to advancement of knowledge on the impact of CRCs as well as the literature on organizational identity and group identification by studying this process among groups of organizations.

In this paper, we argue and test the hypothesis that real progress towards greater sustainability in our society will occur only when individuals adopt a new language for business, use holistic thinking, and develop a robust set of economic, social and environmental measures performance.

This research project proposes to apply Social Identity theory and Porter’s Hypothesis in studying the success of the municipality of Curitiba, Brazil in creating a culture of commitment to sustainability practices among its residents. These theories are reviewed here, along with the social media strategies and innovations developed by Curitiba. We plan to gather survey data from university students and young adult residents in the city about their recycling practices, and their awareness and engagement with the city’s social media campaigns. This study will potentially extend the application of social identity theory in the context of commitment to sustainability. It will also contribute to the debate about whether the constraints of sustainability necessarily impose a cost, or whether they can be exploited as an opportunity.

In an era of instant mass communication and pervasive social media, the ability of an organization to respond and recover quickly from sudden shocks and crises is extremely important to maintain organizational stability, public trust, and social license to operate. However, not all shocks affect firms in the same way and firms do not respond equally well to the same or similar shocks. One factor, organizational resilience, may explain why some firms are able to quickly recover after a shock and other firms recover slowly, partially, or never. Using case studies from the global automobile industry, we propose a conceptual model and several factors that may influence an organization’s resilience and ability to recover and succeed.

The Millennials, people born between 1980 and 2000, are often treated as a homogenous generation. While some prior research on generations posits that there are a number of consistencies across a generation, such as the Millennials, others argue that differences may emerge and distinguish individuals within a generation. Based on prior business ethics literature, this research dissects the Millennial’s personal value orientations (PVO) to explore if demographic differences, such as gender, amount of work experience, business discipline, and intelligence reveal variations in the ethical profile manifested by Millennials. The results from this research show that there are indeed numerous and significant statistical differences within the Millennials’ PVO dataset. Variations are found when exploring nearly every demographic variable considered. Implications of these findings are discussed.

This workshop reflected on the current state of the Business and Society field and explored viable future directions for research in its related disciplines. The premise was that the field has reached a crossroads in its development, in accordance with the conference theme. To move forward, academic stakeholders should reassess the field’s identity and purpose to continue contributing meaningful work. The field could reframe itself as “Business in Society” to reflect the fact that organizations operate within a social and ecological context. The role of business in society can be thought of differently by examining the memes or core cultural artifacts that shape individuals’ beliefs and relevant narratives about what is expected of business. Through the reframing of the field’s institutional logics, recognizing and revisiting the normative roots of the field, as well, the questions that scholars ask can be revised to adapt to the modern world.

Big data analysis is sweeping the natural sciences, industry, and the digital humanities, but what about business and society? The purpose of this session is to facilitate a conversation about the relationship of big data and data science analytics and their relevance to the business and society community in our roles as researchers, reviewers, editors, and scholars. We will discuss the benefits and challenges of big data analysis, and comparisons of big data methods with traditional quantitative and qualitative methods. We will offer a brief example of a topic modelling analysis, and will invite participants to consider the possibilities for using big data analysis in their business and society research.

This paper develops the outlines of a research proposal asking how do environmental managers engage in organisational ambidexterity in order to bridge the competing institutional logics defining and affecting their roles and practices? Drawing on a conceptual framework of organisational ambidexterity we seek to explore how environmental managers manage the competing institutional logics defining and affecting their roles and practices. Using qualitative inductive analysis on interviews with a multitude of UK firms undertaken at the height of the global financial crisis, we plan to examine the organizational capabilities required for dealing with the ethical and strategic trade-offs between meeting economic and ecological organizational objectives, and thus address questions around how companies can move from ambition to more lasting impact.

The fields of applied and professional ethics have accepted the Ethics of Care as the definitive feminist ethics for nearly three decades. Feminism has moved on to embrace the intersectional study of gender, race, and class in identifying key issues and methods, but scholarship in business ethics has not yet adopted intersectional feminism. Further, our understanding of gender is rapidly shifting. Whereas second wave feminism was articulated on the basis of widely accepted norms of gender as a dichotomous variable, gender is now understood to be less essential, more fluid, and entirely socially constructed. This raises challenging questions about what feminism represents, and therefore what feminist ethics is.

This paper explores the dramatic changes in the employer-employee relationship over the past several decades and the implications for the concept of employee rights.

Two 2016 events highlighted the rise of nationalism: (1) the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and (2) Brexit, the UK vote to withdraw from the European Union. We as scholars and teachers and our students as global citizens entering the workforce were and are experiencing increased political and social tensions in both hemispheres and amplified uncertainty. In this presentation, we sought to open a dialogue on the language we use in business and society research and teaching as well as the underlying, often unmentioned, assumptions underlying our studies and pedagogy.

In general, hedge fund activist investors primarily seek to increase their equity value; however, such actions can arise from other intentions and can result in unforeseen consequences. We examine how hedge fund activism during the 1994-2007 period has impacted US companies and their subsequent environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Specifically, we compare prior company ESG performance with that occurring after being targeted by a hedge fund activist investor. We use ESG ratings in a panel data analysis with stakeholder dimensions of the natural environment, the community, diversity, employees, consumers, and specific governance elements. For those firms targeted by hedge fund activists, we found that the number of environmental concerns decreased while the number of corporate governance strengths increased. Social performance was generally worse after being targeted, as targeted firms had fewer strengths in the employee, community, and product dimensions and more concerns in the employee and diversity dimensions.