Business & Society publishes a wealth of insightful research papers and commentaries at the intersection of business and society. These are consistent with the journal’s driving mission: to communicate research “which enhances our understanding of important societal issues and their relation to business.” Generally, the journal publishes 8 issues per year, each of which are packed with insightful research papers. Of these, the most impactful are short-listed for the journal’s annual Best Paper Award. In this article, we highlight the winning research papers since 2017.
Three of these papers recognised the criticality of climate change and the need for corporate action. Slawinski et al. (2017) focussed on climate inaction, notably on firms not responding adequately to pressures. They utilised an insightful multi-level framework and highlighted the role of short-termism and uncertainty avoidance and how these were reinforced at the individual/managerial, organisational/firm, and institutional levels. But what about the many stakeholders who rely on sustainability rating schemes in order to assess firm performance on climate action? Rekker et al (2021) analysed these rating schemes and found that these did not track the corporate climate performance indicators against the 2°C target set by the Paris Agreement. For those seeking a strong case for sustainability, Halme et al. (2020), via their analysis of data from 19 large companies in Europe, identifed four pathways to (non)improvements in environmental and social performance. They also highlighted that pathways to true sustainability performance improvements are much fewer.
Utilising the concept of “institutional work” and via conducting a qualitative study on small-scale garment exporters of Tamil Nadu in India, Soundararajan et al. (2018) show how, despite the Indian government and the global buyers pressurising these actors to improve working conditions, the exporters resisted by engaging in three types of evasion work. And, finally, West’s sobering analysis (2019) examined the historical origins of data capitalism and its implications on surveillance and privacy – notably via the collection of individual data, its commoditisation, and the development of new technologies that can, for instance, mine data for monetisation.
The list below summarises these well-deserved winners of the past 5 years. The papers are also open-access until the end of June. Happy reading!
Rekker, S. A. C., Humphrey, J. E., & O’Brien, K. R. (2021). Do Sustainability Rating Schemes Capture Climate Goals? Business & Society, 60(1), 125–160.
The 2015 Paris Agreement set a global warming limit of 2°C above preindustrial levels. Corporations play an important role in achieving this objective, and methods have recently been developed to map global climate targets to specific industries, and individual corporations within those industries. In this article, we assess whether Sustainability ratings capture corporate performance in meeting the 2°C target. We analyze nine rating schemes used by investors and three commonly used in academic studies. Most rating schemes do consider corporate greenhouse gas emissions in their analysis, whereas only a minority scale emissions by factors that have the potential to allow benchmarking against science-based targets. None take the final step of mapping climate indicators against the 2°C target. Furthermore, we find a lack of consistency in the climate change ratings of the databases used in academic studies. These results are concerning in the context of being able to meet global climate change goals.
Halme, M., Rintamäki, J., Knudsen, J. S., Lankoski, L., & Kuisma, M. (2020). When Is There a Sustainability Case for CSR? Pathways to Environmental and Social Performance Improvements. Business & Society, 59(6), 1181–1227.
Little is known about when corporate social responsibility (CSR) leads to a sustainability case (i.e., to improvements in environmental and social performance). Building on various forms of decoupling, we develop a theoretical framework for examining pathways from institutional pressures through CSR management to sustainability performance. To empirically identify such pathways, we apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to an extensive dataset from 19 large companies. We discover that different pathways are associated with environmental and social performance (non)improvements, and that pathways to success and failure are for the most part not symmetrical. We identify two pathways to improved environmental performance: an exogenous and an endogenous one. We find two pathways to improved social performance that both involve integrating social responsibility into the core business. Pathways to nonimprovements are multiple, suggesting that failure can occur in a number of ways, while there are only a few pathways to sustainability performance improvements.
And the associated blog article, published in this website: Does Corporate Responsibility Deliver? Broken Pathways to Business Sustainability.
West, S. M. (2019). Data Capitalism: Redefining the Logics of Surveillance and Privacy. Business & Society, 58(1), 20–41.
This article provides a history of private sector tracking technologies, examining how the advent of commercial surveillance centered around a logic of data capitalism. Data capitalism is a system in which the commoditization of our data enables an asymmetric redistribution of power that is weighted toward the actors who have access and the capability to make sense of information. It is enacted through capitalism and justified by the association of networked technologies with the political and social benefits of online community, drawing upon narratives that foreground the social and political benefits of networked technologies. I examine its origins in the wake of the dotcom bubble, when technology makers sought to develop a new business model to support online commerce. By leveraging user data for advertising purposes, they contributed to an information environment in which every action leaves behind traces collected by companies for commercial purposes. Through analysis of primary source materials produced by technology makers, journalists, and business analysts, I examine the emergence of data capitalism between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s and its central role in the contemporary information economy.
Soundararajan, V., Spence, L. J., & Rees, C. (2018). Small Business and Social Irresponsibility in Developing Countries: Working Conditions and “Evasion” Institutional Work. Business & Society, 57(7), 1301–1336.
Small businesses in developing countries, as part of global supply chains, are sometimes assumed to respond in a straightforward manner to institutional demands for improved working conditions. This article problematizes this perspective. Drawing upon extensive qualitative data from Tirupur’s knitwear export industry in India, we highlight owner-managers’ agency in avoiding or circumventing these demands. The small businesses here actively engage in irresponsible business practices and “evasion” institutional work to disrupt institutional demands in three ways: undermining assumptions and values, dissociating consequences, and accumulating autonomy and political strength. This “evasion” work is supported by three conditions: void (in labor welfare mechanisms), distance (from institutional monitors), and contradictions (between value systems). Through detailed empirical findings, the article contributes to research on both small business social responsibility and institutional work.
Slawinski, N., Pinkse, J., Busch, T., & Banerjee, S. B. (2017). The Role of Short-Termism and Uncertainty Avoidance in Organizational Inaction on Climate Change: A Multi-Level Framework. Business & Society, 56(2), 253–282.
Despite increasing pressure to deal with climate change, firms have been slow to respond with effective action. This article presents a multi-level framework for a better understanding of why many firms are failing to reduce their absolute greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. The concepts of short-termism and uncertainty avoidance from research in psychology, sociology, and organization theory can explain the phenomenon of organizational inaction on climate change. Antecedents related to short-termism and uncertainty avoidance reinforce one another at three levels—individual, organizational, and institutional—and result in organizational inaction on climate change. The article also discusses the implications of this multi-level framework for research on corporate sustainability.