When Do Investors Prefer to Invest in Benefit Corporations?
Publicly traded benefit corporations represent an attractive investment alternative to U.S. investors.
Sarah Stephen
Lecturer in Strategy and Business Ethics at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. She holds a PhD in Economics, specialising in Management, from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the intersection of society, the environment, and organizations, particularly in relation to environmental responsibility, ESG and responsible investing, climate action, and ethical decision-making.
Can You Hear Me Now? Grassroots Organizations’ Paradoxical Influence Strategies
What makes GROs able to punch above their weight in influencing large corporations?
Organisations of the World, Collaborate!
Concerted action is a prerequisite for the future development of sustainability-driven business models. A new special issue of Business & Society focuses on how organisations work across sectors to build collaborative solutions to complex sustainability challenges.
‘Sorry, we screwed up’ – Managing investor reactions with sustainability legitimation strategies
Companies disclosing negative sustainability incidents often employ legitimation strategies to present mishaps in a favorable light. We found that symbolic legitimation, i.e., evasively explaining negative incidents, cannot counter divestments. Only substantial legitimation does, i.e., when a company reports on concrete measures and behavioral changes in morally charged situations.
Embrace Reason—Reject CSR Groupthink
In decisions about corporate social responsibility and sustainability, think like an economist.
Does CSR Lead to Financial Performance? The Role of Institutional Environment
Our study systematically reviews and quantifies the CSR-CFP link. We proposed that CSR behaviors are more likely to lead to CFP in the developed world because of its relatively mature institutional system and efficient market mechanism that allows such CSR to be more visible.
The why and how of evaluating cross-sector partnerships for sustainability
With a growing number of cross-sector partnerships between companies and nonprofit organizations (NPOs), such partnerships increasingly need to be evaluated to inform managerial decisions and document success. We show how firms formalize their evaluation practices – sometimes together with their NPO partners.
If it’s free, you are the product – The perils of assetizing consumers’ genetic profiles
There’s an old adage that encapsulates our relationship to many of the digital products we consume, from social media to apps to email programs: “If it’s free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product”. But what happens in an industry where this ‘you’ really means – well, you?
Working on Impact: Introducing Business & Society Commentary
When we took over editorship of Business & Society one year ago, we noted that “we are committed to impact and influence beyond publication, impact factors, and journal rankings. We aim to contribute to the development of novel and workable solutions to the urgent challenges that the world presently faces”. We are happy to announce one of the initiatives we took to honour this commitment: the introduction of a new format, Business & Society Commentary!
How can businesses combat human trafficking and their possible connections to it?
We address the ethical responsibilities of businesses related to human trafficking. We argue that due diligence, important as it is in raising consciousness of the problem of human trafficking, is insufficient because human trafficking is a structural injustice.
