Special Issue – Contextualizing Corporate Responsibility
Over the last two decades, the role of business in (global) society has changed significantly. Corporations are asked to voluntarily accept social, environmental and ethical responsibilities arising out of their operations and practices (Waddock 2008). Globalization is one key driver of this debate (Scherer & Palazzo 2008). Corporations have started to split up their value chains to make use of lower factor costs in other parts of the world. As nation-states are often unable or unwilling to “raise the bar”, many corporations and their suppliers have started to self-regulate their operations. As a result, firms increasingly embrace responsibilities for their impact on various stakeholder groups also leading to a more direct interaction with civil society groups (Rasche & Esser 2006).
While the debate on corporations’ responsibilities has matured over the last years, most of the discussion still does not consider contextual influences enough. Often, authors implicitly assume that corporate responsibility practices relate to large Western corporations. However, corporate responsibility practices differ significantly when accounting for geographic, cultural, religious and industry contexts. Developing and emerging economics, for example, where corporate responsibility is arguably all the more pertinent, are often overlooked. In addition, approaches also differ according to the organizational context, when contrasting large multinational corporations (MNCs) with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Spence 1999, Moore & Spence 2006). This Special Issue aims to bring together scholars who reflect on and compare the different contexts within which corporate responsibility practices occur.
Possible topics for contributions include, but are not limited to, the following issues. We particularly welcome papers which link these themes:
We call for papers addressing the contextual embeddedness of corporate responsibility either by discussing this phenomenon in a particular context and/or by comparing it across a variety of contexts. We adopt a broad understanding of corporate responsibility, including reflections on corporations’ role as citizens, business ethics and sustainable business practices. We are interested in conceptual and empirical studies that draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives and in quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches. Questions about the Special Issue should be addressed to guest editor Andreas Rasche (andreas.rasche@wbs.ac.uk).
Submission Guidelines: Please follow the guidelines on the website http://www.management-revue.org authors_guidelines.php and submit the papers electronically to both guest editors by sending a fully anonymized copy of your manuscript (delete all author identification from this primary document) and in a second document information that would typically appear on the document’s title page (title, author names, complete postal addresses, titles, affiliations, contact information including email, phone and fax). This document may also include author biographies if you wish. Please only submit PDF files.
Deadline: December 1, 2010
Tentative Timetable:
Editors:
Andreas Rasche, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
Laura J. Spence, Royal Holloway, University of London
References:
Moore, G./Spence, L. J. (2006): Responsibility and Small Business, in: Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 67, No. 3, pp. 219-226.
Rasche, A./Esser, D. E. (2006): From Stakeholder Management to Stakeholder Accountability – Applying Habermasian Discourse Ethics to Accountability Research, in: Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 65, No. 3, pp. 251-67.
Scherer, A./G. Palazzo (2008): Globalization and Corporate Social Responsibility, in: A. Crane et al. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 413-430.
Spence, L.J. (1999): Does Size Matter?: The State of the Art in Small Business Ethics, in: Business Ethics: A European Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 163-174.
Waddock, S. (2008): Corporate Responsibility/Corporate Citizenship: The Development of a Construct, in: A. G. Scherer and G. Palazzo (eds.). Handbook of Research on Global Corporate Citizenship. Cheltenham, UK:
Edward Elgar, pp. 50-72.