Article 13 is a strategic advisors on risk associated with business responsibility, typically in the areas of governance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development. and is currently looking for senior individuals interested in being associates with economic or financial backgrounds, experienced in environmental and / or social economics.
If you are interested in working with Article 13 please see the areas of consultancy:
If you are interested in joining Article 13's associate base please send your details to: Jane Fiona Cumming at janefionac@article13.com or call +44 (0) 20 8840 4450
Call for Manuscripts – Special Issue of Business Ethics Quarterly
SI Guest Editors Bradley R. Agle, University of Pittsburgh
James J. Chrisman, Mississippi State University
Ronald K. Mitchell, Texas Tech University
Laura J. Spence, Brunel University
The manuscripts are due June 1, 2009.
Topic of the call
Family enterprises i.e., firms in which members of a family exert significant influence through controlling ownership and/or management, are the most common and pervasive form of business organization throughout the world. While most of the small and medium firms are family controlled, founding family members are active in some of the largest firms in the world such as Cargill, Ford, IKEA, and Wal-Mart. In the S&P 500 firms, family enterprises have been found to out-perform their non-family counterparts. Research indicates the long term orientation of family enterprises as these firms endure through multiple generations of leaders and industry life cycles.
Two distinct sub-systems of family and business co-exist in family enterprises, sometimes peacefully, and sometimes not so peacefully. The differences between the family and business systems are fundamental in nature, and as such cause problems in the ongoing social interface within these organizations and among their stakeholders. The incidence of misunderstandings, miscommunications, working at cross-purposes, increased politicization of the work roles, misuse of the natural environment, and other social misalignments increase the incidence of social friction providing a fertile field for ethical dilemmas, theory-of-the-firm-based problems, and environmental impact.
Although important advances have been made in each of these research arenas generally, limited attention has been devoted to exploring stakeholder/ ethics/ environment issues within family-enterprise research and therefore main focus of the call lies on the question: Does family involvement in the firm influence how a firm responds to its stakeholder, ethical, and environmental demands? .
For this special edition of Business Ethics Quarterly, research papers are encouraged that explore one or more points of intersection, that is, how family businesses, and their business families, deal with stakeholder and ethics challenges, some of which may also include implications for the natural environment. Although not exhaustive, questions of special interest center on the following:
What can stakeholder theory contribute to explaining the impact of family involvement in the firm?
How might stakeholder theory develop to clarify the diverse and often unpredictable demands of family involvement?
To what extent can stakeholder research illuminate the role of gender, family mix, differences among generations, in-law relationships, and different forms of family in family firms? For example, where all groups may consider themselves to be legitimate stakeholders - with high power and urgent needs, how does such added complexity among a so-called “definitive” stakeholder mix invoke new stakeholder theory development?
To what extent are there similar or different family- and non-family-enterprise- theories of duty to stakeholders?
What are the unique moral challenges that families in business face and what does extant research have to say about how these challenges are met?
How do existing theories and frameworks of business ethics or corporate social responsibility apply to firms where family members are involved?
What is the role of virtue in the public and private morality found in family enterprise?
How is the ethical blue-print of the founder replicated and evolved through succession in family firms?
To what extent is leaving an ethical legacy a motivator for founding members of family firms?
Do the ethical issues in family firms in developing country contexts differ from those in developed countries? What are the reasons for the difference or lack thereof?
Are family firms more or less ethical than non-family firms and if so in what ways? What are the reasons for the difference or lack thereof?
How do stakeholder, ethical theories and CSR frameworks relate to the environment and sustainable development in firms where family members are involved?
To what extent does being a family-intensive entity influence how environmental sustainability is addressed?
To address these questions, a broad range of submissions is sought, and conceptual and empirical (quantitative or qualitative) contributions that make use of the various perspectives emerging within the stakeholder, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, environmental, and other literatures in relevant fields of inquiry are explicitly encouraged. Normative/ philosophical/ critical and conventional social scientific manuscripts are welcome. Both quantitative and qualitative empirical research is encouraged. Manuscripts should ideally make a contribution that justifies their length, but in any event should not exceed 12,000 words including references, tables, figures, and appendices.
JBE Special Issue on Cross Sector Social Interactions
The Journal of Business Ethics announces the call for papers for a special issue on Cross Sector Social Interactions. The deadline for submission is May 31, 2009. The special issue is jointly edited by Dr. Maria May Seitanidi and Professor Adam Lindgreen.
Purpose
Interactions across sectorial boundaries have intensified over the last years. One of the more recent forms of interactions are cross sector social partnerships (Selsky and Parker, 2005), which involve organisations across different economic sectors—public, nonprofit, and business—that aim to address social issues by providing society with what was traditionally termed ‘public goods’ (Waddock, 1988) such as clean water, clean air, environmental protection, health care, and education.
The aim of this call for papers is to encourage researchers to look at the level of interaction rather than the form of interaction or frame of practice. Focusing on the interactions across organisations and sectors can allow for meaningful comparisons across different frames of practice, organisational forms, industries, sectors, and countries in order to observe emergent patterns.
Specific topics may include, but are not limited to:
A historical overview of cross sector social interactions in each of the four constellations
Theoretical frameworks of formation, implementation, and outcomes of any type of cross sector social interactions (on any of the three different levels of reality)
The role of social interactions across the different sectors as a way of delivering social goods
The measurement of cross sector social interactions on different levels of analysis
Managing cross sector social interactions across different contexts
Theoretical contributions on how best to analyse cross sector social interactions
Cross sector social interactions in different industries
The motivations, processes and dynamics of cross sector social interactions
Critical approaches to develop and assess the impact of cross sector social interactions
Preference will be given to empirical papers (both qualitative and quantitative) although theoretical papers that offer comprehensive frameworks of any type of cross sector social interaction are also welcome. As the Journal of Business Ethics appeals equally to academic and business audience, all submissions should include implications for practitioners.
Submission process
Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be about 6,000 words in length. Copies should be submitted via email Word attachment (in one file including all figures and tables) to both guest editors. To be eligible for review papers must be set up according to the journal’s guidelines. For example, the first page must contain the paper’s title, as well as full contact information details of the authors. For additional guidelines, please see the "Notes for Contributors" from a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, or see the home page. Papers must employ standard English. Suitable papers will be subjected to a double-blind review; hence authors should not identify themselves in the body of the paper.
All submissions to be sent to:
Maria May Seitanidi
PhD Brunel Business School
Brunel University
E-mail: mmayseitanidi@yahoo.com
Call for Proposals: EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW - Special Issue
Strategic Dynamics in Industry Architectures: The challenges of Knowledge Integration
Submission due date: January 15, 2009
Guest Editors Stefano Brusoni, Bocconi University Michael G. Jacobides, London Business School Andrea Prencipe, University G. d’Annunzio
Motivation Industries can no longer be taken for granted. As sectors dis-integrate and re-integrate, converge and transform, the question of how exactly economic activities are structured, and what determines the nature of firms’ and sectors’ boundaries evolution becomes more relevant than ever. Firms are increasingly trying to shape the nature of their environment and the ways in which labor is divided in the sector; they try to shape the “rules and roles” through which labor (and knowledge) is divided – i.e. their “industry architectures”.
Research questions
In terms of the existing theoretical apparatus, research has offered key building blocks that provide answers to partial questions to understand the evolution of industry architectures. Researchers from the New Institutional / Transaction Cost economics, for instance, have explained how firms may choose their boundaries. Scholars of technological change have considered how organizations and technologies co-evolve over time. Yet, only recently have we started understanding what shapes the nature of the sectors that we study, and in what are the forces that explain why and how sectors swing between integration and disintegration. Likewise, the link between the boundaries of organizations and the knowledge bases in the sector has been shown to be important in the strategy literature, and it is clear that the boundaries of knowledge and the boundaries of organization are not fully mapped onto each other. However, our understanding of how knowledge becomes integrated in a complex web of relationships in a sector is still in its early stages: we have yet to propose the micro-mechanisms that explain how the structures that integrate knowledge emerge, and how they affect the industries’ prospects, or how they change over time.
This special issue intends to extend and consolidate this growing area of interest. The main interest is on contributions which look at the micro-level processes of knowledge integration and coordination, through changes in the division of labor and power. Questions of interest include, but are not limited to:
Are sectors characterized by one or multiple “industry architectures”, i.e. ways to divide labour between firms and coordinate the knowledge production? How do such architectures emerge, stabilize, and change?
How do sectors get reorganized to accommodate for the diffusion of new bodies of scientific and technological knowledge?
How do the dynamics of knowledge integration relate to the challenges of sectoral change? Other than science and technologies, what role is played by the distribution of power, intra- and inter-organizational conflict in shaping the evolution of sectors?
How do firms get organized to integrate knowledge? How do they identify what to integrate? What are the different options available to them?
What does knowledge integration actually mean? Is there any empirically observable or theoretically relevant distinction between the concepts of knowledge integration and recombination?
Whether at the level of the sector or the firm (or both), who determines and drives the processes through which knowledge becomes integrated? How, when and why do these change?
The submission of empirical papers, whether qualitative or quantitative, exploratory or confirmatory is hereby explicitly encouraged. However, conceptual, theoretical, or modeling papers (with reference to the specific phenomena identified above) will also be considered.
Deadlines and Submission Instructions The deadline for submission of papers is January 15, 2009. Please submit your papers online on the European Management Review website and make sure to follow the Submission Guidelines available at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/emr/archive/editorials.html
Review Process and Special Issue Conference Papers will be reviewed following the regular European Management Review double-blind review process. It takes an average of four weeks to obtain the first round of reviews.
More Information For additional information, please contact the special issue editors:
Call for Papers - Conference - Sustainable development: a challenge for EU R&D
The European Commission DG Research organises a conference on “Sustainable Development: A Challenge for European Research” on 26-28 May 2009, in Brussels.
For the preparation of this conference, a call for papers has been published with a deadline for submission on 15 January 2009.
Outline of the conference
One of the rationales for and purpose of funding R&D on the EU budget is to serve EU policy needs, while strengthening the scientific and technological basis of the European industry and reinforcing its competitiveness. In view of the strong political will expressed by the European Council to engage on a sustainable path and the priority given to climate change and clean energy, European research is bound to contribute to sustainable development.
Putting European R&D at the service of sustainable development is also needed from a societal point of view. Indeed, there is rising concern about the relationship between science and society. Today's surveys show that Europeans have become less attracted by science or less confident that science brings solutions. If the level of public funding for research is to be maintained and indeed increased, it must be ensured and demonstrated that research is bringing value to the citizens, on substantial and tangible issues beyond competitiveness and jobs.
Coming close to mid-term of FP7 implementation, this 3-day conference will take stock of the progress made so far and identify ways and means for putting the European research system at the service of sustainable development.
With this in mind, the conference will initiate a structured dialogue on how to reform European research to best respond to sustainable development challenges. It will also investigate ways for improving the science-policy link and the relationship between science and society.
Please download the full call for papers providing all necessary information regarding the profile of papers, authors and selection criteria and check the conference website for further updates.
Business & Society: Special Issue on CSR and Environmental Sustainability - Call for Papers
Special Issue Guest Editors: Marc Orlitzky, Penn State University Altoona Donald Siegel, University at Albany, State University of New York David Waldman, Arizona State University
Multinational firms are under pressure from multiple stakeholders to be socially and environmentally responsible.According to the Stern report issued by the U.K. government, The Economist, and the philosopher Joseph DesJ ardins, ecological sustainability could become the central social responsibility challenge for business. Thus, managers must be able to determine how their organizations can become more ecologically sustainable, socially responsible, and economically competitive.
This trend also raises profound research questions, crossing numerous fields in business administration and several social science disciplines. From a theoretical standpoint, it is interesting to note that researchers have attempted to model the antecedents and consequences of “responsible” behavior at the individual, organizational, industry, national, and societal levels. However, the theoretical literatures on this phenomenon are parallel and independent, which hinders our ability to understand the managerial and policy implications of corporate social responsibility and sustainability.
Two key research questions are:
How can social and environmental responsibility be implemented more effectively through integrated market and non-market strategies? and
How can the various business sub-disciplines (e.g., human resource management, management information systems, organizational behavior, marketing, and accounting) contribute to our understanding of the determinants of superior financial, social, and environmental performance?
Submission Instructions
Submisssions to the Special Issue should be sent electronically to Professor Marc Orlitzky at moo3@psu.edu, Professor Donald Siegel at DSiegel@uamail.albany.edu, and Professor David Waldman at waldman@asu.edu) before June 1st, 2009. The format of the papers must follow Business and Society guidelines.
BEQ Special Issue on Accountability - Final Call for Manuscripts
Call for Manuscripts – Business Ethics Quarterly (Due 1 December 2008)
Accountability in a Global Economy: The Emergence of International Accountability Standards to Advance Corporate Social Responsibility
Guest Editors: Dirk Ulrich Gilbert (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany), Andreas Rasche (Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Germany), Sandra Waddock (Boston College, U.S.A.
Over the last few years there has been a proliferation of international accountability standards intended to encourage and guide corporate social responsibility (CSR), and to provide multinational corporations with ways to systematically assess, measure, and communicate their social and environmental performance (e.g. UN Global Compact, SA 8000, Global Reporting Initiative). Although these standards differ in detail – the UN Global Compact being a principle-based initiative, SA 8000 reflecting a tool for monitoring and certification, and the Global Reporting Initiative acting as a framework for disclosure – they all aim at improving corporate accountability on an international level. Despite their growing popularity, these accountability standards have received relatively little research scrutiny, and consequently there is uncertainty about both what they represent and what they accomplish.
From a theoretical viewpoint, only limited attention has been given to the ethical qualities of various accountability standards. This criticism particularly applies to international standards, because these standards need to justify a common moral basis to gain cross-cultural acceptance. Certification programs and reporting initiatives similarly imply that there are globally accepted standards of practice. Must international accountability standards embody a moral point of view to which stakeholders in different countries, with diverse norms and values, can agree? Another question is that of why we currently witness such a proliferation of accountability standards on a global level. Is this because each standard concentrates on different areas of accountability? Or because different governmental and non-governmental organizations prefer standards that embody their own particular agendas? Some might view the lack of a holistic, all-encompassing standard as problematic while others might welcome the diversity. Regardless, the nature, origin, and impact of these proliferating standards is worthy of attention.
This diversity of standards potentially creates problems for CSR managers who must decide for or against the adoption of particular initiatives. More generally, little research has addressed the managerial, social, and political practicability of many of the currently popular standards. For example, if accountability is defined as the readiness of a firm to provide explanations and justifications to relevant stakeholders for its decisions and actions in the social and environmental sphere, then the practical implementation of ongoing dialogues with these stakeholder groups, and concrete norms of action, have to be at the heart of concepts of accountability. Yet, a closer examination of tools such as SA 8000, AccountAbility 1000, or even the UN Global Compact reveals that these standards often do not provide clear guidelines for how to set up stakeholder dialogues, and how to implement certain guidelines into action. Thus implementation stands as an important issue alongside questions of the nature, origin, and impact of accountability standards.
Possible research questions appropriate to this call for manuscripts include, but are not limited to, the following:
Moral Basis of Accountability Standards: What is the moral basis of any or all international accountability standards? Are such standards legitimate, and if so, in what does their legitimacy reside? What moral stances are implicit in accountability standards? How can we make a contribution to a more critical discussion of the normative presuppositions of current standards?
Production/Evolution of Accountability Standards: Who is and who can be responsible for developing international accountability standards? Are standards (and standard makers) themselves accountable towards their stakeholders and the wider public? What potential problems arise within the process of standardization? How can one or more theoretical perspectives (e.g. neo-institutionalist sociology, national business systems theory, inter-organizational relations research, social movements theory, international economics, etc.) help us to better understand the global diffusion of international accountability standards, and their likely intended and unintended consequences?
Growth and Context of Standardization: With Regard to Corporate Accountability: Why have standards emerged as alternatives to governmental regulations? What role do standards play in relation to international and supranational governmental regulations? How can we learn to better distinguish among the myriad of standards? What influences the possible future growth and expansion of accountability standards? What role do international accountability standards play in relation to other CSR activities of firms?
Consumption/Implementation of Accountability Standards: How are standards implemented in corporations? How should firms design stakeholder dialogues and how can they asses the importance of different stakeholder claims? What drives the adoption of standards by firms? What impact can be expected from standard implementation? How can this impact be measured in a meaningful way?
To address these questions, we seek a broad range of submissions, and encourage conceptual and empirical (quantitative or qualitative) contributions that make use of various theoretical perspectives that have emerged recently within business ethics or any other relevant fields of inquiry (such as organization studies, philosophy, sociology, political science/theory, economics, etc.) Both normative/philosophical/critical and conventionally social scientific manuscripts are welcome. Manuscripts should, ideally, make a contribution both to our understanding of accountability standards and to the theoretical perspectives and positions relied upon to address accountability standards.
Manuscripts must be submitted electronically by December 1, 2008 using BEQ’s submission website (http://editorialexpress.com/beq). Manuscripts must conform to BEQ’s normal submission requirements (see the information for contributors on the BEQ website: www.businessethicsquarterly.org). Be sure to indicated “special issue – accountability” in the “comments” section of the online submission form. Manuscripts should not exceed 12000 words and will be blind reviewed following the journal's standard process. For further information contact BEQ editor Dirk Ulrich Gilbert (dirk.gilbert@phil.uni-erlangen.de).
Call for Papers: oikos / PRI Young Scholars Finance Academy 2009
oikos and the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative (www.unpri.org) are now inviting applications to the first oikos/PRI Young Scholars Finance Academy 2009 (Feb. 8-13). The annual programme seeks to promote high-impact scholarship in responsible finance. The Academy will gather leading academics, practitioners and exceptional graduate students and young faculty pursuing research related to issues of integration, engagement and transparency in responsible investment.
The academy features two distinguished guest academics: Dr. Gordon Clark (Oxford University, UK) and Dr. James P. Hawley (Elfenworks Center for the Study of Fiduciary Capitalism, St. Mary's College, USA) and will be facilitated by Dr. Danyelle Guyatt (Mercer, UK).
To allow in-depth discussions the oikos/PRI Young Scholars Finance Academy is limited to 15 PhD students and 5 distinguished practitioners. Please send us your proposal abstract (max. 2 pages), a short resume and a letter of interest before October 30, 2008. Practitioners are invited to apply with a motivation letter. For more details please download the call for papers at http://www.oikos-international.org/projects/finance.html
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