China’s first Tourism Law: representations of stakeholders’ responses

The application of tourism laws to advance the well-being of stakeholders is of broad interest to many countries attempting to shape the rapid rise of the sector. In China, the first Tourism Law came into effect on 1 October 2013. The 112-article law includes various measures to address issues such as unfair competition. Adopting a social representations framework, this study investigates the perceived impacts of China’s new Law from the perspectives of eight groups of stakeholders. Data were collected from 152 articles published in the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure. This material was used to access the commentaries and social representations of the impacts of the Law. A consistent array of positive and negative comments was uncovered using content analysis, justifying a view that a hegemonic representation exists across the groups. Additionally, and somewhat unexpectedly, it was discovered that the new Law is also a catalyst for further conflicts requiring additional management. Pursuing a social representations framework as a way of integrating stakeholder views was seen to be valuable for future studies in China and elsewhere.     

Developing a capstone course on ecological and social sustainability in business education

Sustainability is an important goal of management education, but it has not been integrated properly into all the functional courses. One option for management schools attempting to fix this misalignment is to offer a course that provides an integrated approach to sustainability. This article attempts to structure the contents of a capstone course on sustainability that touches on all the dimensions of sustainability in different management functions. I present the key topics in sustainability and, based on a thorough literature review, identify the categories that constitute the content for a proposed course on business sustainability. The proposed topics pertain to conceptual tools for understanding the issues, different stakeholders, and functional areas. This course will fill the sustainability gap in the current curriculum in management education.     

Toward sustainable corporate behavior: The effect of the critical mass of female directors on environmental,social, and governance disclosure

Boards of directors have recently become more attentive to their stakeholders' concerns, providing more transparent information and adopting more sustainable business strategies. This study investigates the influence of a critical mass of women on boards on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure score and its three components separately. Using a sample of the FTSE-MIB listed companies in the 2005–2017 period, we show that reaching a critical mass of female board members—going from one or two women to at least three—enhances the level of ESG disclosure. The results also show that the critical mass of female board members has a positive influence on every component of the ESG score, with the highest contribution of women reaching the governance score. These findings provide insights to shareholders and policymakers and suggest that a critical mass of female board members is particularly effective in improving transparency, and it can be seen as a mechanism to transit to stakeholder governance, fostering more sustainable behavior in firms.     

主动还是被动：企业环保战略与绿色技术创新

以广东地区265家民营企业为样本,从利益相关者理论的视角考察了环保战略对绿色技术创新效益的影响以及企业议价能力与自然环境动荡的权变效应。主要结论包括:①企业制定主动型或被动型环保战略与绿色技术创新外部效益具有U型关系;②企业的议价能力可以正向调节被动型环保战略与绿色技术创新外部绩效的U型关系;③企业所处自然环境的动荡可以正向调节主动型环保战略与绿色技术创新外部绩效的U型关系。     

Fake it ‘til you make it: Hazards of a cultural norm in entrepreneurship

Fake it ‘til you make it—that is, deceptively claiming a new endeavor exhibits characteristics of successful entrepreneurial ventures to gain support from others—has become an accepted practice in entrepreneurship. One overlooked hazard of this strategy is that entrepreneurs’ efforts to fake it can become a slippery slope in which the deception escalates to a point where stakeholders accuse entrepreneurs of committing fraud. We delineate that the responsible use of faking it in entrepreneurial endeavors rests on entrepreneurs’ full appreciation of the determinants that make turning fiction into fact less and not more difficult. Leveraging prior research to offer new insights, we outline these determinates as controllable vs. uncontrollable elements, sole vs. contingent entrepreneurial action, and limited vs. extensive stakeholder interactions. We also look at faking it examples Lordstown Motors and uBiome, two startups whose founders engaged in and escalated faking it to the point where stakeholders accused them of fraud.     

Authenticating a heritage hotel: co-creating a new identity

This study attempts to broaden understandings of co-creation by examining stakeholders who authenticate the meaning of a heritage hotel. It proposes that a heritage hotel is not only defined in terms of the provenance of material and non-material aspects of a culture, but also by subjective criteria as applied by various stakeholders. Using the case study of the Hotel Estoril, the first Western-style casino hotel built in the former Portuguese colony of Macau, it shows that government, community organizations, and residents endeavor to co-create a new identity for adaptive reuse. Under the circumstances, a heritage hotel is characterized by a polyvocality of interpretations, reflective of the array of stakeholders involved.     

通信服务业企业社会责任评价研究--基于多层次-模糊综合评价方法

资费问题、客户隐私泄露、遭受恶意侵害等事件的频发把公众视线频繁聚焦于通信服务企业。伴随着一系列制度的出台,通信行业被推上了改革的风口浪尖。社会责任成为通信服务企业必须面对的课题。文章构建了通信服务业社会责任评价指标体系,在层次分析法的原理上,使用多层次——模糊综合评价方法对通信服务业社会责任进行评价,并归纳了评价结果的应用路径,对我国社会责任的理论和实践发展形成了有益的补充和促进。     

An Economic Approach to Business Ethics: Moral Agency of the Firm and the Enabling and Constraining Effects of Economic Institutions and Interactions in a Market Economy

The paper maps out an alternative to a behavioural (economic) approach to business ethics. Special attention is paid to the fundamental philosophical principle that any moral ‘ought’ implies a practical ‘can’, which the paper interprets with regard to the economic viability of moral agency of the firm under the conditions of the market economy, in particular competition. The paper details an economic understanding of business ethics with regard to classical and neo-classical views, on the one hand, and institutional, libertarian thought, on the other hand. Implications are derived regarding unintentional and passive intentional moral agency of the firm. The paper moves on to suggest that moral agency can be economically viable in competitive ‘market’ interactions, which is conventionally disputed by classical/neo-classical and institutional, libertarian economics. The paper here conceptualises active moral agency of the firm as the utilisation of ethical capital in firm--stakeholder interactions. This yields a reinterpretation of instrumental stakeholder theory.     

Corporate Community Contributions in the United Kingdom and the United States

We address the issue of UK firms relatively poor record of corporate community contributions (CCCs) by subjecting them to formal comparison with those of US firms. To this end, we employ data on the top 100 UK, and top 100 US, contributors in 2001. Cross-country differences are described and discussed with reference to a stakeholder perspective on corporate social responsibility, and CCCs in particular. In this connection, we evaluate the role played by the sectoral composition of activities, as well as national, cultural and institutional factors. Our findings highlight a number of significant cross-country differences in the pattern of CCCs and suggest that UK and US firms operate within significantly different stakeholder environments.JEL Classification: M14Stephen Brammer is a Lecturer in Business Economics at University of Bath, with research interests in the area of corporate social responsibility. Much of his recent research has examined the stimuli for corporate socially responsive behaviour, the management of business social responsibilities, and the relationships between firm social performance and other dimensions of corporate performance. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Management Studies, the European Management Journal and Business Ethics: A European Review.Stephen Pavelin is a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Reading, with research interests in foreign direct investment and corporate social responsibility. His current research agenda seeks to address: the effect of corporate social performance on the reputations and financial performance of firms; the incidence and quality of social and environmental reporting; demographic diversity (regarding gender and ethnicity) among corporate boards; and the effect of firms geographical diversification on their social performance. Recent publications include articles in the International Journal of Industrial Organisation, the Open Economies Review, the European Management Journal and Business Ethics: A European Review.