Advancing Integrative Social Contracts Theory: A Habermasian Perspective

We critically assess integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) and show that the concept particularly lacks of moral justification of substantive hypernorms. By drawing on Habermasian philosophy, in particular discourse ethics and its recent application in the theory of deliberative democracy, we further advance ISCT and show that social contracting in business ethics requires a well-justified procedural rather than a substantive focus for managing stakeholder relations. We also replace the monological concept of hypothetical thought experiments in ISCT by a concept of practical discourse to better govern business activities on the macro-level of organizational actors such as firms, governments, and NGOs.     

Integrative Social Contracts Theory: Hype over Hypernorms

Applying social contract theory to business ethics is a relatively new idea, and perhaps nobody has pursued this direction better than Thomas Donaldson and Thomas W. Dunfee. Their "Integrative Social Contracts Theory" manages to combine culturally sensitive decision making capacities with trans-cultural norms by setting up a layered system of social contracts. Lurking behind their work is a concern with the problems of relativism. They hope to alleviate these problems by introducing three concepts important to the ISCT: "authentic norms," which clarify culturally specific norms, "priority rules," which determine the rules of engagement when authentic norms clash, and "hypernorms," which measure the value of authentic norms against a thin set of universally upheld values. This paper traces the genealogy of these hypernorms and challenges their value for the ISCT. It argues that well-conceived priority rules can do everything hypernorms can, and can do so more simply.     

Ties that Unwind: Dynamism in Integrative Social Contracts Theory1

Social contract theory offers a powerful method and metaphor for the study of organizational ethics. This paper considers the variant of the social contract that has arguably gained the most attention among business ethicists: integrative social contracts theory or ISCT [Donaldson and Dunfee: 1999, Ties That Bind (Harvard Business School Press, Boston)]. A core precept of ISCT – that consent to membership in an organization entails obligations to follow the norms of that organization, subject to the moral minimums of basic human rights – is a reasonable and appealing notion. One potential challenge for those attempting to apply this idea, however, lies in the dynamic nature of social norms. Organizational norms evolve, often through the conscious efforts of community members and leaders. As currently formulated, ISCT offers a framework that under-appreciates the evolving nature of moral norms. In this paper, we extend ISCT by considering the circumstances under which the terms of and parties to social contracts change. We also consider a number of principles that should be considered as the terms and parties to organizational social contracts change.     

综合社会契约论的商谈转向

作为一种多元主义规范企业伦理研究范式,本文剖析了综合社会契约论（ ISCT ）的内在逻辑矛盾,指出了哈贝马斯哲学与综合社会契约论之间的互补关系,并且根据商谈伦理原则对综合社会契约论的分析框架做出了适当的修正,重新定位了管理者在企业伦理决策中的角色,旨在为企业管理者提供更具多元主义和动态性特征的伦理决策模式。     

Dynamics for Integrative Social Contracts Theory: Norm Evolution and Individual Mobility

This article proposes a specific logic of dynamics for integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) that combines two empirically oriented process extensions strengthening concreteness of Donaldson and Dunfee’s conceptualization, namely (1) international policy regime theory and (2) Tiebout migration. While either would help “dynamize” and “concretize” ISCT, the two combined are even more insightful. Real-world policy regime processes can develop concrete action-guiding norms instantiating hypernorms to guide business decisions. Donaldson and Dunfee placed empirical reliance on expectation of converging parallel evolution of universal principles and authentic local values. ISCT remains vague on how global or local norms can develop and change, for two reasons. First, ISCT does not explain mechanisms for how proposed hypernorms can become actual global norms and also become accepted across extant authentic communities. International policy regime theory explains how hypernorms can become instantiated as global norms expressed in policy regimes. Second, a basic element in ISCT is implied consent positing free exit from voluntary moral communities. Empirically, individuals or businesses may be unable to exit from undesired membership in authentic communities to which they do not consent. The Tiebout migration model provides valuable insights concerning how substantive mobility or its absence improves on the minimum ISCT assumption of implied consent. An integrated logic of ISCT dynamics generates a three-level framework in which instantiated hypernorms and authentic community (microsocial) norms can empirically change, and individuals or businesses can migrate more freely across extant communities.     

A Critical Perspective of Integrative Social Contracts Theory: Recurring Criticisms and Next Generation Research Topics

During the past ten years Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) has become part of the repertoire of specialized decision-oriented theories in the business ethics literature. The intention here is to (1)␣provide a brief overview of the structure and strengths of ISCT; (2) identify recurring themes in the extensive commentary on the theory including brief mention of how ISCT has been applied outside the business ethics literature; (3) describe where research appears to be headed; and (4) specify challenges faced by those who seek to reform ISCT. Key themes in the critiquing literature relate to (a) the identification process for hypernorms; (b) justification of the recognition of hypernorms; (c) proposals for considering meso or meta norms; (d)␣clarification of the relationship between stakeholder concepts and ISCT; (e) problems with potentially unoccupied moral free space; (f) sources of ethical obligation within the ISCT framework; and (g) the potential role for concepts of stakeholder dialogue and engagement. Thomas Dunfee is the Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former president of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business and the Society for Business Ethics. He is a former director of the Wharton Ethics Program and the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research. Professor Dunfee has written widely on topics in business law and business ethics.     

Integrative Social Contract Theory and Urban Prosperity Initiatives

Urban communities in 21st century America are facing severe economic challenges, ones that suggest a mandate to contemplate serious changes in the way America does business. The middle class is diminishing in many parts of the country, with consequences for the economy as a whole. When faced with the loss of its economic base, any business community must make some difficult decisions about its proper role and responsibilities. Decisions to support the community must be balanced alongside and against responsibilities to owners, shareholders and relevant “stakeholders” in a relatively new context. Corporations in urban communities “hollowed out” by white flight or urban sprawl must decide what level of support they can and should provide. This paper examines corporate decisions within the emerging urban prosperity initiatives, using the framework of integrative social contract theory proposed by Donaldson and Dunfee. We suggest that urban prosperity initiatives present a mandate on corporations sufficiently strong as to qualify as an authentic norm. Further, we argue that strict adherence to a corporate bottom line approach or “corporate isolationism” is not congruent with contemporary community standards. Anita Cava is an Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration and serves as Co-Director of the University of Miami’s Ethics Programs, a university-wide entity that promotes research, teaching and service across the disciplines in areas of ethical interest and concern, and Director of Business Ethics Programs in the SBA. Professor Cava received her B.A. with Distinction from Swarthmore College and her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Hays Fellow. She joined the faculty after several years in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Miami. Her experience ranged from national employment cases to commercial and consumer litigation. Professor Cava’s teaching specialties are the legal environment of business and business ethics; here research interests concern legal and ethical aspects of healthcare administration, business ethics and employment issues. She has published in law reviews and business journals on such topics as “Advance Directives: Taking Control of End of Life Decisions,” “Law, Ethics and Management: Toward an Effective Audit” and “The Collision of Rights and s Search for Limits: Free Speech in the Academy and Freedom from Sexual Harassment of Campus”. Recipient of several School of Business Administration Excellence in Teaching Awards, Anita Cava was honored in 1996 by a University-wide Excellence in Teaching Award. She regularly teaches in UM’s well-known Executive MBA Program and has received Teaching Awards from these adult students as well. A frequent speaker on the topic of Business Ethics and Corporate Compliance, Professor Cava’s audiences have included community groups, management trainees, top executives of several corporations, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce Goals Conference and Leadership Florida, among others. Don Mayer teaches ethics, legal environment of business, and environmental law at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He is a full professor in the Department of Management and Marketing at the School of Business. He attended Duke University Law School (J.D., 1973) and Georgetown University Law Center (Master of International and Comparative Law, 1985) and practiced law in North Carolina from 1975–1990 after serving in the United States Air Force from 1973–75. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, California Polytechnic State University, and the University of Iowa. He has been at Oakland University since 1990 and served as Associate Dean in 2000 and 2001. Professor Mayer has published in related areas of international law, environmental law, and corporate ethics. Recent publication include “Fort’s ‘Business as Mediating Institution’-A Holistic View of Corporate Governance and Ethics,” in 41 American Business Law Journal (Summer 2004), “Yes! We Have No Bananas: Forum Non Conveniens and Corporate Evasion,” Academy of Legal Studies International Business Law Review, vol. 4, at 130 (2004), and “Corporate Governance in the Cause of Peace: An Environmental Perspective,” Vanderbilt Transnational Law Journal, Vol. 35, No. 2 (March 2002). An article on corporate free speech and the Nike v. Kasky case is forthcoming in the Business Ethics Quarterly.     

The Bindingness of Social and Psychological Contracts: Toward a Theory of Social Responsibility in Downsizing

Downsizing has become a significant public issue that has not yet been significantly studied by business ethicists. It is proposed that reasonable social and psychological contracts bound the moral free space of managers contemplating downsizing; the degree of constraint is also dependent on the organization's resource munificence. A framework for considering the extent of managerial moral free space and implications thereof for managerial practice are offered.     

The Nature of the Firm, Agency Theory and Shareholder Theory: A Critique from Philosophical Anthropology

Standard accounts on the nature of the firm are highly dependent on explanations by Coase, coupled with inputs from agency theory and shareholder theory. This paper carries out their critique in light of personalist and common good postulates. It shows how personalist and common good principles create a framework that not only accommodates business ethics better but also affords a more compelling understanding of business as a whole.Joan Fontrodona is Assistant Professor of Business Ethics and Academic Director of the Center for Business in Society at IESE Business School. He is member of the Academic Board of EABIS and member of the Executive Committee of EBEN-Spain.Alejo José G. Sison is the Rafael Escolá Chair of Professional Ethics (TECNUN) with appointments from the Philosophy Department and the Institute of Enterprise and Humanism of the University of Navarra.     

Designing and Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility: An Integrative Framework Grounded in Theory and Practice

This article introduces an integrative framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) design and implementation. A review of CSR literature – in particular with regard to design and implementation models – provides the background to develop a multiple case study. The resulting integrative framework, based on this multiple case study and Lewin’s change model, highlights four stages that span nine steps of the CSR design and implementation process. Finally, the study identifies critical success factors for the CSR process.     

Designing and Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility: An Integrative Framework Grounded in Theory and Practice

This article introduces an integrative framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) design and implementation. A review of CSR literature – in particular with regard to design and implementation models – provides the background to develop a multiple case study. The resulting integrative framework, based on this multiple case study and Lewin’s change model, highlights four stages that span nine steps of the CSR design and implementation process. Finally, the study identifies critical success factors for the CSR process.     

A Positive Theory of Social Entrepreneurship

I propose a theory aimed at advancing scholarly research in social entrepreneurship. By highlighting the key trade-off between value creation and value capture and explaining when situations of simultaneous market and government failure may arise, I suggest that social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of sustainable solutions to neglected problems with positive externalities. I further discuss the situations in which problems with externalities are likely to be neglected and derive the central goal and logic of action of social entrepreneurs, in contrast to commercial entrepreneurs. Overall, this article provides a conceptual framework that allows understanding the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship and its role in the functioning of modern society.     

中小企业技术集成创新的集成主体选择方法研究

技术集成创新能够在保证中小企业技术创新“行为优势”的同时获得大企业才拥有的技术创新“资源优势”,是中小企业技术创新的有效模式,该模式中有一个关键问题是集成主体的选择。传统集成主体选择方法存在不足,灰色关联度分析法是合理、有效的集成主体评价选择方法。     

An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Change in Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance: A Stakeholder Theory Perspective

Stakeholder theory provides a framework for investigating the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance. This relationship is investigated by examining how change in CSP is related to change in financial accounting measures. The findings provide some support for a tenet in stakeholder theory which asserts that the dominant stakeholder group, shareholders, financially benefit when management meets the demands of multiple stakeholders. Specifically, change in CSP was positively associated with growth in sales for the current and subsequent year. This indicates that there are short-term benefits from improving CSP. Return on sales was significantly positively related to change in CSP for the third financial period, indicating that long-term financial benefits may exist when CSP is improved.     

基于结构方程模型的企业社会责任评价——以石化行业为例

在企业社会责任管理上,第一,要建立利益相关者管理体系,完善利益相关者沟通机制,及时准确地反馈利益相关者的需求,提高企业社会责任的管理水平。第二,建立企业社会责任均衡发展模式,在满足基本经济效益的前提下,实现社会责任和环境责任等全面提高,使多方利益相关者相互促进、相互协调,形成一个良性循环的系统结构。第三,完善企业社会责任披露机制,统一行业内部企业社会责任信息与标准,促进全行业更好地履行企业社会责任。     

A Software Implementation of Kimbrough's Disquotation Theory for Representing and Enforcing Electronic Commerce Contracts

Kimbrough's Disquotation Theory, a formal theory about sentences that embed propositional content, expounds the fulfillment and violation conditions for speech acts such as asserting, permitting, and obliging. This paper aims to show how the theory can be profitably applied to the creation of computational environments for monitoring and enforcing electronic commerce contracts using pervasive, mainstream industrial technologies such as Java and relational databases. We examine the notion of an occurrence and provide a structural representation of this abstraction. We show how contractual provisions – obligations, permissions, prohibitions, and powers – can be stored, monitored, and enforced. A query overlap determination mechanism is applied to the problem of monitoring occurrences and analyzing contractual provisions for conflicts. The work presented here demonstrates that, with certain alterations, Kimbrough's theory presents a promising means of storing interrogable and executable specifications for e-commerce workflow applications.     

The Usefulness of Social Norm Theory in Empirical Business Ethics Research: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

In response to recent calls to extend the underlying theories used in the literature (O’Fallon and Butterfield in J Bus Ethics 59(4):375–413, 2005; Craft in J Bus Ethics 117(2):221–259, 2013), we review the usefulness of social norm theory in empirical business ethics research. We begin by identifying the seeds of social norm theory in Adam Smith’s (in: Raphael and Macfie (eds) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the Glasgow Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1759/1790) seminal work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Next, we introduce recent theory in social norm activation by Bicchieri (The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006) and compare the new theory to two theoretical frameworks found in the literature: Kohlberg’s (in: Goslin (ed) Handbook of socialization theory and research, Rand McNally, Chicago, IL, 1969; in: Lickona (ed) Moral development and behavior, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1976) theory of moral development and Cialdini and Trost’s (in: Gilbert et al. (eds) The handbook of social psychology, Oxford University Press, Boston, 1998) taxonomy of social norms. We argue that the new theory provides useful insights by emphasizing the ability of situational cues and information to generate common expectations for social/moral norms. The theory is particularly useful for empirical research in business ethics because it gives both organizational and individual factors a role in motivating norm-based behavior. To demonstrate this usefulness, we present examples where the theory has been effectively applied in experimental accounting research to generate new insights. We conclude by citing specific examples where the theory may prove useful in empirical business ethics research.     

A Review of Donaldson and Dunfee's Ties That Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics

This article reviews Thomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee's new book Ties That Bind. The article argues that the book is a helpful elaboration of Donaldson and Dunfee's Integrative Social Contracts Approach, particularly with regard to their specification of hypernorms. The article also presents Donaldson and Dunfee's argument with regard to how the hypernorm of necessary social efficiency applies to bribery and raises questions about the extent to which human moral behavior might be hardwired.     

A Political Economic Critique on the Theory of Optimum Currency Areas,and the Implications for East Asia

In recent years, dynamic debate has arisen as to the desirability and feasibility of creating a monetary union in East Asia. While the debate has relied heavily on the theory of optimum currency areas, this theory has weaknesses in explaining the actual formation of monetary unions. At this point, political economy analysis appears to demonstrate stronger explanatory power. This paper provides a systematic review of the main developments in the literature on optimum currency area theory and in the political economy literature on monetary union. In addition, it addresses the feasibility of an East Asian monetary union, by applying the findings in these two academic strands to the region. It finds that even though formation of an East Asian monetary union may be to some extent feasible from an economic perspective, the region’s political situation does not appear favourable for the creation of one.