Corporate Constructed and Dissent Enabling Public Spheres: Differentiating Dissensual from Consensual Corporate Social Responsibility

I here distinguish dissensual from consensual corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the grounds that the former is more concerned to organize (or portray) corporate-civil society disagreement than it is corporate-civil society agreement. In doing so, I first conceive of consensual CSR, and identify a positive and negative view thereof. Second, I conceive of dissensual CSR, and suggest that it can be actualized through the construction of dissent enabling, rather than consent-oriented, public spheres. Following this, I describe four actor-centred institutional theories—i.e. a sociological, ethical, transformative and economic perspective, respectively—and suggest that an economic perspective is generally well suited to explaining CSR activities at the organizational level. Accordingly, I then use the economic perspective to analyse a dissent enabling public sphere that Shell has constructed, and within which Greenpeace participated. In particular, I explain Shell’s employment of dissensual CSR in terms of their core business interests; and identify some potential implications thereof for Shell, Greenpeace, and society more generally. In concluding, I highlight a number of ways in which the present paper can inform future research on business and society interactions.     

Corporations and Citizenship Arenas in the Age of Social Media

Little attention has been paid to the importance of social media in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. This deficit is redressed in the present paper through utilizing the notion of ‘citizenship arenas’ to identify three dynamics in social media-augmented corporate–society relations. First, we note that social media-augmented ‘corporate arenas of citizenship’ are constructed by individual corporations in an effort to address CSR issues of specific importance thereto, and are populated by individual citizens as well as (functional/formally organized) stakeholders. Second, we highlight that, within social media-augmented ‘public arenas of citizenship’, individual citizens are empowered, relative to corporations and their (functional/formally organized) stakeholders, when it comes to creating, debating, and publicizing, CSR-relevant issues. Third, we posit that information and communication technology corporations possess specific, and potentially very important, capacities, when it comes to creating, or helping construct, public arenas of citizenship from within which individual citizens can influence their broader political–economic environment. Following this, we discuss how social media can contribute to ‘dysfunctions’ as well as ‘progressions’ in corporate–society relations, and conclude with a number of suggestions for future research.     

Intelligent Cyber Logistics Using Reverse Auction in Electronic Commerce

In electronic markets, customers can purchase products online. In addition, the seller or an Internet shopping mall has to deliver the products to the buyers. Transportation agencies can be chosen to deliver the products from an Internet shopping mall. Much research about efficient and automatic delivery scheduling has been carried out on delivery-ordering. By and large, transportation agencies need to maintain not only a cooperative relationship but also a competitive relationship among themselves to meet with customers' preferences for their purchases. This article suggests an intelligent, cyber-logistic framework as a multiagent system and presents designs for an intelligent software-agent structure to maintain this cooperative and competitive relationship. This intelligent cyber-logistic system consists of shopping mall agents, a broker agent, and delivery and scheduling agents. These components, based on the concept of reverse auction, lead to improvement in the overall system efficiency as well as increased profits for each transportation company. Traditionally, in researching vehicle routing problems (VRP), the cooperative and competitive relationships among the transportation companies have not been addressed. However, in this article, we have addressed these issues. We also suggest the reverse method of auction, which solves VRP for their own trucks to provide the transportation of goods for the shopping malls. After finding their own solution, the transportation company can bid with its own cost of delivery. We have used the constraint satisfaction problems solving method to conduct truck scheduling for each transportation agency. To perform the delivery-ordering process between agents, we have defined the logisticsKQML to represent the message protocol of upper level. Finally, we have evaluated the cyber-logistic system using reverse auction by a simulation experiment and have discussed further research and drawn conclusions.     

Does innovativeness of knowledge-intensive business services differ from other industries?

This article seeks to determine whether the innovative capabilities of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) do actually differ from other industries through comparing the innovation capacities and financial performance of KIBS with firms operating in other sectors (non-KIBS). Based upon a 1000-firm sample, the results of our estimated econometric model demonstrate that non-KIBS firms are in possession of significantly greater innovation capacities than KIBS firms. These differences were observed across factors such as organisational process innovation, the launch of already existing products in new markets, branding and new product designs. Nevertheless, as regards the actual importance attributed to product/service innovation, KIBS firms place a greater comparative importance on innovation in comparison with their non-KIBS peers. In addition, the empirical evidences display a significantly different range of effects of innovation capacities on financial performance and concludes that non-KIBS firms turn in better comparative performances than specialist KIBS firms.     

Trade,scale or social capital? Technological progress in poor and rich countries

Endogenous growth theory suggests scale and trade as the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The literature on social capital suggests that the levels of trust and participation in societies may affect cooperation and innovation. While there is evidence of the role of trade and inconclusive evidence on the role of social capital, previous studies have generally omitted two factors, out of the three mentioned, used small sample sizes and emphasized economic growth rather than technological progress. Our study addresses these shortcomings. We find robust evidence of the role of trade in fostering technological progress which is invariant to TFP proxies and independent of the debate on measuring TFP. Moreover, there is no clear role for scale, and a country rate of TFP growth seems to increase the most the more the country trades with dynamic economies that are different from. We uncover a positive effect of social capital, which is more significant in richer countries, suggesting that other characteristics, such as institutional quality, may be complementary to social capital. The paper's results are robust to different specification and estimation methods.     

Legitimacy-Seeking Organizational Strategies in Controversial Industries: A Case Study Analysis and a Bidimensional Model

Controversial industry sectors, such as alcohol, gambling, and tobacco, though long-established, suffer organizational legitimacy problems. The authors consider various strategies used to seek organizational legitimacy in the U.K. casino gambling market. The findings are based on a detailed, multistakeholder case study pertaining to a failed bid for a regional supercasino. They suggest four generic strategies for seeking organizational legitimacy in this highly complex context: construing, earning, bargaining, and capturing, as well as pathways that combine these strategies. The case analysis and proposed bidimensional model of generic legitimacy-seeking strategies contribute to limited literature on organizational legitimacy in controversial industry sectors. In addition, beyond organizations active in controversial contexts, this study and its implications are useful for individuals and organizations supporting or opposing the organizational legitimacy of organizations in controversial industries.     

Orthorexia Nervosa: Can Healthy Eating Food Trends Impact Food Companies Marketing Strategies?

The purpose of this article is to explore foods companies’ knowledge of food trends and assess how orthorexia nervosa may affect food companies’ marketing decisions. Data was gathered through a multiple case-study approach, and four semi-structured interviews to CEOs/CMOs of food companies from four distinct non-competing sectors of the food industry. The results show that although marketing managers are conscious of the existence of consumer behavior changes regarding food habits, they are not particularly concerned neither interested in micro-segments as they are not profitable. Despite the deficiencies on CMOs’ knowledge of particular food trends they declare to be attentive to the changes in consumer behavior and prepared to respond to competitors moves. This research adds to the existing knowledge on the food industry since it is the first study to explore the impact of food trends on food companies’ management marketing decisions from the company point of view.     

Road traffic injuries in Mozambique

Road traffic injuries affect the economy, health and quality of life of the people of Mozambique. Current road safety programmes are inadequate and inefficient given the magnitude of the problem. Data reported on road traffic crashes in the period 1990 to 2000 from the National Institute for Road Safety, the traffic police and the Central Hospital of Maputo were reviewed. The burden of road traffic injuries in Mozambique is rising, with at least three people killed daily. The age group most affected is 25-38 (39.35%), followed by 16-24 (20.79%). The main causes of crashes include reckless driving, drunken driving, roads with potholes, inadequate signs, lack of protection for pedestrians, and inadequate traffic law enforcement. However, the data are not adequate to reveal the true magnitude of the problem. Data collected by different sources are incomplete and not coordinated with other sources and databases. In urban areas, however, better response to crashes, treatment of the injured, reporting and data collection is attributable to a greater concentration of police and medical facilities. Road traffic safety programmes in Mozambique are inadequate and inefficient, starting with the data collection system. Improvement of injury surveillance systems is needed to help make road traffic safety a national development agenda priority and for developing and implementing road safety policies. For road safety programmes to be effective, government must facilitate stakeholders’ involvement, and the clear definition of government activities, civil society activities and public-private partnerships need to be established.     

Corporate Transparency: A Perspective from Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae

This article analyzes the issue of organizational transparency through the lens of Thomas Aquinas’ ethics. It provides moral justification for current claims about corporate transparency and sheds light on the ethical values and virtues affecting information disclosure decisions. Transparency is conceptualized as an informational mechanism necessary for performing the virtues of truthfulness, justice, and prudence. This article extends the organizational transparency and corporate social responsibility literatures by providing an alternative moral justification grounded in virtue-based theory, which extends our understanding of the information disclosure decisions made by management.