Technology plays an important role in business and society. This has resulted in the belief that technology is in a unique position to solve organizational and societal problems. However, technology is not regarded as equally impactful by all. To explore these differences, we designed a technosolutionism scale to measure the extent to which individuals deem technological solutions to be better-suited to address organizational and societal problems. In Studies 1a and 1b, exploratory and confirmatory analyses indicated two reliable factors: (1) near-term (...) and (2) long-term focused technosolutionism. Study 2 confirmed the scale’s convergent and discriminant validity. Next, we tested the predictive validity of the technosolutionism scale. We argue that a propensity to consider intelligent technologies as being able to provide solutions should also predict preferences in areas where technological solutions are being considered in response to organizational issues. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that the technosolutionism scale relates to preferences for a robot over a human in job replacement decisions and preferences for artificial intelligence managers over human managers in managerial decision-making tasks, respectively. This is an important finding as current research indicates that people are generally against being replaced or being managed by intelligent technologies, whereas our findings indicate that this preference flips when it comes to those with a higher propensity for technosolutionism. Our technosolutionism scale can be used to gauge the extent to which individuals believe that technology is uniquely placed to solve problems, such that they opt for intelligent technological solutions over and above other (human) solutions. (shrink)

Existing scholarly work on corporate social responsibility frequently emphasizes either normative/ethical claims about social progress or instrumental/strategic claims about corporate effectiveness, yet less often acknowledges the moral conditions of those undertaking CSR within a specific cultural context. In this paper, we draw attention to the social conditions in which CSR takes place and the related ethics of the subjects that must enact it. Our approach is to document the lived experiences of practitioners in Romania, a post-communist society. Drawing from fifty-three (...) depth interviews with both corporate responsibility practitioners, and managers in non-profit organizations who together work on CSR projects, we describe their experiences of the social and organizational environment, the CSR practices that are undertaken in this context, and the intended and unintended consequences of such work. Using Bauman’s theorization of ethics, including adiaphora and moral distancing, and Borţun’s interpretation of Romanianness, we then theorize liquid CSR as an ambivalence between adiaphoric practice and the moral impulse to do good, resulting in both intended and unintended consequences. (shrink)

In this article, we philosophically reflect on the nature of corporate governance. We raise the question whether control is still a feasible ideal of corporate governance and reflect on the implications of the epistemic insufficiency of economic institutions with regard to grand challenges like of global warming for our conceptualization of corporate governance. We first introduce the concept of corporate governance from the perspective of economics and politics. We then trace the genealogy of the concept of governance based on a (...) selective reading of Giorgio Agamben’s work, who has pointed at two interdependent paradigms of governance in the Christian tradition, and apply his categories in the context of corporate governance. We finally engage in a critical reflection on the concept of corporate governance and develop four characteristics of corporate governance that can guide future conceptual as well as empirical research in the field of corporate social responsibility of economic institutions. (shrink)

Referring to the phenomenon of structural injustice resulting from unintended consequences of the combination of the actions of many people, Iris Marion Young claims for a new understanding of responsibility. She proposes what she calls a social connection model of responsibility which assigns responsibility to individuals also for participating in ongoing structural and social processes. To remedy structural injustice Young claims for collective action of various actors in society and assigns different degrees of responsibility depending on the agent’s position within (...) the structural process. However, although Young mentions power, privilege, interest, and collective ability as parameters influencing the degree of an actor’s responsibility to contribute to structural change she does not elaborate which responsibilities concern which groups in society. As we will outline in our contribution, we hold the tenet of subsidiarity to be a useful supplement to the conception of Iris Marion Young which would allow for assigning such responsibilities to different layers in society. However, since the tenet of subsidiarity is only a supple principle which does not distinguish between different kinds of duties, we propose to enrich the tenet of subsidiarity by the Kantian conception of perfect and imperfect duties. (shrink)

This study uses panel data to investigate the different roles of the Chinese government in influencing companies’ decision making about corporate environmental reporting (CER) via a two-stage process. The results show that the Chinese government appears to mainly influence the decision whether to disclose or not, but has limited influence on how much firms disclose. The results also show that the traditional model of authoritarian capitalism (under which state-owned enterprises [SOEs] are the major governance arrangement) is transforming into a new (...) model. In the new model of authoritarian capitalism, the Chinese government uses newer, more sophisticated tools to manage both state-owned and non–state-owned companies. In addition, these new governance arrangements appear to be more efficient than the traditional model. The findings of this study have implications for both the Chinese government and for Chinese companies, as well as making important contributions to the literature and knowledge of CER in China. (shrink)

The “return of the state” as an economic actor has left scholars at a lack of theoretical tools to capture the characteristics of state-dominated business systems. This is reflected in the fact that any type of state intervention in the economy is too easily qualified as a sign of “authoritarian capitalism,” which has led scholars to lump together countries as diverse as China, Singapore, and Norway under that heading. Rather than considering any type of state intervention in the economy as (...) authoritarian, we propose a more sophisticated conceptualization, which distinguishes two boundaries between the public and the private domains and conceives of the “return of the state” as the erosion of one or both of them. This conceptualization allows us to clearly distinguish a shift from an ideal-typical market-based “regulatory capitalism” to “state capitalism” or “authoritarian capitalism,” respectively. We use interview data with business leaders in an extreme case of the return of the state to identify the nature of the mechanisms by which an authoritarian government erodes these private-public divides. We argue that a focus on these constitutive mechanisms of the erosion of private-public divides allows us to define “authoritarian capitalism” in a way that makes it a useful tool to understand contexts beyond the Chinese case in which it first emerged. (shrink)

The role of governments in business and society research remains underexplored. The generally accepted principle of voluntarism, which frames responsible business conduct as an unregulated subject under managerial discretion, accounts for this gap. Paradoxically, there are sufficient acknowledgments in academia and practice on different roles of governments. The present article identifies three broad topics for research, addressing the paradox between the principle of voluntarism and the role of governments in B&S, the boundaries of governments and business in their contribution to (...) B&S issues, and the mechanisms of government intervention that affect corporate social performance. The authors approach the first topic with a literature review of 703 articles marked with the term “government” from five journals in the field between 1982 and 2011. This study indicates that the principle of voluntarism remains, despite the broad variety of research related to the role of government in B&S. In addition, the identified content provides deeper insight into the mechanisms of government intervention and on the boundaries of governments in the B&S discourse. This article then provides a summary of the other three research articles included in this special research forum, with a contribution oriented toward the latter two research avenues posited. (shrink)

In the political context, the tenet of subsidiarity states that societal tasks should be solved by subordinate entities in society if these entities have the competencies to solve such problems wit...