The constitutions of many nations have been explicitly or implicitly founded upon principles of the social contract derived from Thomas Hobbes. The Hobbesian egoism at the base of the contract fairly accurately represents the structure of market enterprise. A contractarian analysis may, then, allow for justified or rationally acceptable universal standards to which businesses should conform. This paper proposes general rational restrictions upon multi-national enterprises, and includes a critique of unjustified restrictions recently proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and (...) Development (OECD). I propose restrictions that may be tighter than the OECD and international law currently demand, because reason requires that the activities of enterprises accord with standards of environmental and governmental sustainability in addition to consortium, national law and international law agreements. I argue that it is justifiable that indictments may be presented by a citizen or a government against the local arm of a multinational enterprise in response to violations committed by an arm within a different country. (shrink)

As environmental issues have become increasingly prominent around the world, corporate environmental responsibility has begun to attract more attention. As the decision-makers of firms, top executives play an important role in the environmentally ethical behavior of their corporations. Few studies, however, have explored the motivations behind corporations’ environmentally responsible behavior from the perspective of how CEOs’ early experiences shape their decisions. This paper explores the impact that CEOs who experienced the Send-down movement have on their companies’ environmentally responsible behavior and (...) the boundary conditions of this impact from the perspective of the imprinting theory. Based on the data of listed Chinese companies from 2009 to 2020, we have found that CEOs who were themselves “Sent-down youth” have a positive impact on corporate environmental responsibility. For firms with a higher proportion of state ownership and CEOs with Chinese Communist Party membership, the relationship between experience with the Send-down movement and corporate environmental responsibility is strengthened, whereas a higher level of market competition weakens the relationship. This article enriches and deepens the research on the imprinting theory, and it also has certain practical implications for firms that hire top executives with unique types of early experiences to promote business ethics improvement. (shrink)

This article studies argumentation for acceptability of corporate environmental actions in corporate environmental statements, with emphasis on stakeholder relations and environmental values. Stakeholder theory is commonly taken as the basis for corporate environmental management, and rhetoric typical of the stakeholder approach dominates the field. Although environmental issues are strongly charged with values, the dominant stakeholder approach does not stress the value dimension. The data of the study consists of environmental statements by Finnish forerunning business corporations in the forefront of corporate (...) environmental responsibility. The results of the study indicate that the statements argue for the acceptability of corporate environmental actions through three power-related rhetorical forms that are competing ways to produce acceptability in the data: dominance, subordination and equality, and joint action. Each rhetorical form describes a power-based relationship between stakeholders and the corporation and leans on a specific value type producing legitimacy for that rhetoric form. (shrink)

The charged debate on the ‘C‐S‐R‐ization’ of organizational practices seems to have produced two opposing and seemingly incompatible explanations for why organizations should engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR): one, the normative rationale based on an appeal to ethics; and the other, the instrumental rationale, based on an appeal to business pragmatism. This paper argues that a missing link in this debate is the failure to recognize that the normative and instrumental approaches to corporate social responsibility are underpinned by substantively, (...) differentiating, relative logics of emotional rationalism on the one hand, and instrumental rationalism on the other. The paper makes a case that for CSR as a management practice to be practicable and actionable within a sustainable business agenda, it will need to be stripped of its current normative undertone and reconstructed in the instrumentally, pragmatic (utlish) language of business. Otherwise, the whole concept of CSR may continue to dwell in the realm of abstract theorizing without yielding many beneficial and practicable outcomes. The paper concludes that such an approach that situates CSR within a pragmatic business lingua, rather than a non‐business lingua, will help in legitimizing CSR as a ‘neutral’ management practice. (shrink)

Corporate environmental ethics has moved from a niche issue within business strategy to a potential source of competitive advantage. Firms, however, are comprised of individuals who vary in their personal beliefs regarding environmental responsibility. Environmental stewards are those employees whose attitudes and actions reflect environmental concern. Top management can convey similar environmental values through the creation of eco-capabilities. Applying logic from the natural resource-based view of the firm, we build a model to test how the alignment of environmental values impacts (...) multiple outcomes. We conduct a time-lagged examination using multi-level data from frontline employees, their managers, and their customers. We find that firms can ‘activate’ their corporate environmental ethics through eco-capabilities. Specifically, environmental stewards find more meaning in their work when managers perceive high levels of eco-capabilities within the firm. This meaningful work increases employee brand advocacy and customer satisfaction. Together, we demonstrate how corporate environmental ethics translates to the frontline and the customers they serve. (shrink)

This article develops an integrative perspective on corporate responsibility by synthesising competing perspectives on the responsibility of the corporation at the organisational and societal levels of analysis. We review three major corporate responsibility perspectives, which we refer to as economic, critical, and politico-ethical. We analyse the major potential uses and pitfalls of the perspectives, and integrate the debate on these two levels. Our synthesis concludes that when a society has a robust division of moral labour in place, the responsibility of (...) a corporation may be economic without jeopardising democracy and sustainability. Moreover, the economic role of corporations neither signifies the absence of deliberative democratic mechanisms nor business practices extending beyond compliance. The study underscores the value of integrating different perspectives and multiple levels of analysis to present comprehensive descriptions and prescriptions of the responsibility phenomenon. (shrink)

Drawing from the varieties of capitalism theoretical framework, the study explores the home country influences of multinational corporations on their corporate social responsibility practices when they operate outside their national/regional institutional contexts. The study focusses on a particular CSR practice of seven MNCs from three varieties of capitalism – coordinated, mixed and liberal market economies – operating in the oil and gas sector of the Nigerian economy. The study concludes that the corporate codes of conduct of these MNCs operating in (...) Nigeria, to a large extent, reflect the characteristics of their home countries' model of capitalism, respectively, albeit with certain degree of modifications. The home countries' model of capitalism is also found to have implications for the degree of adaptability of these MNCs' CSR practices to the Nigerian institutional context – with the mixed market economy model of capitalism adapting more flexibly than the liberal and coordinated market economies, respectively. The findings of this study will contribute to the emerging literature on the institutional embeddedness of CSR practices in transnational social spaces, understanding of varieties of capitalism, and CSR in developing economies. (shrink)

This article argues that previous research on the outcomes of corporate responsibility should be refined in two ways. First, although there is abundant research that addresses the link between corporate responsibility (CR) and financial performance, hardly any studies scrutinize whether the type of corporate responsibility makes a difference to this link. Second, while the majority of CR research conducted within business studies concentrates on the financial outcomes for the firm, the societal outcomes of CR are left largely unexplored. To tackle (...) these two deficiencies, this article extends the different conceptualizations of corporate responsibility and elaborates both the financial and the societal outcomes of different types of CR. (shrink)

The corporate responsibility (CR) discussion has so far been rather fragmented as academics tackle it from their own areas of expertise, which guarantees in-depth analyses, but leaves room for broader syntheses. This research is a synthetic, interdisciplinary exercise: it integrates philosophical, psychological and managerial perspectives of corporate responsibility into a more holistic CR-model for the benefit of academics, companies and their interest groups. CR usually comprises three areas: environmental, social and economic responsibilities. In all these areas there should be a (...) match between corporate values, discourses and actions. The aim of this multidisciplinary research is to build a CR-model by integrating (1) utilitarian/egoistic, duty/rights/justice and virtue ethical corporate values with (2) increased consciousness of psychological defences in corporate discourses, in order to achieve (3) responsible environmental, social and economic corporate actions. The resulting CR-model can be tested in companies and executed through corporate strategic and operational management. (shrink)

In their role as political actors and lobbyists, corporations have responsibilities to help determine the existence and content of global regulations of pollutants. The ethical nature of those responsibilities is highly sensitive to the assumed normative framework. This paper compares several frameworks by modeling them as differently weighted versions of utilitarianism. Under a strict neoclassical approach, corporations have a narrow obligation to maximize profits, which generally entails opposing emission regulations. In contrast, a stakeholder approach as well as Marxian and common (...) ethics approaches suggest that firms have an obligation to actively support sustainable emission regulations with the following properties • major restrictions would be global rather than local• global restrictions would apply in all cases of persistent emissions• global restrictions would apply to non-persistent emissions as well, unless they have been affirmatively shown to be safe using reasonably persuasive scientific evidence• safety thresholds would be set fairly restrictively, based on administrative models and rules of thumb, in light of existing scientific knowledge but without requiring full scientific justification• long-run goals would include zero emission of persistent unsafe substances.However, the stakeholder approach supports phase-in rules to mitigate short-run compliance costs. (shrink)

Resource extraction companies worldwide are involved with Indigenous peoples. Historically these interactions have been antagonistic, yet there is a growing public expectation for improved ethical performance of resource industries to engage with Indigenous peoples. (Crawley and Sinclair, Journal of Business Ethics 45, 361–373 (2003)) proposed an ethical model for human resource practices with Indigenous peoples in Australian mining companies. This paper expands on this work by re-framing the discussion within the context of sustainable development, extending it to Canada, and generalizing (...) to other resource industries. We argue that it is unethical to sacrifice the viability of Indigenous cultures for industrial resource extraction; it is ethical to engage with indigenous peoples in a manner consistent with their wishes and needs as they perceive them. We apply these ideas to a case study in the coastal temperate rainforest of Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. In this case a scientific panel comprised of Nuu-Chah-Nulth elders, forest scientists and management professionals, achieved full consensus on developing sustainable forest practice standards by drawing equally on Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and Western science in the context of one of the most heated and protracted environmental conflicts in Canadian history. The resulting sustainable forest practice standards were later adopted by leading forestry firms operating on the coast. Our analysis of this scientific panels success provides the basis for advancing an ethical approach to sustainable development with Indigenous peoples. This ethical approach is applicable to companies working in natural resource industries where the territories of Indigenous peoples are involved. (shrink)

This paper investigates the driving forces behind the environment-oriented management in Slovenia, a country in transition. The study focuses on attititudes of managers towards different aspects of the concern for the environment, the most important sources of pressure on companies for better environmental performance, the potential conflict between environmental and other business goals, and perception of barriers to the environmentally responsible behaviour of a company. The study uncovers a strong belief that the government is responsible to prevent damage caused to (...) the environment by industry. (shrink)

With the dramatic collapse of bureaucratic dictatorial socialism, Business Ethicists need an antithesis to capitalism to enrich our reformist writings. Reliance on self-regulation and requesting that business executives behave in a socially responsible manner are necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for creating a "good society." The purpose of this article is to introduce readers to the works of two new age theologians – Neale Donald Walsch and Reverend Sun Myung Moon – who offer an alternative vision and paradigm for understanding (...) business and society relationships. They provide unique insights about economics, organizational structures and policies, and individual attitudes and behaviors necessary for creating an ethical society. Pertinent economic and organizational concepts emanating from their writings include mission statements and codes of ethics; meaningful and joyful work; autonomy and self-management; workplace diversity; parentism and participatory management; stakeholder governance boards; democratic social capitalismwith upper and lower income limits; and the principle ofvisibility. Work should support family units and individualgrowth and development, not supersede or destroy them. (shrink)

The charged debate on the ‘C‐S‐R‐ization’ of organizational practices seems to have produced two opposing and seemingly incompatible explanations for why organizations should engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR): one, the normative rationale based on an appeal to ethics; and the other, the instrumental rationale, based on an appeal to business pragmatism. This paper argues that a missing link in this debate is the failure to recognize that the normative and instrumental approaches to corporate social responsibility are underpinned by substantively, (...) differentiating, relative logics of emotional rationalism on the one hand, and instrumental rationalism on the other. The paper makes a case that for CSR as a management practice to be practicable and actionable within a sustainable business agenda, it will need to be stripped of its current normative undertone and reconstructed in the instrumentally, pragmatic (utlish) language of business. Otherwise, the whole concept of CSR may continue to dwell in the realm of abstract theorizing without yielding many beneficial and practicable outcomes. The paper concludes that such an approach that situates CSR within a pragmatic business lingua, rather than a non‐business lingua, will help in legitimizing CSR as a ‘neutral’ management practice. (shrink)

This study investigates the social and environmental disclosure practices of socially responsible Chinese listed firms as displayed in their annual reports and corporate social responsibility reports from the perspective of stakeholders. A stakeholder-driven, three-dimensional social and environmental disclosure index that integrates the quantity and two aspects of the quality of disclosure perceived by stakeholders is constructed to assess the social and environmental disclosures in firm annual reports and CSR reports. The study results indicate that stakeholders perceive different disclosure types and (...) disclosure items as important to differing degrees. CSR reports provide more stakeholder-relevant social and environmental disclosure than annual reports. (shrink)

Corporate responsibility is considered the “epitome of corporate ethics.” In “the balanced concept of the firm,” a corporation is seen as a moral agent that has a balanced approach to managing three interrelated and equally important responsibilities viz. economic, social, and environmental. The case study aims to advance our understating of the “triple bottom line approach to CSR” by showing how a news media organization committed itself to dispensing its corporate responsibilities despite facing lawless situations. Through a detailed study of (...) organizational records and interviews with the top management of the organization, we found that Prabhat Khabar could reap rich benefits for its stakeholders by engaging in role-related work and following business practices that were innovative, contextually appropriate, and ethically correct. As Prabhat Khabar’s growth happened in a market that was adverse to business activities, we believe that its story would act as a role model function of corporate conduct in emerging economies. Moreover, it would help organizations understand how to commit themselves to corporate responsibilities in unfavourable circumstances. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of corporate environmental performance on the propensity that auditors issue modified audit opinions and further investigates the moderating effects of internal control and greenwashing. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, our findings reveal that corporate environmental performance is significantly negatively associated with modified audit opinions, suggesting that auditors applaud environmentally friendly firms. Moreover, internal control reinforces the negative association between corporate environmental performance and modified audit opinions, but greenwashing attenuates the negative effect of corporate (...) environmental performance on modified audit opinions. The findings are robust to various sensitivity tests, and our conclusions are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity. Additional tests reveal that corporate environmental performance is negatively associated with modified audit opinions only for firms without audit opinion shopping and corporate environmental performance is significantly negatively associated with both earnings management and audit fees. (shrink)

This study empirically examines whether firms’ environmental capital expenditures impact institutional investors’ investment decisions in the Chinese market. We particularly examine the impact of ownership type on the relationship of environmental capital expenditures and the behavior of different types of institutional investors by classifying institutional investors into two categories, short-term and long-term investors. In addition, this study further investigates whether environmental capital expenditures related to ownership type increase firm value. We find that long-term institutional investors tend to invest in state-owned (...) firms making environmental capital expenditures. Results also indicate that, with governmental backing and encouragement, the market value of SOEs making more environmental capital expenditures is likely to increase. However, no similar results are found for non-SOEs. (shrink)