Although CSR scholarship has highlighted how tensions in CSR implementation are negotiated, little is known about its normative and moral dimension at a micro-level. Drawing upon the economies of worth framework, we explore how spirituality influences the negotiation of CSR tensions at an individual level, and what types of justification work they engage in when experiencing tensions. Our analysis of semi-structured interview data from individuals who described themselves as Buddhist and were in charge of CSR implementations for their organizations shows (...) that spirituality influences how they compromise among competing moral values by identifying two forms of justification work: compartmentalizing work and contextualizing work, which help spiritual practitioners minimize moral dissonance. (shrink)

Arguing that psychology and business ethics are best brought together through a multi-level, broad-based agenda, this essay articulates a vision of psychology and business ethics to frame a future research agenda. The essay draws upon work published in JBE, but also identifies gaps where published research is needed, to build upon psychological conceptions of business ethics. Psychological concepts, notably, are not restricted to phenomena “in the head”, but are discussed at the intra-psychic, relational, and contextual levels of analysis. On the (...) basis of this presentation, I discuss future directions for development in psychology and business ethics, including but not limited to studies of personality, emotion, decision making, motivation, and the biological bases of psychology and business ethics. An inclusive approach to these and related areas, it is argued, will both bring about depth of understanding on the psychological bases of business ethics, and allow dialogue across disciplinary areas within JBE. (shrink)

This article maps existing research from 5,874 scholarly publications on social entrepreneurship (SE) utilizing scientometrics. The mapping indicates a taxonomy of five clusters: (a) the nature of SE, (b) policy implications and employment in relation to SE, (c) SE in communities and health, (d) SE personality traits, and (e) SE education. We complement the scientometric analysis with a systematic literature review of publications on SE in the Financial Times 50 list (FT50) and Business & Society and propose a multistage, multilevel (...) framework that highlights the clusters of existing research on SE based on their stage and level of analysis. This review study also helps outline a set of future research directions, including studies examining (a) the process stage at the micro-level and macro-level, (b) linkages across levels and stages, (c) linkages across stages over time or longitudinal studies, (d) SE in resource-constrained environments, (e) technological advancement and its impact on SE, (f) the types of social enterprises and their outcomes, and (g) various emerging topics in SE. (shrink)

This study introduces a human empowerment framework to better understand why some businesses are more socially oriented than others in their policies and activities. Building on Welzel’s theory of emancipation, we argue that human empowerment—comprised of four components: action resources, emancipative values, social movement activity, and civic entitlements—enables, motivates, and entitles individuals to pursue social goals for their businesses. Using a sample of over 15,000 entrepreneurs from 43 countries, we report strong empirical evidence for two ecological effects of the framework (...) components on prosociality. We find that human empowerment lifts entrepreneurs’ willingness to choose a social orientation for their business, and reinforces the gender effect on prosociality in business activity. We discuss the human empowerment framework’s added value in understanding how modernization processes fully leverage the potential of social business activities for societies. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship is perceived as a legitimate and innovative solution to social problems. Yet, when one looks at the literature one finds that the social problems that the SE movement seeks to address and how these problems are identified and defined are not studied. This lack of attention to the defining of social problems in SE has implications for the domain for problems do not exist unless they are recognized and defined, and those that define problems have influence on how (...) these will eventually be addressed. Our paper presents an analysis of framing activities in SE done by the actors involved in the development and promotion of the SE movement. Our analysis reveals that these actors are concerned with creating an ecosystem to support social entrepreneurs. Critical analysis of discourses of these actors reveals a powerful mobilization discourse, one that supports social entrepreneurs as the agents of change. We also find that as the SE movement emerged at the beginning of a cycle of protest against capitalist systems, their framing of SE as system changing of these very systems therefore finds strong resonance with a wide variety of actors. (shrink)

Fairness of Artificial Intelligence decisions has become a big challenge for governments, companies, and societies. We offer a theoretical contribution to consider AI ethics outside of high-level and top-down approaches, based on the distinction between “reality” and “world” from Luc Boltanski. To do so, we provide a new perspective on the debate on AI fairness and show that criticism of ML unfairness is “realist”, in other words, grounded in an already instituted reality based on demographic categories produced by institutions. Second, (...) we show that the limits of “realist” fairness corrections lead to the elaboration of “radical responses” to fairness, that is, responses that radically change the format of data. Third, we show that fairness correction is shifting to a “domination regime” that absorbs criticism, and we provide some theoretical and practical avenues for further development in AI ethics. Using an ad hoc critical space stabilized by reality tests alongside the algorithm, we build a shared responsibility model which is compatible with the radical response to fairness issues. Finally, this paper shows the fundamental contribution of pragmatic sociology theories, insofar as they afford a social and political perspective on AI ethics by giving an active role to material actors such as database formats on ethical debates. In a context where data are increasingly numerous, granular, and behavioral, it is essential to renew our conception of AI ethics on algorithms in order to establish new models of responsibility for companies that take into account changes in the computing paradigm. (shrink)

Compassion is acknowledged as a key motivational source of prosocial opportunity recognition. This study examines the underlying processes of different types of compassion that lead to prosocial OR interventions designed to solve or ameliorate social problems. Self-compassion is associated with intimate personal experiences of suffering and encompasses a desire to alleviate the distress of others based on common humanity, mental distance and mindfulness. Other-regarding compassion is associated with value structures and social awareness and is based on a desire to help (...) the less fortunate. Using a life-story analyses of 27 Israeli social entrepreneurs, we identified two OR process mechanisms, reflexivity and imprinting. The relationship between these two types of compassion are equifinal, that is, both can lead to prosocial OR; however, the mechanisms differ. We contribute to the literature by showing that compassion serves as an internal enabler based on both cognitive and affective motivations for prosocial OR. We introduce a theoretical perspective that establishes a process model for further research on the role of compassion in identifying and leading prosocial action. (shrink)