Recent research highlights the positive effects of organizational CSR engagement on employee outcomes, such as job and life satisfaction, performance, and trust. We argue that the current debate fails to recognize the potential risks associated with CSR. In this study, we focus on the risk of work addiction. We hypothesize that CSR has per se a positive effect on employees and can be classified as a resource. However, we also suggest the existence of an array of unintended negative effects of (...) CSR. Since CSR positively influences an employee’s organizational identification, as well as his or her perception of engaging in meaningful work, which in turn motivates them to work harder while neglecting other spheres of their lives such as private relationships or health, CSR indirectly increases work addiction. Accordingly, organizational identification and work meaningfulness both act as buffering variables in the relationship, thus suppressing the negative effect of CSR on work addiction, which weakens the positive role of CSR in the workplace. Drawing on a sample of 565 Swiss employees taken from the 2017 Swiss Public Value Atlas dataset, our results provide support for our rationale. Our results also provide evidence that the positive indirect effects of organizational CSR engagement on work addiction, via organizational identification and work meaningfulness, become even stronger when employees care for the welfare of the wider public. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines the growing number of publications on multinational enterprise management of sustainability issues. Based on an integrative literature review and thematic analysis, the paper analyses and synthesises the current state of knowledge about main issues arising. Key issues identified include the following: choice of sustainability strategies; management of the views of headquarters towards sustainability; local cultural sustainability perspectives in developed and developing host countries; MNEs with home in developing/emerging countries; and resource availability for implementing sustainability initiatives. Findings indicate (...) that although the literature is tending towards growing acceptance about sustainability and its challenges most researchers have focused on corporate social responsibility and investigate their own niche problem, industry, and country, using their own chosen theory and do not consider the need for consolidation and integration of social, environmental and economic performance. Avenues for future research are identified which will provide a means for the ethical foundations of theory and practice to be improved. (shrink)

This research explores the dynamic capabilities required for firms to implement environmental, social, and governance strategies, and investigates sustainable management performance that can be created based on them. By using dynamic capabilities theory, we integrate sustainable management and the ESG literature to suggest a research model and identify the factors that act as the catalysts achieving sustainability. The data used for the analysis were collected from 78 firms listed on the Korea Exchange with assets totaling more than 2 trillion Korean (...) won. In this study, the partial least squares structural equation model is applied. We found that absorptive capability and adaptive capability significantly affect sustainable management performance through implementation of the ESG strategy as a mediating variable. In particular, a firm’s implementation of an ESG strategy is a significant determinant that impacts sustainable management performance. We also believe our model contributes to the current knowledge by filling several research gaps, and our findings offer valuable and practical implications not only for achieving sustainable growth but also for creation of competitive advantage. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

This paper aims at gaining a better understanding of the inherent paradoxes within sustainability discourses by investigating its basic assumptions. Drawing on a study of the metaphoric references operative in moral language, we reveal the predominance of the ‘well-being = wealth’ construct, which may explain the dominance of the ‘business case’ cognitive frame in sustainability discourses. We incorporate economic well-being variables within a philosophical model of becoming well :221–231, 2005), highlighting the way in which these variables consistently articulate a combination (...) of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ concerns. We then compare this broad understanding of well-being with the metaphors operative in the sustainable development discourse and argue that the sustainability discourse has fallen prey to an overemphasis on the ‘business case’. We proceed to draw on Georges Bataille to challenge the predominance of these value priorities and to explore which mindshifts are required to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what is needed to enable ‘sustainable development’. (shrink)

Based on an abductive analytic study, we examine financial and social value incorporation in the multi-valued market of impact investing. This paper draws on interviews with investment professionals in 54 charitable foundations, intermediary and field building organizations in the impact investing market, to compare market objectives with practice, and to determine whether social and financial values are incorporated, thus producing ‘returns’ of both types through market exchange. We find unincorporated valuation is apparent at both the market level and for several (...) types of investors in contrast with the incorporated or even integrated valuations of other investors. This demonstrates that rather than incorporating logics in a binary or hybrid way, valuation in the moral market of impact investing occurs in a multiplicity of ways and on different levels of the market, depending on a variety of factors including adherence to traditional financial market standards and market design and maintenance. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine whether corporate social responsibility activities perceived by consumers affect brand trust and corporate sustainability management. In other words, this study tried to examine whether the compatibility and authenticity of CSR influences brand trust, thereby affecting CSM including economic viability, environmental soundness, and social responsibility. To measure this, an empirical analysis was conducted on 479 consumers who had experience purchasing products from cosmetic companies that are carrying out CSR. As a result of the (...) analysis, it was found that the compatibility and authenticity of CSR have a positive effect on brand trust. Also, it was found that brand trust had a positive effect on social responsibility among the sub-concepts of CSM, but did not affect economic viability and environmental soundness. The results of this study are expected to provide strategic implications for social responsibility performance and brand trust building necessary for cosmetics companies to grow continuously. (shrink)

In a recent systematic review of the Sustainability Balanced Scorecard literature in this journal, we developed a typology of architectures as a basis for the process of SBSC design, implementation, use, and evolution. This paper addresses a comment by Hahn and Figge designed to stimulate further research. We argue that the existing literature demonstrates that the SBSC management tool can play an important role in corporate sustainability. The SBSC architectures—as representations of goals and priorities—form an integral and iterative part of (...) the corporate sustainability strategy-making process and therefore cannot be isolated from it. However, the concept as such should not be overloaded. In this paper, we first reflect on the potentials and constraints of the SBSC in relation to radical or transformational change and measuring performance outcomes on the level of human–earth systems. Second, we discuss the importance of SBSC architecture concerning how it enables the integration of sustainability into business organisations; how both strictly hierarchical cause-and-effect chains and less hierarchical designs can allow companies to seek inclusive profits; and the contingency-based use of generic architectures in contrast to its use as a diagnostic tool. (shrink)

In recent years, companies receive pressure to release environmental, social, and governance disclosure, since these are perceived as critical issues by society. Despite this pressure, ESG disclosure practices considerably vary by firm. Prior academic literature investigated country- and firm-level factors determining such variation, alternatively adopting the institutional and legitimacy theory. By combining these theories in a unique framework, this study investigates the extent to which social structures and social legitimization influence ESG disclosure practices and each pillar. Results obtained using a (...) cross-country sample of 14,174 firm-year observations during 2005–2012 provide evidence that country-level characteristics such as a political system, labor system, and cultural system significantly affect firms’ ESG disclosure practices. However, their impact is heterogeneous in that they either reduce or enhance disclosure levels and may differ by pillar. Results for firm-level characteristics related to a firm’s visibility demonstrate a positive and homogeneous effect on ESG disclosure and each pillar. These results inform policy makers and regulators aiming to enhance ESG disclosure levels of the risk they incur when managing variables related to social structure and the benefits of exposing firms to higher visibility. (shrink)