Abstract:Should the responsibilities of business managers be understood independently of the social circumstances and “market forces” that surround them, or (in accord with empiricism and the social sciences) are agents and their choices shaped by their circumstances, free only insofar as they act in accordance with antecedently established dispositions, their “character”? Virtue ethics, of which I consider myself a proponent, shares with empiricism this emphasis on character as well as an affinity with the social sciences. But recent criticisms of both (...) empiricist and virtue ethical accounts of character deny even this apparent compromise between agency and environment. Here is an account of character that emphasizes dynamic interaction both in the formation and in the interplay between personal agency and responsibility on the one hand and social pressures and the environment on the other. (shrink)

Do environmental policy statements accurately represent corporate commitment to environmental sustainability? Because companies are not required by law to publish environmental policy statements or to verify that these statements are true using independent third parties, external stakeholders often wonder when a published commitment to a policy translates into actual policy implementation. The authors analyzed two independent databases to predict the circumstances under which large, leading-edge corporations in industry sectors will commit to and/or implement proactive corporate environmental policies and when it (...) is unlikely they will do so. The authors found that commitment to specific environmental policies does not vary greatly between industry sectors; however, policy implementation does. (shrink)

This article reviews the literature on corporate political action (CPA), integrating the perspectives of nine basic social science theories. Theoretical and empirical research grounded in these nine theories have described the characteristics of firms that engage in CPA (who), their rationale (why), and their methods (how). To a much lesser extent, the literature has also addressed how CPA changes over time (when) and the settings in which CPA is done (where). Reexamining the CPA literature this way directs us toward fundamental (...) research questions that have not yet been addressed. (shrink)

Variance theories have dominated corporate political action (CPA) research because the pioneering works in the 1970s and 1980s. Process theories offer an entirely new perspective on CPA research, as they are able to explain processes across a number of levels of analysis and link actions to contexts. We add to the existing CPA literature by offering a process model that can be useful especially in historical and evolutionary analysis. Our model depicts CPA as a complex system in which a firm’s (...) actions are affected by various factors across organizational, industry, and institutional levels of analysis. As political actions also influence these factors, the process is in essence systemic and path dependent. Our model supplements existing research by offering the possibility to explain the long-term consequences of CPA vis-à-vis wider societal changes and by promoting longitudinal research strategies. In addition to the theoretical model, we provide a historical analysis of the evolution of the Finnish paper and pulp industry to illustrate the applicability of the framework. (shrink)