The Business for Society SIG is dedicated to research and educational programmes that analyse the conditions under which business can (or actually does) interact positively with its social and natural environment. The objective of our SIG is to bring together scholars from various fields of social sciences (management, law, sociology, economics, political science, education, social psychology, history, philosophy, engineering, etc.), while sharing a common interest in B4S projects. We try to build a strong community of engaged scholars by:
- Exploring ways and methods, of identifying actors, business models and contexts which allow organisations to contribute to sustainable development, and
- Fully grasping the ambiguities, contradictions as well as the potential for innovative and transformative practices of this approach.
SIG Chairs :
Rémi Jardat (ISTEC - France) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Corinne Vercher (Université Paris 13- France) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Jérôme Méric (Université de Poitiers- France)This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
For more detail on each track, please download the related document. If you cannot see the whole text on any of the Excel pages, please double-click.
GT 01_00 B4S General track
The B4S General Track invites contributions from all areas related to Business for Society that are not explicitly covered by other tracks within the SIG. The shock of recent global crises contributed to widening the gap between business and society. The most recent years even conducted to consider that business could act against society. It is high time to favour research and educational programmes that analyse under which conditions business can (or actually does) interact positively with its social and natural environment. Our B4S General Track is open to various approaches: CSR; Business Ethics, Social issues in management; Stakeholders Management; Alternative Business Models and Sustainable Management; Critical Management Studies; NGOs and Business relationships; Soft law, Hard law and Business Sustainability, among others, examining Business for Society as a project.
B4S SIG STANDING TRACKS
ST 01_01 Accounting and control for sustainability
This track attracts papers which critically review and advance theorizations and methodological applications in the study of accounting and control for sustainability, highlighting the relevance of different theories and research approaches, highlighting the potential richness of this stream of research for both sustainability and accounting studies. We also to explore different research methods, and various types of organisational settings and practices in different countries. The track is carried out in collaboration with the Environmental Management Accounting Network Europe (EMAN EU).
ST 01_02 Finance, Economy and Society: For a Sustainable Re-embedding
The financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath have highlighted the limits and risks of an increasingly global and dis-embedded economy. The social tumults and economic upheavals resulting from the subprime crisis have revealed the dysfunctioning, shortcomings and failures of the financial and regulatory institutions. The ‘Finance, Economy and Society: for a Sustainable re-embedding’ track invites the authors to submit their theoretical and empirical contributions with a focus on, but not limited to, the following questions and themes: - Sources of financing: microfinance, crowdfunding, cooperative banks, SME stock exchanges, SRI funds, faith-based financing, - Role of economic, social and financial institutions and actors in providing novel solutions to the market shortcomings and failures,- Regulation of financial, taxation and banking systems.
ST 01_03 Institutional change, Power, Resistance and Critical Management
The purpose of the track is twofold. First, we investigate why institutions and organizations change, despite their inertia and their domination over individual members through the routines and regularities. Thus, we welcome papers contributing to the advance of institutional theory by coupling persistence and change. On the other hand, we critically engage with the issue of power, domination and resistance to change. This latter both interpreted as the institutional work of elites that try to maintain their hegemony and the one enacted by dominated actors that resist and counteract the establishing hegemony.
ST 01 _04 Responsible Global Value Chains
Extending the notion of "sustainable" business operations at a global level and introducing the one of "responsibility" at all levels of supply chain activities is becoming an increasingly prominent and challenging topic in society and business. In the ICT global value chain (GVC) for example, Google, Apple and HP took strategic decisions to outsource and offshore both their production and “e-wastes” with equivocal effects. On the one hand, these decisions support upgrading, but on the other hand, they cause dramatic environmental/health damages and extreme work conditions. This externalisation phenomenon directly or indirectly affects all industries, supply chains and the inter-organisational/network cooperation processes ranging from eco-design and innovation, responsible purchase, organizing, transport and logistics, delivery, consumption and waste recycling in environment and production (circular economy). The current concept of Responsible Global Value Chains (RGVCs) seeks to address key political, economic, environmental and societal challenges. Water is a critical and growing key example of a global problem locally addressed where tools for water supply chain management remain relatively new and underdeveloped, especially in corporate business. The current concept of "Responsible Global Value Chains (RGVCs) is emerging to include these sustainability issues at its core.
B4S SIG EURAM 2016 TRACKS
T 01_05 Marketing for Society
Faced with massive physical, environmental, economic and social changes, many consumers and organizations are questioning their practices, behaviors and plans for future activities. In this climate of uncertainty, the role of marketing is increasingly questioned. This track aims to compare and analyze practices within different marketing fields including consumer behavior, retailing and brand strategies, focusing on new forms of cooperation (and cooperation management) amongst consumers, retailers and suppliers. This track contributes to the development of marketing in society by taking a critical perspective on current consumerist approaches and seeking to develop a more manageable cooperative sustainable, societal understanding. In this context, managing brands represent a main topic: we stimulate authors (academics, practitioners and students) to develop papers concerning this topic where the intangibles have a major role.
T 01_07 Rethinking the form, governance & legal constitution of corporations: theoretical issues & social stakes
Contemporary social and environmental challenges call for a rethinking of the forms and models of the business corporation. The field of management research has focused a lot on how to curb corporate behaviour and how stakeholders matter. But it has usually considered as given for entrepreneurs the possible forms, the governance and the legal constitution of the firm, while the diversity of corporate models is continually expanded both by companies and by laws. This track encourages work that examines our current theories of the corporation, extends our knowledge on alternative and emergent forms of business companies, and suggests new foundations for future governance.
T 01_08 Organizing collective action: meta, partial and temporary organizations
In a fast paced, highly digitized and globalized business environment, collective action among organizations needs to take new adaptive forms. Literature has recently started to investigate these organizational devices, ranging from formal meta-organization—organizations which members are themselves organizations—to temporary inter-organizational projects. Their degree of partiality often varies as these organizations integrate more or less of hierarchy, membership, rules, monitoring and sanctions.
The track focuses on this “manageable cooperation” between organizations. The aim is to help conceptualizing rationale, dynamics and processes of collective action organizing
T 01_10 Beyond rationalism, rationality and rationalization: critical, clinical and psychodynamic approaches to organizational life
“Rationality” is such a polysemic word that we can wonder whether it is a steady concept. Power, social and affective involvements, body experiences are but a few phenomena that question this notion. Even the ego, in spite of its attempts to cast itself as the representative of reason, is hardly to be considered as rational. A state beyond rationality thus appears …. Based on critical, clinical, psychodynamic and psychoanalytic approaches, we wish to question the different meanings of the term, and both the harmful effects of the primacy of rationalization and its reality in actual organizational life. The project of this track is to extend and develop the contribution of critical, psychoanalytic, psychodynamic and more generally clinical approaches to the analysis of working situations and organizations and to show the effects of moving away from rationality, whether these are harmful or in contrast contribute to produce original, productive practices and ideas.