Publications Database
Welcome to the new Schulich Peer-Reviewed Publication Database!
The database is currently in beta-testing and will be updated with more features as time goes on. In the meantime, stakeholders are free to explore our faculty’s numerous works. The left-hand panel affords the ability to search by the following:
- Faculty Member’s Name;
- Area of Expertise;
- Whether the Publication is Open-Access (free for public download);
- Journal Name; and
- Date Range.
At present, the database covers publications from 2012 to 2020, but will extend further back in the future. In addition to listing publications, the database includes two types of impact metrics: Altmetrics and Plum. The database will be updated annually with most recent publications from our faculty.
If you have any questions or input, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Search Results
Neu, D., & Saxton, G. D. (Forthcoming). "Twitter-Based Social Accountability Callouts", Journal of Business Ethics.
Abstract
The ICIJ’s release of the Panama Papers in 2016 opened up a wealth of previously private financial information on the tax avoidance, tax evasion, and wealth concealment activities of politicians, government officials, and their allies. Drawing upon prior accountability and ethics focused research, we utilize a dataset of almost 28 M tweets sent between 2016 and early 2020 to consider the microdetails and overall trajectory of this particular social accountability conversation. The study shows how the publication of previously private financial information triggered a Twitter-based social accountability conversation. It also illustrates how social accountability utterances are intra-textually constructed by the inclusion of social characters, the personal pronoun ‘we,’ and the use of deontic responsibility verbs. Finally, the study highlights how the tweets from this group of participants changed over the longer-term but continued to focus on social accountability topics. The provided analysis contributes to our understanding of social accountability, including how the release of previously private accounting-based financial information can trigger a grassroots social accountability conversation.Belk, R. and Humayun, M. (Forthcoming). "The Analogue Diaries of Post-Digital Consumption", Journal of Marketing Management.
Abstract
Even in a world that is saturated with the digital, we still seek out analogue objects. Drawing on concepts of postdigital aesthetics, we examine the use of analogue objects to escape the omnipresence of the digital realm. Based on consumer narratives from interview, archival, and netnographic data involving the use of analogue notebooks and film cameras, we derive the notion of postdigital consumption and analyse the ‘digital’ as a background object foregrounding the analogue. Our findings reveal ways in which consumers use these analogue objects to escape controlled consumption, to enchant their consumption with their labour, and to seek continuity and permanence, in navigating paradoxical relationships with the digital world.Reuber, A.R. and Fischer, E. (2021). "Relying On the Engagement of Others: A Review of the Governance Choices Facing Social Media Platform Start-ups", International Small Business Journal, 40(1).
Abstract
We are grateful to Professors Rebecca Reuber and Eileen Fischer for contributing our 2022 annual review article. This insightful review explores an issue of great contemporary importance regarding the relationship between entrepreneurial activities and social media platforms. Whilst there is much popular and media commentary regarding the opportunities such platforms offer for entrepreneurship, we lack informed, academic reflection upon the role and influence of such platforms for both good and ill. Hence, this review article is timely in identifying current practices and raising important issues for future research. Our thanks to the authors for their valuable contribution to the ISBJ. Entrepreneurs create digital platforms which, in turn, facilitate entrepreneurial behaviours of others, the platform users. An important start-up activity is developing the mechanisms to govern user participation. While prior literature has provided insights on the governance of innovation platforms and exchange platforms, it has shed little light on the governance of social media platforms. In this review, we synthesize the emerging literature on diverse social media platforms, focussing on four types of governance mechanisms: those that regulate user behaviour, those related to user identification and stature, those that structure relationships among users and those that direct user attention. We highlight the implications of this body of literature for entrepreneurship scholars.Dean Neu, Gregory Saxton and Abu S. Rahaman (2021). "Social Accountability, Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests", Journal of Business Ethics.
Keywords
Abstract
This study examines the 3.5 m+ English-language original tweets that occurred during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests. Starting from previous research, we analyze how character terms such as “the banker,” “politician,” “the teaparty,” “GOP,” and “the corporation,” as well as concept terms such as “ethics,” “fairness,” “morals,” “justice,” and “democracy” were used by individual participants to respond to the Occupy Wall Street events. These character and concept terms not only allowed individuals to take an ethical stance but also accumulated into a citizen’s narrative about social accountability. The analysis illustrates how the centrality of the different concepts and characters in the conversation changed over time as well as how the concepts ethics, morals, fairness, justice, and democracy participated within the conversation, helping to amplify the ethical attributes of different characters. These findings contribute to our understanding of how demands for social accountability are articulated and change over time.Saxton, G. D. and Neu, D. (2021). "Twitter-Based Social Accountability Processes: The Roles for Financial Inscriptions-Based and Values-Based Messaging", Journal of Business Ethics.
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Abstract
Social media is changing social accountability practices. The release of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) unleashed a tsunami of over 5 million tweets decrying corrupt politicians and tax-avoiding business elites, calling for policy change from governments, and demanding accountability from corporate and private tax avoiders. The current study uses 297,000+ original English-language geo-codable tweets with the hashtags #PanamaGate, #PanamaPapers, or #PanamaLeaks to examine the trajectory of Twitter-based social accountability conversations and the potential for the emergence of a longer-term social accountability user network. We propose that it is the combination of financial inscriptions and evaluative ethical utterances that incite and sustain social accountability conversations and social accountability networks. Financial inscriptions simultaneously remind audiences of both the information event that fomented the initial public reaction and the monetary magnitude of the event. Value-based ethical messaging, in turn, enunciates an ethical stance that simultaneously evaluates existing practices and emphasizes the need for accountability. It is the combining of these two types of messaging that helps to construct and sustain a normative narrative about social accountability. The results illustrate how the repetition and re-working of these two forms of messaging facilitated the construction of a normative narrative that coalesced into a social accountability network which persisted beyond the initial Panama Paper information event and which was re-activated in 2017 when the ICIJ published the Paradise Papers.Harris, E. E., Neely, D. G., and Saxton, G. D. (2021). "Social Media, Signaling, and Donations: Testing the Financial Returns on Nonprofits’ Social Media Investment", Review of Accounting Studies.
Abstract
Social media outlets provide nonprofit organizations the opportunity of opening new communication and disclosure channels. Organizations must decide whether to set up these channels. They – and in turn their target audiences – must also decide how much to use social media. In this study we test a novel multi-level signaling theory framework to examine the relationship between social media investments and financial returns. Employing both cross-sectional and cross-temporal samples of 427 of the largest US non-hospital charities, we look at the association between donations and three dimensions of organizations’ social media efforts: 1) whether the organization has a social media presence, 2) how much the organization uses social media, and 3) the level of engagement of the organization’s audience. The findings support our conjecture that financial returns result from establishing a particular communication channel, from using that channel, and from having channel-specific audience engagement. We also consider how our three social media signaling dimensions condition the core donations demand variables, finding that social media substitutes for traditional fundraising expenditures. These results carry implications for the signaling and donation demand literatures and further our understanding of how these new media are changing the rules of donor engagement.Noseworthy, T., Pancer, E., Philp, M. and Poole, M. (2021). "Content Hungry: How the Nutrition of Food Media Influences Social Media Engagement", Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Abstract
What motivates people to consume and engage with food media on social networks? We adopt an evolutionary lens to suggest that the valence of people’s affective state varies by the implied caloric density of food media, which has a direct impact on social media engagement. First, we analyze a catalog of Buzzfeed’s Tasty videos based on nutritional content derived from the dish’s ingredients and find that visualizing caloric density (i.e., calories per serving) positively influences likes, comments, and shares on Facebook. We then replicate this phenomenon in an experiment, providing preliminary evidence for the role of affect as an explanatory mechanism. We conclude by isolating the role of affect with a classic misattribution task, which attenuates the elevated engagement resulting from exposure to calorie‐dense food media. These findings contribute to the dialogue on the antecedents of social media engagement and offer implications for content developers, advertisers, consumer health advocates, and policy makers.Guo, C., Ren, C. and Saxton, G. (2020). "Responding to Diffused Stakeholders on Social Media: Connective Power and Firm Reactions to CSR-Related Twitter Messages", Journal of Business Ethics.
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Abstract
Social media offers a platform for diffused stakeholders to interact with firms—alternatively praising, questioning, and chastising businesses for their CSR performance and seeking to engage in two-way dialogue. In 2014, 163,402 public messages were sent to Fortune 200 firms’ CSR-focused Twitter accounts, each of which was either shared, replied to, “liked,” or ignored by the targeted firm. This paper examines firm reactions to these messages, building a model of firm response to stakeholders that combines the notions of CSR communication and stakeholder salience. Our findings show that firm response to a stakeholder on social media is positively and most significantly associated with what we refer to as the stakeholder’s connective power but negatively associated with the firm’s own connective power. To a lesser extent, firm response is positively associated with the stakeholder’s normative power but negatively associated with the firm’s own normative power. Firm response is also shown to be positively associated with stakeholder urgency in terms of both the originality of a stakeholder message and the expression of positive sentiment.Guo, C. and Saxton, G. (2020). "Social Media Capital: Conceptualizing the Nature, Acquisition, and Expenditure of Social Media-Based Organizational Resources", International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 36, 100443.
Abstract
The near-universal organizational participation in social media is predicated on the belief there are some tangible or intangible new resources to be had through tweeting, pinning, posting, friending, and sharing. We argue the linchpin of any payoff from engagement in social media is a special form of social capital we refer to as social media capital, and offer a conceptual framework for understanding its nature, acquisition, and expenditure. This paper contributes to existing literature by elaborating a new type of organizational resource and then synthesizing and extending research on the processes through which organizations can translate social media efforts into meaningful organizational outcomes. Understanding this causal chain is critical not only for measuring the return on investment from social media use but also for developing accounting information systems that are both adaptable to social resources and better able to exploit the data analytic and forecasting capabilities of real-time social media data.Saxton, G., Singhal, A., Wang, H. and Xu, W. (2019). "Social Media Fandom for Health Promotion?", SEARCH Journal of Media and Communication Research, 11(1), 1-14.