Irene Henriques

Sustainability challenges typically occur across sectoral boundaries, calling the state, market, and civil society to action. Although consensus exists on the merits of cross-sector collaboration, our understanding of whether and how it can create value for various, collaborating stakeholders is still limited. This special issue focuses on how new combined knowledge on cross-sector collaboration and business models for sustainability can inform the academic and practitioner debates about sustainability challenges and solutions. We discuss how cross-sector collaboration can play an important role for the transition to new and potentially sustainability-driven business models given that value creation, delivery, and capture of organizations are intimately related to the collaborative ties with their stakeholders. Sustainable alternatives to conventional business models tend to adopt a more holistic perspective of business by broadening the spectrum of solutions and stakeholders and, when aligned with cross-sector collaboration, can contribute new ways of addressing the wicked sustainability problems humanity faces.

In Barnett, Henriques, and Husted (2020), we argued that, in the aggregate, the digital age has not given stakeholders greater influence over firm behaviors. In their Exchange article, Jimenez, Xu, and Bennett (2021) agreed with our broad model of stakeholder influence in the digital age but suggested that the model does not account for independent, owner-managed small businesses interacting with local stakeholders in crisis situations. In our response here, we explore the implications of the two factors that underpin their argument—firm size and firm–stakeholder proximity—for stakeholder influence in the digital age. We conclude that some scenarios associated with these two factors are worth further investigation, but they do not fundamentally alter the dynamics of stakeholder influence in the digital age that we identified in Barnett et al. (2020), even for small, independent firms in crisis situations.

Corporate sustainability programs have grown dramatically, but biases have crippled their effectiveness. We identify three critical steps for reform.

We examine the likelihood of collaboration between NGOs and business in persistent intense social contexts. Using social capital theory and the institutional void literature, we argue that an NGO’s stakeholder relations act as a valuable resource in the formation of the organization’s social capital and raise its potential value as a legitimate business partner relative to NGOs with weak or few relations. These relations, however, are moderated by the persistent intense social context in which the NGO finds itself. Using Mexican data, we find that the positive relationship between stakeholder interactions and the likelihood of NGO–business collaboration is weakened by greater poverty (ties are more difficult to establish) and strengthened by corruption (ties provide a trust signal).

With the growing call for private sector actors to address global challenges, it is necessary to first assess whether regions with the greatest needs are accessing corporate philanthropy. In this paper, we ask whether corporate philanthropy is reaching those with the greatest health-care needs. Drawing on economic geography and corporate homophily, we argue that corporate philanthropy tends to exacerbate health inequality as grants are destined for counties with fewer health problems. We test and find support for this hypothesis using data on health grants made by US corporate foundations and county-level health data. Our results that corporate health grants are less likely to go to counties which have a lower proportion of medical service providers and insured citizens suggest that corporate foundations are unwittingly complicit in worsening the resource gap between small, poor, rural counties and large, wealthy, urban counties. From an ethical perspective, we provide some guidance as to how this may be corrected.

Have stakeholders increased their influence over firm behavior in the digital age? We draw from cognitive theory to argue that although social media has made it easier for stakeholders to broadcast their demands, the methods used to cope with the drastic change in quantities and qualities of information in the digital age have limited stakeholder influence in the aggregate. Even secondary stakeholders now have the ability to engage mass audiences, but the likelihood of success of most stakeholders’ efforts to alter firm behavior has been constrained amid the torrent of information flows. We develop a revised framework that accounts for the cognitive mechanisms that buffer firm–stakeholder relationships from change and thereby limit the overall effects of the digital age on stakeholder influence over firm behavior.

It is a pleasure and honor to be invited to speak at the 2019 SinergieSIMA Management Conference here in Rome. As a professor of Sustainability & Economics who has been studying sustainability and business for over 25 years, the question I am often asked is: Have things improved across time? My response is “it depends…”. Environmental and social issues are not alike. Some are tame in that the issue originates from a specific source and can be reduced by the source by choosing to reduce or eliminate certain activities that cause the problem, but others are wicked (e.g., income inequality, climate change, information overload, achieving zero waste) because they originate from multiple sources and cannot be reduced unless all sources agree to change their behavior. The wickedness does not only stem from their biophysical complexity but also from multiple stakeholders’ perceptions of them and of potential trade-offs associated with problem solving. In my research with Michael Barnett and Bryan Husted (Barnett et al., 2018, p. 128), we summarize the differences in Table 1.

Are Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives providing the societal good they promise? After decades of CSR research, it appears to occur only rarely. In this article, we suggest a new approach to CSR that can deliver on its promise. Drawing from the impact evaluation literature of development economics, public policy, and education, we argue that the CSR field should reconceive itself as a science of design in which researchers formulate CSR initiatives that seek to achieve specific social and environmental objectives. In accordance with this pursuit, we provide seven guidelines to enable CSR practitioners to improve the design of their initiatives.

Are corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives providing the societal good that they promise? After decades of CSR studies, we do not have an answer. In this review, we analyze progression of the CSR literature toward assessing the performance of CSR initiatives, identify factors that have limited the literature’s progress, and suggest a new approach to the study of CSR that can overcome these limits. We begin with comprehensive bibliometric mapping illustrating that although social impact has infrequently been its explicit focus, the CSR literature has measured outcomes other than firm performance, especially in the current decade. Thereafter, we conduct a more fine-grained analysis of recent CSR studies. Adapting a logic model framework, we show that even the most highly cited studies have stopped short of assessing social impact, often measuring CSR activities rather than impacts and focusing on benefits to specific stakeholders rather than to wider society. In combination, our analyses suggest that assessment of the performance of CSR initiatives has been driven by the availability of large, public secondary data sources. However, creating more such databases and turning to “big data” analyses are inadequate solutions. Drawing from the impact evaluation literature of development economics, we argue that the CSR field should reconceive itself as a science of design in which researchers formulate CSR initiatives that seek to achieve specific social and environmental objectives. In accordance with this pursuit, CSR researchers should move toward “small data” research designs, which will enable studies to better determine causation rather than just identify correlation.

Business and society research has increasingly moved from the margins to the mainstream. Although this progression has benefited from advances in empirical research, the field continues to suffer from considerable methodological challenges that hamper its development. In this introductory article to the special issue, we review how far our field has come in advancing methods and methodologies in business and society research. We also highlight the methods and methodologies covered by the contributors to this special issue and how they help address key shortcomings in our field. Finally, we suggest some promising research methodologies that can address important business and society research challenges going forward.

In this chapter, we explain why firms selectively responding to the most powerful, legitimate, and urgent demands of their stakeholders will not bring about sustainability and offer suggestions on what we should do in light of this shortcoming. Sustainability issues tend to be wicked problems that require cooperation across parties and over time to define and resolve. Stakeholder pressures can bring sustainability to the fore, but government intervention is necessary to drive meaningful action to resolve such issues. Without government intervention, self-interested stakeholders can pressure firms to move away from the complex, long-term challenges of wicked problems. Yet, stakeholder pressure is also necessary, as without it, industries may self-regulate in self-serving ways. Our analysis thus suggests that collaboration between business, government, and other stakeholders is necessary to resolve the wicked problems of sustainability. We therefore urge the stakeholder literature to move beyond its libertarian underpinnings by (re)incorporating government into models of effective corporate governance.

Bitcoin is an exciting new financial product that may be useful for inclusion in investment portfolios. This paper investigates the implications of replacing gold in an investment portfolio with bitcoin (“digital gold”). Our approach is to use several different multivariate GARCH models (dynamic conditional correlation (DCC), asymmetric DCC (ADCC), generalized orthogonal GARCH (GO-GARCH)) to estimate minimum variance equity portfolios. Both long and short portfolios are considered. An analysis of the economic value shows that risk-averse investors will be willing to pay a high performance fee to switch from a portfolio with gold to a portfolio with bitcoin. These results are robust to the inclusion of trading costs.

The purpose of this paper is to assess, theoretically and empirically, the governance approach associated with the formation of the circular value ecosystem (CVES) within the Sustainable Wealth creation based on Innovation and enabling Technologies (SWIT) framework. The SWIT framework is designed to interlink economic models, policies and strategies so as to introduce and convert residue, waste and by-product chains into multiple increasing returns cycles. Unlike regional circular economy cases in Germany, Japan and China where governments or industry have taken the lead on such initiatives – a top-down governance approach, the SWIT framework was developed for regions where government support for eco-initiatives is weak and where the participation of community stakeholders is critical – a bottom-up governance approach. The ecological, social and economic dimensions of the system are explored so as to ascertain the key stakeholders critical to the governance of the circular value ecosystem (CVES). We seek to answer: What stakeholders must be incorporated in a bottom-up CVES governance approach for the SWIT framework to be able to restore environmental resilience while creating economic returns and social benefits in rural communities? We report the results of an action research case – both successes and challenges – which sought to test this community-driven bottom-up governance approach on a rural community in Mexico. Our findings suggest that a bottom-up governance approach requires a deep understanding of the social, political, environmental and economic characteristics of the community as well as civic collaboration.

Wicked problems such as climate change cannot be addressed by a single economic or government actor. A collaborative approach that seeks a system-level, holistic approach to explaining how firms, government and other actors can convene to solve wicked problems is necessary. My essay seeks to challenge business model researchers to take a more holistic approach by increasing the number of actors in the business model ecosystem to co-create the knowledge necessary to deal with wicked problems.

There is a growing movement for both individual investors and large institutions to divest from oil companies, and from fossil fuel producers in general. This paper investigates the implications of doing so, by comparing three portfolios: (1) a portfolio that includes fossil fuel producing companies and utilities, (2) a portfolio that replaces fossil fuel producing companies and utilities with clean energy companies, and (3) a portfolio without fossil fuel producing companies, utilities, or clean energy companies. Using a range of measures, we find that portfolios that divest from fossil fuels and utilities and invest in clean energy perform better than those with fossil fuels and utilities. We also find that risk-averse investors would be willing to pay a fee to make this switch, even when trading costs are included.

This perspective documents current thinking around climate actions in Canada by synthesizing scholarly proposals made by Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD), an informal network of scholars from all 10 provinces, and by reviewing responses from civil society representatives to the scholars’ proposals. Motivated by Canada’s recent history of repeatedly missing its emissions reduction targets and failing to produce a coherent plan to address climate change, SCD mobilized more than 60 scholars to identify possible pathways towards a low-carbon economy and sustainable society and invited civil society to comment on the proposed solutions. This perspective illustrates a range of Canadian ideas coming from many sectors of society and a wealth of existing inspiring initiatives. Solutions discussed include climate change governance, low-carbon transition, energy production, and consumption. This process of knowledge synthesis/creation is novel and important because it provides a working model for making connections across academic fields as well as between academia and civil society. The process produces a holistic set of insights and recommendations for climate change actions and a unique model of engagement. The different voices reported here enrich the scope of possible solutions, showing that Canada is brimming with ideas, possibilities, and the will to act.

For the past few years, Business & Society has received manuscripts from scholars based in more than 50 different countries each year. This is testament to the growth in interest in business and society issues across the globe as well as a growing desire from researchers from various national academic systems to publish in international, peer-reviewed, English-language journals. In one sense, we see this as a measure of success of the journal. However, at the same time, Business & Society typically accepts articles from only a handful of these countries each year. So the acceptance rate for the vast majority of these 50-plus countries is 0%. This is a statistic that we would like to change. The question is, however, how can we meaningfully address it? There are many potential explanations for the overwhelming failure rate of most of these submissions. These include different standards and styles of research, limited knowledge of the rules of the international publishing game, and the impact of non-native English-language skills, not to mention the potential unconscious bias on the part of editors and reviewers. Notwithstanding their plausibility, our intention in this particular article is not to examine these explanations. Rather, our purpose here is to explore one particular phenomenon that we believe is holding back many prospective scholars from across the world from successfully publishing in Business & Society—namely the submission of poor-quality country studies. Country studies make up a substantial proportion of the manuscripts we receive each year. By a country study, we mean a manuscript that seeks to explore a particular issue, concept, or theory in our field in the context of a specific country, much like the apocryphal article in our title, CSR in Mongolia. Such studies are submitted by scholars from virtually every country that submits to the journal, be it about labor practices in Bangladesh, social reporting in Brazil, or stakeholder management in Burkina Faso. Every year, we publish a number of such studies, but they are also overly represented among the rather large subset of manuscripts that we desk reject. Quite simply, very few of the country studies we receive are of sufficiently high quality that they even make it out for review. We hope that if we can start to solve this problem, we can start to address the bigger problem of expanding the accessibility of the journal to scholars across the world.

No one likes receiving rejection letters. These letters often state that the “man-uscript does not show sufficient evidence of a theoretical contribution”—or something to that effect. At Business & Society, our editorial team writes such letters with considerable regularity, both for empirical and conceptual manuscripts.1 Although we usually try to explain to authors why their paper does not meet the required standards for a theoretical contribution, we thought it would be helpful to distill some of that insight to enable prospective authors to better prepare their manuscripts prior to submission rather than face the disappointment of rejection afterward. Therefore, in this Editors’ Insights piece, we would like to share what we have learned from the hundreds of manuscripts we have dealt with at Business & Society, as well as our broader experience as authors, reviewers, and editors. In so doing, we hope to begin a conversation about what the appropriate and desired characteristics of a theo-retical contribution should be in our field.Over the years, many journal editors have opened similar discussions on what constitutes a theoretical contribution in their respective journals. In particular, journals with a specific mission with regard to theory develop-ment, such as Academy of Management Review (e.g., Byron & Thatcher, 2016; Corley & Gioia, 2011; Suddaby, 2014; Whetten, 1989) and Administrative Science Quarterly (e.g., Sutton & Staw, 1995; Weick, 1995), have discussed at some length the appropriate standards for a theoretical contribution and indeed what management theory should or should not look like. We would strongly encourage prospective authors to avail themselves of some of the excellent resources made available in these articles. In the following, however, what we would like to particularly focus on is what a theoretical contribution means in the specific context of the business and society field.

It is quite a privilege to assume the editorship of a scholarly journal when much of the hard work has already been done. As the new editorial team responsible for editing Business & Society, we are inheriting a thriving enterprise that has convened a strong community of committed readers, authors, editors, and reviewers, which has a growing reputation for scholarly excellence, and that has in place an impressive process for reviewing manuscripts and putting out issue after issue, as it has done for the last 50 odd years. Our immediate predecessor, Duane Windsor, in particular has steered the journal a long way in his 8 years at the helm. This has involved instituting the online ScholarOne system for manuscript submission and review, and getting the journal listed on the Thomson Reuters Social Science Citation Index, not to mention significantly increasing the journal’s esteem and impact within the scholarly community. That being said, Business & Society, and the academic journal publishing business in general, are facing a number of challenges that suggest we are moving into something of a new era for the journal. It is not only an exciting time for us to be assuming control of Business & Society but also, it has to be said, a challenging time. Our field is experiencing considerable growth while being tasked with enhancing both the rigor and the relevance of our research. Also, the scholarly space we look to occupy is becoming increasingly competitive, whether in terms of getting the best work out there submitted to the journal, finding willing expert reviewers, or getting the attention of people who we think should be reading and citing what we publish. Even the way that people discover and access the journal is undergoing a major shift as we witness the relentless incursion of digital technology into journal publishing. With so much change around us, we thought that it would be opportune to mark our first issue as editors with a few remarks on what we see as the defining characteristics of the new era that we are facing and what we think it means for the journal going forward in terms of our aims and ambitions for Business & Society.

Our vision for Business & Society is for the journal to become the leading, peer-reviewed outlet for scholarly work dealing specifically with the intersection of business and society. So what counts as the intersection of business and society? As a journal, we have to determine the boundaries of the field that we are covering. Certainly, we have found that when making decisions on whether manuscripts should go out for review, we must first decide whether the manuscript fits the journal. This is not an exact science—it is always a judgment call—but as editors, we feel it is necessary to provide prospective authors some guidance on what, in our opinion, fits and does not fit. As such the purpose of this Editors’ Insight is to clarify some of our thinking on this issue.

We compare the environmental performance of voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) with different attributes. Using club theory, we argue that the differential performance of VEPs is due in part to their specific design attributes that will either enhance or diminish their ability to improve both targeted and untargeted environmental impacts. We analyze two VEPs in Mexico, the global standard ISO 14001 and the local standard Clean Industry. These two VEPs differ in the stringency of the standards and in their ability to sanction noncompliant facilities. These differences ensure that firms adopting the local standard are less likely to shirk their responsibilities and enhance potential spillover effects on untargeted environmental emissions. Our empirical results support our hypotheses and show that the local Clean Industry program is more effective in improving both targeted (toxic emissions) and untargeted environmental impacts (greenhouse gas emissions).

In this paper, a model of the determinants of environmental management practices and the impact of these practices on environmental performance is described and tested using Canadian manufacturing facility-level data. Our results show that Canadian manufacturing facilities have indeed undertaken environmental initiatives as a result of pressures arising from the buyers of their products and corporate headquarters. The relationship between environmental management practices and environmental performance is curvilinear. Increases in environmental performance are observed as the number of environmental practices increases up to an inflection point. Past this inflection point, environmental performance diminishes with further increases in environmental practices. We also find that, across time, facilities with more comprehensive practices continue to see improvements in environmental performance.

Biofuels are being embraced worldwide as sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, because of their potential to promote energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while providing opportunities for job creation and economic diversification. However, biofuel production also raises a number of environmental concerns. One of these is the risk of biological invasion, which is a key issue with second generation biofuel crops derived from fast-growing perennial grasses and woody plant species. Many of the most popular second generation crops proposed for cultivation in the U.S. and Canada are not native to North America, and some are known to be invasive. The development of a large-scale biofuel industry on the continent could lead to the widespread introduction, establishment, and spread of invasive plant species if invasive risks are not properly considered as part of biofuel policy. In this paper, we evaluate the risk of biological invasion posed by the emerging second generation biofuel industry in the U.S. and Canada by examining the invasive risk of candidate biofuel plant species, and reviewing existing biofuel policies to determine how well they address the issue of invasive species. We find that numerous potentially invasive plant species are being considered for biofuel production in the U.S. and Canada, yet invasive risk receives little to no attention in these countries’ biofuel policies. We identify several barriers to integrating invasive species and biofuel policy, relating to policy analytical capacity, governance, and conflicting policy objectives. We recommend that governments act now, while the second generation biofuel industry is in its infancy, to develop robust and proactive policy addressing invasive risk. Policy options to minimize biological invasions include banning the use of known invasive plant species, ongoing monitoring of approved species, and use of buffer zones around cultivated areas.

Cleantech venture capital investment differs from the typical venture capital investment in that it tends to be very capital intensive and faces greater technology risks associated with the functioning of the technology, scalability and exit requirements than the typical venture capital investment. Moreover, unlike the typical venture capital investment, the benefits arising from cleantech cannot be totally captured by the venture capitalist as many of its benefits accrue to society via reduced environmental degradation and better health and quality of life outcomes. The public goods literature posits that such externalities reduce investment in cleantech below the socially optimal level. We seek to determine whether there are countervailing factors which may incite greater cleantech investment. We argue that oil prices, increased stakeholder attention, as well as the impact of various formal and informal institutions are such factors. This paper provides a cross-country analysis of the determinants of cleantech venture capital investment with a unique worldwide dataset of 31 countries spanning 1996–2010. The data show consistent evidence of a pronounced role for oil prices in driving cleantech venture capital deals, which is more important than other economic, legal or institutional variables. Cleantech media coverage is likewise a statistically significant determinant of cleantech venture capital investment and as economically significant as other country level legal, governance, and cultural variables. Uncertainty avoidance has a negative impact on cleantech venture capital investment, as well as a moderating effect on other variables.

To evaluate global and domestic corporations on their sustainability engagement, numerous metrics have been developed at the national and international levels. In this paper, we assess whether the largest 448 foreign and local firms operating in a particular country engage in local sustainability initiatives (i.e., Mexico’s Clean Industry Program). The paper also assesses the degree of sustainability reporting (transparency towards sustainability) by the 267 local firms. Using an Institutional Theory rationale, we find that type of industry (dirty vs. clean), regional home, and engagement in global sustainability initiatives—i.e., The UNGC—best explain the firm’s decision to follow local sustainability initiatives. We find that the type of industry and affiliation to a national sustainability program are highly related to transparent sustainability reporting for large Mexican firms.

The interactive effects of climate change and invasive alien species (IAS) pose serious threats to biodiversity, ecosystems and human well-being worldwide. In particular, IAS are predicted to experience widespread changes in distribution in response to climate change, with many expanding their ranges into new areas. However, the two drivers of global change are seldom considered together in policy and management. We conducted a knowledge synthesis to assess the state of research on IAS range shifts under climate change in Canada. We found that the study of IAS distribution changes caused by climate change is a relatively new field of inquiry that integrates research in the areas of ecology, conservation biology, and environmental sciences. The multidisciplinary dimensions of the issue are largely overlooked in the scholarly literature, with most studies having a purely natural science perspective. Very little original research has occurred in the field to date; instead literature reviews are common. Research focuses on modeling range changes of current IAS threats, rather than predicting potential future IAS threats. The most commonly studied IAS already occur in Canada as native species that have spread beyond their range (e.g., lyme disease, mountain pine beetle, smallmouth bass) or as established invaders (e.g., gypsy moth). All of these IAS are expected to expand northward with climate change, resulting in widespread negative impacts on forest and freshwater biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and public health. Many barriers to predicting IAS range change under climate change are identified in the literature, including the complexity of the issue, lack of ecological data, and failure to integrate climate change – IAS interactions into research, policy, and management. Recommendations for increased research and monitoring, and the need for policy and management reform predominate in the literature.

Sustainability challenges typically occur across sectoral boundaries, calling the state, market, and civil society to action. Although consensus exists on the merits of cross-sector collaboration, our understanding of whether and how it can create value for various, collaborating stakeholders is still limited. This special issue focuses on how new combined knowledge on cross-sector collaboration and business models for sustainability can inform the academic and practitioner debates about sustainability challenges and solutions. We discuss how cross-sector collaboration can play an important role for the transition to new and potentially sustainability-driven business models given that value creation, delivery, and capture of organizations are intimately related to the collaborative ties with their stakeholders. Sustainable alternatives to conventional business models tend to adopt a more holistic perspective of business by broadening the spectrum of solutions and stakeholders and, when aligned with cross-sector collaboration, can contribute new ways of addressing the wicked sustainability problems humanity faces.