Business & Society

The Ecological Allowance of Enterprise: An Absolute Measure of Corporate Environmental Performance, its Implication for Strategy, and a Small Case

by André Reichel

Bento, Paulo (2007), “Quantitativo vs. Qualitativo (I) – prazo e ensino”, Leilões & Negócios, I. 15, Oct./Nov., pp. 39-40.

by Paulo Bento

Bento, Paulo (2007), “Quantitativo vs. Qualitativo (II) – prazo e desenvolvimento”, Leilões & Negócios, I. 16, Dec./Jan., pp. 39-40.

by Paulo Bento

Bento, Paulo (2008), “Quantitativo vs. Qualitativo (III) – prazo e saúde”, Leilões & Negócios, I. 17, Feb./Mar., pp. 39-40.

by Paulo Bento

O grupo Randon: Estratégia e trajetória de expansão a partir do enfoque da teoria evolucionária da firma

by Elson Rodrigo Souza Santos

Co-authored: Armando Dalla Costa

The objective this paper is explorer the strategic and trajectory of expantion of the of the Randon Group. This... more The objective this paper is explorer the strategic and trajectory of expantion of the of the Randon Group. This enterprise born how garage little in city of Caxias do Sul – RS, in the south of Brazil at decade of 1940, grounded over Raul Anselmo and Hercílio Randon brothers front the need of a means of survive. In the decades of 1950 and 1960, the Randon brothers known harness the environment and create the opportunities for transformed the garage in industry, leader in the market of implements for trucks. In the decade of 1970 the enterprise transformed in S. A. with holding negotiate in stock exchange for viable itself expantion, damage for crisis of the decade of 1980 that provoked an situation hard to firm. After this fact, the Randon Group again to growth across of enterprise in the market of car spare, financial services, special vehicles and implements. Moreover, the Randon Group have vacation for be multinational not only and great export, but with industrial plants in others countries and search of investors and partner for growth.

Transparency work and argumentation design in deliberation about business in society

by Mark Aakhus

Aakhus, M. (2010). Transparency work and argumentation design in deliberation about business in society. In D. Gouran (Ed.), The functions of argument and social context: Selected papers from the 16th Biennial Conference on Argumentation (pp. 11-17). Washington, DC: National Communication Association.

There is considerable contemporary interest in the prospect that corporate responsibility can be fostered through... more There is considerable contemporary interest in the prospect that corporate responsibility can be fostered through practices that make business conduct transparent. The belief is that transparency leads to accountability and that accountability will bring about socially and environmentally desirable business-conduct. Underlying this belief is the assumption about the power of publicity as articulated by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the early 20th century: Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman. In terms of the emerging field of work in corporate social responsibility (CSR), much attention is given to developing practices for transparency that enable businesses to demonstate their corporate responsibility to their constituencies (e.g., sustainability reports, codes of conduct). Such transparency practice shifts who shines the light and what the light shines on, thus changing the ground and shaping the materials for deliberating about the role and conduct of business in society.

Rather than focusing directly on the transparency practices of business organizations, attention is given here to transparency practices of third-party actors whose work shapes the landscape of accountability. Traditionally this function has been carried out by the business press, investigative journalism, government regulatory agencies, and courts. Over the past several decades, however, shifts in the conduct of business, changes in transnational governance, innovations in communication and information technology, and social trends appear to have changed the ways and means for raising doubts, pursuing opposition, and otherwise making sense of business conduct in society.

The Reformation of Business Education: Purposes and Objectives.

by Robert Shaw

Robert Keith Shaw (2011) The Reformation of Business Education: Purposes and Objectives. In Proceedings of the New Zealand Applied Business Education Conference, Nelson, New Zealand, 11 October, 2011.

Business education is at a critical juncture. How are we to justify the curriculum in undergraduate business awards in... more Business education is at a critical juncture. How are we to justify the curriculum in undergraduate business awards in Aotearoa New Zealand? This essay suggests a philosophical framework for the analysis the business curriculum in Western countries. This framework helps us to see curriculum in a context of global academic communities and national needs. It situates the business degree in the essential tension which modernity (Western metaphysics) creates and which is expressed in an increasingly globalised economy. The tension is between those who insist that the degree is to serve modernity and those who hope that it may contribute to a new era of justice and harmony with nature. One critical battle ground for the business curriculum is the subject Business Ethics. The business ethics curriculum often indicates the intention of the business ethics degree itself. Kant's distinction between heteronomy (rule following) and autonomy (making your own decisions) provides us with a means to judge the purposes of business ethics courses: there are courses which seek to produce reliable and compliant (heteronomous) employees, and there are those which seek to produce independent creative (autonomous) human beings. The question for this conference is: what do we as business educators see as our task?

Capturing the Lived Experience of Immigrant Entrepreneurs: The ELIE Project Case Studies Report

by Carolyn Downs

Co-authored with Satu Aaltonen, Elisa Akola, Panayiotis Ketikidis, Lambros Lazuras, Georgia Molioti, T. Bartosz Kalinowski, Maciej Urbaniak

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

This paper includes 40 case studies of immigrant entrepreneurship within the EU. It sets out a taxonomy of immigrant... more This paper includes 40 case studies of immigrant entrepreneurship within the EU. It sets out a taxonomy of immigrant entrepreneurship and provides a set of recommendations for policy-makers and enterprise educators.

Corporate Sustainability Survey 2011

by Dhiman Chowdhury

Sustainability paradox has become a debate of our time; adding to this predicament is sometimes the questionable... more Sustainability paradox has become a debate of our time; adding to this predicament is sometimes the questionable behaviors of the corporations. This detrimental demeanor is counterproductive, as it for the entity so do for our common goods. The issue of sustainability is a dilemma of our which many scholars pondered over last decades, yet despite their efforts, the message is somewhat convoluted through a plethora of conflicting strategies, definitions, mandates and regulatory measures. The obfuscation has created deviation in the discourse of “sustainability” measures without addressing systemic discord with sustainability challenges at organizational and societal level, and societal and ecological level. This survey examines presence and absence of a particular behavioral dimension in global corporations and corollary effect of it. In addition, this global survey unveils previously unknown data depicting correlation between certain behavioral dimension at workplace and other corporate level factors including profitability, innovation and market leadership. This global survey serves as the basis for further research to find a common ground that brings institutional integration to sustainability conjectures.

A Question of Progress and Welfare: The Jitney Bus Phenomenon in Atlanta, 1915-1925

by Julian Chambliss

Georgia Historical Quarterly, 2008

From 1915 to1925 the desire to control urban space and support big business in Atlanta erupted in a prolonged struggle... more From 1915 to1925 the desire to control urban space and support big business in Atlanta erupted in a prolonged struggle between independent Jitney operators and the city’s streetcar system. Jitneys were multiple passenger vehicle used for sight to sight transport. Carving a niche apart from traditional transportation options, Jitneys operated without fixed routes hunting for fares all over the city. While an innovative new addition to the urban landscape was usually welcomed, Jitneys found themselves the focal point of bitter complaint from municipal streetcar franchises.

Business discourse as a site of inherent struggle.

by Alan Jones

In Ahmar Mahboob & Caroline Lipovsky, eds., (2009). Studies in Applied Linguistics and Language Learning. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

The author suggests that the orientation to communication and language in business discourse is fundamentally... more The author suggests that the orientation to communication and language in business discourse is fundamentally dissimilar from the one that prevails in non-institutional contexts. He assembles sources that suggest business discourse is inherently conflictual, linking the discourse of business competition (Porter 1979, 1980, 1985) to the Habermasian concept of strategic action (Habermas 1984). He argues that business discourse is both consciously and unconsciously strategic, leading in the latter case to what Habermas (1976, 1984) calls “systematically distorted communication”. Business practices are mediated by discursive practices that not only account for and mirror movements of money and material goods but, especially in their more spontaneous enactments, reveal the internal dilemmas of strategic actors who are also bound by the “involvement obligations” of the interaction order (Goffman 1959, 1967). Jones's analysis of business discourse is grounded in empirical descriptions of discourse in use, but transcends specific contexts of communication and genres, going beyond the examination of the immediate discourse situation to explore the relationship between participants’ language use and their socio-economic interests. The author instantiates three kinds of evidence to show how discursive practices of the business world are unconsciously conflictual, or “distorted”: a) the occlusion of risky topics; b) a high incidence of discursive shifts indicative of competing motivations; and c) the occurrence of impeded or self-contradictory speech.

SMEBS-Complete web2.0guide for SME's.pdf

by Loveneet S

"Co-authored with...loveneetsingh

Exporting Overseas Key for SME Growth Small Business
Complete web2.0guide for SME's.pdf  1. Clearly... more Exporting Overseas Key for SME Growth Small Business
Complete web2.0guide for SME's.pdf  1. Clearly describe the accountability of each staff engaged with your B2B.

An evaluation of technical efficiency and managerial correlates of solid waste management by Welsh SMEs using parametric and non-parametric techniques

by Joseph Sarkis

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2011

Strong economic growth and environmental regulation stimulus make Welsh small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs)... more Strong economic growth and environmental regulation stimulus make Welsh small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) sustainability performance merit investigation in the context of European Union (EU) sustainability initiatives. This is due in part to strong economic growth and the stimulus provided by environmental regulation. We use stochastic frontier analysis, a parametric econometric technique to generate estimates of the technical efficiency of solid waste management by 299 Welsh SMEs in 2003. We demonstrate that the ranking and efficiency scores of the Welsh SMEs studied correlate significantly with non-parametric data envelopment analysis efficiency measures and are related to the use of environmental auditing practices and the use of local business support groups, but not to monitoring of waste expenditures and publication of environmental policies.

Ethos of Exploitation: Insecurity and Predation in Madagascar

by Moncef Kartas

With Oliver Jütersonke; published in Small Arms Survey 2011: States of Security, Cambridge University Press

Madagascar’s security institutions do not reflect the security needs of its population or the requirements of the... more Madagascar’s security institutions do not reflect the security needs of its population or the requirements of the state. Instead, they are shaped by the historical contingencies of the island’s decolonization process. Weak to begin with and continually undermined by external influence, the security sector has been exploited by successive heads of state and their entourages. Rather than con- stituting effective units with a clear vocation, the military, gendarmerie, and police are characterized by severely underpaid regular forces and far too many high-ranking officers pursuing their own political and economic agendas.

Fifty years after Madagascar’s independence, the armed forces and the police have become part of the island’s security liabili- ties. In March 2009, President Marc Ravalomanana was not overthrown by a violent military coup, nor by a popular movement, as Andry Rajoelina’s current transitional government, the HAT, often claims. Ravalomanana had lost control of the state’s security apparatus, and it was the mutiny of non-commissioned officers that played a crucial role in the unconstitutional transfer of power to Rajoelina.

Combined with Madagascar’s strategic location, the lack of basic infrastructure, difficult terrain, and porous borders which attract predatory actors who plunder the natural resources and engage in illegal trafficking—a dysfunctional security sector has generated the conditions for armed violence of worrisome proportions. The chapter considers three main types of insecurity: armed criminality, large-scale rural banditry, and international trafficking networks on the island. In so doing, it focuses on the role of state security actors in failing to prevent insecurity or in perpetuating it.

This chapter’s principal conclusions include:

– To a large extent, Madagascar’s inability to develop effective state security forces can be attributed to its colonial heritage and strategic location. As a result, the main rationale for a career in the military or gendarmerie is the pursuit of personal gain.
– Since their politicization and instrumentalization in the 1970s, Madagascar’s armed forces have constantly been embroiled in
struggles over political power and economic access to the country’s wealth of resources.
– Today, Madagascar’s security sector is characterized by severely underpaid and ill-equipped regular forces, far too many high-ranking officers, and a mushrooming of special intervention units with questionable mandates.
– Collusion between elements of the country’s security sector and both foreign and domestic business interests has sharply intensified since the political crisis of early 2009. In the resulting security vacuum, armed criminality is on the rise, rural ban-
ditry has expanded, and Madagascar is gaining in importance as an international trafficking hub.
– The state administration has encouraged the organization of neighbourhood watch initiatives and village self-defence
groups; it has also turned a blind eye to the operations of highly aggressive indigenous private security companies that hunt down
rural bandits.

Governance Inc.

by Jeroen Veldman

Published in Business Ethics: A European Review
Special Issue: Where is business ethics?
Volume 20, Issue 3, pages 292–303, July 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8608.2011.01628.x

The use of the nomer ‘corporate’ is hardly an issue in contemporary scholarship on corporate governance. I will argue... more The use of the nomer ‘corporate’ is hardly an issue in contemporary scholarship on corporate governance. I will argue that this nomer is important for two main reasons. First, the corporate form distinguishes itself from any other form of business representation. In this sense, it is important to know exactly how this form is different to understand how conceptions of ‘corporate governance’ relate to different forms of representation. Second, it is my contention that the use of a particular understanding of incorporation directly informs the concept of internal governance in terms of constituency, structure, ownership and the locus of corporate agency. It is in this sense that I argue that the identification of corporate constituencies and the allocation of agency and ownership is a precondition of business ethics. With this aim in mind, I explore the governance in corporations as the result of the legal understanding of incorporation and the separate legal entity. I explore two historical positions from which five legal positions on the separate legal entity can be derived. These five positions provide reference points for the attribution of ownership and agency between the separate legal entity and the aggregation of individuals that together make up the corporation. Incorporation, as the legal act that constitutes the corporation, can then be shown to adopt multiple and mutually exclusive positions. These positions are central to the debate on the respective claims to agency and ownership between the separate legal entity and the aggregation of individuals. I then end the article by arguing that all concepts of incorporation create legal and economic issues regarding the allocation of ownership and agency, which makes their understanding and the choice behind them important for theories of governance.

Business Attitudes Towards Statistical Investigation in Late 19th Century Italy: A Wool Industrialist from Reticence to Influence

by Giovanni Favero

Enterprise & Society, 12(2), 2011: 265-316.

The ability of industrial entrepreneurs to influence the outcome of statistical surveys on industry is inquired here... more The ability of industrial entrepreneurs to influence the outcome of statistical surveys on industry is inquired here exploiting the correspondence between Luigi Bodio and Alessandro Rossi. Bodio (1840-1920) was the head of Italian official statistics from 1871 to 1898 and had also an important role in the International Statistical Institute. Rossi (1819-1898) was the main Italian wool industrialist of the time, and was directly involved in the promotion of protectionism. The in-depth study of the exchange of letters between the two allows a micro-analysis of the mechanisms by which a businessman could exert his influence on a public official, by which the data provided by the former could take on an official nature, and by which his opinions could affect the approach of the latter as a statistician to the measurement of industry. In time, the industrialist’s attitude changes from a passive resistance to statistical investigation to a more active role of unofficial consultant to the statistician. The growing influence Rossi exerted is interpreted as a case of deep regulatory capture, showing how industrialists could mould in some parts the official data that would be used to take economic-policy decisions. Rossi’s involvement in the construction of official statistics is also discussed in connection with the indirect effects it had in the long period on the statistical representation of Italian industrial economy.

Corporate Governance: Recasting the Role of Business in Society

by Usha Kiran Rai

A Bibliometric Analysis of 30 Years of Research and Theory on Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Social Performance

by Frank de Bakker

Securing Access to Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics of Active Embedding and Field Structuration

by Stephan Manning

Full Source: Manning, S., Sydow, J., Windeler, A. 2011. “Securing Access to Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics of Active Embedding and Field Structuration”. Regional Studies. Forthcoming.

This article examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to... more This article examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to secure access to high-skilled, yet lower-cost science and engineering talent. Based on two in-depth case studies of engineering offshoring projects of German automotive suppliers in Romania and China we analyze how MNCs engage in ‘active embedding’ by aligning local institutional conditions with global offshoring strategies and operational needs. MNCs thereby contribute to the structuration of field relations and practices of sourcing knowledge-intensive work from globally dispersed locations. Our findings stress the importance of institutional processes across geographic boundaries that regulate and get shaped by MNC activities.

The Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review of Concepts, Research and Practice

by Archie Carroll

International Journal of Management Reviews, 12: 1, March 2010, 85-105