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Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role for growth and sustainable development, particularly for rural areas in which MNCs are absent. Despite this link, there is little sy...

This conceptual article extends the literature on the disadvantages of calling. The article makes four main contributions. First, it argues that some of the burden of calling is shouldered not by called individuals or their employers, but rather by close family members. Second, it argues that calling influences work–life ideology, limiting a called person’s ability to exercise choice and self-manage their work–life boundary. Third, it introduces the novel notion of the sacrifice-reliant organisation, which relies on calling to achieve organisational goals. Fourth, the article argues normatively that organisations with called members have an enhanced duty of care towards families of its members that is commensurate with the extent to which they rely on calling to achieve their goals. Using ethics of care, it also develops guidelines on the extent and components of such an enhanced duty of care.

We explore how nonprofits can effectively govern delegation relationships. We extend stewardship theory by conceptualizing stewardship costs—costs in delegation relationships based on stewardship behavior. As stewards are theorized as other-regarding, self-actualizing, and intrinsically motivated, so far, literature almost exclusively points to the positive performance potential of stewardship behavior. Addressing this shortcoming, we develop propositions showing how stewardship selection costs rooted in the psychological characteristics of stewardship behavior and stewardship management costs rooted in situational factors of stewardship behavior occur during relationship formation and maintenance, and how they counteract the potential to increase performance. We identify and systematize opportunity costs of delayed growth, limited growth potential, and lost standardization gains, as well as increased selection and management costs. To demonstrate the theoretical potential and empirical relevance of our framework, we illustrate our arguments by referring to social franchising, a scaling strategy considered relevant for nonprofits as well as social enterprises.

Big data raises manifold ethical questions. While there is a certain consensus on general principles for addressing these issues, little is known about when and why decision-makers display such ethical conduct or opt for unethical behavior with regard to collecting, storing, analyzing, or using big data. To address this research gap, we draw on the concept of moral disengagement. Moral disengagement describes psychological mechanisms by which individuals rationalize and thus disengage themselves from unethical conduct. We develop a theoretical model in which the motivation for monetary benefits as well as the motivation for hedonic benefits is set into relation to moral disengagement and the tendency to make unethical decisions in the context of social media generated big data. Our model spells out four sets of testable propositions that invite further research.

As forms of private self-regulation, multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have emerged as an important empirical phenomenon in global governance processes. At the same time, MSIs are also theoretically intriguing because of their inherent double nature. On the one hand, MSIs spell out CSR standards that define norms for corporate behavior. On the other hand, MSIs are also the result of corporate and stakeholder behavior. We combine the perspectives of institutional theory and club theory to conceptualize this double nature of MSIs. Based on a stage model that looks at the interplay of actor and institutional dynamics, we generate insights into why actors join a voluntary MSI, how the various motivations and intentions of the actors influence the standard development, and how these as well as the MSI design are subsequently influenced by both external (institutional) and internal (club) dynamics.