Search

Cities around the world are preparing for the effects of climate change, including sudden climate-induced disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and droughts. The science and policy literatures that inform cities' adaptation and disaster plans have focused on the probability and impact of climate disasters, but have not systematically considered how firms will react. We leverage management and organization research to build a framework of how firms make sense of such disasters, characterizing their responses as "fight", "flee", or "freeze". We extend our framework to the city level by using historical data and prospective sensemaking to develop a narrative scenario of a future flood in the Netherlands, where analysts already discuss how the next '100-year flood' may unfold. Our study reveals how heterogeneity in firms' sensemaking may come to dramatically affect which adaptation strategy is likely to prevail: city reconstruction or retreat. The paper bridges the climate science and policy literatures with organizational research, advances research on business sustainability and firms' responses to punctuations, and helps broaden the explanatory potential and methodological toolkit of organization theory. In so doing, the paper serves as a springboard for policy debates and future interdisciplinary research on societal adaptation following climate disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to survive sharing platforms must find ways to monetize the services they offer in facilitating peer-to-peer sharing. New business models for the sharing of personal items usually transform the value proposition from sharing for free to renting and minimize personal interactions to increase the convenience for participants. Using an experiment and a survey we investigate whether these new business models will help attract the mass of users that is critical to the growth of the sharing economy or whether, on the contrary, they will crowd out the relational value that seems to drive many people's participation in the sharing economy. We make three discoveries. First, business models affect how (prospective) participants see peer-to-peer relationships on sharing platforms, which in turn helps explain that some platforms are more attractive than others. This suggests that in general relational value matters to participants. Our second discovery is that sharing platforms do not face a 'free or fee' dilemma when devising a new business model. For the sharing of personal items, money does not crowd out relational value: renting with personal interactions is attractive to prospective participants. Third, there is room for a variety of business models: participants do not care equally about relational value and those who care less about it (according to the functional and social benefits they seek) are less likely to shy away from platforms that adopt a business model of renting without personal interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's globalized economy, multinationals are increasingly asked to take responsibility for various social and environmental issues that were once regarded as the purview of the state, including human rights issues. With the UN Human Rights Council endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights in 2011, a consensus has emerged in academia and practice that corporations do have human rights obligations (the so- called "corporate responsibility to respect human rights") (Baumann, 2015). The Guiding Principles affect management practice and raise many fundamental questions about the role of private actors in global governance in general and the implementation of human rights commitments in corporations in particular. Although corporations are increasingly aware of the necessity for anticipating and addressing human rights concerns through the development of human rights policies and contributions to peace building activities in conflict and post conflict zones (Giuliani & Macchi, 2014), corporate efforts often fail to address or eliminate human rights concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interest in collaboration between business and non- governmental organizations (NGOs) has grown rapidly in the past decades, literature has underexposed the peculiarities of the NGO partner, compared to the ample attention for the perspective of the firm and the implications for society. In the context of growing uncertainty of government funding and budgetary constraints, NGOs have taken a more proactive approach of embracing partnerships with business to foster their organizational viability and strategic economic interests, in addition to their traditional focus on social value and meaningfulness. Using two complementary studies, one qualitative, the other more quantitative, we explore activities adopted by NGOs to generate resources and further their objectives in collaborating with firms, considering their strategy context, content and process, and how these reflected in their external communication and presentation, especially via organizational websites. Findings show the most prominent dimensions of NGOs' strategy for partnerships, including the deployment of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes, the provision of specific options for collaboration, and evidence of past achievement to increase trustworthiness. Our findings also shed light on the factors relevant for firms seeking to partner with an NGO as a means to further their meaningfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of Journal of World Business, a special issue will be published in late 2015/early 2016. This issue will include contributions from some of the leading scholars - both established and emerging - in international management research. In this panel, 4 of these individuals - representing each of four areas of the special issue - will present their perspectives. As Editor-in-Chief of the journal I will introduce the panel, frame the presentations and dialogue, and comment upon the presentations and the overall direction of international management research. The focus of the panel will be on the questions "where have we been and where are we going in international management research", with each panelist responding to that question for his/her particular area of interest and expertise. The panelists will offer short presentations that track their prospective contribution to the JWB special issue, but also comment on some broader themes and currents in international management research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fields of Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have attracted increasing scholarly interest and yet the nature of their relationship remains contested. These two areas of knowledge and practice are closely inter-related, particularly as firms seek to gain long-term sustainability. Corporate governance and CSR interface gains traction particularly in the context of multinational and transnational corporations, which by their very nature function in multiple countries and face differentiated pressures to adopt particular governance structures, stakeholder responsibilities, and disclosure requirements in relation to these two ascending trends. In this session, we propose to open governance by exploring and incorporating the long term-sustainability agenda integral to CSR. Specifically, by concentrating on the inter-linkages of Corporate Governance and CSR this panel will explore the role of business leaders and corporate boards in steering the CSR and sustainability in businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the challenge posed by the MNE to institutional theory by exploring how multinational institutional embeddedness affects MNEs' responses to deinstitutionalization after a disruptive event. It focuses on the institutional work by national governments and major European nuclear energy firms in the German, French and UK organizational fields in the (de-)institutionalization processes surrounding the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Through a qualitative multiple-case study, drawing on newspaper reporting and government and firms' press releases, of the year directly preceding and a period of almost two years following the disruptive event, we examine MNEs' and governments' institutional work within and across the three contexts. Findings show the presence of inter-country and intra-country isomorphism and the relevance of national institutional idiosyncrasies. Implications and limitations of this exploratory study are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, sustainability in supply chains has become a topic of strategic priority for supply chain management. Still, doubts have been raised about the substantive commitment of large, international corporations to really improve global social welfare and to preserve the natural environment. The objective of this panel symposium is to stimulate and inspire new managerial approaches to achieve substantive sustainable improvements in supply chains. It offers a platform for exchanging first ideas and, thereby, stimulates research on sustainable supply chain management to move to the next level. The panelists will, among others discuss questions such as (1) how to enable corporations to give substantial weight to environmental protection and social welfare?; (2) how to move beyond our dominant Western perspective on sustainability and consider the values of different societies, in particular different value systems in emerging economies?; and (3) how to change the strategies and structures of supply chains such that they become truly sustainable? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]