The goal of this paper is to describe the link between financial performance and the level of sustainability. In a novel approach, the paper classifies firms based on past financial success to address a potentially reciprocal relationship. For the groups of better and worse performing firms and for the entire sample, the above link is then tested, also accounting for non‐linearity in the relationship. We show that environmental management system (EMS) implementation as a proxy for a firm's sustainability level is (...) only positively associated with the financial performance of financially well‐performing firms. Conversely, it has a negative association with the performance of less good firms. We show that this implies that firms cannot change from good to bad performance, and vice versa, solely through the implementation of an EMS, and also that the result remains when introducing non‐linearity in the link. Based on this result, we discuss implications for the direction of causality. (shrink)

For much of the 20th century, brewers owned the majority of British public houses. In 1989, the Monopoly and Mergers Commission brought about the dissolution of the brewers' estates, and two types of pub‐owning companies emerged. One employed managers, and the other leased their outlets to individual operators. In the present climate of opposition to excessive drinking, their approach to retailing is being brought into question, with public demands for a responsible approach. This article examines the different responses of the (...) major firms within the industry. (shrink)

For much of the 20th century, brewers owned the majority of British public houses. In 1989, the Monopoly and Mergers Commission brought about the dissolution of the brewers' estates, and two types of pub‐owning companies emerged. One employed managers, and the other leased their outlets to individual operators. In the present climate of opposition to excessive drinking, their approach to retailing is being brought into question, with public demands for a responsible approach. This article examines the different responses of the (...) major firms within the industry. (shrink)

The notion of “responsibility” can be understood in a number of different ways, namely as being accountable for one’s actions, as a personal trait, or as a task or duty that results from one’s role. In this article we will challenge the assumptions that underpin each of these employments of the word “responsibility” and seek to redefine the concept as such. The main thrust of the argument is that we need to critically interrogate the idea of “identity” and deliberate decision-making (...) that inform the use of all three of these notions of “responsibility”. By drawing on selected concepts emanating from the oeuvre of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, our understanding of agency moves away from “identity” towards “multiplicity”. In fact, it will be argued that our sense of “agency” is a side-product of our own desiring-production as it operates in and through our interactions with other human beings and organizational structures. The article therefore contends that “responsible management” requires ongoing re-articulations of moral responsiveness. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In showing how the bureaucratic space negatively influences the moral conscience of managers, Robert Jackall’s sociological writings have pointed up one of the darkest sides of organizations. In fact, in the business ethics literature there is much to support Jackall’s pessimistic contentions, suggesting that bureaucracy can rob individual managers of their sense of responsibility. How then can this space for individual freedom, so essential in re-establishing responsible management, be recreated? In order to answer this question, we propose to interpret Jackall’s (...) Moral Mazes ( 1988 ) from the standpoint of Blaise Pascal’s Jansenist ethics and conception of humankind. Our discussion here of Pascal’s “reason of effects,” his theory of “double thought” and his distinction between respect and esteem takes Jackall’s analysis forward and opens new lines of thought about managerial responsibility. The article concludes with some thoughts on further research in the field of business ethics arising from Pascalian anthropology or what we call here “skeptical humanism.”. (shrink)

In this article, we contend that due to their size and emphasis upon addressing external social concerns, the corporate relationship between social enterprises, social awareness and action is more complex than whether or not these organisations engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR). This includes organisations that place less emphasis on CSR as well as other organisations that may be very proficient in CSR initiatives, but are less successful in recording practices. In this context, we identify a number of internal CSR (...) markers that may be applied to measuring the extent to which internal CSR practices are being observed. These considerations may be contrasted with the evidence that community based CSR activities is often well developed in private sector small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) (Observatory of European SMEs, 2002), a situation which may be replicated in social enterprises especially those that have grown from micro-enterprises embedded in local communities. We place particular emphasis upon the implications for employee management. Underpinning our position is the Aristotelian-informed capabilities approach, a theory of human development and quality of life, developed by Sen (1992; 1999) and Nussbaum (1999) which has been developed further, in an organisational context, (e.g., Cornelius, 2002); Cornelius and Gagnon, 2004; Gagnon and Cornelius, 1999; Vogt, 2005. We contend that the capabilities approach offers additional insights into CSR in social enterprises in general and internal CSR activity in particular. Our article concludes with proposals for future research initiatives and reflections upon social enterprise development from a capabilities perspective. (shrink)

Recent events have raised concerns about the ethical standards of public and private organisations, with some attention falling on business schools as providers of education and training to managers and senior executives. This paper investigates the nature of, motivation and commitment to, ethics tuition provided by the business schools. Using content analysis of their institutional and home websites, we appraise their corporate identity, level of engagement in socially responsible programmes, degree of social inclusion, and the relationship to their ethics teaching. (...) Based on published research, a schema is developed with corporate identity forming an integral part, to represent the macro-environment, parent institution, the business school and their relationships to ethics education provision. This is validated by our findings. (shrink)

Due to the nature of lending practices and support services offered to the poor in developing countries, portfolio risk is a growing concern for the microfinance industry. Though previous research highlights the importance of risk for microfinance organizations, not much is known about how microfinance organizations can mitigate risks incurred from providing loans to the poor in developing countries. Further, though many microfinance organizations practice corporate social responsibility to help create economic and social wealth in developing countries, the impact of (...) such CSR practices remains an underdeveloped area of inquiry. We use a normative ethics lens to develop an ethics-based CSR theory that differentiates between three forms of ethics-based CSR—virtue, consequentialist, and deontological. We argue that while all three forms can help mitigate risk, virtue ethics-based CSR is potentially the most useful form of CSR toward mitigating microfinance portfolio risk. We test our hypotheses using a sample of microfinance organizations from across the world. Our findings suggest that virtue ethics-based CSR is not just an important philosophical paradigm; it can actually help mitigate microfinance portfolio risk when implemented in practice. (shrink)

The transition to a low carbon economy demands new strategies to enable organizations to take advantage of the potential for “green” growth. An organization's environmental stakeholders can provide opportunities for growth and support the success of its low carbon strategies, as well as potentially acting as a constraint on new initiatives. Building environmental capabilities through engagement with environmental stakeholders is conceptualized as an important aspect for the success of organizational low carbon strategies. We examine capability building across a range of (...) sectors affected by the sustainability agenda, including construction, rail, water, and health care. We identify a number of emergent environmental stakeholders and explore their engagement with the development of environmental capabilities in the context of the transition toward a low carbon economy. Our conceptual framework offers a categorization of environmental stakeholders based on their position in relation to a focal organization and the potential for the development of environmental capabilities. (shrink)

This article serves as an introduction to the collection of papers in this monographic issue on "What the European tradition can teach about Corporate Social Responsibility" and presents the rationale and the main hypotheses of the project. We maintain that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an ethical concept, that the demands for socially responsible actions have been around since before the Industrial Revolution and that companies have responded to them, especially in Europe, and that the content of CSR has evolved (...) over time, depending on historical, cultural, political, and socio-economic drivers and particular conditions in different countries and also at different points in time. Therefore, there is not — and probably cannot be — a unique, precise definition of CSR: one global standard for CSR is unlikely. (shrink)