Mapping the Evolution of the Business and Society field and Moving the Research Agenda Forward

Abstract

In this paper, we map the business and society field from a relational approach that allow us to understand the direction, the pace and velocity at which the field has been evolving and to identify the three main trends; (1) the number of components included in the business and society approach, (2) the emergence effect (3) the level of analysis that explains all three, moving from functionally towards supra-functionally oriented approaches in the field of business and society. Based on these trends and following a problematization approach, we propose a new approach, the complete supra-functional approach (SCA) based on relational sociology (Donati and Archer, 2015) which challenges the main positivist and modernist assumptions in the field ( the separation fallacy and the functionalism-positivistic concept of paradigm) following the problematization approach. We applied the SCA in the Covid-19 panorama as an example of how it works and what this entails in practice.