Business Citizenship Research Articles

Social networks, network interaction and resilience of B&Bs in rural China

PurposeThis study aims to explore the social networks and network interactions of bed-and-breakfast (B&B) entrepreneurs in rural China. In addition, it evaluates how such network interactions relate to rural resilience.Design/methodology/approachIn-depth interviews were performed in two locations: Ningbo and Dujiangyan, China. Purposive sampling was combined with snowball sampling to select interviewees. The 154 interviews involved 29 B&B owners and relevant social actors. All codes and data were analyzed using the discourse analysis framework.FindingsThe B&B owners’ social networks were identified based on strategic goals, revealing a business operation network, business development network and business citizenship network. Challenges in seeking financial support for rural B&Bs during the pandemic were specified along with network interactions. The institutional adaptation approach was used to evaluate network interaction in rural B&B business. It was argued that other networks would react based on primary network members’ goal compatibility and the effectiveness of the primary network in addressing obstacles.Practical implicationsThis study indicates that the rural B&B entrepreneurs’ interactions with various networks could influence on business resilience, community resilience as well as rural resilience.Originality/valueBy combining the institutional adaptation typology with social network theory, this study generates a new typology of network interactions for rural B&Bs. The typology helps to explain how and why B&B entrepreneurs make decisions and provides a broader scope of social networks involved in these business operations.

Theories of Knowledge Sharing Behavior in Business Strategy

Inspiring people to share knowledge and experience at workplaces has gained attention among the researchers to determine the ways of motivating employees to knowledge sharing behavior. In order to promote knowledge-sharing behavior, people in business need to understand the influences and the mechanism that drives individually to contribute their valuable knowledge with others. This paper reviews the nature of knowledge sharing and theories underlying knowledge sharing behavior to understand the factors that influence individual behavior to share their knowledge. Several theories have been applied to study knowledge-sharing behavior included theory of reasoned action (TRA), theory of planned behavior (TPB) and social exchange theory (SET). The literature review was conducted to identify the association of the theories, practices and knowledge sharing behavior. Initial discussion in this paper, was discussing the nature of knowledge sharing and common practices of knowledge sharing behavior. The literature review determined willingness, business citizenship behavior and commitment represent as an individual knowledge sharing behavior. While, the theories identified that attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and exchange of maximizing benefits and minimize cost in turn leads to drive individual towards knowledge sharing behavior. The finding contributes to the individual and business in understanding the factors that drive to knowledge sharing behavior.

O poder do Terceiro Setor: a teoria do agendamento às avessas

To understand News Promoters's paper in the social construction of the news, with relevance to the sources as one of the key factors in Agenda Setting definition, starting from the relationship of organisms of the Third Section with the journalism printed is the central objective of this work, In the light of the framing concept, used by Erving Goffman, the author analyzed a special series of five reports on the theme Social Responsibility of the Companies published in the newspaper O Popular, larger newspaper of circulation in Goiás, in alternate days of April to May of 2002. The analysis of content of the reports on Business Citizenship evidenced the framing wise the engendered by the Instituto Ethos and reproduced by the O Popular. The case study concluded that it is necessary to put back in check the power of the journalism, so acclaimed by the Theory of Agendamento, retaking the subjects put by Mawell E. MacCombs and Donald Shaw, pioneers in the agendamento studies: "are the own ones measured to establish the calendar or do theses just reflect an established calendar for their sources of information?"

Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916 (review)

Reviewed by: Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916 Ken Fones-Wolf Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916. By Jeffrey Haydu. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. 268 pp. Cloth $39.95, ISBN 978-0-8014-4641-2.) Despite all the excellent social history scholarship dealing with working- and middle-class formation over the last generation, we often take the class development of business elites as a given. It is almost as if they establish shared interests by osmosis, while the same is such a struggle for working people or the middle classes. Jeffrey Haydu forces us to subject these assumptions to a critical analysis. By comparing two cities, Cincinnati and San Francisco, and drawing on social movement theory, he seeks to add historical specificity to the process by which businessmen developed class alignments, shaped civic identities, and pursued political and economic solutions. Despite experiencing many of the same social and economic trends, businessmen followed very different strategies, particularly in their relations with labor. Haydu notes that Cincinnati's elites faced an uncertain path to unity. A strong producer ethic linked employers to workers both in the workplace and in the community, while industrial divisions and competitiveness fractured class solidarity. It was not until workers began to organize as a class in the last decades of the nineteenth century that businessmen did likewise. Once this began, Cincinnati employers developed trade organizations, cultural institutions, and civic improvement associations that only gradually articulated a strict class orientation, but that path enabled them to cultivate an identity that Haydu calls "business citizenship," which celebrated individual rights and duties and asserted business-class interests as identical to the interests of the city as a whole. In contrast, San Francisco business leaders confronted a different set of forces. Racism strengthened the bond between white employers and workers as well as the sense of unity among the workers themselves. Consequently, the labor movement developed greater economic and political power and the employers adopted a more accommodating relationship with unions. Through the end of the nineteenth century, San Francisco employers also were better able to appease unions than were their counterparts in Cincinnati; their markets were somewhat insulated from national competitors. Thus, the business community resembled the corporate liberalism of such national organizations as the National Civic Federation but without the same commanding presence of the dominant huge corporations. As Haydu [End Page 139] notes, there was "little high-minded idealism in this civic ideology"; rather, it was "a self-interested response to the realities of labor power" (89). The final portion of the book discusses the extent to which employers in San Francisco and Cincinnati were able to transpose their group identities across a range of institutions. With some qualifications, Haydu argues that the solidarities and identities forged by employers in both cities provided "a common framework for evaluating worthy citizens, good employees, and the proper governance of city and workplace" (136). But the contrasts in the case studies also raise questions about the extent to which it is possible to talk about a national business-class consciousness. One cannot do justice to the sophistication and nuance of Haydu's argument in a brief review. He utilizes a range of theories and concepts (framing, social boundaries, social movement theory, neoinstitutionalism, pathdependent processes, transposition, cultural scripts, et cetera) in an attempt to answer basic questions about how and why employers create a united front, what are the components of that shared identity, and how they apply that identity in other contexts. This makes for tough sledding in places, but it is worth it. Haydu deserves our thanks for significantly advancing the discussion of business-class formation and the barriers that it presents to the American labor movement. Ken Fones-Wolf West Virginia University Copyright © 2010 The Kent State University Press

Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism

Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism

Google in China: A Manager-Friendly Heuristic Model for Resolving Cross-Cultural Ethical Conflicts

Management practitioners and scholars have worked diligently to identify methods for ethical decision making in international contexts. Theoretical frameworks such as Integrative Social Contracts Theory (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994, Academy of Management Review 19, 252–284) and more recently the Global Business Citizenship Approach [Wood et al., 2006, Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism. (M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY)] have produced innovations in practice. Despite these advances, many managers have difficulty implementing these theoretical concepts in daily practice. Using the example of recent decisions by internet service providers Google, Yahoo, and MSN regarding censorship requirements in China, we offer six heuristic questions to help managers to resolve cross-cultural ethical conflicts in which the firm’s way of doing business differs from the practice in the host country. Recognizing that companies can take different approaches to law and ethics (Paine, 1994, Harvard Business Review 72(2), 107–117), our aim is to provide a management decision process to deal with demands or opportunities for engaging in questionable business practices in a host country.

Three Models of Corporate Social Responsibility: Interrelationships between Theory, Research, and Practice

Three Models of Corporate Social Responsibility: Interrelationships between Theory, Research, and Practice

Business Citizenship as Metaphor and Reality

We argue that Néron and Norman’s article stops short of the point where it would truly advance our understanding of corporate citizenship. Their article, in our view, fosters normative confusion and displays significant gaps in logic. In addition, the large and useful literature on business-government relations has for the most part been overlooked by Néron and Norman, even though their article ends with an enthusiastic call for scholarly attention to this subject.

Book and Resource ReviewsGlobal Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism, by WoodDonna J., LogsdonJeanne M., LewellynPatsy G., and DavenportKim. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006, 259 pages.

Book and Resource ReviewsGlobal Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism, by WoodDonna J., LogsdonJeanne M., LewellynPatsy G., and DavenportKim. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006, 259 pages.

Global Business Citizenship and Voluntary Codes of Ethical Conduct

This article describes the theory and process of global business citizenship (GBC) and applies it in an analysis of characteristics of company codes of business conduct. GBC is distinguished from a commonly used term, “corporate citizenship,” which often denotes corporate community involvement and philanthropy. The GBC process requires (1) a set of fundamental values embedded in the corporate code of conduct and in corporate policies that reflect universal ethical standards; (2) implementation throughout the organization with thoughtful awareness of where the code and policies fit well and where they might not fit with stakeholder expectations; (3) analysis and experimentation to deal with problem cases; and (4) systematic learning processes to communicate the results of implementation and experiments internally and externally. We then identify and illustrate the three attributes of a code of conduct that would reflect a GBC approach. The three attributes are orientation, implementation, and accountability. The various components of these attributes are specified and illustrated, using website examples from six global petroleum companies.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship: Towards Corporate Accountability

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship: Towards Corporate Accountability

Conversations on Business Citizenship

Conversations on Business Citizenship

Global Business Citizenship: Applications to Environmental Issues

Global Business Citizenship: Applications to Environmental Issues

On Global Business Citizenship: Introduction to the Special Issue

On Global Business Citizenship: Introduction to the Special Issue

Glottal Business Citizenship for Human Rights and a Sustainable Environment

Glottal Business Citizenship for Human Rights and a Sustainable Environment

Business Citizenship at Work: Cultural Transposition and Class Formation in Cincinnati, 1870–1910

This article links class analysis and institutionalism through a case study of late‐19th‐century employers. Class analysis extends institutionalism by highlighting an additional source of cultural transposition—a generalized identity summarized here as “business citizenship.” Institutionalism, in turn, shows how civic associations worked to unify employers and foster an overarching class consciousness. The case study provides an overview of class formation among Cincinnati employers and illustrates how business citizenship carried over from the realms of political reform and high culture to personnel management and industrial training. Some comparative observations suggest this pattern of class formation and cultural transposition was typical.

Business Citizenship: From Domestic to Global Level of Analysis

Abstract:In this article we first review the development of the concept of global business citizenship and show how the libertarian political philosophy of free-market capitalism must give way to a communitarian view in order for the voluntaristic, local notion of “corporate citizenship” to take root. We then distinguish the concept of global business citizenship from “corporate citizenship” by showing how the former concept requires a transition from communitarian thinking to a position of universal human rights. In addition, we link global business citizenship to global business strategy and to three analytical levels of ethical norms. Finally, we trace a process whereby global businesses can implement fundamental norms and learn to accommodate to legitimate cultural differences.

Integrity capacity, business citizenship and Enron stakeholder remedies

The adverse impacts of the neglect of integrity capacity and business citizenship by Enron executives on multiple stakeholders are delineated by focusing on the violations of four dimensions of integrity capacity – process, judgment, development, and system. Proposed remedies for stakeholders are provided to prevent the future export of corporate irresponsibility.

Business Citizenship

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is being supplanted by a new term—corporate citizenship (CC). For many reasons, it’s not a bad idea to replace the CSR term. But the core content of CSR is also gradually being replaced in a significant portion of the literature by a narrower, voluntaristic concept of corporate community service. This is not a viable replacement for the broad ethics-based and problem-solving norms of social reciprocity that are represented by CSR. A more legitimate successor-term is needed so that corporate community relations and philanthropy take their rightful place among the larger set of rights, duties, stakeholder relationships, and opportunities accruing to business organizations.Therefore, we develop a working theory of business citizenship (BC), a more palatable term, and a concept designed to capture the core moral and social content of CSR. In this article we extract and synthesize several key ideas about individual citizenship that have evolved over several thousand years. We then transpose these ideas from the level of individual members of a polity to the level of organizations within society. In a companion article, we extend the business citizenship concept from its single-polity boundaries to the institutional and global levels of analysis. This approach allows a view of business citizenship that accommodates strong moral guidance, structural and institutional realities, and the flexibility necessary to respond to the structures and dynamics of particular company-stakeholder relationships.

Business Citizenship

In this article we first review the development of the concept of global business citizenship and show how the libertarian political philosophy of free-market capitalism must give way to a communitarian view in order for the voluntaristic, local notion of “corporate citizenship” to take root. We then distinguish the concept of global business citizenship from “corporate citizenship” by showing how the former concept requires a transition from communitarian thinking to a position of universal human rights. In addition, we link global business citizenship to global business strategy and to three analytical levels of ethical norms. Finally, we trace a process whereby global businesses can implement fundamental norms and learn to accommodate to legitimate cultural differences.