Despite the term being coined in the early 1990s, heteronormativity is a longstanding and enduring hierarchical social system that identifies heterosexuality as the standard sexuality and normalizes gender-specific behaviors and roles for men, women, and transgender and non-binary individuals. As a system, it defines and enforces beliefs and practices about what is ‘normal’ in everyday life. Although there are many factors that shape heteronormative beliefs and attitudes, religion, the government, education, and workplaces are the principal macro-level factors that normalize and institutionalize heteronormative beliefs and attitudes. These institutions contribute an outsize influence on the perpetuation of heteronormativity in society because these institutions create and inculcate the norms and standards of what are and are not acceptable values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in our society. As such, in order to create effective interventions to eliminate the negative outcomes of heteronormativity, particular attention should be paid to each of these institutions. Parents, relatives, and other adults contribute to the normalization and institutionalization of heteronormativity at the individual- or micro-level. Although some people benefit from the system of heteronormativity (mainly heterosexual cisgender conforming men), much of the research on heteronormativity focuses on the negative outcomes. Heteronormativity is responsible for a host of pernicious outcomes such as lower self-esteem, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and greater rates of suicide ideation, verbal and physical abuse, and workplace mistreatment and discrimination. Future research should investigate identify effective micro- and macro-level interventions that could mitigate or eliminate the negative effects of heteronormativity.
Article
The Antecedents and Outcomes of Heteronormativity in Organizations
Oscar Holmes IV
Article
Aversive Racism: Foundations, Impact, and Future Directions
Audrey Murrell
The concept of aversive racism has had a significant impact on theory, research, and practice devoted to better understanding bias, discrimination, and persistent disparities based on social identity group such as race, gender, social class, and so on. Originally developed to better explain subtle forms of bias toward racial and minoritized groups, this concept has been extended to understand the impact of disparities in a range of diverse settings, such as intergroup relations, health outcomes, fairness in employment setting, intergroup conflict, educational outcomes, racial bias in policing, experiences of stress and mental health issues, and persistent economic disparities. A core facet of the aversive framework paradigm is that because of human biases that are deeply rooted within a historical context and reinforced by ongoing societal ideologies, unintentional and subtle forms of discrimination emerge and persist. Given that these subtle forms of bias and discrimination exist within otherwise well-intentioned individuals, strategies to eliminate them require understanding the complexity of the aversive racism phenomenon in order to develop effective social interventions.
This article reviews the foundation, research, and impact of this important body of work. In addition, the concept of aversive racism is discussed in connection to emerging research on microaggressions and unconscious (implicit) bias in order to create a more integrated framework that can shape future research and applications. Lastly, practical implications for organizations and future directions are explored, such as using social identity as a theoretical lens, including global perspectives on intergroup bias and leveraging emerging work on intersectionality, as useful perspectives to extend the aversive racism framework. Setting a future agenda for research and practice related to aversive racism is key to greater understanding of how to reduce intergroup bias and discrimination through interventions that cut across traditional academic and discipline boundaries as one approach to create meaningful and long-lasting social impact.
Article
Board Interlocks and Diversification Strategies
Christine Shropshire
The board of directors serves multiple corporate governance functions, including monitoring management, providing oversight on strategic issues, and linking the organization to the broader external environment. Researchers have become increasingly interested in board interlocks and how content transmitted via these linkages shapes firm outcomes, such as corporate structure and strategies. As influential mechanisms to manage environmental uncertainty and facilitate information exchange, Board interlocks are created by directors who are affiliated with more than one firm via employment or board service and allow the board to capture a diversity of strategic experiences. One critical corporate decision that may be influenced by interlocks and strategic diffusion is diversification (i.e., in which products and markets to compete). Directors draw on their own experiences with diversification strategies at other firms to help guide and manage ongoing strategic decision-making. There is broad scholarship on interlocks and the individuals who create them, with extant research reporting that some firms are more likely to imitate or learn from their interlock partners than others. Prior findings suggest that the conditions under which information is transmitted via interlock, such as an individual director’s experience with diversification strategies at other firms, may make that information more influential to the focal firm’s own strategic decision-making related to diversification. A more holistic framework captures factors related to the individual interlocking director, the board and firm overall and the context surrounding these linkages and relationships, helping to promote future research. Understanding the social context surrounding board interlocks offers opportunities to more deeply examine how these interconnections serve in pursuit of the board’s fundamental purpose of protecting shareholder investment from managerial self-interest. Overall, integrating multi-level factors will offer new insights into the influence of board interlocks on firm strategies on both sides of the partnership. Expanding knowledge of how inter-firm linkages transmit knowledge influential to board decision-making can also improve our understanding of board effectiveness and corporate governance.
Article
Categorization Theory
Judith A. Clair and Mary M. Struzska-Tyamayev
Categorization, the process of placing or separating into classes or groups, is a socially meaningful process and has been studied across a variety of disciplines, including the organizational studies field. Organizational scholars have focused on implications of social categorization (classification of another person as part of a group in organizational life), self-categorization (identifying the self as part of a group or category), and, increasingly, categorization systems (the norms and structures shaping and legitimizing the categories themselves) for individuals, group functioning, and organizational outcomes. All three elements are interconnected, as how one categorizes the self is linked to how one is socially categorized by others in organizational life, while categorization systems used in organizations provide the context for this process.
Categorization, in its various forms, plays a key role in diversity and inclusion dynamics within organizations, as it can have positive and negative consequences. Among the most discussed negative outcomes is the potential for categorization to serve as a precursor to interpersonal or systemic forms of bias in organizations. Once categorized, a person may experience stigmatization or work discrimination based on the category assigned. Categorization is associated with unique forms of bias; for instance, if one is perceived to be a-prototypical for a category (e.g., a poor fit), the person may resultingly experience social penalties or work-based negative consequences for not exemplifying the group’s core qualities well enough. In turn, this can generate negative personal and interpersonal effects at work and undermine organizational efforts to build inclusion. For instance, if one does not fit a “leader” prototype well enough, they may have a more difficult time claiming the role of leader. However, categorization also allows for the individual and organizational creation of meaning and understanding of the social world, group cohesion, interpersonal congruence, and ultimately the coordination and structuring of institutional diversity and inclusion efforts.
There are many avenues for advancing understandings of categorization and its effects. In particular, opportunities are rich for studies that explore implications of a growing number of people with intersected, multiple, and/or non-normative categories at work and in organizations. The growth of more complex categories has implications at multiple levels of analysis—for people, group functioning, and organizations seeking to build a more inclusive workplace. Also, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and computerization, categories drawn upon and the processes of categorization, and their implications, are intimately linked to nonhuman forces. There are ample opportunities for organizational research in this domain, a chance to explore and understand the subject beyond the bounds of traditional computing disciplines.
Article
Constructs and Measures in Stakeholder Management Research
James Mattingly and Nicholas Bailey
Stakeholder strategies, or firms’ approaches to stakeholder management, may have a significant impact on firms’ long-term prosperity and, thereby, on their life chances, as established in the stakeholder view of the firm. A systematic literature review surveyed the contemporary body of quantitative empirical research that has examined firm-level activities relevant to stakeholder management, corporate social responsibility, and corporate social performance, because these three constructs are often conflated in literature. A search uncovered 99 articles published in 22 journals during the 10-year period from 2010 to 2019. Most studies employed databases reporting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, originally created for use in socially responsible investing and corporate risk assessment, but others employed content analysis of texts and primary surveys. Examination revealed a key difference in the scoring of data, in that some studies aggregated numerous indicators into a single composite index to indicate levels of stakeholder management, and other studies scored more articulated constructs. Articulated constructs provided richer observations, including governance and structural arrangements most likely to provide both stakeholder benefits and protections. Also observed were constraining influences of managerial and market myopia, sustaining influences from resilience and complexity frameworks, and recognition that contextual variables are contingencies having impact in recognizing the efficacy of stakeholder management strategies.
Article
Corporate Ethics
Thomas Donaldson and Diana C. Robertson
Serious research into corporate ethics is nearly half a century old. Two approaches have dominated research; one is normative, the other empirical. The former, the normative approach, develops theories and norms that are prescriptive, that is, ones that are designed to guide corporate behavior. The latter, the empirical approach, investigates the character and causes of corporate behavior by examining corporate governance structures, policies, corporate relationships, and managerial behavior with the aim of explaining and predicting corporate behavior. Normative research has been led by scholars in the fields of moral philosophy, theology and legal theory. Empirical research has been led by scholars in the fields of sociology, psychology, economics, marketing, finance, and management.
While utilizing distinct methods, the two approaches are symbiotic. Ethical and legal theory are irrelevant without factual context. Similarly, empirical theories are sterile unless translated into corporate guidance. The following description of the history of research in corporate ethics demonstrates that normative research methods are indispensable tools for empirical inquiry, even as empirical methods are indispensable tools for normative inquiry.
Article
Corporate Ethics Codes and Practices
Tanusree Jain and Jiangtao Xie
Having a Code of Ethics (COE) has become a common practice within large companies since the 1980s. A COE serves multiple functions for organizations: as an internal control mechanism to guide employees during ethical dilemmas, a benchmark for fostering ethical corporate culture, and as a communication tool to signal organizational commitment to stakeholders.
Four major theoretical frameworks underpin the extant academic scholarship on COEs. In particular, organizational justice and stakeholder theories highlight the role of individuals in adopting and shaping a COE, and the institutional theory emphasizes the influence of the exogenous environment on the convergence and/or divergence of COEs across firms and contexts. Integrative social contracts theory captures the significance of both individuals and the institutional environment and views COEs as a contractual obligation that guides managers and employees to manage contradictions between local and global norms.
Within these theoretical framings, significant variations in the nature and stakeholder orientations of COEs have been detected across the developed and developing world. In the developed contexts, a comparative institutional analysis using the national business system approach shows that while in the compartmentalized cluster (the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Japan), expectations of market participants and firm owners are key drivers of COEs; in the collaborative cluster (Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands), firms develop COEs that have a wider focus oriented towards multiple stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, and the environment. Whereas in the state-organized cluster (South Korea, Spain, Greece, and Slovakia) the role and the nature of the state are important guiding factors. The coordinated industrial district cluster (Italy) characterized by alliances among smaller artisanal firms demonstrates a human-centric view of business embedded within their COEs.
Excluded from the national business systems categorization, the Nordic cluster displays a unique distinctiveness in its approach to COEs through the presence of a structured moral apparatus within firms. In the developing world, country-specific institutional characteristics play a vital role behind adoption of localized a COE, yet nonstate actors—namely multinationals enterprises, and international and supranational institutions—promote the diffusion of hyper-norms.
Given the pervasiveness of corporate misconduct despite the global diffusion of COEs, scholars must pay heed to understand the conditions under which gaps between a COE adoption and implementation arise. Equally, more scholarly attention needs to be accorded to a systematic investigation of COEs in transitional and emerging contexts. This becomes particularly necessary in the face of sociological changes, a fast-evolving landscape of local and transnational regulations including those arising from global events such climate change, and COVID-19, and the co-existence of multilevel COEs at the industry, firm, and professional levels.
Article
Corporate Political Strategies
Rodrigo B. DeMello
Firms deploy value-based strategies to achieve competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, processes of value creation and appropriation do not happen in a vacuum but are structured by a set of formal market institutions that define, among other things, policies and regulations on standards, privacy, safety, trade, and access to resources. Corporate political strategies are the ways firms use to shape these policies and regulations in favorable ways that help them achieve competitive advantage. The political activities include lobbying, participation in hearings, campaign contributions, the use of revolving-door personnel, advocacy, grass-roots mobilization, and nurturing and exploiting political ties. Firms interact with government officeholders in different government arenas, such as national and local legislatures, government agencies, and the judiciary branch.
For most corporations, being able to deploy effective political strategies is, therefore, necessary for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. The research into corporate political strategies has tried to explain why firms engage in political strategy, when, and which political activity would yield the best results. The usual theoretical framings draw from Resource Dependence Theory, Institutional Theory, Resource-Based View, Agency Theory, and Stakeholder Theory. While the strategic logic underlying each theoretical approach varies, they are better seen as complementary to each other. The fact that the phenomenon of political strategies is complex, dynamic, and an important part of daily business of several corporations favors the integration of different theoretical approaches.
Although the literature on corporate political strategies has considerably advanced, there are still areas that could benefit from future research: the integration of market and political strategies, especially the use of market actions as political influence; the integration of social and political strategies; the role that individual and managerial aspects play in choice of political strategies; and multicountry comparative studies, especially focusing on ideological turnarounds and state capitalism.
Article
Corporate Social Entrepreneurship
Elisa Alt
Corporate social entrepreneurship (CSE) is a subject of growing interest for scholars in the areas of corporate entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and corporate social responsibility as it has the potential of engaging corporations in activities that transform traditional practices, advance corporate purpose, and promote positive social change. CSE consists of identifying, evaluating, and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities that address social and environmental problems through market means from within corporations. Dual value creation—the simultaneous pursuit of social and economic value creation—is a core element of CSE, however, in organizations that have not been originally designed for this purpose. As an umbrella concept, CSE embraces similar terms such as social intrapreneurship and sustainable corporate entrepreneurship. CSE often starts autonomously through managers and employees acting as social intrapreneurs, until initiatives are accepted and integrated into the firm’s concept of strategy. CSE introduces a societal concern to corporate entrepreneurship, contextualizes social entrepreneurship in corporations, and advances entrepreneurial approaches to corporate social responsibility—all of which are topics that remain relatively unexplored and that offer vibrant opportunities for future research.
Article
Corporate Social Responsibility
Abagail McWilliams
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a legitimate responsibility to society, based on the principle that corporations should share some of the benefit that accrues from the control of vast resources. CSR goes beyond the legal, ethical, and financial obligations that create profits.
In the research literature, corporate social responsibility is defined in a variety of ways, depending on the aspect of CSR being examined. An inclusive definition is that social responsibility requires the firm to take into account the interests of all stakeholders, where stakeholders are defined as everyone who affects or is affected by the firm’s decisions and actions. A firm-focused definition holds that social responsibility includes actions that further a social goal, beyond what is required by ethics, law, and profitability. A political economy–oriented definition posits that firms have a responsibility to correct market failures such as negative externalities and government failures such as limits to jurisdiction that result in worker rights violations.
When implemented, altruistic CSR implies that firms provide a social good unrelated to the firms’ business that does not benefit the bottom line. Strategic CSR implies that firms are simultaneously profitable and socially responsible. To achieve this, CSR must be a core value of the firm and must be integrated into processes and products. When employed strategically, CSR can be an element of a differentiation strategy, leading to premium prices, enhanced brand and firm reputation, and supportive community relations. Corporate environmental responsibility often takes the form of overcompliance with regulation, improving the environment more than is required. A primary benefit of this is to stave off further regulation.
To capture the benefits of being socially responsible, the firm must make stakeholders aware of its record. This has led to triple bottom line reporting—that is, reporting about firm performance in terms of profits, people, and the planet. Social enterprises go a step further and make social responsibility the primary goal of the organization.
Article
Discrimination in Work and Organizations
Nancy DiTomaso
Discrimination is behaving differently toward people from different social identity groups, such as those based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, or some other category that is not related to the qualifications, contributions, or performance of the target group members. It is usually thought of as unfair and is often illegal. Discrimination has been the subject of substantial research in the social and behavioral sciences. It can entail acting more favorably toward those who have not earned it or less favorably toward those who have, although most of the research focuses on the negative behavior toward less favored groups rather than on the positive behavior toward more favored groups.
Although discrimination can occur in many domains, this paper focuses primarily on discrimination in work and organizations. Research on labor market discrimination spans disciplines with most research being done in economics, sociology, psychology, and law, as well as in business or management. Such research has examined differences in access to jobs or employment including hiring and promotion, job rewards such as income and wages, evaluation of performance, treatment on the job from supervisors and coworkers, and unemployment or underemployment. Discrimination may be explicit or overt, but increasingly research has focused on more subtle forms of discrimination that reflect unconscious or implicit biases. Research also considers perceived discrimination.
Research on discrimination has examined trends in discriminatory behavior or outcomes for various groups, comparisons across groups in terms of the extent or experience of discrimination, antecedents and the consequences of discrimination, as well as mediators and moderators of discriminatory behavior. Most research on discrimination has found that those from lower status or subordinate groups within any society are more likely to experience negative discrimination, while dominant group members almost always receive more favorable treatment. Although there are variations in terms of circumstance and context, native-born, heterosexual men from higher social classes and from dominant racial or ethnic groups are disproportionately found in the best jobs, with the most authority, and with the highest incomes, while women, racial or ethnic minorities, immigrants, those from working or lower classes, and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender are more likely to suffer adverse discrimination. An increasing emphasis on the intersectionality of social identity recognizes that the labor market experiences of particular people reflect the combination of their multiple identities. Discrimination can be interpersonal, intergroup, organizational, and it can be embedded in structures and institutions.
Article
The Economics of Hacking
Kai-Lung Hui and Jiali Zhou
Hacking is becoming more common and dangerous. The challenge of dealing with hacking often comes from the fact that much of our wisdom about conventional crime cannot be directly applied to understand hacking behavior.
Against this backdrop, hacking studies are reviewed in view of the new features of cybercrime and how these features affect the application of the classical economic theory of crime in the cyberspace. Most findings of hacking studies can be interpreted with a parsimonious demand-and-supply framework. Hackers decide whether and how much to “supply” hacking by calculating the return on hacking over other opportunities. Defenders optimally tolerate some level of hacking risks because defense is costly. This tolerance can be interpreted as an indirect “demand” for hacking. Variations in law enforcement, hacking benefits, hacking costs, legal alternatives, private defense, and the dual-use problem can variously affect the supply or demand for hacking, and in turn the equilibrium amount of hacking in the market. Overall, it is suggested that the classical economic theory of crime remains a powerful framework to explain hacking behaviors. However, the application of this theory calls for considerations of different assumptions and driving forces, such as psychological motives and economies of scale in offenses, that are often less prevalent in conventional (offline) criminal behaviors but that tend to underscore hacking in the cyberspace.
Article
Effective Strategies and Psychological Mechanisms for Cooperation Induction in Social Dilemmas: A Review and Future Research
Xiao-Ping Chen
A social dilemma is a situation in which people face a conflict between maximizing personal interest (noncooperation) and maximizing collective interest (cooperation). Although a noncooperative choice leads to a better individual outcome, when all people do the same, all will be worse off than if all choose to cooperate. Climate “Code Red,” overpopulation, funding for public television, and the depletion of scarce and valuable resources such as forests and fisheries are all typical examples of social dilemmas. A long-lasting theme in the research into social dilemmas is the identification of effective approaches to induce voluntary cooperation. In the past five decades, many strategies have been discovered, with communication, sanction, emotion, and norm formation being the most effective ones. Meanwhile, a personality trait called social value orientation (SVO) demonstrated its stable predictive power of human cooperation in social dilemmas. A close examination of the effects of the strategies and SVO reveals several distinct and common underlying psychological mechanisms, namely, group identity, cooperative norm, expectation of others’ cooperation, and interpersonal trust. These strategies and mechanisms have important implications for future research into social dilemmas because in the age of digitization and social distancing, new forms of social dilemmas that pose enormous challenge to human existence such as online teamwork and organization, global warming, and COVID-19, are emerging and calling for solutions.
Article
Entrepreneurship and the Poverty Experience
Michael Morris
Poverty is more than a lack of money or an inability to afford basic necessities. It is an experience that is multidimensional and includes challenges related to literacy, health, food security, housing, transportation, safety, fatigue, underemployment, limited social networks, and limited access to many opportunities available to those in other income categories. Poverty is a pernicious global problem with unacceptably high levels persisting in spite of trillions of dollars of annual spending by governments and other organizations. While this kind of investment represents a critical lifeline to many individuals and families, it is not moving enough of them out of poverty. As a result, there is a need to explore alternative solutions and approaches. Entrepreneurship, or the creation of businesses, by those experiencing poverty is one potential pathway to a better life. Yet it is a pathway about which we understand relatively little. While the poverty–entrepreneurship interface has received growing attention from scholars over the past few years, very little theoretical or conceptual work has been done. More critically, there is scant empirical evidence on such basic questions as the rate of business creation by those in poverty, success and sustainability rates, key success factors, the role of institutions and entrepreneurial ecosystems in venture outcomes, and much more. The unique difficulties faced by these entrepreneurs can be captured through the liability of poorness, a concept which includes gaps in five types of literacy, a scarcity or short-term orientation, severe nonbusiness distractions, and the lack of any safety net. As a result, the ventures that are created tend to be survival businesses that are labor intensive, with low margins, little differentiation, no bargaining power with suppliers or customers, lack of equipment and technology, and limited capacity. These are fragile enterprises, suggesting the priority may not simply be fostering higher levels of start-up activity among the poor, but interventions that enable them to become sustainable. A beginning point in realizing the potential of entrepreneurship as a poverty alleviation tool is the development of new insights on expanding opportunity horizons of these individuals, helping them escape the commodity trap, rethinking resourcing and microcredit, and assisting with adoption of the entrepreneurial mindset.
Article
Equality of Treatment, Opportunity, and Outcomes: Mapping the Law
Alain Klarsfeld and Gaëlle Cachat-Rosset
Equality is a concept open to many interpretations in the legal domain, with equality as equal treatment dominating the scene in the bureaucratic nation-state. But there are many possibilities offered by legal instruments to go beyond strict equality of treatment, in order to ensure equality of opportunity (a somehow nebulous concept) and equality of outcomes. Legislation can be sorted along a continuum, from the most discriminatory ones (“negative discrimination laws”) such as laws that prescribe prison sentences for people accused of being in same-sex relationships, to the most protective ones, labeled as “mandated outcome laws” (i.e., laws that prescribe quotas for designated groups) through “legal vacuum” (when laws neither discriminate nor protect), “restricted equal treatment” (when data collection by employers to monitor progress is forbidden or restricted), “equal treatment” (treating everyone the same with no consideration for outcomes), “encouraged progress” (when data collection to monitor progress on specific outcomes is mandatory for employers), and mandated progress (when goals have to be fixed and reached within a defined time frame on specified outcomes). Specific countries’ national legislation testify that some countries moved gradually along the continuum by introducing laws of increasing mandate, while (a few) others introduced outcome mandates directly and early on, as part of their core legal foundations. The public sector tends to be more protective than the private sector. A major hurdle in most countries is the enforcement of equality laws, mostly relying on individuals initiating litigation.
Article
Faultlines
Keith Murnighan* and Dora Lau
Group faultlines are hypothetical dividing lines that may split a group into subgroups based on one or more attributes. An example of a strong faultline is a group of two young female Asians and two senior male Caucasians. Members’ alignment of age, sex, and ethnicity facilitates the formation of two homogeneous subgroups. On the other hand, when a group consists of a young female Asian, a young male Caucasian, a senior female Caucasian, and a senior male Asian, the group faultline is considered weak because subgroups, regardless of how they are formed, are diverse.
As a relatively new form of group compositional pattern, the group faultline is associated with subgroup formation, and these subgroups, rather than the whole group, can easily become the focus of attention. When members strive to obtain more resources and protect their subgroups, between-subgroup conflict, behavioral disintegration, lack of trust, lack of willingness to share information, and communication challenges are likely. As a result, group performance is often negatively affected, and sometimes groups may even be dissolved. These results were repeatedly found in studies of experimental groups, ad-hoc project groups, organizational teams, top management teams, global virtual teams, family businesses, international joint ventures, and strategic alliances.
Article
For-Purpose Enterprises and Hybrid Organizational Forms: Implications for Governance and Strategy
Marco S. Giarratana and Martina Pasquini
A company’s social purpose has become a key factor that should be considered in organizational design and strategic decision-making. For-purpose enterprises are for-profit, financially self-sustained organizations that embed a social aim as one of their main objectives. Companies that simultaneously must envisage a double purpose, namely, social and competitive, face an even greater complexity, that is, a likely risk of internal logics’ tensions and structural drifts.
Scholars have proposed different theoretical and operative frameworks; on the one hand, they describe ad hoc business models to foster synergies between the social impact and economic and competitive-oriented actions. On the other hand, they also try to focus on an organization’s governance, suggesting incentive schemes and organizational designs that could smooth trade-offs and tensions, which could jeopardize a company’s viability. Following scholars have differentiated two clusters of studies: (a) instrumental–strategic–economic stream and (b) injunctive–social–behavioral.
The first approach perceives as critical the balance between social-oriented aims and profit with a viable business model. Under this perspective, the concept of synergies between the two aims is critical. Its mainstream framework is the stakeholder theory approach while recent approaches, rooted especially in marketing and strategic human capital studies, bring to the central stage how corporate social responsible actions develop social identity processes with focal stakeholders, which are responsible for reciprocity behaviors. These different perspectives, although complementary, could imply significant differences for the organization design, product strategy, and the role and power of the chief sustainability officer as well as allocation of resources and capabilities.
The second group of studies—injunctive–social–behavioral—is focused on understanding how to maintain active social aims under economic and competitive constrains. These works are particularly focused in investigating the intrinsic motivations of doing good and the type of tensions that could arise in organizations with a social mission. The works analyze the potential drifts, risks, and solutions that could mitigate tension and trade-offs. In this stream, the first line of work is related to social entrepreneurship, especially in developing countries, while the second is more focused on human-resource incentive schemes and organizational designs that preserve a company’s social goals under economic constrains.
Article
Gendered Organization Theory
Jenny K. Rodriguez and Elisabeth Anna Guenther
Gendered organization theory refers to an understanding of organizations as sites that (re)produce gender dynamics and the gender order. Bringing the gender lens to discussions about organization theory is useful to capture the filter through which relational dynamics operate in organizations and the way these (re)construct the psychological, cultural, and social dimensions that shape the organization as a dynamic, relational, and interdependent structure. Key ideas associated with gendered organization theory center on gender as a social category that continues to be the basis for inequality in working life. Gendered organization theory pays particular attention to how gender interacts with different dimensions of social, political, economic, and technological life and how this is mobilized in organizations as well as how organizations foster and tackle new and reformulated gender(ed) inequalities. However, gender is not the only social category of difference that shapes inequality in organizations and would benefit from more explicit insight from feminist theories to unpack the complex dynamics in organizations and the impact they have on individuals. Focusing on intersectionality, decolonial feminism, ecofeminism, queering, and theorizing beyond the human provides a more integrated framework to understand the complex and fluid impact of gender in organizations.
Article
Gender vs. Sex
Elisabeth Anna Guenther, Anne Laure Humbert, and Elisabeth Kristina Kelan
Gender research goes beyond adding sex as an independent, explanatory category. To conduct gender research in the field of business and management, therefore, it is important to apply a more sophisticated understanding of gender that resonates with contemporary gender theory. This entails taking the social construction of gender and its implications for research into consideration. Seeing gender as a social construct means that the perception of “women” and “men,” of “femininity/ties” and “masculinity/ties,” is the outcome of an embodied social practice.
Gender research is commonly sensitive to notions of how power is reproduced and challenges concepts such as “hegemonic masculinity” and “heteronormativity.” The first highlights power relations between gender groups, as well as the different types of existing masculinities. The latter emphasizes the pressure to rely on a binary concept of “women” and “men” and how this is related to heterosexuality, desire, and the body. Gender research needs to avoid the pitfalls of a narrow, essentialist concept of “women” and “men” that draws on this binary understanding of gender. It is also important to notice that not all women (or men) share the same experiences. The critique of Black feminists and scholars from the global South promoted the idea of intersectionality and postcolonialism within gender research. Intersectionality addresses the entanglement of gender with other social categories, such as age, class, disability, race, or religion, while postcolonial approaches criticize the neglect of theory and methodology originating in the global South and question the prevalence of concepts from the global North.
Various insights from gender theory inform business and management research in various ways. Concepts such as the “gendered organization” or “inequality regime” can be seen as substantial contributions of gender theory to organization theory. Analyzing different forms of masculinities and exploring ways in which gender is undone within organizations (or whether a supposedly gender-neutral organization promotes a masculine norm) can offer thought-provoking insights into organizational processes. Embracing queer theory, intersectionality, and postcolonial approaches in designing research allows for a broader image of the complex social reality. Altogether management studies benefit from sound, theoretically well-grounded gender research.
Article
Governance of Financial Institutions
Guler Aras
Corporate governance is a central issue in business and economics. However, governance in financial institutions is more complicated than in other fields because of the nature of financial services and instruments. Financial organizations are similar to other businesses in terms of their purposes of establishment, but confidence in management and complex risk structures are more important in financial organizations than in other businesses. In financial institutions, there are various areas in which problems arise that are related to corporate governance, including the agency problem and stakeholder protection. The importance of good governance for sound performance of financial institutions was reconfirmed during the 2008 financial crisis, raising the need to understand the agency problems and the efficiency of various corporate governance mechanisms in mitigating them. International organizations, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Basel Committee, the International Finance Corporation, and the International Organization of Securities Commissions, have been working with regulators and policy makers to improve corporate governance practices both in nonfinancial and financial institutions. Corporate governance, especially in financial institutions, is essential in guaranteeing a sound financial system, capital markets, and sustainable economic growth. Governance weaknesses at financial institutions can result in the transmission of problems across the finance sector and the economy. Consequently, the effectiveness of governance mechanisms of financial institutions and capital markets after financial crises had significant importance in a period that witnessed an intensive discussion of corporate governance issues with new regulations and the related academic works.