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1 – 10 of over 15000Helen Borland and Stan Paliwoda
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate Michael Thomas's concept of civic professionalism and social trusteeship as a future alternative to the current marketing profession's…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate Michael Thomas's concept of civic professionalism and social trusteeship as a future alternative to the current marketing profession's code of conduct and to put this in the context of climate change and ecological sustainability as a model for firms everywhere.
Design/methodology/approach
Review of the marketing profession's responsibility towards society, communities and the ecology of the planet in the twenty‐first century in the light of climate change.
Findings
The hypothesis for the paper emerges as: whether it is possible for Chinese firms to embrace the needs of twenty‐first century global ecological sustainability in meeting their own economic requirements for development and financial prosperity.
Research limitations/implications
Limited secondary research and primary research that is also limited in terms of scope.
Practical implications
As we move into an era of Chinese economic supremacy, we marketers must face up to the responsibility we have towards balancing the progression of global economic development (and selling goods and services in global market systems) with our responsibility towards our cultural systems and the global ecological system (the global ecosystem), the home of all our economic wealth.
Social implications
To extrapolate lessons and opportunities for firms from developing economies as they move towards global domination of world economic markets and, suggest strategies for sustainability that they can, and should, adopt.
Originality/value
The paper presents a theoretical framework for a global strategy for sustainability, and provides a vision of marketing responsibility that embraces civic professionalism, social trusteeship and a strategy for sustainability.
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The purpose of this paper is to propose a measurable terrestrial ecosystem boundary to answer the question: what extent of landscapes, bioregions, continents, and the global Earth…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a measurable terrestrial ecosystem boundary to answer the question: what extent of landscapes, bioregions, continents, and the global Earth System must remain as connected and intact core ecological areas and agro-ecological buffers to sustain local and regional ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons?
Design/methodology/approach
This observational study reviews planetary boundary, biosphere, climate, ecosystems, and ecological tipping point science. It presents a refinement to planetary boundary science to include a measurable terrestrial ecosystem boundary based on landscape ecology and percolation theory. The paper concludes with discussion of the urgency posed by ecosystem collapse.
Findings
A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed based on ecology's percolation theory: that across scales 60 percent of terrestrial ecosystems must remain, setting the boundary at 66 percent as a precaution, to maintain key biogeochemical processes that sustain the biosphere and for ecosystems to remain the context for human endeavors. Strict protection is proposed for 44 percent of global land, 22 percent as agro-ecological buffers, and 33 percent as zones of sustainable human use.
Research limitations/implications
It is not possible to carry out controlled experiments on Earth's one biosphere, removing landscape connectivity to see long-term effects results upon ecological well-being.
Practical implications
Spatially explicit goals for the amount and connectivity of natural and agro-ecological ecosystems to maintain ecological connectivity across scales may help in planning land use, including protection and placement of ecological restoration activities.
Originality/value
This paper proposes the first measureable and spatially explicit terrestrial ecosystem loss threshold as part of planetary boundary science.
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This paper aims to clarify the character of globalization, to identify the changes it brings to structures of governance, and to consider ways in which these arrangements could be…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to clarify the character of globalization, to identify the changes it brings to structures of governance, and to consider ways in which these arrangements could be made to serve a good (more global) society.
Design/methodology/approach
This essay takes a reflective approach.
Findings
The paper considers the rules and regulatory processes that govern today's more global world. The first step in the analysis identifies globalization as a trend whereby people's lives become more interconnected on a planetary scale. The second section describes the institutional apparatuses through which global issues are governed. Global governance is seen to take shape not as a “world government”, but as a complex array of regulatory networks that span local to global scales and also combine public and private sectors. The third section assesses the normative values that this “networked” and “polycentric” governance of global affairs might serve. Both an earlier “neoliberal” design of global governance and a currently prevailing “social market” paradigm are critiqued. An alternative vision of global social and ecological democracy is offered as a more promising road to a good society in the contemporary more global world.
Practical implications
The paper suggests alternative guiding principles for governance of today's more global society, including the role of corporations in it.
Social implications
The paper suggests ways in which global governance can deliver social justice, ecological sustainability and democracy along with material prosperity.
Originality/value
The paper consolidates a conception of post‐statist governance that can aid researchers and practitioners alike in mapping the processes of contemporary policymaking. The normative framework presented can, moreover, help to clarify the objectives that citizens of a more global world would wish regulation to provide.
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Max Baker, Rob Gray and Stefan Schaltegger
This article explores and contrasts the views of two influential research projects within the social and environmental accounting space. Both projects advocate for sustainability…
Abstract
Purpose
This article explores and contrasts the views of two influential research projects within the social and environmental accounting space. Both projects advocate for sustainability. The first here referred to as the Critical Social and Environmental Accounting Project (CSEAP), was developed and championed by Rob Gray and calls for immediate radical structural change. The second one is called the Pragmatic Sustainability Management Accounting Project (PSMAP), championed by Stefan Schaltegger, and advocates for an entrepreneurial process of creating radical solutions in joint stakeholder collaboration over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is the culmination of a decade-long debate between Gray and Schaltegger as advocates of CSEAP and PSMAP, respectively. Specifically, the paper explores the differences and agreements between CSEAP and PSMAP on whether and how companies should pursue sustainability and the role of accounting in these efforts. The paper focusses on critical issues that exemplify the tension in their views: general goals, the role of structure and agency and how to creating change and transformation.
Findings
The article contrasts CSEAP's uncompromising antagonising approach to accountability and fundamental systemic change with PSMAP's pragmatic approach to sustainability accounting with its management and entrepreneurship-orientated approach to change and unwavering support for transformative managers on the front lines. Despite their apparent differences, the paper also outlines areas of agreement between these two positions and how accounting and sustainability can move forward.
Research limitations/implications
The debate tries to reconcile language and conceptional differences in the social and environmental accounting (SEA) and sustainability management accounting (SMA) communities to reduce confusion in the research space over what sustainability is for organisations and what role accounting plays in this. The authors hope that the tension between the different positions outlined in this paper generates new insights and positions on the topic.
Practical implications
While the two views explored in this paper are primarily incompatible, each generates implications for practice, research and education. Debates like this are crucial to moving from discursive disagreement to creating a tolerant and robust foundation for moving forward and achieving much-needed sustainable transitions in the economy and society.
Originality/value
The authors offer shared understandings, points of continuing disagreement and alternative views on the nature of sustainability. The debate forges a bridge of understanding where both sides can learn from each other.
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This paper seeks to review the potential gendering of leadership in the emerging field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It explores whose voices are becoming dominant…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to review the potential gendering of leadership in the emerging field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It explores whose voices are becoming dominant, how leaders speak, and what forms men's and women's leadership take.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a self‐reflective inquiry, analysing observational and secondary data to explore leadership and its gender patterning. It reflects on its approach and the voice in which it is written.
Findings
Women and men are often differently placed to work within the emerging dominant logics of CSR. The gender patternings considered are skewed rather than clear‐cut. In relation to organization‐based discourses and practices, leadership is dominated by white men. Some men are tempered radicals, inside‐outsiders acting for change. Some women leaders question the foundations of business and global power relations, and point to fundamental gender inequalities. Whilst they are recognised figures, they are operating at the margins, self‐identified as activists. Other influential women provide training in the alternative practices of leadership they advocate. Systemic theories of gendering are employed to review these findings.
Originality/value
Explores some of the dynamics through which leadership can become gendered, in the challenging realm of how ecological sustainability and global social justice are addressed.
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Iordanis Katemliadis and Georgios Markatos
Tourism planning and development has revolved around sustainability concepts and issues, and this paper aims to provide an analysis of stakeholder involvement in sustainability…
Abstract
Purpose
Tourism planning and development has revolved around sustainability concepts and issues, and this paper aims to provide an analysis of stakeholder involvement in sustainability planning and implementation in Cyprus.
Design/methodology/approach
The article provides a comprehensive perspective on stakeholder involvement in sustainability planning and implementation based on a systematic literature review.
Findings
Study findings indicate that the active involvement of stakeholders is a prerequisite in order to address the complex issues of sustainable tourism development.
Originality/value
The authors examined the role of stakeholders at individual, local and international levels, and how they can make a difference in transitioning to a more sustainable future for tourism in Cyprus.
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This research presents uncomfortable questions about the viability of alternative energy technologies, which arise during economic contraction and degrowth but are scarcely…
Abstract
Purpose
This research presents uncomfortable questions about the viability of alternative energy technologies, which arise during economic contraction and degrowth but are scarcely addressed within media and academia.
Design/methodology/approach
The author identifies and graphically illustrates differences between media expectations for renewable energy production versus energy reduction strategies. The author contrasts green energy expectations with material factors to develop unasked questions about potential: urban myths (e.g. solar cells are made from sand), assumptions (e.g. alternative energy is of comparable quality to fossil fuel energy and can offset its use), strategic ignorance (e.g. solar cost drops reflect Moore’s law), and trained incapacity (e.g. solar and wind energy is low- or zero-carbon).
Findings
Compared to energy reduction coverage, journalists cover energy production using 1) more character-driven storytelling, 2) about twice the promising language, and 3) far more references to climate change and energy independence. These observations help loosely illustrate a pervasive energy production ethos, a reflexive network including behaviors, symbols, expectations, and material conditions.
Social implications
Fascination with alternative energy may serve as a form of techno-denial to avoid facing the uncertain but inevitable end of growth in consumption and population on our finite planet.
Originality/value
This paper offers journalists, policymakers, researchers, and students new, unasked, questions regarding the expectation that alternative energy technologies can replace fossil fuel. For instance, if wind and sunlight are free, why are wind and solar energies so expensive, requiring billions in subsidies? Where do solar cell and wind turbine costs ultimately arise, if not from fossil fuels (via labor, materials, etc.)?
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What if we were to take an explicit relational perspective on organizing? What if we put our organizational conversations and interactive practices right in the middle of our…
Abstract
What if we were to take an explicit relational perspective on organizing? What if we put our organizational conversations and interactive practices right in the middle of our scholarly focus on organizations? In this contribution, I wish to document how the concept of “relational practices” can be formulated as a generative approach to organizing in emergent and multiplex organizational contexts. Starting from the main concern of developing “actionable knowledge” about organizing, I will compare and contrast a relational constructionist approach with a mere instrumental approach to organizing. Beyond the purposive coordination of the means to attain intended goals, organizing will be considered as an essentially relational activity. Actors acknowledge mutually meaningful contributions and, at the same time, mutually enact organizational membership through joint engagement in “relational practices.” Relational organizing is as much a goal in itself as a means to an end.
The purpose of this paper is to review current conceptualisations of social enterprise and present a new theoretical model for social enterprise in the UK.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review current conceptualisations of social enterprise and present a new theoretical model for social enterprise in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper draws on the rise of social enterprise in the UK context. Social enterprise in the UK emerged around the 1980s, in both political consciousness and as an academic discipline. The paper explores organisational antecedents to develop a conceptual model that prioritises different legal forms of social enterprise in the UK regulatory framework.
Findings
In critiquing policy, practitioner and academic publications, as well as the theoretical models that operationalise social enterprise, there are two observations from the literature this paper examines: first, Theories to date have tended to conceptualise social enterprise as a single hybrid form, neglecting a consideration of the various legal identities, ownership and governance types; second, Theoretical models have tended to overlook the cultural, regional and political-economic histories within their conceptualisations.
Originality/value
The value and originality of this paper lies in offering a new paradigm in the conceptualisation of social enterprise in the UK. This is a new contribution to knowledge that strengthens an understanding of the field. This paper creates the space to broaden and appreciate ideologically and operationally different hybrid business types of social enterprises that include charitable, solidarity and entrepreneurial type social enterprises.
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