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Despite the growing importance and complexity of modern supply chains, little scholarly attention has been devoted to cognitive processes in supply chain management (SCM). In particular, we know little about the structure of supply chain managers’ cognitive frames and how differences between frames affect sustainable supply chain management (SSCM).

Given the relative scarcity of the topic, this paper uses a conceptual approach. Building on prior literature from cognitive psychology and related areas, it develops ideal types of cognitive frames with which supply chain managers approach sustainability-related decisions.

This study first develops three ideal-type cognitive frames – unidimensional, hierarchical and paradoxical. This paper then shows that it makes a difference which one of these a supply chain manager holds when addressing issues related to sustainable supply. Thereafter, this study discusses the antecedents that can explain why a manager holds a particular cognitive frame.

This paper represents one of the first analyses of how the structure of a supply chain manager’s cognitive frame impacts their firm’s sustainable supply initiatives. Although developed with regard to SSCM, the arguments have implications for other management areas too, not least for the education of future SCM professionals.

Given their boundary-spanning role, attention to the cognitive processes of supply chain managers is crucial to understanding the conditions under which firms can address sustainability challenges in their supply chains.

Companies increasingly find themselves under pressure to adopt socially responsible forms of operation. Since organizational change is crucially influenced by knowledge creation and sense‐making, this paper aims to determine how knowledge management (KM) processes can foster (or impede) progress towards corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The paper reviews the KM literature to identify areas of knowledge management that are particularly relevant to managing a company's social and environmental externalities.

Distinguishing between two related but analytically distinct approaches to knowledge management, namely an element and a process view, the paper develops a conceptual model of how knowledge management can impact on CSR.

Distinguishing between elements of knowledge and processes of managing these allows a more systematic and comprehensive approach to managing knowledge around CSR.

While the contribution of supply chain management to sustainability is receiving increasing attention in the private sector, there is still a scarcity of parallel studies of public procurement. Hence the purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which local government authorities in England use their procurement function to foster sustainable development.

The paper uses an exploratory approach. Based on a review of the existing literature, qualitative research into leading local government authorities is undertaken to draw out the multiple ways in which public procurement can support sustainable development.

At an aggregate level, local government procurers have adopted a wide range of initiatives to address all three aspects of sustainability. These are condensed into a typology of sustainable supply chain management for the public sector.

The study highlights the importance of supporting factors, like transparency, organisational culture and strategy as well as leeway in public policy, for sustainable supply chain management in the public sector.

The experience of the best practice local authorities deserves wider recognition among practitioners, policy makers and academic researchers, not least given the objective of the UK government to be among the leaders in the European Union on sustainable procurement by 2009.

The proposed typology of sustainable supply chain management for the public sector can serve as a basis for future research in this area.

The payment of taxes is both a crucial corporate contribution to society and essential to good governance; but it is an under‐researched aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Hence this paper first seeks to examine whether companies that engage in tax avoidance through locating their headquarters in tax havens – or Offshore Finance Centres (OFCs) – make any claims to act socially responsibly. If so, the paper, second, aims to investigate how being based in an OFC impacts on the firm's commitment to key organisational stakeholders.

In the light of the sensitivity of the issue, the research questions are studied through an analysis of the content of codes of conduct that have been adopted by a sample of firms based in OFCs. The results are compared with a sample of US firms.

OFC‐based firms do indeed make claims that they engage in responsible business practices. However, the commitments by OFC‐based companies vis‐à‐vis key stakeholders fall in almost all cases short of those made by the sample of US firms.

With regard to CSR theory, the paper shows how organisational legitimacy is the result of a complex interaction between strategic legitimacy efforts by OFC‐based companies and isomorphic processes in the wider social system. In terms of CSR practice, the paper argues that claims to acting socially responsibly by firms that do not even fully meet their economic responsibilities to society may, in the longer term, undermine the very idea of CSR.

Against the backcloth of a growing geopolitical and economic importance of emerging economies, this paper seeks to ask whether emerging economy firms are willing to match their increased economic weight with greater social responsibility. Given a relative scarcity of research into CSR in Russia, particular attention is to be given to firms from that country.

The research question is examined through an analysis of differences between firms from industrialized nations, transition economies, and newly industrialized countries in terms of the breadth and depth of their sustainability reporting. This three‐way comparison analyses corporate sustainability reporting according to the GRI G3 framework developed by the Global Reporting Initiative.

The firms in the sample display clear evidence of a divide between industrialized and emerging economies, with Russia occupying a middle position. Contrary to expectations, however, emerging economy firms outperform those from industrialized nations in their coverage of GRI indicators.

These findings leave open two possible conclusions: either emerging economy MNEs have leaped to the front in terms of addressing sustainability or they have been able to use GRI reporting as window‐dressing to hide a dirtier reality. From a different angle, the strong evidence of a North‐South divide in the sample also lends support to the national business systems approach to CSR.

The paper adds to a small but growing body of cross‐national studies into CSR that go beyond OECD member countries. In particular, it constitutes one of the first studies not only to tease out CSR priorities of large Russian firms but also to elucidate differences in terms of CSR priorities between newly industrialized countries and transition economies.

This article discusses ways of giving support to auditors in addressing moral dilemmas. Codes of Ethics are very important in this context but are in the final analysis insufficient devices, because their necessarily generalised form has to be translated into the specific situation and thus requires acceptance rather than merely adherence. Codes have to be complemented with developed ethical reasoning of accountants. Hence, individual ethical principles are discussed which have been applied to accounting in the recent literature, i.e. utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics and ethics of care. Unsurprisingly, none emerges as giving completely satisfactory solutions. Yet eclecticism can be avoided by using compound models, which combine individual principles to provide reasonably comprehensive cover of decision‐making in a business context.

In this unashamedly polemical piece it is argued that we should not jump into bed with virtue too quickly. It is suggested that the concept of virtue is dangerously ill defined, so it becomes what those in power hegemonically define it to be; that virtue’s rise may serve factional political purposes within social science; that system implications are frequently missed, side-lined or minimised so that virtue niavely becomes a purely individual construct; that aspirational codes, which expect a-contextual demonstration of ‘virtue’ from practitioners, need to be tempered with a dose of reality; and that the achievable ‘good enough’ is better than the unrealisable and idealised virtuously ‘perfect’. It is suggested that the implied centrality of ‘virtue’ in research is problematic, that being ‘critically virtuous’ has limits, and that better education will not necessarily lead to morality and integrity in research – any more than it does in the general population. Finally it is argued that ethics committees should focus on (probable) behaviours, rather than rather than imagined motives or vague character traits. Locating virtue in an individual is dangerous because it allows the system to blame and punish an individual, rather than acknowledge the collective responsibility of the whole system. It is suggested that we need to move from a purist pursuit of virtue to a more realistic and nuanced appreciation of the real world consequences of its adoption. Whilst the present emphasis on sound research ethics and responsibility is a positive development, we need to slow down.