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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between supply chain quality management (SCQM) and firm performance (including quality safety performance and sales performance) leveraging social co-regulation as a moderator.

Using survey data collected from 203 food manufacturers in China, a series of hierarchical linear modeling analyses were conducted to test hypotheses on the relationships between SCQM and firm performance.

The findings are threefold. First, all three dimensions of food SCQM practices, i.e., supplier quality management, internal quality management, and customer quality management, have significant positive effects on an enterprise's quality safety performance and sales performance. Second, SCQM practices can also increase sales performance indirectly through quality safety performance as a mediator. Third, while social co-regulation has no significant effect on the relationship between supplier quality management and quality safety performance, it has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between internal quality management and quality safety performance, customer quality management and quality safety performance.

This study not only integrates SCQM with social co-regulation but also explores the regulating effect of social co-regulation through empirical analysis, thereby providing a theoretical base for future research. However, this research is confined to China and so the results are not necessarily generalizable to other countries.

The findings inform managers of the importance in enhancing awareness of food quality and safety as well as in improving their sensitivity to salient quality demands of external stakeholders in order to achieve better SCQM practices. The findings can also inform policymakers of the significance in designing a systematic multi-agent cooperation mechanism for food SCQM as well as to build an effective information sharing mechanism for social co-regulation of food safety.

This study contributes to knowledge by empirically examining the relationships of SCQM practices with firm performance. It also expands the scope of SCQM research by incorporating social co-regulation in the study framework.

This paper provides a perspective on the field of nonmarket strategy. It does not attempt to survey the literature but instead focuses on the substantive content of research in the field. The paper discusses the origins of the field and the roles of nonmarket strategy. The political economy framework is used and contrasted with the current form of the resource-based theory. The paper argues that research should focus on the firm level and argues that the strategy of self-regulation can be useful in reducing the likelihood of challenges from private and public politics. The political economy perspective is illustrated using three examples: (1) public politics: Uber, (2) private politics: Rainforest Action Network and Citigroup, and (3) integrated strategy and private and public politics: The Fast Food Campaign. The paper concludes with a discussion of research issues in theory, empirics, and normative assessment.

The existing literature on emotion regulation strategies provides important insights with regards to intrapersonal strategies for emotion regulation. However, in pointing out the limitations of intrapersonal emotion regulation models, it has been suggested that emotion regulation is not confined to intrapersonal processes and the complex social networks that humans form are intricately connected to their emotions. The previous work on financial traders has recognized the relevance of emotions in trading, focusing only on intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies. In this chapter, drawing on the author’s previous research on emotions in trading as well as existing research on social sharing of emotions and interpersonal emotion regulation, interpersonal emotion regulation strategies in the work of financial traders are identified. In doing so, an existing definition of interpersonal emotion regulation is extended and it is argued that while the pursuit of a regulatory goal is paramount, the benefits of interpersonal regulation may be achieved even in the absence of live social interaction, as long as labeling of the affective state takes place. The chapter concludes with a model summarizing intra–interpersonal emotion regulation processes.

This introduction unpacks the key question that informs the articles in this special issue. How does a social sphere inform regulation and, more specifically, how can the regulatory capacity of a social sphere be harnessed, as an alternative or significant complementary force to state regulation and reliance on the self-regulatory capacity of markets? This question is salient and topical also in light of the search for new regulatory strategies and perspectives in the aftermath of the 2007 financial and subsequent EU sovereign debt crises, which have led to a major realignment of economy and society in a number of countries.

This introduction argues that economic sociology is a crucial reference point for understanding more about the social practices that constitute business behavior. It enables to explore the scope and significance of often interlinked social and legal norms for regulating various transnational risks that economic activity can give rise to. The introduction therefore locates the quest for understanding more about the regulatory capacity of a social sphere in debates that draw on Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the embedding, disembedding, and re-embedding of economic activity into social norms. The introduction highlights one of the key themes developed in this special issue, the idea of society within economy which questions an assumed conceptual distinction between economy and society.

This introduction concludes by specifying how the accounts of risk regulation developed in this special issue chart a path that is different from recent explorations of the role of a social sphere in regulation, which were conducted under the banner of “the sociological citizen,” “regulatory sociability,” and “collaborative governance.”

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how practitioner culture is maintained despite legal, technical, and educational issues resulting from the deluge of social media. The authors examined the nexus of practitioner culture, social media usage, and regulatory forces like policies, authority figures, and social norms.

To explore practitioner culture, a cultural studies approach was used. Specifically, the circuit of culture model framed data analysis. The authors conducted qualitative interviews with 20 US public relations practitioners.

Social media emerged as integral for cultural maintenance at every point in the circuit of culture. Practitioners expressed shared meanings about the regulations of social media as the reinvention of communication amidst growing pains; blurred public-private boundaries; nuanced rules of netiquette; and new systems of measurement and education.

The authors propose a regulation-formality hypothesis and regulation-identification articulations that should be considered in public relations practice, research, and education.

Findings suggest best practices to help practitioners negotiate their personal identities and the identities of their organizations because of the unregulated nature of social media.

This study fills the need for more qualitative, in-depth research that describes the cultural implications of social media in public relations to better address misunderstandings or gaps between its perceived effectiveness and actual use.

Federal regulatory agencies are created by Congress to mitigate particular social problems, such as pollution (the Environmental Protection Agency), discrimination (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), and anticompetitive conduct (the Federal Trade Commission). These agencies have the delegated authority to issue Rules and Regulations that have the force of law within their respective domains, constrained by the oversight of the President and Congress, and by litigation through the Courts. Many view the extent of such oversight as inefficiently lax, with the result that “missionary” bureaucracies successfully overregulate and inefficiently extend the span of their authority. After describing these concerns, I develop a model of agency bias that extends my earlier work with Canice Prendergast and Topel (1993, 1996) to a regulatory framework. In the model, activist bureaucrats who seek greater regulation are attracted to an agency's mission. Their biases are constrained by the courts, where agency rules and regulations can be challenged, and by oversight from other branches of government. In equilibrium, agencies gain from the exercise of bias even though all parties know it occurs and seek to mitigate its costs. The public sector is overregulated on average. Overregulation is largest when the social problem is least harmful, and when oversight of agency actions is weak. Stronger oversight would reduce the distortionary effect of agency biases. More precise legislative language would provide clearer guidance to the court system, which would reduce deference to biased agency opinions in the formation of regulations.

This article analyzes the interplay between regulation and social and environmental reporting in northern Italian social enterprises. Specifically, it investigates how “non-accredited” social enterprises discharge voluntary accountability before and after the introduction of regulation making social and environmental reporting compulsory for “accredited-social enterprises.” By developing a content analysis on 170 stand-alone social and environmental reports, this article provides a longitudinal analysis of voluntary disclosures in a regulated context from 2006 (before regulation) to 2009 (after regulation). Based on the total number of disclosures and the average number of sentences per report, Italian “non-regulated” social enterprises showed increased voluntary disclosure on social and environmental matters from 2006 to 2009; however, when analyzing the average sentences per report, it emerges that the information contained in the stand-alone social and environmental reports decreased, especially disclosures related to “social-related issues.” This article looks beyond crude noncompliance analysis with legislation and analyzes if the regulation influences organizations’ voluntary disclosure. It analyzes all of the social and environmental disclosures provided by northern Italian “non-accredited” social enterprises before and after the introduction of regulation. The novelty of this article rests in the fact that it does not analyze the social and environmental disclosure of “legal social enterprises”; rather, it considers the whole voluntary disclosure context for “non-accredited” social enterprises in a regulated environment.

The purpose of this paper is to undertake a qualitative case-based analysis of the factors affecting the capability of primary sector rural entrepreneurs to manage regulation. The authors suggest a conceptual framework to aid understanding of their skill and capability when managing regulation.

Using a multiple case study approach the entrepreneurial skill of rural entrepreneurs is examined in light of three sets of factors: institutional regulatory, social capital and economic market.

The case analysis indicates diversity in the skill of rural entrepreneurs to manage regulation across sub-sectors including dairy and stock farming, fruit growers and vegetable/horticultural producers. The conceptual framework indicates that there are three areas that influence entrepreneurial skill: relationships with national cooperatives, relationships with the institutional regulatory environment and relationships with the economic market environment. This provides the authors with a conceptual framework to aid understanding of the interplay of factors affecting entrepreneurial skill and capability to manage regulation.

This study contributes to the emerging stream of literature highlighting the importance of industry sector context for understanding the complex and differing regulatory effects on entrepreneurs’ skill and hence capability to manage. Case comparisons allow the authors to explain and understand why entrepreneurs that operate similar businesses within the same sector respond differently to regulation.

Purpose – To outline the history of ethical regulation in the social sciences and to question the proportionality of its costs and benefits.

Methodology/approach – Secondary analysis of primary literature.

Findings – Ethical regulation in the social sciences has been driven more by institutional reputation management than human subject protection. It has a range of social and economic costs that have not received adequate critical appraisal.

Social implications – Ethical regulation in the social sciences may be highly damaging to a society's ability to understand itself, particularly by constraining scientific research relative to journalism or imaginative forms of communication.

Originality/value of paper – Review of the most current research and an explanation of the positive case against regulation.