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Moral consideration is significantly important as social responsibility of economic actions. This article aims to analyze the moral embeddedness of labor market using the typology of moral behavior in market exchange by Beckert (2005).

This study contributes to methodological novelty through a digital research design using Gephi and NVIVO software. Textual Network Analysis (TNA) is used to analyze the moral embeddedness of labor market transaction of Chinese migrant workers.

Overall, the results show that the presence of Chinese migrant workers in Indonesia is a form of Trojan altruism and harmful to local labor market. This study also provides a theoretical debate that morals are always embedded in markets.

The data and focus of this study are the Indonesian side, particularly the local labor market. In addition, access to interviews with the Chinese government and companies is very challenging and cannot be done because they cannot carelessly provide information to journalists and researchers.

In contrast to previous studies on Chinese migrant workers that tend to use the economic perspective, this study applies the moral perspective that is more sociological and discusses social responsibility of market actions.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0737

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how executives can rapidly gain employee acceptance for strategic change through reciprocal sensegiving. The author draw on a processual case study of a transformational European merger to study this question, highlighting the properties of reciprocity in making sense of urgent strategic change, then developing them through the lens of a gift exchange.

The author draws on several qualitative methods to study sensegiving and sensemaking processes in Alpha and Beta from 2011 to 2014: insider-outsider team meetings at the beginning, mid-way and at the end of the merger integration process, ethnographic field notes during a four-month research internship, one focus group meeting with Alpha and Beta managers after the announcement of the redistribution of managerial positions, interviews with a carefully selected sample of top and middle managers, participant observation in key sensegiving meetings with top managers and “custodians,” triangulation with secondary data from the database Factiva, and finally follow-up insider corroboration of the findings by the research intern who took up a management position at Alpha in 2014.

Likening executive and employee sensegiving to a gift-giving and gift-returning exchange, the author elucidates how executives induce employees to quickly “give in” to strategic change imperatives. the author single out the key third party role of custodians of reciprocity in the mechanism, using the metaphor of the Trojan horse to illustrate its executive use and point to the underexplored darker side of prosocial sensegiving dynamics.

Further research should clarify the long-term advantages and disadvantages of the mechanism. The Trojan horse mechanism possibly sacrifices long-term reciprocity for short-term purposes. Following the example of executives in this case study, use of the Trojan horse mechanism should be followed by attention to socio-political balance concerns, including new procedures that clarify the link between value creation aims and employees’ collective contribution. Without such a cohesion-building exercise, employees’ feelings of procedural injustice may build up, resulting in negative reciprocity in subsequent change projects.

The work indicates that a leader’s visionary credentials are not the main source of her norm-shaping power in a project of urgent strategic change. Visionary credentials are welcomed by the dominant group of employees as long as they are framed as a symbolic management exercise that will not substantially impact socio-political balance. Substantively, employees make sense of the justice of urgent strategic change primarily through the lens of custodians and their “power from the past.”

All in all, executives should use the Trojan horse mechanism sparingly, in contexts of urgent strategic change and institutionalized employee behavior. Working with sources and voices of resistance from lower levels of management is more likely to yield symbiotic integration benefits.

Applied to the problem of rapid strategic change in a non-crisis context, the Trojan horse mechanism is a solution to the question: how can executives avoid lengthy socio-political confrontations and quickly induce employee ownership of painful strategic changes?

Investigates the relationship of employees to founding board members in voluntary organizations. Argues that unresolved conflicts are the source of much of the difficulty experienced in this field by the organizations. Concludes that because of this destructive element it is important that such organizations resolve these struggles at key stages in their growth.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to argue that utility maximisation, taken from a narrow economic understanding of rationality, frames contemporary business school pedagogy and management theory. The chapter will illustrate this observation by detailing the rational framing assumptions in social capital literature. The chapter will argue that these framing rational notions foster a perspective that inclines towards excessive self-interest as well as a concomitant lack of fellow feeling or morality.

Methodology – Literature review of Social Capital theory.

Findings – The chapter demonstrates that the narrow economic understanding of rationality that predominates as the framing notion in management theory tends towards amorality as it privileges individual self-interest. In consequence, the significance of ethics and cooperation are under-reported and under-emphasised which leads to Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI). These observations are discussed with reference to social capital theory.

Research implications – To consider the significance of the under-acknowledged rational background or framing perspectives in distorting theory and empirical research in social capital literature, and more generally in contemporary management literatures and business school pedagogy.

Social implication – There is a need to re-examine and challenge the validity and application of rational notions in contemporary management literatures and pedagogy.

Originality – The chapter identifies that a narrow utility maximising understanding of rationality frames and therefore inhibits current management literatures and pedagogy, including social capital literature.

To explore the issues surrounding the falling rates of MMR vaccination following the publication of a controversial study by Wakefield et al.

In order to take a fresh look at the MMR crisis, the Greek tragedy, Antigone, was used as a “strong plot” to de‐contextualise the underlying social and political issues. In this short paper, two themes are explored that emerge from reading Antigone with respect to the unfolding crisis of public confidence in the MMR vaccine: first, the challenge to government in the form of a decrease in public trust in government and government policies; and second, how such a challenge assumes significance and, arising from that, the question of how one might respond to the challenge.

The MMR debate throws issues of importance to society into relief – for example, public trust in government and science; and notions of public good versus rational choice in public policy on vaccination, However, much of the debate has been polarised into good versus evil – good and evil being subjective positions that are interchangeable, depending on the side one favours. It is argued that the issues are more complex than this, and are as much to do with political consent and the bargain between citizen and state.

Using “strong plots” to theorise about current issues is powerful because it allows one to explore them from different angles and challenge one's understanding. Antigone provides us with a way of standing back from the MMR crisis and re‐conceptualising the issues to capture the essence of the underlying debate.

X = multiple interpretations