Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Business Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics

Series

Singapore Management University

Keyword
Publication Year
Publication

Articles 31 - 60 of 261

Full-Text Articles in Business

Digital Transformation, Sustainability, And Purpose In The Multinational Enterprise, Gerard George, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx Apr 2022

Digital Transformation, Sustainability, And Purpose In The Multinational Enterprise, Gerard George, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We discuss how environmental and pandemic crises in combination with digitization are presenting the multinational enterprise (MNE) with increasing geopolitical, organizational, and market tensions. Institutional pluralism is creating a more complex global environment. The organization of productive work is shifting, which challenges how MNEs structure and coordinate their activities. Changing consumer and investor expectations are broadening the understanding of value creation with implications for business models. We contend that the tensions invite MNEs to reconsider how they frame, formalize, and realize corporate purpose. We close with a research agenda that recognizes the need for MNEs to become purpose-driven actors.


Impact Measurement And Standards, Angeline Chua, Hao Liang, Wanyi Yang Feb 2022

Impact Measurement And Standards, Angeline Chua, Hao Liang, Wanyi Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite rapid economic growth and increasing interest in impact investment worldwide, less attention has been paid to the question of whether this growth is sustainable for people and the planet. In an ideal scenario, growth would happen within planetary and social boundaries. However, current financial value is often prioritised and achieved at cost to society and the environment. For example, small farmers in Indonesia have long practised slash-and-burn agriculture, and in recent decades large companies have industrialised the practice. The peatland blazes in Indonesia release smoke and large amounts of greenhouse gases, which impact both Indonesia itself, and neighbouring countries …


Introduction To The Business Of Sustainability: An Organizing Framework For Theory, Practice And Impact, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Havovi Heerjee Joshi, Anita M. Mcgahan, Paul Tracey Feb 2022

Introduction To The Business Of Sustainability: An Organizing Framework For Theory, Practice And Impact, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Havovi Heerjee Joshi, Anita M. Mcgahan, Paul Tracey

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Human activity needs to become sustainable, and businesses have a massive role to play in it. Important progress has occurred. The Coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the importance of sustainability and resilience. Businesses have become champions of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), both by integrating them into their core activities and by developing strategies and metrics to achieve them. Despite this progress, more must be done to achieve sustainability targets on a timetable that is relevant. While the narratives of businesses are often exciting, their follow-through with implementation remains limited. So too is information on successful practices, conceptual knowledge …


Developing Socio-Ecological Scenarios: A Participatory Process For Engaging Stakeholders, Andrew Allan, Emily Barbour, Robert J. Nicholls, Craig Hutton, Michelle Mei Ling Lim, Mashfiqus Sale-Hin, Md. Munsur Rahman Feb 2022

Developing Socio-Ecological Scenarios: A Participatory Process For Engaging Stakeholders, Andrew Allan, Emily Barbour, Robert J. Nicholls, Craig Hutton, Michelle Mei Ling Lim, Mashfiqus Sale-Hin, Md. Munsur Rahman

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Deltas are experiencing profound demographic, economic and land use changes and human-induced catchment and climate change. Bangladesh exemplifies these difficulties through multiple climate risks including subsidence/sea-level rise, temperature rise, and changing precipitation patterns, as well as changing management of the Ganges and Brahmaputra catchments. There is a growing population and economy driving numerous more local changes, while dense rural population and poverty remain significant. Identifying appropriate policy and planning responses is extremely difficult in these circumstances. This paper adopts a participatory scenario development process incorporating both socio-economic and biophysical elements across multiple scales and sectors as part of an integrated …


Why Companies Practice Corporate Social Responsibility, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim Jan 2022

Why Companies Practice Corporate Social Responsibility, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The article discussed why companies practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) and their meta-analysis of 200 surveys over 20 years found that CSR is often embraced as a “halo” strategy.


What Drives Companies To Do Good? A “Universal” Ordering Of Corporate Social Responsibility Motivation, Alwyn Lim, Shawn Pope Jan 2022

What Drives Companies To Do Good? A “Universal” Ordering Of Corporate Social Responsibility Motivation, Alwyn Lim, Shawn Pope

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The classic question of why companies do corporate social responsibility (CSR) is central to much theoretical, regression-based, and experimental research. Guiding research into this question is a tripartite schema of normative, instrumental, and political CSR motivations that has become increasingly established in the CSR literature. This paper challenges the schema’s status as a typology of equally plausible alternatives through an integration and analysis of a worldwide literature of 120 existing academic surveys on CSR motivation. Rather, the paper reformulates the schema into a surveyed ordering of CSR motivations that might be called “universal” in having remarkable stability across time periods, …


Beyond Shareholder Value? Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Support For Black Lives Matter, A. J. Chen, Patricia M. Dechow, Samuel T. Tan Dec 2021

Beyond Shareholder Value? Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Support For Black Lives Matter, A. J. Chen, Patricia M. Dechow, Samuel T. Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate why firms voluntarily disclose support for the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM firms) even though these disclosures have little impact on shareholder value. We examine two competing explanations: that managers are acting in the interests of a broad set of stakeholders, or that they are engaging in “woke-washing.” Our evidence supports the stakeholder perspective since we find that BLM firms have more inclusive cultures on multiple dimensions – from their board members, to employees, to the rights of shareholders, and to the compensation structure of top executives. Furthermore, BLM firms face less risk in speaking out since they …


Accounting For A Hopeful World, Themin Suwardy Nov 2021

Accounting For A Hopeful World, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a commentary, SMU Associate Provost for Postgraduate Professional Education and Associate Professor of Accounting (Practice) Themin Suwardy noted that environmental reporting has become more common in the last 10 years and that companies are embracing sustainability reporting despite the challenging myriad of seemingly different models, frameworks and regulations. He opined that the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards to be issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) will enable companies to provide comprehensive sustainability information for the global financial markets. He urged accounting professionals to embrace the development wholeheartedly and to help organisations do and report good.


Corporate Sustainability Has Failed: Digitizing Regeneration May Still Save Us, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx Nov 2021

Corporate Sustainability Has Failed: Digitizing Regeneration May Still Save Us, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The author proposes a focus on regeneration as a way for small carbon footprint firms (e.g., consulting, financial services firms) to make a positive sustainability impact. He highlights that service industry firms can proactively contribute to the regeneration of common pool resources, such as forests and lakes, which often become neglected or overused. What makes regeneration different compared to more traditional donations to a conservation nonprofit is the use of digital technology that enables an organization to lay claim to the eco­system benefits it generates through its support. The digitization of benefits claims provides a transparent accounting system for environmental …


Too Many Peas In A Pod? How Overlaps In Directors’ Local And Global Status Characteristics Influence Board Turnover In Newly Public Firms, Abhijith G. Acharya, Timothy G. Pollock Oct 2021

Too Many Peas In A Pod? How Overlaps In Directors’ Local And Global Status Characteristics Influence Board Turnover In Newly Public Firms, Abhijith G. Acharya, Timothy G. Pollock

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Drawing on status characteristics theory, we explore how boards’ social structures influence board turnover. We theorize that (1) understanding directors’ relative standing and spheres of influence in the local status hierarchy creates deference structures that reduce conflict and enhance stability, thereby reducing board turnover; and (2) shared performance expectations and attraction based on homophily in the global status hierarchy can also reduce conflict and enhance stability, and thus serve as another means of reducing board turnover. Using data on the five years following the initial public offerings (IPOs) of 218 firms that went public between 2001 and 2005, we find …


Local Political Corruption And M&As, Chun Liu, Yang Chen, Shanmin Li, Liang Sun, Mengjie Yang Oct 2021

Local Political Corruption And M&As, Chun Liu, Yang Chen, Shanmin Li, Liang Sun, Mengjie Yang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relation between local political corruption and firms' cross-province M&As using provincial-level data on corruption in China. The results show that firms in more corrupt regions are less likely to engage in cross-province M&As. Further analyses reveal that the effects of local corruption on the probability of cross-province M&As are stronger when corrupt officers have greater impeding benefits or lower impeding costs. Meanwhile, Both ex-ante intervention and ex post punishment are important channels through which corrupt officers hinder firms' cross province M&As. Moreover, informal institutions, such as social capital and informal networks can help to alleviate the negative …


Understanding Organizational And Socio-Cultural Contexts: A Communicative Constitutive Approach To Social License To Operate Among Top Hong Kong Companies, Angela K. Y. Mak, Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, Alessandro Poroli, Pang, A. Sep 2021

Understanding Organizational And Socio-Cultural Contexts: A Communicative Constitutive Approach To Social License To Operate Among Top Hong Kong Companies, Angela K. Y. Mak, Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, Alessandro Poroli, Pang, A.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Embracing a constitutive view of communication, this study explores how organizations in Hong Kong make sense of and negotiate their corporate societal commitment. It does that by examining how the considered organizations construct their engagement in society and talk of their aspirations on identified society-oriented doings by cultural discourse analysis. Findings show that the studied Hong Kong companies constructed their engagement by communicationally relating to other societal actors, establishing we-ness in community engagement actions, incorporating elements of the local cultures (languages and places) and in their reasoning and disclosing emotion-rich considerations. Aspirations were instead presented through a constant reference to …


Regeneration First, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Ryan Knowles Merrill Aug 2021

Regeneration First, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Ryan Knowles Merrill

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

30 years of "corporate sustainability" has left our earth in a dire state. Biodiversity loss, planetary fever, floods, wildfires, droughts, melting ice caps, dying corals… the list goes on. We need a new approach. I’m sure you heard about a carbon footprint. It is the sum of all the actions we take that have a negative impact on the planet. We consume electricity, we drive to work, we fly to our holiday destination, we waste food and plastic and so on. All these actions create a negative impact that can be expressed in CO2 equivalent. The more CO2 ends up …


Competition And Cheating: Investigating The Role Of Moral Awareness, Moral Identity, And Moral Elevation, Abhijeet K. Vadera, Chandra Shekhar Pathki Jul 2021

Competition And Cheating: Investigating The Role Of Moral Awareness, Moral Identity, And Moral Elevation, Abhijeet K. Vadera, Chandra Shekhar Pathki

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Competition can lead individuals to cheat; yet our knowledge of why competition affects cheating and how to mitigate these effects is limited. To address this limitation, we first contrast two theories: arousal theories of competition (via desire to win) and social cognitive theory (via impaired moral awareness). Our results were consistent with social cognitive theory in that competition impairs moral awareness and that this impairment explains why people cheat. We therefore build on social cognitive theory and show that two factors, moral identity and moral elevation, which are likely to make morality salient, moderated the effects of competition on cheating …


Donor-Advised Funds Can Make A Meaningful Impact In Asia, Hang Wu Tang Jul 2021

Donor-Advised Funds Can Make A Meaningful Impact In Asia, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Such funds give donors more say in the philanthropic process, and can lead to donors being tipped off about underfunded causes. These funds also make it possible for non-millionaires to do their bit.


The Impacts Of Ethical Philosophy On The Corporate Hypocrisy Perception And Communication Intentions Toward Csr, Kyujin Shim, Jeong-Nam Kim Jul 2021

The Impacts Of Ethical Philosophy On The Corporate Hypocrisy Perception And Communication Intentions Toward Csr, Kyujin Shim, Jeong-Nam Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates how perceptions of corporate hypocrisy from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities connect the public’s ethical philosophy to subsequent positive/negative opinion-sharing intention. With special attention to deontology and consequentialism in normative ethics of philosophy, the current study empirically tests a theoretical model of perceived corporate hypocrisy with two causal antecedents (i.e., individual moral philosophy of deontology and consequentialism), and the mediating role of corporate hypocrisy between such antecedents and the publics’ subsequent communication intention (i.e., positive and negative opinion-sharing intentions) toward a firm. Results indicate significant mediation effects of corporate hypocrisy between personal ethical orientations and the …


Us Lawmakers Are Taking A Massive Swipe At Big Tech. If It Lands, The Impact Will Be Felt Globally, Katharine Kemp Jun 2021

Us Lawmakers Are Taking A Massive Swipe At Big Tech. If It Lands, The Impact Will Be Felt Globally, Katharine Kemp

Perspectives@SMU

Five antitrust laws proposed in the US aim to aggressively rein in the market power of “big tech” companies and change the way they do business, writes UNSW Sydney's Katharine Kemp


Good Deeds Done In Silence: Stakeholder Management And Quiet Giving By Chinese Firms, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Zhe Zhang May 2021

Good Deeds Done In Silence: Stakeholder Management And Quiet Giving By Chinese Firms, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Zhe Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a new mechanism explaining why companies may remain silent about their positive corporate behaviors, such as socially responsible activities. We examine such strategic silence in the context of corporate philanthropy. Building on and extending the literature on legitimacy and stakeholder management, we argue that when a firm mistreats primary stakeholders, it is more likely to keep quiet about its philanthropic acts to avoid backlash from stakeholders. We also propose that long-term orientation among stakeholders mitigates the positive relationship between mistreating primary stakeholders and quiet giving, which allows stakeholders to appreciate the long-term value of corporate philanthropy. Data from …


A Capability-Based View Of Boards: A New Conceptual Framework For Board Governance, Patricia Klarner, Toru Yoshikawa, Michael Hiit Feb 2021

A Capability-Based View Of Boards: A New Conceptual Framework For Board Governance, Patricia Klarner, Toru Yoshikawa, Michael Hiit

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A key role of board directors is to govern corporate strategy. Whereas prior research has provided insights into board roles and activities regarding board governance, the underlying capabilities required to govern effectively remain understudied. This article explores and explicates a capability-based view of board actions in which the specific capabilities that enable boards to govern strategic activities are identified. We specifically examine the conceptual foundations and different types of board capabilities, drawing on illustrative cases as well as information from interviews with board directors in the United States, Asia, and Europe. We then discuss several future research directions that can …


Reputation Matters: Building Internal Trust And Resilience With Effective Communication, Su Lin Yeo Dec 2020

Reputation Matters: Building Internal Trust And Resilience With Effective Communication, Su Lin Yeo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Reputation is a crucial driver of business performance. In today’s crisis-ridden business environment, this corporate quality has never been more prized in organizations. Research has time and again demonstratedthat a favorable reputation offers long-term value for organizations. Reputation impacts everything from financial to relationships represented by public’s confidence in brand equity, human capital, earnings and future growth. Reputation-led companies have been shown to set the standard by leading the pack for other businesses to follow, and in times of a crisis, the reputation capital that they have amassed enable them to better recover from economic storms. However, unlike other business …


Public Relations Education In Singapore: Educating The Next Generation Of Practitioners On Ethics, Eugene Yong Sheng Woon, Augustine Pang Dec 2020

Public Relations Education In Singapore: Educating The Next Generation Of Practitioners On Ethics, Eugene Yong Sheng Woon, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines if PR education adequately prepares students for the workplace, particularly in the practice of ethics in the context of Singapore, which has been described as one of “Asia’s economic tigers” (BBC, 2018). This study, thus, aims to first, elucidate the state of PR education specifically in relation to how PR ethics is taught in Singapore. Second, it examines how ethics education prepares students for the workplace in Singapore. Data comes from examining the syllabi of 14 universities in Singapore, both local and international, and interviews with 20 academics and practitioners. Findings suggest there are varying degrees in …


Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia Oct 2020

Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines how target corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the economic gains for acquirers, as reflected in market reaction to acquisition announcement, from two distinct perspectives: stakeholder preservation versus stakeholder appropriation. The stakeholder preservation perspective suggests that positive market reaction to an acquisition stems from potential new value creation by honoring implicit contracts and maintaining good relationships with target stakeholders. By contrast, the stakeholder appropriation perspective posits that positive market reaction is primarily derived through wealth transfer to acquirers by defaulting on implicit contracts with target stakeholders. Using a dataset of acquisitions in the US, we find that target …


International Standards: Catalyst Or Barrier For Innovative Entrepreneurship In Singapore?, Tan K. B. Eugene Oct 2020

International Standards: Catalyst Or Barrier For Innovative Entrepreneurship In Singapore?, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This research, under the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore inaugural Research Grant 2018, considers whether and how international standards, specifically those of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), can function as a catalyst or barrier to innovative entrepreneurship in Singapore. It also interrogates how private (and quasi-public regulation) affect competition and whether such barriers are anti-competitive. In essence, while innovation and entrepreneurship are necessary, they may not be sufficient in ensuring that a product or service is competitive and able to access export markets. The growing movement towards and the expectation of businesses engaging in responsible behaviour has led …


Corona Crisis And Inequality: Why Management Research Needs A Societal Turn, Hari Bapuji, Charmi Patel, Gokhan Ertug, David G. Allen Sep 2020

Corona Crisis And Inequality: Why Management Research Needs A Societal Turn, Hari Bapuji, Charmi Patel, Gokhan Ertug, David G. Allen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As the world struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the stark inequalities in our societies have been laid bare, and the interplay between organizations and societies has also become evident yet again. This crisis underscores the need for management scholars to take a societal turn and examine how organizational practices interact with societal economic inequality. To illustrate this approach, we discuss organizational practices – corporate social responsibility, work design, recruitment and selection, and compensation management – that can contribute to the normalization, reinforcement, and reduction of economic inequalities in society. We conclude by calling on scholars of inequality, as …


Minding The Gap: Asymmetric Effects Of Pay Dispersion On Stakeholder Engagement In Corporate Environmental (Ir)Responsibility, Ying Zhang, Li Tong, Ji Li Sep 2020

Minding The Gap: Asymmetric Effects Of Pay Dispersion On Stakeholder Engagement In Corporate Environmental (Ir)Responsibility, Ying Zhang, Li Tong, Ji Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How does pay dispersion affect corporate environmental performance? Building on the tournament effect and equity perspective, we theorize that vertical pay dispersion and horizontal pay dispersion can impinge on corporate environmental performance. We develop the theoretical argument that vertical pay dispersion is negatively related to corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and positively related to corporate environmental irresponsibility (CEIR) due to the tournament competition among executives, and that horizontal pay dispersion is negatively related to CER and positively related to CEIR due to the unjust sense among executives. We then delve into the asymmetric effects of vertical pay dispersion and horizontal pay …


Corporate Social Responsibility And Sustainable Finance: A Review Of The Literature, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog Sep 2020

Corporate Social Responsibility And Sustainable Finance: A Review Of The Literature, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the incorporation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations into corporate management, financial decision making, and investors’ portfolio decisions. Socially responsible firms are expected to internalize the externalities (e.g. pollution) they create, and are willing to be accountable to shareholders as well as a broader group of stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, local communities,…). Over the past two decades, various rating agencies developed firm-level measures of ESG performance, which are widely used in the literature. A problem for past and a challenge for future research is that these ratings show inconsistencies, which depend on the …


Giving And Receiving: A Study Of Barriers And Enablers In Asian Philanthropy, Dalvin Sidhu, Jinwen Chen Aug 2020

Giving And Receiving: A Study Of Barriers And Enablers In Asian Philanthropy, Dalvin Sidhu, Jinwen Chen

Lien Centre for Social Innovation: Research

This report provides an insight into Asian philanthropy through engaging with philanthropic entities (PEs) in Greater China, India and Indonesia. Issues pertinent to this research include (1) challenges and opportunities for philanthropy in the region, (2) the interest and readiness of PEs to address common regional problems, (3) identifying support and platforms that would effectively help translate giving strategies into impact, (4) the interest and readiness of PEs to explore and engage in innovative ways, and (5) identifying the major areas in which these PEs are involved.


Foreign Subsidiary Csr As A Buffer Against Parent Firm Reputation Risk, Nan Zhou, Heli Wang Jul 2020

Foreign Subsidiary Csr As A Buffer Against Parent Firm Reputation Risk, Nan Zhou, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the influence of parent firm reputation risk on the level of corporate social responsibility activities of foreign subsidiaries. We first argue that a strong reputation risk spillover occurs from parent firms to their foreign subsidiaries due to the high visibility of multinationals, the control of parent firms over their subsidiaries, and the liability of foreignness associated with foreign firms in host countries. Then, we argue that subsidiaries may resort to CSR in their host country to reduce the spillover effect. Thus, we hypothesize a positive relationship between parent firm reputation risk and foreign subsidiary CSR activities. Moreover, …


Why We Need A Theory Of Stakeholder Governance - And Why This Is A Hard Problem, John Amis, Jay Barney, Joseph T. Mahoney, Heli Wang Jul 2020

Why We Need A Theory Of Stakeholder Governance - And Why This Is A Hard Problem, John Amis, Jay Barney, Joseph T. Mahoney, Heli Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate governance is an important topic for both scholars and practicing managers. To date, most work on this subject has focused on how to resolve potential conflicts of interest between a firm’s senior managers and its shareholders in how firms create and distribute economic value. Work on using governance to resolve possible conflicts between senior managers and shareholders has largely developed separately from governance questions focused on the broader relationships between a firm and its multiple stakeholders.This is ironic since some of the earliest work on agency theory conceptualized a firm as “a nexus for a set of contracting relationships …


The Governance Divide In Global Corporate Responsibility: The Global Structuration Of Reporting And Certification Frameworks, 1998-2017, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim Jun 2020

The Governance Divide In Global Corporate Responsibility: The Global Structuration Of Reporting And Certification Frameworks, 1998-2017, Shawn Pope, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In recent decades, as worldwide attention to corporate responsibility increased, the global corporate responsibility (GCR) movement did not converge on a singular governance model nor hybridize into myriad country-specific models. The movement, rather, bifurcated into onerous certification frameworks and more lax reporting frameworks. We examine this ‘governance divide’ in the GCR movement by investigating the cross-national diffusion of seven core GCR frameworks. We adopt a glocalization perspective that conceptualizes a vertical nesting of local and global contexts. Our cross-national quantitative analyses suggest that, while linkages to global culture have encouraged business participation in all GCR frameworks, power dependencies related to …