Multi-stakeholder initiatives have become a vital part of the organizational landscape for corporate social responsibility. Recent debates have explored whether these initiatives represent opportunities for the “democratization” of transnational corporations, facilitating civic participation in the extension of corporate responsibility, or whether they constitute new arenas for the expansion of corporate influence and the private capture of regulatory power. In this article, we explore the political dynamics of these new governance initiatives by presenting an in-depth case study of an organization often (...) heralded as a model MSI: the Forest Stewardship Council. An effort to address global deforestation in the wake of failed efforts to agree a multilateral convention on forests at the Rio Summit in 1992, the FSC was launched in 1993 as a non-state regulatory experiment: a transnational MSI, administering a global eco-labeling scheme for timber and forest products. We trace the scheme’s evolution over the past two decades, showing that while the FSC has successfully facilitated multi-sectoral determination of new standards for forestry, it has nevertheless failed to transform commercial forestry practices or stem the tide of tropical deforestation. Applying a neo-Gramscian analysis to the organizational evolution of the FSC, we examine how broader market forces and resource imbalances between non-governmental and market actors can serve to limit the effectiveness of MSIs in the current neo-liberal environment. This presents dilemmas for NGOs which can lead to their defection, ultimately undermining the organizational legitimacy of MSIs. (shrink)

_Not exercising as much as you should? Counting your calories in your sleep? Feeling ashamed for not being happier? You may be a victim of the wellness syndrome._ In this ground-breaking new book, Carl Cederström and André Spicer argue that the ever-present pressure to maximize our wellness has started to work against us, making us feel worse and provoking us to withdraw into ourselves. The Wellness Syndrome follows health freaks who go to extremes to find the perfect diet, corporate athletes (...) who start the day with a dance party, and the self-trackers who monitor everything, including their own toilet habits. This is a world where feeling good has become indistinguishable from being good. Visions of social change have been reduced to dreams of individual transformation, political debate has been replaced by insipid moralising, and scientific evidence has been traded for new-age delusions. A lively and humorous diagnosis of the cult of wellness, this book is an indispensable guide for everyone suspicious of our relentless quest to be happier and healthier. (shrink)

This Special Issue commemorates the 60th anniversary of Business & Society with nine rigorous literature reviews that address important societal problems and provide opportunities for theory development in the business and society field; in this introduction we present an overview of the Special Issue. With the theme “Building on Its Past,” the nine articles address a host of contemporary issues, including climate change, wicked problems, business and human rights, human health, certifications standards, the governance of artificial intelligence, stakeholder engagement, stakeholder (...) theory, and corporate political activity. Together, these reviews offer a wealth of suggested themes, theories and approaches that can drive our research forward for the next decades in business and society research and practice. Using the lens of a miner-prospector continuum to categorize the diversity of articles within this special issue, a common theme emerges across the portfolio of reviews: they all call for a more systemic and integrative perspective toward studying the complex interactions that link business and society actors and issues. Building on these findings, we encourage future scholars to fill long-standing researched gaps through a more open systems approach, which supports both contextually sensitive and multi-level and multi-disciplinary approaches to address grand societal challenges. We conclude with specific suggestions as to how business and society scholars might use an open systems approach, including embracing methodologies to address complex causal pathways, theorizing with a view towards spanning external and internal elements of an organization, and reflecting on the temporal and spatial dynamics of complex systems. (shrink)

I propose that the emphasis on "authentic" norms in the ISCT literature does not encompass the possibility of community norms that facilitate and maintain corrupt behavior. To fill this gap, I build on the normalization of corruption literature to present a typology of community norms that distinguishes between authentic, behavioral, and aspirational norm types as well as between illegitimate, authentic norms and illegitimate, behavioral norms. By refining the terminology used to evaluate community norms, I propose that ISCT can be more (...) easily applied to cases of systemic corruption. (shrink)

In this paper I work through an Antipodean phenomenon; the prevalence of copying or mimesis in processes of organising. Rejecting claims for a more authentically Antipodean way of organising, I argue that we need to properly understand the weight of the copy through philosophical inquiry into mimesis. I begin this inquiry with neo-institutional theoretical insights into mimesis. I then sketch out a short history of the emergence of the original and the copy. This Platonic distinction is then elaborated upon to (...) open up the copy with reference to Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return, Benjamin’s analysis of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, and Taussig’s analysis of mimesis. I draw these together to argue that processes of copying are singular and in fact central to the continual coming into being of organisation. (shrink)

I propose that the emphasis on "authentic" norms in the ISCT literature does not encompass the possibility of community norms that facilitate and maintain corrupt behavior. To fill this gap, I build on the normalization of corruption literature to present a typology of community norms that distinguishes between authentic, behavioral, and aspirational norm types as well as between illegitimate, authentic norms and illegitimate, behavioral norms. By refining the terminology used to evaluate community norms, I propose that ISCT can be more (...) easily applied to cases of systemic corruption. (shrink)