SIG Business & Society

Welcome to the Business & Society SIG!

The Business & Society SIG’s objective, in order to develop a European based B&S stable and supportive research community, is to bring together scholars from various disciplines of the social sciences: management but also law, sociology, economics, political science, social psychology, history.....and philosophy, who share a common interest in B&S issues. The B&S SIG aims to promote research collaboration among its members through EURAM Conferences, networking, preparation of common publications and answers to EU or national funding programs.

Our agenda for EURAM 2012 in Rotterdam includes (click on the event of your choice):

• 6 tracks which purpose is to support a sustainable and cooperative effort of research
• 1 Development Working Group
• Contribution to the General EURAM Doctoral Colloquium
• Special issues and publication opportunities
• 3 meetings of the B&S SIG members
• Social networking activities

Tracks

9. Business & Society General Track welcomes all submissions not relating directly to one of our 5 more focused tracks and wish to bring together scholars from various fields of the social sciences (management, law, sociology, economics, political science, social psychology, history…), who share a common interest in B&S issues.
10. Accounting, auditing and control for sustainability: interdisciplinary perspectives This track welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers on any research topic related to sustainability accounting, management control, auditing and/or reporting & disclosure. Papers may also be limited to environmental or social accounting. The purpose of this track is to explore new challenges and new prospects for sustainability accounting research, and discuss future directions of research. We aim to bring together a large spectrum of different theoretical lenses and research methods, and explore various types of organizational settings and practices in different countries.
11. Alternative Business Models for Sustainable Development Faced with socioeconomic and environmental risks and crises, as well as with the persistence of poverty and gross inequalities, research needs to focus on alternative business models. While not being exclusive, five main devices will be privileged in this track: Base of the Pyramid; Social Entrepreneurship; Social Economy and Nonprofits Organizations; Fair Trade; Public-Private Partnership. Research could, amongst other issues, explore the kind of specific context but also funding, cooperation, management and outcome measurement, implied by such ventures.
12. Events, Culture and Management of Institutions This Track has been merged with Track 9 Our purpose is to better understand why institutions and organizations change, despite their inertia and their domination over individual members through the routines and regularities. In short, what difference is made to institutional dynamics by enacted events (which can be social innovations) that are initiated by individual actors (traders, entrepreneurs, managers) and actants (such as oil wells and hurricanes)?
13. Managerial Norms and Society This Track has been merged with Track 9 questions how societal norms are managerialised and normalised. The issues raised encompass all areas of management research, marketing, organisation studies, operations science and logistics, management. Moral and political philosophy, philosophy and theory of law are areas of interested as well.
14. Organizational evolution towards the sustainable enterprise With this track, we would like to tackle some of the key questions related to the organizational change and learning challenges that companies face as they identify, make sense and manage sustainability issues and rapidly evolving stakeholder expectations on corporate behavior. Despite the increasing amount of work on the learning and change challenges connected to embedding sustainability in firms, the internal and the external dynamics that influence the ability of firms to change themselves towards sustainability are still largely unclear. We also have little understanding of the dynamics of system change that is needed if firms are to meet the sustainability challenges. We thus invite theoretical development and empirical papers addressing these topics as related to the main components of an enterprise model, including but not limited to: Purpose and History; Sensing and Strategy, Organizational Culture, Organizational Architecture, and Organizational Capabilities.

Development Working Group

4. Massive Social Innovation and Change; Identity Rights vs. Property Rights; Bringing BOP into the Formal Economy; Transforming a Nation: This DWG analyses a highly complex case about a social innovation that is designed to take millions of people out of poverty. The case describes India’s ambitious effort to empower its 1.2 billion residents by issuing a unique ID that can be authenticated online. For more information click here. 

General EURAM Doctoral Colloquium

Invites PhD-students addressing research problems in the area of Business & Society to discuss preliminary and intermediate results with mentors. GENERAL EURAM Doctoral Colloquium takes place prior to the conference – please submit via EURAM www.euram2012.nl. Click here to download the Call for the Doctoral Colloquium.

Special Issues and books publication opportunities

The Business & Society SIG propose a range of Special Issues for publication in CSR-related journals or in books. Particularly,

• Papers submitted to Track 11 (Managerial norms and society) will be considered for publication in Revue de l'organisation responsable/ Responsible Organization Review. Papers will be published in Spring 2013 in French or English.

• Depending on their originality, quality, and other editorial considerations, eligible research papers submitted to Track 10 (Accounting, auditing and control for sustainability), will be invited for publication in a volume of Studies in Managerial and Financial Analysis series (Emerald: editor Prof. Epstein). The title of the book is: Accounting and control for sustainability (edited by Lucrezia Songini, Anna Pistoni and Christian Herzig). The purpose of the book is to explore new challenges and new prospects for sustainability accounting research, both from a theoretical point of view and an empirical perspective. The book aims mainly at presenting the state of the art of overall sustainability accounting, with regard to both external reporting and managerial control perspective, and highlighting and discussing firms’ practices in the international context. Particularly, two main topics are developed: a) the role of sustainability reporting and accounting, in order to make firms accountable towards stakeholders; b) the role of managerial control systems in integrating sustainability into business practice. Various types of organizational settings and practices in different countries are explored.

The following link also allow to identify the main call for papers of interest for B&S SIG members (see, in sources, announcements for upcoming special issues of academic journals ) : http://societyforbusinessethics.org

Social Networking Activities and meetings

The Business & Society SIG will organize some responsible social networking activities in Rotterdam (June 6th at night) as well as 3 meetings (preconference and plenary sessions Wednesday June 6th morning and Saturday June 9th morning) in order to welcome all its members, to present its activities and, together, define our priorities and the ways to animate a fruitful cooperation.

The precise schedule and locations will be defined later.

Join our B&S SIG and Contact Us

For any information, please contact Business & Society SIG Programme Chairs Lucrezia Songini : lucrezia.songini@unibocconi.it and Corinne Vercher corinne.vercher@univ-montp3.fr or Julienne Brabet via brabet@u-pec.fr

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