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I would like to draw your attention to the approaching deadline (1 June 2012) of the

attached call for papers for a Thematic Symposium of the Journal of Business Ethics.

"The Scandinavian Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability"

CALL FOR PAPERS

"The Scandinavian Approach to

Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability"

Thematic Symposium of the Journal of Business Ethics

Submissions due June 1, 2012

Guest Editors

R. Edward Freeman (University of Virginia Darden School of Business),
Kai Hockerts (Copenhagen Business School), and Robert Strand (Copenhagen Business School)

"Few can contest Scandinavia's place at the forefront of the corporate responsibility movement."  This was a claim that led a feature article in Ethical Corporation almost a decade ago (McCallin & Webb, 2004).   Yet despite bold claims of this nature, the opportunity remains for a concerted focus to deeply explore the Scandinavian approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability-- and to do so from multiple perspectives by scholars from differing disciplines and regions.  This thematic symposium entitled "The Scandinavian Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability" addresses this opportunity with the intention to spur on further explorations.

Scandinavian companies are disproportionately well-represented in the major corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability performance indicators (Gjølberg, 2009) and the region as a whole has demonstrated strong and balanced macro economic, social, and environmental performances (Strand, forthcoming).  This indicates that academics and practitioners alike may find something of interest by exploring the Scandinavian approach.

Scholars have pointed to the region's longstanding commitment to integrating environmental and social issues into management practices (Morsing et al., 2007) and Scandinavian leadership approaches have been characterized as demonstrating a deep-seated commitment to participation and stakeholder engagement (House et al., 2004; Grenness, 2003; Bjerke, 1999).  With Scandinavian corporations like Novo Nordisk and prominent Scandinavian leaders like Novo Nordisk's former CEO Mads Øvlisen (Morsing & Oswald, 2009), Scandinavia presents promising empirical grounds from which to explore effective stakeholder engagement in practice and what this means in terms of CSR and sustainability.  Grennes (2003: 13) described the "Scandinavian model promotes long-term ties between owners, managers, workers, and society, where the role of the company includes promotion of goals of society at large" and Strand (2009) proposed that the willingness and ability of Scandinavian industry to embrace and promote collaborative partnerships has resulted in a "Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage" that will prove to be a competitive advantage for the region in the face of increasingly complex social and environmental challenges that companies cannot solve alone.

Stakeholder theorists credit important developments in stakeholder theory as having come from Scandinavia (Freeman, 1984; Freeman et. al, 2010).  The contributions of Swedish Scholar Eric Rhenman stand out (Freeman, 1984; Jones, Wicks & Freeman, 2002; Freeman, 2005) where in a 1964 publication, Rhenman (1964) contributed one of the earliest definitions of stakeholders offering that the "stakeholders in an organization are the individuals and groups who are depending on the firm in order to achieve their personal goals and on whom the firm is depending for its existence".  Rhenman identified the very survival of the firm depended on the ''crucial task'' of the management to take care of the ''stakeholder balance" (Nasi, 1995).  The Finnish scholar Juha Nasi (1995) is also recognized as continuing the tradition, where Nasi also served to chronicle the historical development of Scandinavian stakeholder thinking in his chapter "A Scandinavian Approach to Stakeholder Thinking: An analysis of its theoretical and practices uses 1964-1980."

Institutional theorists have also recognized Scandinavia as a special place to explore CSR and sustainability where Scandinavian governmental institutions are taking an active role in the CSR and sustainability agenda (Gjølberg, 2010) and Campbell (2007) described Scandinavia as having "the sorts of institutions that I have argued will facilitate socially responsible corporate behavior." Scandinavia also presents opportunities for exploration into effects and impacts for a region of the world has demonstrated strong "implicit CSR" and is more recently is demonstrating movement toward "explicit CSR" (Matten & Moon 2008; Vallentin & Murillo, 2010).

There also exist promising explorations spurred on by Scandinavia into pedagogical research for how to most effectively teach coursework in the fields of CSR and sustainability.  Ghoshal (2005) questioned why the theories espoused in the dominant model of business school education did not acknowledge that companies survive and prosper when they simultaneously pay attention to the interests their stakeholders.  Similarly, Giacalone & Thompson (2006) called for a shift in role models in how we teach business students, where the Scandinavian region with its balanced economic, environmental, and societal performances may serve as a role model of sorts- or at least provide some interesting food for thought for different approaches.  And increasingly, business schools from elsewhere in the world are building CSR and sustainability focused educational programs that bring their students to Scandinavia to explore these concepts (e.g. Strand, forthcoming) which may not be surprising given the most commonly used definition for sustainability has deep Scandinavian roots (Brundtland, 1987).

For this variety of reasons the Scandinavian context offers unique perspectives and contributions to CSR, sustainability, and stakeholder theory from both a practitioner and academic standpoint.  Some interesting questions follow.  We invite contributions to address the following questions and all other contributions relevant to the concept of the Scandinavian approach to CSR and sustainability.

·         What learnings can practitioners and academics worldwide take away from studying a so-called "Scandinavian approach" to CSR and sustainability?

·         To what extent is the Scandinavian approach dependent on its institutional and cultural context and what does this mean for attempts to replicate it in other countries?

·         What critical perspectives should be explored in more depth?   Might Scandinavian firms miss crucial elements in their approach? 

·         Is there such a thing as a "Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage"?  And if so, what might this mean in a business world that is focused on competition?

Timeline:

·         Full Paper Submissions due to kho.ikl@cbs.dk:   June 1, 2012

·         First round of reviews finished/decision send to authors:  Early August 2012

·         Deadline for first revisions: End September 2012

·         2^nd round of reviews finished/decision send to authors: End October 2012

·         Deadline for 2^nd revisions: End November 2012

·         Final round of reviews finished/decision send to authors: Early January 2013

·         Deadline for final revisions: Early February 2013

·         Final version of all manuscript handed to Journal of Business Ethics: Early March 2013

Process for submitting papers:

Papers submitted must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submissions should be approximately 8,000 words in length and no more than 12,000 words in length. Manuscripts should be submitted via e-mail as a Word document ('.doc' attachment; one file including all figures and tables) to kho.ikl@cbs.dk.

Papers should employ standard English. To be eligible for review, manuscripts must follow the journal's guidelines and provide full contact information for the authors. For additional guidelines, see the "Notes for Contributors" in Journal of Business Ethics or at the homepage at http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/applied+ethics/journal/10551. Authors should not identify themselves in the body of the paper. The paper's front page should have the authors' names, affiliations, and contact information (e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and physical addresses).

Guest editors:

R. Edward Freeman

Professor, University of Virginia Darden School of Business

FreemanE@darden.virginia.edu

Kai Hockerts

Associate Professor, Copenhagen Business School Centre for CSR

kho.ikl@cbs.dk

Robert Strand

Research Fellow, Copenhagen Business School Centre for CSR

Lecturer, University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management

rs.ikl@cbs.dk

References

Bjerke, B.  1999.  Business Leadership and Culture.  Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Brundtland, G. 1987. Our Common Future. World Commission on Environment and Development: Brussels.

Cambell, J. 2008.  Why would corporations behave in socially responsible ways?  An institutional theory of corporate social responsibility.  Academy of Management Review.  32(3): 946-967.

Freeman, R. E.: 1984, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman, Boston).

Freeman, R. E. 2005.  The Development of Stakeholder Theory:  An Idiosyncratic Approach.  In K. Smith & M. Hitt (eds.), Great Minds in Management.  (Oxford University Press: Oxford).

Freeman, R. E., Harrison, J., Wicks, A., Parmar, B. & de Colle, S. 2010.  Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art.  (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, US).

Ghoshal, S. 2005.  Bad management theories are destroying good management practices.  Academy of Management Learning & Education. 4(1): 75-91.

Gjølberg M. 2009. Measuring the immeasurable? Constructing an index of CSR practices and CSR performance in 20 countries. Scandinavian Journal of Management.  25(1): 10–22.

Gjølberg, M. 2010. Varieties of corporate social responsibility (CSR): CSR meets the "Nordic Model". Regulation & Governance.  4(2): 203–229.

Giacalone, R. & Thompson, K. 2006.  Business ethics and social responsibility education: Shifting the worldview.    Academy of Management Learning & Education. 5(3): 266-277.

Grennes, T. 2003. Scandinavian Managers on Scandinavian Management.  International Journal of Value-Based Management.  16: 9-21.

House, R., Hanges, P., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P., & Gupta, V. 2004. Culture, Leadership and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. (SAGE: Thousand Oaks, CA).

Jones, T., A. Wicks and R. E. Freeman: 2002, 'Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art', in N. Bowie (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Business Ethics (Blackwell Publishers, Oxford), pp. 19–37.

Matten, D. & Moon, J. 2008.  "Implicit" and "Explicit" CSR: A conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility.  Academy of Management Review.  33(2): 404-424.

McCallin, J. & Webb, T. 2004.  Corporate Responsibility Progress in Scandinavia.  Ethical Corporation.  January.

Morsing, M. & Oswald D. 2009. Sustainable Leadership: Management Control Systems and Organizational Culture in Novo Nordisk A/S. Corporate Governance.  9(1): 83- 99.

Morsing, M., Midttun, A. & Palmås, K. 2007.  Corporate social responsibility in Scandinavia – a turn towards the business case? In: May, S., Cheney, G. and Roper, J. (Eds.) The Debate Over Corporate Social Responsibility.  (Oxford University Press: London), pp. 98-127.

Nasi, J. 1995, 'A Scandinavian Approach to Stakeholder Thinking: An Analysis of Its Theoretical and Practical Uses, 1964–1980', in J. Nasi (ed.), Understanding Stakeholder Thinking (LSR-Julkaisut Oy, Helsinki), pp. 97–115.

Rhenman, E. 1964. Foeretagsdemokrati och foeretagsorganisation. (Thule, Stockholm).

Strand, R. 2009.  Corporate Responsibility in Scandinavian Supply Chains. Journal of Business Ethics. 85: 179–185.

Strand, R. forthcoming.  Toward Sustainable Sustainability Learning:  Lessons from a U.S. MBA study abroad program to Scandinavia.  Journal of Strategic Innovation & Sustainability.  Vol. 7. No. 2.

Vallentin, S. & Murillo, D. 2010.  Government, Governance and Collaborative Social Responsibility. In: Tencati, A & Zsolnai, L. (Eds.) The Collaborative Enterprise. Peter Lang Publishers: Oxford, U.K). pp. 209-227.

_______________________________________________

Kai Hockerts, Professor in Social Entrepreneurship

Academic Director of Responsible Management Education

Copenhagen Business School (CBS), kho.ikl@cbs.dk; www.cbs.dk/staff/kho

Check out my blog: http://nationofsocialinnovation.blogspot.com/

CBS ranked in Top10 worldwide on CSR research: http://www.beyondgreypinstripes.org/ranking/top-10-list

Recent Publications of mine:

Arnold and Hockerts, "The Greening Dutchman: Sailing Green Flagships at Royal Philips Electronics," Business Strategy and the Environment, Vol 20, No 6, 2011.

Hockerts, "Social Entrepreneurship Between Market and Mission." International Review of Entrepreneurship 8(2): 177-198, 2010.

Hockerts, Mair, Robison (eds), "Values and Opportunities in Social Entrepreneurship," Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.                

New core course and elective on our MBA: This year CBS has launched a Corporate Sustainability core course as well as two electives (on Cleantech Venturing and CSR). Apply for the 2012/13 MBA here.

Sign up for 3-day "Corporarte Sustainability" executive education course (15-17 Nov 2012): http://cbs-simi.dk/program/corporate-sustainability-and-social-innovation-0.