Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Business & Society
Corporate Innovation and Sustainable Community Development
Guest Editors:
Jeremy Moon
Judy N. Muthuri
Nottingham University Business School, Nottinghamshire, UK
Uwafiokun Idemudia
York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Poverty remains one of the biggest development
challenges today. The rise of global poverty has
reinvigorated the idea that corporations must
embrace wider roles and responsibilities and
respond to poverty and development challenges
afflicting communities. The proposition that
businesses can play proactive role in solving
development and poverty challenges is widely
accepted. Increasingly, businesses are viewed as
an integral part of the solution to sustainable
livelihoods of low-income communities.
Corporate community involvement (CCI) remains a
popular corporate social responsibility approach
employed by companies toward community
development. However, whether, and if, CCI is
actually delivering on its community
development objectives, and importantly, whether
CCI initiatives are designed to just accommodate
or address poverty remain primary concerns in
contemporary discourse on business and development relationships.
But as community development and poverty
reduction agendas move from the periphery to the
heart of strategic business thinking, there is a
need to strengthen the emerging critical
perspective on CCI and reconceptualise the role
of business in development that goes beyond
philanthropy and toward sustainable community
development. This demands that we reexamine the
extent to which corporations facilitate, support
and promote (a) interventions and (b)
institutional mechanisms and structures, for
building the natural, economic, social, cultural,
and human forms of community capital. These forms
of community capital in turn help address
development challenges, and advance
self-determination of local communities in developing countries.
This special issue will discuss corporate
innovation as it relates to poverty alleviation
in local communities in developing countries.
Some research questions that might be addressed
in this special issue include, but are not limited to, the following:
What constitutes business and poverty and
how different types of businesses may affect
different aspects of poverty? (see Note 1)
What is the role of corporations in eradicating
poverty, and what are the limits or boundaries?
What are the implications of businesses taking on
responsibility for poverty alleviation and development?
What motivates companies to tackle poverty in
local communities? What types of institutional
logic inform corporate innovation in community development?
In what ways are corporations meaningfully
engaging state and nonstate actors in poverty
alleviation and development through their CCI
programs? What organizational forms support or
facilitate corporate social action that works to ameliorate poverty?
What are the (a) ethical, (b) economic, and (c)
governance dilemmas of businesses taking on
responsibility for poverty reduction and development?
How do corporations integrate the sustainable
community development agenda into the
organization? How are poverty alleviation issues
incorporated in the corporate strategy? How is a
community development innovation culture built,
diffused, and sustained in organizations?
How do corporations promote institutions that
are essential for local communities participation in development processes?
What market mechanisms promote and enhance
sustainable livelihoods in the community?
What are the limits of market mechanisms for
poverty and sustainable community development,
and how might these challenges be resolved?
How do we measure social impact of corporate community development?
How can sustainable community development initiatives be scaled up?
This special issue is open to papers from
different academic disciplines that are
conceptual, theoretical, or empirical in nature
and present new insights and innovative ideas on
business models, frameworks, strategies, and
processes that (a) respond to factors that
contribute to poverty and (b) advance sustainable
community development in developing countries.
The papers should demonstrate how corporations
are engaging (or not engaging) local communities
across the business value chain. Possible topics are the following:
Corporations and community (and/or social) enterprise development.
Corporations and community asset building.
Business approaches toward community empowerment and capacity building.
Social partnerships.
Multistakeholder engagement processes.
Submission Instructions
Contributors are requested to submit full papers
electronically to the corresponding guest editor,
Dr. Judy Muthuri (
judy.muthuri@nottingham.ac.uk)
before June 18, 2010. Submissions to the Special
Issue should all follow the Business & Society
manuscript submission guidelines outlined on the
journals Web site at
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsProdManSub.nav?prodId=Journal200878
Papers should include a 100-150 word abstract
followed by 3 to 5 keywords. The paper itself
should contain no indications of authorship. A
title page containing full author contact
information should be sent as a separate
document. The citations and references should be
APA compliant (see BAS guidelines). All submitted
papers will go through the regular double-blind
journal review process. Please note that the
topic of the Special Issue is also to be the
theme of the ICCSR annual symposium which is
currently planned for April 27, 2010.
Any questions regarding the Special Issue can
also be addressed to the guest editors:
Prof. Jeremy Moon
International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, Nottingham
University Business School, United Kingdom
E-mail:
jeremy.moon@nottingham.ac.uk
Dr. Judy Muthuri
International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, Nottingham
University Business School, United Kingdom
E-mail:
judy.muthuri@nottingham.ac.uk
Dr. Uwafiokun Idemudia
York University, Canada
E-mail:
idemudia@yorku.ca
Note
1. Prieto-Carron, M., Lund-Thomsen, P., Chan, A.,
Muro, A., & Bhushan, C. (2006). Critical
perspective on CSR and development: What we know,
what we dont know and what we need to know.
International Affairs, 82, 977-987.
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