June 15, 2008 (Please forgive necessary
cross-postings on multiple list-serves.)
The June 2008 issue of Business & Society (BAS),
volume 47, number 2, has been mailed to
subscribers (who can obtain access to OnlineFirst
electronic pre-publication articles and back
issue archives through Sage's website for
Business & Society). Business & Society began
publication in 1960. It will soon celebrate its
50th anniversary volume. Business & Society is
published by Sage Publications and sponsored by
the International Association for Business and Society (IABS).
Table of Contents (June 2008, 47.2) - abstracts follow TOC.
Mark S. Schwartz and Archie B. Carroll
Integrating and Unifying Competing and
Complementary Frameworks: The Search for a Common
Core in the Business and Society Field
Business & Society 2008 47: 148-186.
David Campbell and Richard Slack
Corporate "Philanthropy Strategy" and "Strategic
Philanthropy": Some Insights From Voluntary Disclosures in Annual Reports
Business & Society 2008 47: 187-212.
Paul Cox, Stephen Brammer, and Andrew Millington
Pension Funds and Corporate Social Performance: An Empirical Analysis
Business & Society 2008 47: 213-241.
Tim Blumentritt and Kathleen Rehbein
The Political Capital of Foreign Subsidiaries: An Exploratory Model
Business & Society 2008 47: 242-263.
Abstracts
Schwartz and Carroll - In the field of business
and society, several complementary frameworks
appear to be in competition for preeminence.
Although debatable, the primary contenders appear
to include (a) corporate social responsibility,
(b) business ethics, (c) stakeholder management,
(d) sustainability, and (e) corporate
citizenship. Despite the prevalence of the five
frameworks, difficulties remain in understanding
what each construct really means, or should mean,
and how each might relate to the others. To
address the confusion, the authors propose three
core conceptsvalue, balance, and
accountabilitythat might be used to better
integrate the five frameworks and potentially
provide the basis for further discussion and
theoretical development of the business and society field.
Campbell and Slack - To develop this study of
strategic philanthropy in the United Kingdom,
voluntary charitable donations policy disclosures
were captured from the annual reports of two
samples of U.K. companies: one of the entire
Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 at year-end
2002 and another of 14 selected companies over a
15-year period. Post and Waddock's descriptions
of "philanthropy strategy" and "strategic
philanthropy" were employed to establish the
extent to which these concepts were conveyed to
readers of annual reports based on the belief
that high disclosure serves both agency
accountability to shareholders and the
information needs of soliciting charities.
Conclusions drawn include that although there is
a relatively high level of policy disclosure, the
detail of narrative in, and consistency (over
time) of, these disclosures is very patchy, and
only a minority of companies show evidence of
adopting a fully strategic approach to philanthropy.
Cox, Brammer, and Millington - This study
examines the relationship between pension fund
ownership of companies and corporate social
performance using a unique database of more than
500 publicly listed U.K. companies. The empirical
analysis emphasizes the heterogeneous character
of pension fund holdings and the multidimensional
nature of corporate social performance. The
results highlight that the characteristics of
pension fund management are significant drivers
of preferences for social performance and that
employee-related aspects of social performance are preferred by pension funds.
Blumentritt and Rehbein - This article explores
the concept of political capital in the setting
of multinational corporation foreign
subsidiaries. Drawing on resource dependence
theory, the literature on corporate political
activities, and the bargaining power framework,
hypotheses are developed examining the
antecedents to subsidiary political capital. The
article tests hypotheses based on primary data
from 91 foreign subsidiaries using path analysis.
The empirical results suggest that both ownership
of bargaining power resources and the management
of those resources through government affairs
activities are important in explaining the
variation of political capital across foreign subsidiaries.
Duane Windsor, BAS Editor
The Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Management
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management
Rice University
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