Delivering value to consumers is a key challenge faced by social enterprises in emerging markets in which local social structures govern access to markets. We investigate how caste, a hierarchical social structure, impacts value delivered to consumers. Using data on 160,963 service provider-consumer transactions in rural India, we theorize that caste-based homophily occurs when the service provider and consumer are in the same caste category, and this results in 58% more value delivered compared to caste-mismatch interactions. However, if a consumer is disadvantaged due to physical disability or cognitive vulnerability, the value delivered by the service providers of the same caste category is reduced by 60%, while the value delivered by service providers in a lower caste category is increased substantially, by more than 6 times. Our findings uncover the nuanced role of caste and highlight pathways for leveraging local social structures to reduce inequalities and foster inclusive value delivery.
Debates on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in qualitative research focus on methodological utility versus epistemological harm. We reframe the issue from conditions of use to conditions of production , arguing GenAI’s foundation in exploitative digital labor and geopolitical inequality presents a more fundamental ethical challenge for business and society scholars, who risk complicity in these extractive systems. We outline several pathways through which scholars and institutions can engage GenAI more responsibly.
Building on the smart cities and empowerment literatures, this study investigates how city digitalization affects employee welfare expenditure of local firms in China. We develop a stakeholder empowerment view and posit that by empowering local governments, the public, and local workers, city digitalization increases employee welfare expenditure of firms located within the city. Analyzing a panel dataset of Chinese listed firms spanning from 2014 to 2019, our study reveals a positive impact of city digitalization on local firms’ employee welfare expenditure. This positive effect is amplified in regions with stronger legal systems, and for firms that attract greater public attention or have a more educated workforce. These findings provide important implications for policymakers on how to foster employee welfare expenditure in their regimes.
Organizational wrongdoing is foundational in Grand Challenges (GC), and a GC itself. Understanding patterns of wrongdoing, rather than idiosyncratic cases, would facilitate management of GCs. Fraud patterns – scams – show five aggrandizing mechanisms, the structured processes by which fraudsters make themselves better off: demanding, taking, diverting, steering, and assuring. Eight patterns of manipulation are generated: Demand manipulations (speculation events – manias, bubbles, panics; cons – Ponzi schemes); and supply manipulations (exploits – exploitation of the formal reward system; cost off-loading/risk-shifting; extraction/extortion/rent-seeking behavior; expropriation; enticement; and normative rents – e.g., abuses of trust). The approach makes possible analysis of the logics of corruption and its construction, and of its prevention and repair via “braking and breaking the scam.” Finally, the article discusses some GCs that feature wrongdoing, identifies their aggrandizing mechanisms, offers sample strategies to brake or break the potential for wrongdoing, and discusses why organizational wrongdoing is indeed foundational in GCs.
Organizational corruption and wrongdoing remain persistent problems in contemporary life and are closely linked to the grand societal challenges humanity faces. This Special Issue, therefore, asks: How are organizational corruption and wrongdoing linked to grand societal challenges? We posit that corruption and wrongdoing are dynamic forces that interact reciprocally with grand societal challenges. In an inside-out dynamic, organizational corruption and wrongdoing hinder, distort, or reverse progress on grand societal challenges. In an outside-in dynamic, grand societal challenges and broader societal transformations reconfigure the incentives, opportunities, pressures, justifications, and visibility conditions through which corruption and wrongdoing emerge. This editorial traces the evolution of corruption research from classic economic and public-sector accounts toward a business-and-society perspective and develops a dynamic framework of the corruption–grand societal challenges nexus. We analyze how the Special Issue articles advance this conversation and conclude with a research and practice agenda for scholars and practitioners.
