Summary Multinational corporations (MNCs) are not only economic actors but also political entities that themselves function as complex institutions composed of diverse groups with their own political interests, thus constituting political arenas in their own right. Scholarship on multinational corporate politics has focused on different levels. At the micro level, research in corporate politics has been prominent in studies on micropolitics, subsidiary initiatives, and critical discursive theory. MNCs are seen in these areas as internally contested spaces, where individuals and subunits engage in political maneuvering, issue-selling, and influence tactics. Power is not just top-down exercised by the headquarters, but is at the same time negotiated bottom-up. Subsidiaries pursue local agendas, challenge mandates, or form alliances to shift intra-firm power dynamics. Discursive approaches have further highlighted how power is constituted through language, narratives, and identity construction. At the macro level, political engagement has been an important focus in relation to corporate political activity (CPA), political corporate social responsibility (PCSR), political economy (PE), and corporate governance (CG) approaches. CPA research focuses on how firms use lobbying, campaign finance, or public advocacy to shape regulation and secure market advantage. PCSR examines MNCs as norm entrepreneurs assuming quasi-governmental roles, particularly in governance gaps. PE perspectives foreground structural asymmetries in global capitalism, analyzing MNCs’ political role in areas such as global inequalities and their policy influence. In CG research, ownership structures, board diversity, and institutional environments are analyzed in relation to the political behavior and accountability of firms. The meso-level analysis of multinational corporate politics shows how micro and macro processes intertwine. The meso-level perspective integrates micro and macro processes by jointly examining how phenomena inside and outside MNCs intersect. Against the backdrop of global developments such as the erosion of traditional state sovereignty, there is also a growing “metapolitical” impact of MNCs on systemic institutional structures, which has not been fully theorized. Conceptual ideas based on field theory, transnational social space, and circuits of power, among other areas, have the potential to lead to more integrative theorizations of the various political dynamics within and around MNCs. They provide the building blocks for the development of refined frameworks to study why and how established transnational governance and organizational arrangements are stabilized and/or destabilized.

This paper analyzes the advent of fascism as a management philosophy, and its growing influence in the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary business practice. While many contemporary management practices identified as fascist in nature have existed in isolation and have been analyzed for considerable time, this paper delineates the threshold of characterizing the thought and practice of fascist management based on their conformity with Enlightenment principles. On this basis, some dominant practices in contemporary management are analyzed and their fascist nature is identified. The paper closes with some observations around the implementation of fascism as a new management philosophy.

In this study, we investigate the potential differences in topic-specific corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure between companies located in liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). We also examine the potential convergence of the reporting practices that characterise these two economies over time. We analyse a sample of 5,939 CSR reports issued by European and U.S. firms over 2008-2019. We use textual analysis to examine how explicitly such reports address specific CSR topics. Following Matten and Moon (2008), we focus on three thematic areas: 'human resources', 'environmental protection', and 'society at large'. Each area comprises three distinct topics. Our results show that companies operating in LMEs report more explicitly on these thematic areas, with one exception: those operating in CMEs report more explicitly on parental policies. Additionally, the reporting practices of companies operating in these two types of economies converge for most of the topics under study. For the disclosure of parental leave policies, biodiversity, and waste, no distinct trend is observable.

Firms are increasingly responding to social and environmental issues in highly complex and heterogeneous organizational fields that transcend national boundaries. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of how these fields are structured and the implications of structural variation on how issues are addressed over time. We advance theory in this area by arguing that issue fields are characterized by varying settlement constellations that structure these fields. We develop a typology of three settlement constellations—unified, fragmented, and bifurcated—and describe their impact on field structure and the challenges they raise for addressing field-defining issues. We then theorize the evolution of fields with different settlement constellations and explain how and why constellations are sustained over time as well as when they may change. Our paper helps advance theory on organizational fields, private regulation, and firm responses to social and environmental issues. More broadly, our paper highlights the unique position of organizational and institutional scholars to examine complex social and environmental issues, or “grand challenges.”

Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) flourished pre-COVD-19 and could reasonably claim to be one of the most widely read and cited sub-fields of management. However, the pandemic has clearly challenged a number of existing CSR assumptions, concepts, and practices. We aim to identify four key areas where CSR research has been challenged by COVID-19 – stakeholders, societal risk, supply chain responsibility, and the political economy of CSR – and propose how future CSR research should be realigned to tackle them. COVID-19 has clearly illustrated who should be regarded as the most 'essential' stakeholders of business. Frontline workers in healthcare, food service, delivery, and public transportation, for example, have been widely recognized as critical for delivering healthcare and keeping the economy going during the pandemic. Despite being widely applauded, however, such workers have also often been exposed to infection without necessary protections (Lancet, 2020), and remain poorly paid and economically vulnerable (Lowrey, 2020). It is predicted that COVID-19 will exacerbate inequalities and lead to continued growth in precarious work even among ostensibly 'essential' workers (Kniffin et al., 2020). Also, with huge swathes of the labour force working from home there has been greater recognition of how much economic value creation relies on overlooked and unrewarded labour in the home and in schools, such as teaching, childcare and elder care. As such, it is incumbent upon CSR researchers to reassess our theories of value creation and stakeholder identification and prioritization. In the case of the former, we need to reconsider how value is assessed and allocated in models of value creation if those deemed most essential are receiving such a small slice of the economic pie. We also need to re-examine why our models should continue to exclude what feminist researchers would call 'social reproduction' in the home (Ferguson, 2020) from what is considered within the remit of economic value creation – even from models recognizing the importance of creating mutually beneficial value for stakeholders (e.g., Freeman, 2010; Tantalo and Priem, 2016). As we look forward, we need new ways of thinking about the value that different stakeholders generate and how those perspectives affect our theories of social responsibility. With respect to stakeholder identification and prioritization, despite calls for an opening up of consideration of 'who and what really counts' (Hall et al., 2015; Neville et al., 2011) we remain wedded to a view that power, legitimacy and urgency can effectively explain stakeholder salience (Wood et al., 2018). However, if so-called essential workers are classified as 'dependent stakeholders' because their claims have legitimacy and urgency, but they lack power, we need better ways of capturing their indispensability to society. In our view, future CSR research should take seriously the need to model how and why certain key stakeholders get to be under-appreciated and develop new models of stakeholder identification and salience to take account of them. A second key issue is that of societal risk and uncertainty. Remarkably there has been scant attention in the CSR literature to pandemics and similar global societal risks. However, COVID-19 has highlighted the role of business both as: (i) a source of such risks; and (ii) an actor that is highly exposed to such new risks and needs to play a role in addressing them. As to the first aspect, it is reasonably well-established that the virus originated from so-called 'wet markets' in China, and so the question arises as to the role of business responsibility in preventing such pandemics in the first place. The second aspect embeds business in a diffuse and multi-layered quagmire of management challenges. This includes, first of all, the effect COVID-19 has on the social obligations of businesses to retain or lay off employees, to serve customers with 'essential services', and other immediate impacts. It also puts companies at the core of solving – or at least containing – the problem. Face masks, ventilators – and of course, vaccines – are all produced by businesses. Thus, the core function of business to produce goods and services that address social needs and demands is highlighted by the pandemic. This contrasts quite significantly with the way risk has been conceptualized in the existing mainstream CSR literature. CSR has been presented as a tool to manage risk for the company, and to fend off risks such as future legislation (Smith, 2003). This focus on risk centred on individual company risks to the bottom line. However, the risks that connect companies to COVID-19 are of a far broader scope. These are societal risks to which the company contributes, and at the same time to which it is exposed. As such, COVID-19 should give renewed attention in the CSR literature to the debate around 'risk society' (Beck, 1992), the central point of which is that modern societies are exposed to risks for which there are no mechanisms to adequately cope with them. The risks are beyond individual decisions and the protection of insurance but are an inherent part of modern society. Government inability to fully manage such risks focuses attention on an arena of 'subpolitics' (Beck, 1997) where next to traditional political actors, civil society organisations, companies, and other actors enter the space where solutions are negotiated and executed and thus firms become 'responsibilized' (Reinecke and Ansari, 2016). The key conclusion here is that CSR research needs to shift from an individual to a societal conception of risk and examine how this plays out in CSR theory and practice. A third area of challenge for CSR research concerns the issue of responsibility in supply chains. Surges in demand for medical products such as personal protective equipment and ventilators, as well as shortages caused by stockpiling have demonstrated the fragility of some of our global supply chains, especially when lockdowns have severely disrupted production. In addition, low wage workers in these supply chains have clearly borne a great deal of the brunt of these shocks with many workers left without pay, employment, or social protections (Clean Clothes Campaign, 2020; Leitheiser et al., 2020). Supplier factories too have been faced with cancelled orders, delayed payments, and demands for deep discounting in industries relying on low cost sourcing such as the global garment industry (Leitheiser et al., 2020). Such developments have highlighted the vulnerability of global supply chains to external shocks and the precarity of workers and suppliers in these chains. This challenges some of the existing assumptions in the CSR literature about the nature of supply chain responsibility, and the inevitability of disintermediation and offshoring. For instance, if one response to the pandemic is a reorganization of supply chains to prioritise integration and localness to ensure greater resilience, what would this mean for supply chain responsibility? Or, will sourcing companies see COVID-19 as proof that outsourcing helps immunize them from severe risks since so much of their operations are outsourced and therefore beyond their direct economic and social responsibility? Future CSR research will need to become more adept at conceptualizing and evaluating these configurations of risk-resilience-responsibility in supply chains. More fundamentally, if corporate-led responsible sourcing programmes are largely unable to protect those most at risk in global supply chains when they most need it during a global pandemic, we have to question whether they are really worth our continued attention as management researchers. Rather, future research should focus on exploring alternative ways of ensuring that the rights and livelihoods of precarious workers in the supply chain are protected, for example through worker-driven social responsibility or extra-territorial regulation of business responsibility for human rights. CSR as conventionally understood appears to be a dead-end. This brings us to our final challenge in that COVID-19 has exposed the new political economy of CSR. On the one hand, COVID-19 has re-centred governments as the key actors in tackling grand challenges rather than being seen as increasingly ineffective in this space, as they are often portrayed in the CSR literature. On the other, it is clear that the social responsibility of companies in the pandemic has been to act along with governments (and other actors) to address the pandemic – not so much by voluntary, charitable good deeds (although these have also played their role) but by employing (and safeguarding) workers, producing socially useful products, and protecting their stakeholders. As such, COVID-19 questions the core purpose of what a firm is about and what role it should play in society. One could argue therefore that, going forward, the instrumental version of CSR that dominated management scholarship is largely unfit for purpose (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011), or even dead (Fleming and Jones, 2012). COVID-19 rather points to the fact that we need to explore how different systems of capitalism across the globe have prepared for and dealt with the challenges of the pandemic, and what role for business responsibility is allocated in these systems to address social demands and the needs of wider society. Ultimately, COVID-19 could point us to a different way of conceptualizing private enterprise. Rather than being boxed into some 'CSR' concept that does not transcend the self-interest of the firm, research in this field needs to better theorize how business is a part of societal governance, and how the social and political responsibilities of business can be redefined from a systemic perspective (Rhodes and Fleming, 2020). The point is we need to move beyond CSR and think about different modes of organizing or new models of the firm that repurpose business to truly attend to social needs and goals. Such research in the scholarly community, however, is still at a nascent stage (De Bakker et al., 2020).

We reflect on our 2008 article, “‘ Implicit ’ and ‘ Explicit ’ CSR: A Conceptual Framework for a Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility, ” first recalling its origins. We contextualize this reflection piece with a stylized interpretation of CSR “ then ” (the turn of the twenty-first century) and “ now ” (2019). We then focus on two themes: CSR ’ s meaning and its dynamics. Regarding the meaning of CSR, we indicate the advantages of our capacious CSR definition and elaborate on the underlying theo- rization of our CSR framework regarding corporations ’ need for legitimacy with their core stakeholders, societies they operate in, and regulators they are subject to. We propose that the configuration of these legitimacy relationships informs the nature and balance of implicit and explicit CSR. Turning to CSR dynamics, we build on research on the hybridization of implicit and explicit CSR and explore two underlying phenomena — explicitization and implicitization of CSR. We conceptualize explicitization as the process by which norms and rules associated with implicit CSR are adopted in explicit CSR policies, practices, and strategies. We conceptualize implicitization of CSR as the process by which norms and rules of business responsibility are informed by what were hitherto explicit CSR policies, practices, and strategies of corporations, and are built into general obligations of business.

This chapter presents a basic introduction to the concept of business ethics and its importance both at an academic level and in terms of practical management in different types of organizations. It starts by describing the relationship between business ethics and the law, then distinguishes between ethics, morality, and ethical theory. The chapter then introduces two of the main themes of the book: globalization and sustainability. It argues that business ethics has been recontextualized by the forces of globalization, necessitating a distinctly global view of ethical problems and practices in business. Ultimately, the chapter explains how the ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability is a key goal for business ethics. It also elaborates on different international perspectives on business ethics, including European, Asian, and North American perspectives.

This chapter sets out the key normative ethical theories that can be applied to business ethics problems, in terms of both traditional and contemporary theoretical approaches. It addresses Western modernist ethical theories, i.e. utilitarianism, ethics of duty, rights and justice, and social contract theory. The array of ethical theories discussed in the chapter provides a rich source of assistance in making morally informed decisions. The chapter aims to identify a pragmatic, pluralistic approach to theory application. It also discusses and utilizes alternative ethical theories, i.e. virtue ethics, ethics of care, discourse ethics, and postmodernism. Ultimately, the chapter carries out a pluralist business ethics evaluation.

This chapter sets out the rights and responsibilities of shareholders, emphasizing the ethical issues that arise in the area of corporate governance including insider trading, executive remuneration, and ethics of private equity. It focuses on the different corporate governance models across the globe, and the specific role played by shareholders in socially responsible investment. The chapter also evaluates the ethical implications of globalization for company–shareholder relations. It explores the roles of shareholder democracy, shareholder activism, and responsible investment in promoting ethical business behaviour. Ultimately, the chapter concludes with a discussion of alternative forms of corporate ownership as a basis for enhanced sustainability.

This chapter studies ethical issues in relation to employees and workers. Focusing on the specific role of employees and workers as a stakeholder, the chapter addresses the various rights and duties of this stakeholder group, and presents the global context of workers' rights. The chapter also discusses corporate citizenship and sustainability in relation to employees, in the context of issues such as employee participation, work–life balance, and sustainable employment. It further explicates the role of good corporate citizenship in managing human rights. Ultimately, the chapter assesses the ethical issues raised by globalization for managing employees. It then identifies the implications for sustainability of firms' relationships with employees.

This chapter presents an alternative way of addressing questions of ethical decision-making by looking at how decisions are actually made in business ethics, and by assessing the various descriptive theories in the literature. It specifies the characteristics of a decision with ethical content, and defines a basic ethical decision-making model. The chapter also outlines the key elements of individual and situational influences on ethical decision-making, then evaluates the role of individual differences in shaping ethical decision-making. Ultimately, the chapter reviews the role of situational influences on ethical decision-making, including both issue based and context based factors. It then determines the points of leverage for improving ethical decision-making in business.

Business Ethics starts with a description and analysis of business ethics. The first part begins with an introduction to business ethics. Next, the text frames business ethics within the contexts of corporate responsibility, stakeholders, and citizenship. Business ethics is then evaluated using normative ethical theories. The text then looks at making decisions in business ethics using descriptive ethical theories. At the end of the first part, the text looks at managing business ethics. The second part is about contextualizing business ethics in terms of the people involved. It looks at shareholders, employees, consumers, suppliers, competitors, government, and civil society. Finally the text makes some conclusions and looks to the future.

This chapter talks about government and regulation. The government as a stakeholder, as the chapter defines it, is a very multifaceted group. The chapter unfolds the government at various levels, functions, and areas. It investigates problems such as corruption and corporate lobbying, and explores the shifting relationships between regulation, government, and business, emphasizing the increasingly important role played by corporations in the governance of the global economy. By describing the ethical issues and problems faced in business–government relations, the chapter evaluates the shifts in these issues and problems in the context of globalization. Ultimately, the chapter looks at the changing role of business and CSOs in the regulatory process as well as the role of governmental regulation in achieving potentially sustainable solutions.

This chapter shows the relationships between businesses and civil society organizations (CSOs), addressing the changing patterns of relationships between these traditionally adversarial institutions. It looks at the role played by various types of CSOs as stakeholders of corporations, both directly and indirectly. The chapter also explores the ethics of pressure group tactics, business–CSO collaboration, and social enterprise. The chapter then jumps to review the impacts of globalization on the nature and extent of the role played by civil society towards corporations. It further examines the different relationships between business and civil society and their impact on corporate responsibility. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the role of civil society in enhancing corporate sustainability.