Journal Spotlight: Business & Society

The SAGE Business & Society journal publishes “research that develops, tests and refines theory, and which enhances our understanding of important societal issues and their relation to business.” This broad mission means the journal is relevant to researchers who are interested in theory or “societal issues” as well as topics specifically related to business. The current editors discuss the journal in a June, 2022 issue:

Business & Society’s 60th anniversary affords an opportunity to reflect on the journal’s achievements in the context of the wider field. We analyze editorial commentaries to map the evolving mission of the journal, assess the achievement of the journal’s mission through a thematic analysis of published articles, and examine Business & Society’s distinctiveness relative to peer journals using a machine learning approach. Our analysis highlights subtle shifts in Business & Society’s mission and content over time, reflecting variation in the relative emphasis on scholarly quality versus policy/practice relevance, and building the journal and its academic community versus addressing issues of concern to wider society. While Business & Society’s intended missions have been substantially and sequentially achieved, an increased emphasis on the society-business nexus and a critical approach to interdisciplinarity could further enhance Business & Society’s leading role within business and society research and attract new generations of contributors and readers.

While it is a subscription-based journal accessible in your academic library, you will also find open-access articles.

Business & Society offers research that matters.

Are you interested in the ways businesses interact with people, communities, and society? Are you concerned about ethics and social responsibility? You can read about these questions in the news, and turn to Business & Society for substantive explanations in empirically-based articles. While some studies lean more towards the business side, the wide-ranging research included in Business & Society mean this journal offers valuable food for thought to readers from across disciplines.

Popular articles focus on business and social responsibility.
Business does not operate in a vacuum. Business and society must inevitably meet, because employees are needed to make the organization run, suppliers are needed if products are made, and customers are needed who want the products. That said, the interface between business and society can cooperative or conflictual (sometimes on the same day!)

Here are some examples of articles that invite readers to explore broader roles of business in the global society:

Caruana, R., Crane, A., Gold, S., & LeBaron, G. (2021). Modern Slavery in Business: The Sad and Sorry State of a Non-Field. Business & Society, 60(2), 251–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650320930417 (open access)
Abstract. “Modern slavery,” a term used to describe severe forms of labor exploitation, is beginning to spark growing interest within business and society research. As a novel phenomenon, it offers potential for innovative theoretical and empirical pathways to a range of business and management research questions. And yet, development into what we might call a “field” of modern slavery research in business and management remains significantly, and disappointingly, underdeveloped. To explore this, we elaborate on the developments to date, the potential drawbacks, and the possible future deviations that might evolve within six subdisciplinary areas of business and management. We also examine the value that nonmanagement disciplines can bring to research on modern slavery and business, examining the connections, critiques, and catalysts evident in research from political science, law, and history. These, we suggest, offer significant potential for building toward a more substantial subfield of research.

Cooper, K. R., & Wang, R. (2022). From Reactionary to Revelatory: CSR Reporting in Response to the Global Refugee Crisis. Business & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221101882
Abstract. Refugee concerns may be perceived as controversial or outside the business domain, yet some corporations publicly engage these issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This article relies on institutional and constitutive approaches to CSR to explore why organizations might declare their engagement in refugee issues, and utilizes decoupling to explore the relationship between reported CSR policy and CSR activity. We utilize a mixed-method, content analysis approach to draw on Fortune Global 500 CSR reports between 2012 and 2019, a period in which refugee activity increased around the world. Our research suggests that few corporations offer refugee programming and fewer still feature programs that are “coupled” with either CSR policies or impacts. We introduce a typology that depicts these corporations as reactionary, recurring, relevant, or revelatory, and offer constitutive implications for CSR programming in response to other emerging social issues.

Joseph, J., Katsos, J. E., & Van Buren, H. J. (2022). Entrepreneurship and Peacebuilding: A Review and Synthesis. Business & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221084638 (open access)
Abstract. Entrepreneurship is the dominant form of enterprise in conflict-affected settings, yet little is known about the role of entrepreneurship in peacebuilding. In response, this article undertakes a review of entrepreneurship in conflict-affected regions to integrate research from business and management with research from political science, international relations, and parallel domains. Three views of entrepreneurship emerge—the destructive view, economic view, and social cohesion view—showing how entrepreneurship can concurrently create conflict but also potentially generate peace. The article identifies new avenues for pro-peace entrepreneurship: namely, through personal transformation, social contributions, inclusive interactions, conflict trigger removal, intergroup policy persuasion, and acting as legal champions. This article also discusses several pathways forward for business-for-peace research alongside additional implications for the deployment of business-based support programs in conflict settings.

Schrempf-Stirling, J., Van Buren, H. J., & Wettstein, F. (2022). Human Rights: A Promising Perspective for Business & Society. Business & Society, 61(5), 1282–1321. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211068425 (open access)
Abstract. In his invited essay for Business & Society’s 60th anniversary, Archie B. Carroll (2021, p. 16) refers to human rights as “a topic that holds considerable promise for CSR [corporate social responsibility] researchers in the future.” The objective of this article is to unpack this promise. We (a) discuss the momentum of business and human rights (BHR) in international policy, national regulation, and corporate practice, (b) review how and why BHR scholarship has been thriving, (c) provide a conceptual framework to analyze how BHR and corporate social responsibility (CSR) relate to each other, and (d) provide a research agenda outlining how BHR can expand business and society scholarship in general and one of its foundational constructs, CSR, in particular, beyond the current confines of the business and society field.

Articles offer research examples and methods for studying issues that cross sectors and disciplines.
A search of this journal's archives shows that the "society" part of Business & Society encompasses efforts by governments, NGOs or nonprofits and other entities. Contributors include researchers from the fields such as economics, sociology, psychology, finance, accounting, operations management, international business, and marketing. The journal includes studies that delve into these relationships, as well as guidance about conducting this kind of multidisciplinary research. A discussion by the journal's editorial team: "Quants and poets: Advancing methods and methodologies in business and society research," might be a place to start (Crane, Henriques, & Husted, 2018).

These examples extend beyond the business discipline:

de Bakker, F., Crane, A., Henriques, I., & Husted, B. W. (2019). Publishing Interdisciplinary Research in Business & Society. Business & Society, 58(3), 443–452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650319826188 (open access)

One of the core values of Business & Society is openness to diversity. As it says in the description of the journal on our website, “we publish conceptual, empirical and normative research, based on a variety of disciplinary lenses and methodological approaches.” This diversity is exemplified by the considerable range of subjects and theoretical approaches addressed in the articles we publish, as well as the different methods applied, and the scholarly disciplines that the articles (and their authors) draw from. Although Business & Society is a management journal, we publish work that emerges from, or speaks to, different management subfields (such as strategy, organization theory, marketing, accounting, entrepreneurship, and operations) as well as disciplines well beyond the management field, primarily in the social sciences (e.g., economics, geography, law, political science, psychology, sociology) as well as the humanities (e.g., history, philosophy) and occasionally the arts and sciences.

Dentoni, D., Pinkse, J., & Lubberink, R. (2021). Linking Sustainable Business Models to Socio-Ecological Resilience Through Cross-Sector Partnerships: A Complex Adaptive Systems View. Business & Society, 60(5), 1216–1252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650320935015
Abstract. A flourishing literature assesses how sustainable business models create and capture value in socio-ecological systems. Nevertheless, we still know relatively little about how the organization of sustainable business models—of which cross-sector partnerships represent a core and distinctive mechanism—can support socio-ecological resilience. We address this knowledge gap by taking a complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspective. We develop a framework that identifies the key strategic, institutional, and learning elements of partnerships that sustainable business models rely on to support socio-ecological resilience. With our analytical framework, we underpin the importance of assessing sustainable business initiatives in terms of their impact on resilience at the level of socio-ecological systems, not just of organizations. Therefore, we reveal how cross-sector partnerships provide the organizational support for sustainable business models to support socio-ecological resilience. By combining the key features of CAS and the key elements of partnerships, we provide insight into the formidable task of designing cross-sector partnerships so that they support socio-ecological resilience and avoid unintended consequences.

Klarin, A., & Suseno, Y. (2022). An Integrative Literature Review of Social Entrepreneurship Research: Mapping the Literature and Future Research Directions. Business & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503221101611
Abstract. This article maps existing research from 5,874 scholarly publications on social entrepreneurship (SE) utilizing scientometrics. The mapping indicates a taxonomy of five clusters: (a) the nature of SE, (b) policy implications and employment in relation to SE, (c) SE in communities and health, (d) SE personality traits, and (e) SE education. We complement the scientometric analysis with a systematic literature review of publications on SE in the Financial Times 50 list (FT50) and Business & Society and propose a multistage, multilevel framework that highlights the clusters of existing research on SE based on their stage and level of analysis. This review study also helps outline a set of future research directions, including studies examining (a) the process stage at the micro-level and macro-level, (b) linkages across levels and stages, (c) linkages across stages over time or longitudinal studies, (d) SE in resource-constrained environments, (e) technological advancement and its impact on SE, (f) the types of social enterprises and their outcomes, and (g) various emerging topics in SE.

Innovations in Methods and Theory Development
Business & Society offers thought pieces and articles that discuss methodological issues or introduce new thinking about theories and methods. Here are some examples:

Illia, L., Colleoni, E., Etter, M., & Meggiorin, K. (2022). Finding the Tipping Point: When Heterogeneous Evaluations in Social Media Converge and Influence Organizational Legitimacy. Business & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211073516 (open access)
Abstract. Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media evaluations do not initially influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens.

McCarthy, L., & Muthuri, J. N. (2018). Engaging Fringe Stakeholders in Business and Society Research: Applying Visual Participatory Research Methods. Business & Society, 57(1), 131–173. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650316675610
Abstract. Business and society (B&S) researchers, as well as practitioners, have been critiqued for ignoring those with less voice and power (e.g., women, non-literate, or indigenous peoples) often referred to as “fringe stakeholders.” Existing methods used in B&S research often fail to address issues of meaningful participation, voice and power, especially in developing countries. In this article, we stress the utility of visual participatory research (VPR) methods in B&S research to fill this gap. Through a case study on engaging Ghanaian cocoa farmers on gender inequality issues, we explore how VPR methods may be used by researchers to achieve more inclusive, and thus more credible, stakeholder research that can improve decision making within businesses. Furthermore, we argue that ingrained social and environmental problems tackled by B&S research and the unique context in which they occur may open up new opportunities to develop participatory visual methods for social change.

Spence, L. J., & du Gay, P. (2022). In Praise of Involvement. Business & Society, 61(4), 833–838. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211017450 (open access)
Abstract. Involvement is an important element of good research and a route to impact. In line with early organizational analysis, we advocate involvement with research stakeholders and investing in the necessary communication and rhetorical skills.

Steiner, A., Jack, S., Farmer, J., & Steinerowska-Streb, I. (2021). Are They Really a New Species? Exploring the Emergence of Social Entrepreneurs Through Giddens’s Structuration Theory. Business & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211053014 (open access)
Abstract. Using Giddens’s structuration theory and empirical data from a study with social enterprise stakeholders, the article explores how social entrepreneurs and the structure co-create one another. We show that the development of the contemporary significance of social entrepreneurialism lies in a combination of complex context-specific structural forces and the activities of agents who initiate, demand, and impose change. Social entrepreneurs intentionally tackle social challenges, but their actions bring unintentional results, such as the transfer of state responsibilities onto communities. Direct outputs of their activities introduce indirect outcomes, bringing wider changes in culture and policy. The evolving nature of entrepreneurship and a number of factors that interplay in time and space, and enable and constrain social entrepreneurs, confirm the applicability of Giddens’s theory in the field of social entrepreneurship. The originality of this article derives from revealing mechanisms that enable social entrepreneurs to emerge and reasons for structural change. We also build a “co-creation model of structure and agency” that can be used to “engineer” the process of social entrepreneurship.

Stutz, C., & Sachs, S. (2018). Facing the Normative Challenges: The Potential of Reflexive Historical Research. Business & Society, 57(1), 98–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650316681989
Abstract. This article explores methodological problems of qualitative research templates, that is, the Eisenhardt and the Gioia case study approaches, which are relevant for the business and society (B&S) scholarship and outlines a reflexive historical research methodology that has the potential to face these challenges. Building on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, we draw critical attention to qualitative B&S research and frame the methodological problems identified as the normative challenges of qualitative research, that is, to productively deal with both the researchers’ norms and the research subjects’ norms. We then introduce the reflexive historical case study (RHCS), a distinct research strategy to face normative challenges based on philosophical hermeneutics and the interpretive tradition of studying organizations. This research approach aims at theory elaboration while its mode of enquiry is reflexive. By explicating three of its key characteristics and using a case example to illustrate our approach, we demonstrate how B&S scholars can benefit from the “temporal filter” of the historical lens and from reflexive concerns about the nature of theory and empirical material. To tap the potential of historical research, we finally envision a research program for studying issues and debates associated with B&S scholarship.

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