Global multi-stakeholder initiatives (global MSIs) have become a cornerstone of modern governance. However, critics disparage MSIs (1) for giving too much power to private actors, specifically corporations, and (2) for allowing organizations from one state to influence another’s affairs. This criticism holds true in particular for the Habermasian approach to political corporate social responsibility (political CSR). By contrast, this paper grounds global MSIs in John Rawls’s theory of justice, arguing that both legitimacy issues can be overcome when all those affected by a global MSI possess a means of contestation able to effectively contest the MSI’s activities. This entails that global MSIs, when affecting states that are unwilling or unable to protect their own citizens, must themselves provide their stakeholders with such means. It is argued that this Rawls-based approach to political CSR can rectify the shortcomings of the Habermasian approach without requiring a change in the composition of MSIs.

Turnover intention constitutes a challenge for organizations. Meaningful work and employee engagement can reduce turnover intention, but their relationship is complex. This study aims to understand how meaningful work, work and organizational engagement, and turnover intention interact with each other. Using a structural equation model with data from 562 employees, meaningful work was examined as the independent variable, turnover intention as the dependent variable, and work and organizational engagement as serial mediators. Results show that work engagement partially mediates the relationship between meaningful work and organizational engagement, and organizational engagement partially mediates the link between work engagement and turnover intention. Additionally, a serial mediation effect of work and organizational engagement on the relationship between meaningful work and turnover intention was confirmed. Therefore, we encourage organizations to provide meaningfulness to their employees’ jobs and engage them within their job and organization not only to promote retention, but also to develop an engaged, healthy and sustainable workforce that supports both organizational sustainability and general societal well-being.

Extant research has highlighted the impact of legal innovations on the organizational choices made by entrepreneurs and traced the diffusion of new business forms across international borders, such as the private limited liability company (PLLC). This paper uses a newly compiled database of all firms operating in Vienna between 1900 and 1936 to examine the PLLC’s impact on the Austrian business landscape following its introduction. Its findings reveal that the PLLC quickly replaced other legal forms. While suitable for a wide range of sectors, the PLLC was particularly attractive to new industries burdened by machinery investment rather than wage costs. By empirically demonstrating that the PLLC filled a critical gap in the legal framework of Austria, this study highlights the broader importance of legal forms as instruments for fostering entrepreneurial activity, shaping economic structures, and driving development.

As a source of credit on residential real estate in North America, private individuals played a vital role well into the 1950s, especially in Canada. Rare national surveys, together with varied case studies in Canada and the United States, indicate that they provided land contracts, construction loans, and first and junior mortgages to a variety of people, including family and friends and many strangers. Contacts were arranged through social networks, agents, and brokers. By comparison with major lending institutions, their role and significance have been overlooked, their loans often unrecorded. In the early decades, lenders included men and women in a range of occupations, not least because many owners offered credit to buyers to facilitate sales. By the 1950s, women, professionals, and businessmen were the main investors, the chief beneficiaries being lower-income households in less desirable districts. Some personal lenders were ill-informed or exploitive, but most enabled families to realize their aspirations to own. This sector’s decline was a consequence of federal policies that promoted national mortgage markets, making the business more professional but displacing practices that had enabled many home buyers and builders.

It is with great sadness that we announce the recent death of this journal’s founding editor, Will Hausman. Will was not only Enterprise & Society’s first editor, but he was also central to its foundation. Will, then editor of the Business History Conference (BHC) annual proceedings volume, Business and Economic History, was at the core of a small group of BHC officers and members, including but not limited to Pat Denault, Glenn Porter, Phil Scranton, and Roger Horowitz, who recognized the potential to establish “a new journal that was dedicated to expanding the interactions between traditional business history and fields that might have seemed peripheral, but which had much to offer the study of business and its wider relationships.”1 Will not only helped to shape a vision of what the new journal should be but, as first editor, for Volumes 1 through 4 did much of the very heavy lifting involved in getting a new journal off the ground and underway. In addition to his work with Enterprise & Society, Will undertook many other roles on behalf of the organization, not least as President from 2006 to 2007. Will was also a very fine scholar in his own right, publishing extensively, especially in the history and economics of electricity and other power utilities. We will carry a fuller appreciation of Will’s life and career in a future issue. For now we wish to extend our deepest sympathies to Will’s family and friends. He will be very much missed by many.