The attention that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has given to public–private partnerships in solving global concerns including poverty, sustainable development and climate change has shed new light on the question of duties of corporations in relation to economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights. At the same time, objections to recognizing the obligations of corporations in relation to human rights in general and to ESC rights in particular have continued to be made. At the formal level, these objections are reflected in new distinctions such as between the duties of states and responsibilities of corporations, between primary duties of states and secondary duties of corporations, and between obligations of compliance and obligations of performance. All these objections and distinctions are untenable and serve only to stultify the discourse on business and human rights. The current state of human rights is dynamic, not static; commodious, not stale. There is ample space in it to accommodate duties of corporations regarding ESC rights.

Given his view that the modern world is “radically evil,” Theodor Adorno is an unlikely contributor to business ethics. Despite this, we argue that his work has a number of provocative implications for the field that warrant wider attention. Adorno regards our social world as damaged, unfree, and false, and we draw on this critique to outline why the achievement of good work is so rare in contemporary society, focusing in particular on the ethical demands of roles and the ideological nature of management’s self-understanding. Nevertheless, we show that Adorno’s comments on activities such as art and philosophy mean that it is possible to draw on his work in a way that contributes constructively to the conversation about good and meaningful work within business ethics.

What explains the design of international institutions? Existing research has largely neglected how experience in cooperation in one set of international institutions impacts on design choices made by states in other globally-oriented institutions. We contribute to this evolving debate by analyzing spillovers in experience in international trade. We argue that countries' track record of interaction in multilateral trade disputes affects the design of their preferential trade agreements (PTAs). If a country participates in a complaint against a prospective PTA partner at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the challenge in Geneva alerts the defendant's import-competing industries with respect to potential challenges under the planned PTA. As a result, these industries exert pressure on their government to preserve leeway under the future treaty, leading to increased flexibility and a lower level of enforcement in the PTA. We find support for our hypotheses in an empirical analysis of 347 PTAs concluded post 1990.

This article aims to understand how Eastern and Western philosophies shape the perspectives of scholars and practitioners in framing co-opetition (i.e., the coexistence of competition and cooperation) in distinctive manners and, in turn, how such distinctions shape the behavioral patterns of co-opetition. We disentangle the constructs of competition and cooperation and their coexistence as proposed by three Chinese schools of thought (i.e., Taoism, Confucianism, and Legalism) and three Western philosophers (i.e., Immanuel Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, and Adam Smith). Based on this groundwork, we unveil four comparative philosophical logics used to address the essence of co-opetition (i.e., either/or, both/and, both/or, and either/and). In addition, we apply such East-meeting-West linkages to a typology of co-opetition strategies.

Despite the growing interest in social businesses, knowledge about and theorization of how these businesses change social and institutional conditions in emerging economies is scarce. This research investigates how an innovative social business model acts on institutional voids and creates social value for deprived communities. Building on insights from the literature and a longitudinal case study of a local, grassroots social business venture operating in Brazilian slums and shantytowns (favelas), we uncover and theorize eight mechanisms by which an innovative social business model brings about institutional change and creates social value. These mechanisms are: orchestrating local business networks, developing local business networks, upgrading and building cognitive capacity, legitimizing, assigning multiple roles, empowering, building a positive territorial identity (territorial de-stigmatization), and boundary spanning. Our findings have important implications for social entrepreneurs and organizations supporting social business ventures in transforming economies.

This study provides new insights into the role of subsidiary managers in the practice of global business models of multinational enterprises in transforming economies. Drawing on the global business model literature and through semi-structured interviews with a leading Norwegian maritime multinational enterprise in China, we have developed and critically explored a theoretical framework for uncovering how subsidiary managers understand and manage the tensions between the headquarters based in a western country and the subsidiaries based in a transforming economy. More specifically, when implementing the global business model in the transforming economy, subsidiary managers need to undertake effective management of structural, behavioural, and cultural tensions along with the global integration-local responsiveness dilemma. Subsidiary managers can contribute to solving structural tensions between the headquarters and subsidiary by undertaking effective market sensing and knowledge transfer activities to integrate the transforming economies into the MNE's global production networks. Meanwhile, they need to make effective relationship management to solve behavioural and cultural tensions.

This study adopts a configurational perspective to examine how business model designs and contextual factors in transforming economies combine to create value. We investigate configurations of efficiency-centered and novelty-centered business model designs, corporate ownership, development stage, and external regulatory volatility associated with high growth in a transforming economy. Using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of Chinese firms, we find five solutions associated with superior growth, suggesting that the effective configurations of business model designs vary in different contexts. Our study offers a holistic understanding of the relationship between business model designs and firm growth, and yields useful insights for business model designs for practitioners.

The current research examines the combined role of proactive personality and political skill in job crafting and work engagement by integrating the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and trait activation theory. Self-reported survey responses collected from three samples – university students (study 1, N = 363) and panel data (study 2, N = 300 and study 3, N = 206) – were analyzed using the PROCESS macro. Results revealed that political skill strengthened the relationship between proactive personality and work engagement and between proactive personality and job crafting when trait activated. Furthermore, perceived supervisor support did not interact with the job crafting–work engagement relationship with trait activation, suggesting that proactive individuals rely on self-resources to improve engagement when presented with trait-relevant situational cues. The findings extend JD-R theory to offer the interplay of proactive trait and political skill in facilitating overall job crating. JD-R is identified as a contextual condition for trait activation.

This article demonstrates that rating-based capital requirements, through their impact on insurers’ investment demand, affect corporate bond prices. Consistent with insurers’ low demand for investment-grade bonds with a rating close to noninvestment-grade, these bonds outperform. Consistent with insurers’ high (low) demand for investment-grade bonds with high (low) systematic risk exposure, these bonds underperform (outperform). Insurer demand, measured by insurer holdings, explains most of these pricing effects. We identify rating-based capital requirements as the driver of insurer demand, and thus the pricing effects, by showing that the effects do not exist before these requirements’ implementation in 1993.

We study two quick-service restaurant (QSR) chains based on regional ethnic foods that were launched in China and India. The products that these QSR ventures offered had hitherto been sold by fragmented street vendors who typically operated single outlets. Inspired by the successful business models of international QSR brands, these entrepreneurs developed business models to popularize their chosen regional ethnic foods in multiple new regions and grew their organizations to 1,400 and 300 outlets in China and India, respectively. We build on the recently coined concept of ‘secondary’ business model innovation (SBMI), which is based on inter-organizational learning, break down its constituents into creative and imitative, specify the mechanisms through which it is achieved, and propose that it is a specific case of the more general construct of creative imitation.

In an attempt to respond to recent calls for better understanding the coexistence of multiple business models, we develop the concept of ‘multidexterity’ – the ability to develop, nurture, and execute several distinctive BM strategies simultaneously across different levels and functions of the MNC and its host markets. To illustrate this approach, we describe a European healthcare firm entering the rapidly transforming economy of China and facing regulatory constraints and ambiguities in the application of industry standards. This situation is a generic challenge for MNCs entering rapidly transforming economies, which they help in turn to substantially alter and develop. We argue multidextrous business models are effective entry strategies for MNCs. They also help resolve two conceptual limitations in the BMI literature: (1) the problem of environmental contingencies and (2) the interrelatedness of factors at the macro, meso, and micro levels. We address these problems from a practice approach. We provide some implications for the concept of multidexterity and business models and address managerial challenges and prospects in developing multidextrous organizations.

This paper investigates how employees' experience of workplace incivility may steer them away from idea championing, with a special focus on the mediating role of their desire to quit their jobs and the moderating role of their dispositional self-control. Data collected from employees who work in a large retail organization reveal that an important reason that exposure to rude workplace behaviors reduces employees' propensity to champion innovative ideas is that they make concrete plans to leave. This mediating effect is mitigated when employees are equipped with high levels of self-control though. For organizations, this study accordingly pinpoints desires to seek alternative employment as a critical factor by which irritations about resource-draining incivility may escalate into a reluctance to add to organizational effectiveness through dedicated championing efforts. It also indicates how this escalation can be avoided, namely, by ensuring employees have access to pertinent personal resources.

In 2020, the Barunga Festival would have celebrated its 35th anniversary. In mid-June of 2021, as many as 4,000 individuals were expected to descend on an aboriginal community of 300 residents located 400 km south of Darwin. This case describes the challenge to the Festival's promoters as they seek to sustain peak socio-economic impact in their role as community development change agents in a diverse and dynamic environment. The reader is tasked with clarifying goals, deciding what is at stake, and setting a course of action to realize those objectives.