*** FINAL REMINDER, with apologies for cross-posting ***
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to invite you to submit your research to a new volume of Advances in Strategic Management on Sustainability, Stakeholder Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The volume will incorporate articles that cut across these areas of research and connect them to each other in ways that advance research in strategic management and related fields. The deadline is July 1, 2017.
The Call for Papers (below and attached) describes the goals of the volume in detail.
With best wishes,
Sinziana Dorobantu, Ruth Aguilera, Jiao Luo, and Frances Milliken
Editors, Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 39: Sustainability, Stakeholder Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility
Call for Papers
Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 39
Sustainability, Stakeholder Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility
Volume Editors:
Sinziana Dorobantu, Ruth Aguilera, Jiao Luo, Frances Milliken
Submission Deadline: July 1, 2017
Scholarly interest in the areas of sustainability, stakeholder relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) has increased considerably in recent years. However, while each of these areas has flourished and has provided seminal theoretical insights and empirical findings, relatively little work emphasizes the connections between the concepts that occupy the front stage in each of these areas. In this volume, we seek to take a step back to examine the "broader picture" and consider the fundamental questions that underlie and tie research across these areas together. We seek to highlight that business decisions relating to sustainability and CSR are ultimately decisions about the governance of stakeholder relations, and propose that work in these areas should consider more closely both the firm and its stakeholders as strategic actors driving firm decisions.
This volume aims to a) draw on the theoretical connections between stakeholder governance and CSR/sustainability, and explore possible syntheses among these streams of research; b) bring into focus relevant theoretical contributions provided by different disciplinary perspectives; c) outline the theoretical links and the possible complementarities across research studies conducted at different levels of analysis-from research on the micro-foundations of CSR/sustainability to studies on the relationship between a firm and specific stakeholder groups, to work on spillovers across firms and interdependencies between stakeholder groups that become apparent in field- or industry-level research; and, d) showcase some of the best current research and theorizing that cuts across the areas of CSR, sustainability and stakeholder governance.
There are many relevant questions and multiple ways to advance our understanding of how sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR are interconnected as well as how and why a focus on these areas might create or destroy value for organizations. Below we list only a few.
First, we need deeper theoretical clarity about the connections and differences between the areas of sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR. Relevant research questions might include:
· How do the concepts of sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR relate to each other? What are the theoretical connections between them and the observable empirical regularities that reveal these connections?
· Are there different models of sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR, and how do they differ? Can a historical perspective explain why they diverged over time?
· How does a focus on sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR affect an organization's competitive strategy and performance? Do sustainability and CSR initiatives create value or are they mostly efforts to rethink the distribution of value among different stakeholders?
· How do different models of stakeholder governance (e.g., contracts, relational governance, cross-sector partnerships or alliances) address considerations of (re)distribution among these stakeholders?
· What are the cognitive foundations of sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR? How do top-level managers think about these concepts? What are some key differences in how top-level managers think about these concepts and how do these differences affect how they approach sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR?
Second, we need to advance each of these areas empirically by drawing on more comprehensive research designs and innovative methodologies. Relevant research questions might include:
· What are the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to measuring sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR?
· What are the most appropriate constructs for properly conceiving of the research domains in these three areas while still exploiting their overlapping and complementary dimensions?
· What kind of new data and tools are most appropriate for advancing research in this area?
· What are innovative research designs that can capture these complex realities, including multi-method approaches as well as multi-level techniques?
Third, we welcome submissions that draw on scholarship in strategic organization, organizational behavior, and organization theory to help the strategy field achieve a more nuanced understanding of the nature of the relationship between a firm and its stakeholders. Relevant research questions might include:
· What role does organizational identity play in explaining variation in different organizations' focus on sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR?
· How does involving employees and other stakeholders shape an organization's sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR agendas? And how does a firm's CSR agenda, in turn, affect employee voice and stakeholder cooperation?
· How does a focus on sustainability and related CSR goals alter the practices of a firm and thereby, the experience of its employees? How is a focus on sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR related to employee engagement, both in work organizations and in the broader community?
· How do individual-level factors, organization-level characteristics, and industry dynamics explain firms' focus on sustainability, stakeholder governance and CSR? How do variables at these different levels of analysis interact with or affect each other?
· Cross-national and multinational studies are also encouraged as they might be able to uncover and test new theoretical and empirical insights across these three domains.
Despite recent work addressing the key concepts highlighted above, additional research needs to uncover how they fit together and how they interact to affect organization- and individual-level outcomes. In this call, we invite theoretical and empirical work that tackle these and related issues.
Submission guidelines
Submissions are due no later than July 1, 2017. All papers submitted must represent original research not previously published elsewhere. All submissions will be subject to in-depth review, and editorial decisions and revision requests will be communicated to authors by September 15, 2017. Authors going forward will be asked to submit their revisions by December 15, 2017. The target publication date for the volume is July-August 2018.
Authors are encouraged to get in touch with the Editors with a brief proposal and discuss the fit of their submission with the overall theme of the volume. Completed drafts and all inquiries should be sent to Sinziana Dorobantu, sdoroban@stern.nyu.edu.