Call for Papers
Special Issue of Business & Society
Natural Science Approaches Toward Transformational Change
for Sustainability
Guest Editors:
David Wasieleski, Duquesne University (Wasieleski@duq.edu)
Sandra Waddock, Boston College (sandra.waddock@bc.edu)
Tim Fort, University of Indiana (trofmit@gmail.com)
Nuno Guimaraes-Da Costa, ICN Business School,
Nancy-Metz, France (nuno.guimaraes-dacosta@icn-artem.com)
Background of Special Issue
This special issue of Business & Society on natural science and sustainability explores the potential contribution to management research in the transition to sustainability and corporate responsibility from a different lens: the natural sciences. This lens encompasses a broad array of scientific theories that can potentially provide valuable insights that inform management research in understanding socially, ethically, and environmentally responsible behaviors. The natural sciences of interest include but are not limited to: cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, thermodynamics, climate change, environmental science, biology, physics, and natural values. We seek submissions that address social, ethical, and sustainability practices emerging from financial, social and ecological perspectives from so-called 'hard' science models of understanding human, organizational, and social/sustainability behavior.
For instance, evolutionary approaches provide a broad set of underlying assumptions concerning human behavior, different from traditional management assumptions, which in turn can be used in business ethics, corporate (social) responsibility (CSR/CR), and sustainability research. In keeping with recent efforts to incorporate biological evolution into the organizational sciences (Frederick, 2012; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Ilies, Arvey & Bouchard, 2006; Nicholson & White, 2006; Pierce & White, 1999; Saad, 2006), the goal in this special issue is to inform sustainability research about novel ways to motivate managerial and organizational behavior towards ecological initiatives. If human nature is profoundly affected by the evolutionary history of our species (Greene, 2014; Nicholson, 1998), it is reasonable to expect that evolutionary and other 'hard' science theories can provide clues into behavior within organizations.
This Special Issue on Natural Science Approaches Toward Transformational Change for Sustainability seeks to advance creative thinking and scholarship exploring how the natural sciences can and should inform management research on the transition to sustainability. It is important to identify what can be learned from the natural sciences as well as psychological research to advance our understanding of how sustainable and socially responsible behaviors can be facilitated and achieved. Current paradigms governing organizational research, for example, focus almost entirely on assumptions and theories associated with social science and economic models of behavior. Theories are built around the "rationally self-interested" individual motivated by selfish, short-term profit interests. These assumptions, however, do not accurately reflect the entire range of human, organizational, and societal behaviors. Practically, for example, when enterprises move toward new strategic initiatives, they permit only a partial and selective understanding of the underlying issues of the initiatives. Corporate sustainability is subject to these restrictions. "Corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility have been historically defined in restricted, instrumental, compliance-driven, and profit-oriented terms" (Shrivastava et al., 2013, p. 231). Often sustainability initiatives are framed in terms of the Triple Bottom Line (Elkington, 1997) involving the interaction of people, planet, and profit. While this conception of sustainability and environmental management is useful for understanding the complexities of sustainability issues and initiatives, the triple bottom line is approached primarily from a social science perspective. Given the normative undertones associated with this conception of sustainability, a productive dialogue involving responsible management and sustainability is necessary, but should be expanded to include insight from natural science research. To gain a deeper understanding of what motivates sustainability behaviors is an important task for organizational scholars.
As another example, the development of neuroscience over the last decades also has dramatically changed the way we understand human behavior, in general, and decision-making, in particular (e.g., Damasio and Damasio 2012). However, neuroscientific findings and the models they have generated remain largely unknown in most disciplines devoted to predicting human behavior. In addition, the basic building blocks of social science theories are often inconsistent with neuroscientific evidence. Authors submitting to this Special Issue should bear in mind that "Living beings are one interrelated, embodied whole, of which humans comprise only a fractional portion. The real flow of the efficiency approach to sustainability is that nature is still seen as something 'outside' that can be used for human means. But nature is not outside of us. It is inside of us-and we are inside of it" (Weber, 2013: 18).
Some biologists have suggested that evolutionary theories provide opportunity for business ethicists to understand and thus "fortify the other-oriented tendencies of human beings-our tendencies toward sympathy, reciprocity, and loyalty-and to counter our destructive tendencies, such as within-group violence and cheating" (Flack & de Waal, 2004: 23). The relevance of biological perspectives (including both the neurosciences and evolutionary theory), for example, to socially and environmentally responsible behavior is rooted in the belief that cooperation and compassion develops, in part, from the evolutionary forces present in human life (Cropanzano & Becker, 2013; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fort, 2004). Natural science approaches provide the potential for a more integrated approach to understanding human behavior, in which socio-cultural phenomena are seen as arising from or influenced by thermodynamic and natural selection pressures facing our ancient ancestors. "Natural" perspectives on human behavior reflect both the social embeddedness and biological nature of individuals. Submissions to this track should seek to offer creative representative strategies for discovering common ground between evolutionary and socio-cultural explanations of sustainable behavior in organizations.
Types of Submissions Solicited
We are particularly, but not exclusively, interested in different perspectives that represent the mutual influence and dependency between concepts and theories to provide an initial pattern on how to facilitate the dialectic process which can also be seen as an orientation for further research. The editorial team welcomes conceptual, empirical, review, or methodological contributions. The editorial team's intention therefore is to provide a discursive frame where authors bring their different perspectives to addressing how natural science models and theories can inform sustainable development.
This issue is associated with the 2nd Artem Organizational Creativity and Sustainability International Conference. It seeks to rethink new paths related to how creativity can move people, organizations and societies towards sustainability in various fields. As such, our objective is to connect the research and experience of scholars, consultants, artists, production company managers, and professionals in areas of science and engineering, social sciences and the arts, and management studies to address different solutions to sustainable development and social responsibility. Presenters at this conference are invited to submit full papers to the Special Issue of B & S, but a general Call invites other scholars to submit as well.
Example Research Questions to be Addressed:
Research questions and themes explored by potential contributions to this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following aspects:
- What creative approaches can management scholars explore to address the inclusion of sustainability in organizational strategies?
- How can insights from natural science theories inform organizational research in sustainability at the individual, organizational, and systems levels of analysis?
- Can natural science theories aid organizational scholars in changing the paradigm under which current research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place?
- What new business models can be designed to change the way our institutions operate in the Anthropocene?
- Using insights from the natural sciences, how can managers be motivated to develop a sustainability mindset?
Relevant scientific perspectives include, but are not limited to:
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Agricultural science
- Strong reciprocity
- Moral imagination and creativity
- Natural values (economizing, ecologizing, power aggrandizing)
- Thermodynamics and entropy
- Natural altruism
- Evolutionary psychology
- Biology
- Systems thinking
- Physics
- Evolutionary economics
Submission Instructions
Authors are strongly encouraged to refer to the "Business & Society" website and the instructions on submitting a paper. For more information see:
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/business-society/journal200878#submission-guidelines
Submission to the special issue is required through Manuscript Central at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bas. Full paper submissions should be submitted during the month of March 2018. Upon submission, please indicate that your submission is to this Special Issue of B&S. All articles will be subjected to double-blind peer review and editorial processes in accordance with the policies of Business & Society.
Questions about expectations, requirements, the appropriateness of a topic, etc., should be directed to the guest editors of the Special Issue: David Wasieleski (Wasieleski@duq.edu).
About the Journal
Business & Society is one of the leading journals at the intersection of business and issues of social responsibility, ethics and governance. It is published by SAGE and its current two-year Citation Impact Factor is 3.298 (2016). It was ranked 31 out of 121 journals in the Business category of the 2016 Thomson Reuters Journals Citation Report (ISI). For further details see http://bas.sagepub.com.
------------------------------
Sandra Waddock
Endowed Chair
Boston College
Chestnut Hill MA
(617) 552-0477
------------------------------