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Business for Society

 

Business for Society

The shock of recent global crises contributed to widening the gap between business and society. The image of companies devoted to the common good as Peter Drucker could introduce them in the early 1950s gradually sank into oblivion for the benefit of much more critical representations. The most recent years even conducted to consider that business could act against society. It is high time to favour research and educational programmes that analyse under which conditions business can (or actually does) interact positively with its social and natural environment. Said differently, it is high time to stop juxtaposing Business and Society as matters of fact, in order to start examining Business for Society as a project. Thus, exploring ways and methods, identifying actors and contexts that allow organisations to contribute to sustainable development is essential.

The objective of our SIG is to bring together scholars from various fields of social sciences (management, law, sociology, economics, political science, education, social psychology, history, philosophy, engineering, etc.). We aim to build, through our exchanges, a community of engaged scholars sharing a strong interest for B4S meaningful issues and fully grasping the ambiguities, contradictions, and potential for innovative and transformative practices of the B4S project.

Business for Society is open to various approaches: CSR, Business Ethics, Social issues in management, Stakeholders Management, Alternative Business Models and Sustainable Management among others.

In Warsaw, completing our general B4S track, the following topics will be proposed to set distinct tracks:

  •   Accounting and control for sustainability (standing track);
  •   Finance, Economy and Society (standing track);
  •   Developing leadership theories for a not-for-profit sector;
  •   Equality and Inclusion in Social Enterprises;
  •   Institutional resistance, war of positions and power maintenance;
  •   Institutions and change;
  •   Race discrimination and the management of ethnic diversity at the workplace;
  •   Responsible innovation;
  •   Sustainable Global Value Chains are facing uncertainty.

Three symposia will also be organised:

  •   Aesthetics, process and objects;
  •   European retailers strategies faced to sustainable development;
  •   Philosophy of management perspectives on uncertainty as a great opportunity for corporate "performance.”

We welcome:

  •   Theoretical, methodological and/or empirical works,
  •   Managerial (strategy, finance, marketing, HRM, control, etc.) environmental or more social/political and multidisciplinary orientations
  •   Micro, Meso (for instance, sector/global value chain or region) or macro lenses,
  •   Diachronic (historical) and/or synchronic studies,
  •   Classical, constructionist/institutionalist or critical analyses,
  •   Research or pedagogical orientations.

 

See details on website of EURAM 2015, See details on conference website  and choose the one related to your paper or propose your paper to the B4S General track which invites contributions from all areas related to Business for Society that are not explicitly covered by other tracks within the SIG.

 

SIG chair:

Rémi Jardat, ISTEC

Programme chair:

Corinne Vercher, Université Paris 13

Past SIG Chair:

Julienne Brabet, Université Paris Est-Créteil

General Track Chair :

Jérôme Méric, IAE-Université de Poitiers