IABS 2012 Call for Proposals – Deadline Extended to 12/15/11

The theme of the 2012 IABS conference, to be held June 14-17 in Asheville, North Carolina, USA, is “Personal Responsibility for Improving Society.”  While business and society scholars typically focus on the role of institutions such as business and government in addressing difficult social problems.  However, it appears that these institutions are increasingly unable to successfully address these difficult problems.  As such we may need to look to alternative sources for action to solve these problems.   In particular, what roles and responsibilities exist for individuals in improving society?  Submissions are invited that address the responsibilities of individuals, in their various roles both within and outside of organizations, to act in ways that make society better.

Further details on this theme are provided below, following information on session types and submission requirements and deadlines.

Call for Proposals

Proposals are accepted on a wide range of topics. It is not required that all proposals relate specifically to the conference theme. Reviewers will assess the likely level of interest of the proposal’s topic to the IABS membership as a whole, and the coherence of the proposal in terms of adding to knowledge in the broad range of business and society topics. The IABS founders intended that the annual conference provide a forum for scholarly work in various stages of development. Twenty‐three years later, we continue to pursue that goal, inviting you to submit proposals in any of the following formats:

 

·     Research Incubator Idea – noted scholars develop “appetizers” to push the boundaries of the field and encourage attendees to participate in creating new ideas and new knowledge

·     Discussion Idea – a short, informal presentation of a research idea, intended to solicit constructive feedback

·     Paper – a formal summary presentation of a completed (or largely completed) conceptual or empirical paper; time for audience feedback and questions will be provided during paper sessions

·     Salon Session - discussion not of a research idea, but of an emerging question or issue having possible application to the classroom, to society, or to one’s personal life

·     Symposium – a set of presentations related to a well‐defined theme

·     Video Salon Session - screening and discussion of a video that appears well suited to the classroom

·     Workshop Session – a working meeting to address a specific research or teaching challenge

 

IABS 2012 Submission Requirements

Please read the IABS 2012 Submission Requirements below carefully. All conference proposals will be subjected to a blind peer‐review process. Each submission should include a cover sheet with the intended session format, designated corresponding author, contact information (name, address, phone, fax, email) for the author and any other participants (e.g., workshop panelists, symposium presenters, etc.), and three keywords to help the Program Chair assign appropriate reviewers. Submission of an abstract for review constitutes a commitment that at least one paper author will attend the conference if the submission is accepted or that all panelists / presenters will attend the conference if the submission is accepted. Everyone submitting a proposal will be requested to serve as a reviewer for three other submissions.

 

For consideration, email your proposal to Gordon Rands at GP-Rands@wiu.edu by Thursday December 15 5 PM PST (Friday December 16, 01:00 GMT), 2011.  If you must use traditional mail, send five copies of your cover page and five two-sided copies of your proposal to Gordon Rands, Department of Management and Marketing, Western Illinois University, 1 University Circle, Macomb, IL 61455 USA.

 

All proposals should be single-spaced.

 

• Proposal for a Research Incubator Idea:In a Research Incubator Session, senior scholars present five-minute “research appetizers” that summarize an idea and whet attendees’ research appetite. The appetizers reflect fertile new areas for theory and research in some aspect of business and society. Following appetizer presentations by three or four scholars, attendees will join one of the “incubator” groups to discuss “pushing the boundaries” questions. Incubators will re-convene into a large group for sharing insights and crafting research agendas that enable the expansion of business and society scholarship. This interactive symposium format offers a stimulating space for business and society scholars to work together to consolidate what we have learned and to bring new theoretical lenses to discussion. We encourage senior scholars to submit proposals of approximately two pages (single-spaced) in length.

• Proposal for a Salon Session:  This session format provides an opportunity to share and discuss an idea that is not aimed at research but at application, either in the classroom, in one’s personal life, or in society. Proposals should be approximately two to three pages (single spaced) in length and should specify the nature of the idea and the focal area of the application.  It should also clarify how the idea is relevant to the IABS domain and the intended outcome of the session.

• Proposal for a Symposium:  A symposium proposal of three to five pages in length should provide both the presenters’ names and their specific contributions to the symposium as well as an overview that clearly defines the interconnections among the various presentations.

• Proposal for a Video Salon Session: This session format provides an opportunity to view and discuss a recent video that you believe has special applicability in the classroom. Proposals should be approximately two to three pages (single spaced) in length and should identify the video, provide relevant information about it (producer, run time, etc.), and should include details on its potential use in the classroom.  It should also clarify how the idea is relevant to the IABS domain and the intended design of the session.

• Proposal for a Workshop:  A workshop is a working meeting that focuses on a specific research or teaching challenge. Proposals for workshops should be three to five pages (single spaced) in length and should include a brief overview of the basic area of research or teaching that will be addressed, a summary of the session’s planned logistics and mechanics, and a brief discussion of the workshop leaders and some tentatively identified participants. (Note: Workshops may be “open” – you do not need to know all your participants ahead of time.)  Those interested in proposing a research workshop may want to consider as an example the Corporate Governance Workshop, which has been held during the IABS Conference for the last four years. It has successfully facilitated the development of new ideas, research collaborations, and publications. This workshop’s three coordinators ask potential participants to pre-register by submitting an abstract or overview. The research abstracts can discuss an existing paper, a work in progress, or a proposed project. These summaries are then distributed to all of the workshop registrants by e-mail, so they can read them before the conference and prepare to give their fellow participants constructive feedback at the workshop.

 

Details Regarding the Theme: Personal Responsibility for Improving Society

Traditionally, in most of the research conducted and courses taught by business and society scholars, the focus is on the responsibilities of corporations for addressing social issues, on the role of government in making public policies affecting business, and/or on the responsibilities of individuals in acting ethically in the workplace.  Meanwhile the nature of the social and environmental problems that are affecting society are becoming increasingly interconnected, complex and challenging

 

It is increasingly apparent that institutional conditions in the market – e.g., opportunities to create externalities that generate competitive advantage, the global nature of competition and economic integration, correspondence of low wage rates with lax social and environmental regulations, costs of ensuring supplier compliance with corporate social and environmental policies, etc. -- place limits on the ability of corporations to voluntarily adopt and implement CSR policies to such an extent sufficient to solve critical social and environmental problems.  Under such conditions, we might expect governments to recognize the existence of inherent market failures and to adopt regulations that require, or that lessen or remove the barriers to pro-social action.  However, institutional conditions in the policy arena -- the increased need for cooperative global action to successfully address “wicked problems,” growing budgetary resource constraints, anti-tax sentiments, increased ideological polarization, the high costs of political campaigns, the lessening of restrictions on sources of donations to candidates and to issue campaigns, gerrymandered legislative districts, and an emphasis on future partisan electoral advantage rather than engaging in good faith efforts to develop solutions to problems – have combined to decrease governmental abilities -- particularly in the United States -- to develop policies to address market failures.

 

It therefore appears that the abilities of both business and government to address these wicked problems are severely constrained by institutional failures.  We thus are paradoxically faced with increased understanding of the nature, causes, scope and severity of problems, but with increased limits on the ability of business and government to solve such problems.  Under such conditions, we may need to increasingly look to other sources for solutions. While NGOs, international and multilateral institutions, industry associations, and multi-institutional collaborations have all contributed to increased attention to and action on social responsibility, these efforts have not, as yet, overcome the obstacles noted above.  Given the inability of institutions to adequately address social problems, we may need to look “back to the future” for additional solutions.   In particular, what roles and responsibilities exist for individuals in improving society?  

 

Individual Roles and Social Responsibility

 

The central individual role focused on in the business ethics and business and society literatures is that of the manager. Discussions of the ethics of managers has typically focused on avoiding engaging in harmful activity.   However, the focus can just as easily be placed on engaging in ethically positive, pro-social activity, the kind referred to by Carroll (1979) as a discretionary responsibility.  Wood (1991) argued that a central principle of corporate social responsibility is the principle of managerial discretion.  “Managers are moral actors. Within every domain of corporate social responsibility, they are obliged to exercise such discretion as is available to them, toward socially responsible outcomes.” (Wood, 1991, 698).  Attention to discretionary responsibilities to help improve society still tend to focus on the corporation rather than the manager, however.

 

But individuals act in many roles throughout their lives other than that of a manager. These roles include but are not limited to those of an employee, consumer, investor, entrepreneur, member of civic and religious associations, citizen, neighbor, student, parent, child, sibling or other relative. In each of these roles a goal of improving society can serve to motivate individuals to act in different or additional ways as they fulfill these roles. Some of these pro-social behaviors, such as the decisions of individual employees to initiate socially responsible behavior – e.g., championing social or environmental issues (e.g., Andersson & Bateman, 2000) or engaging in whistleblowing (Micelli & Near, 2006) – have received substantial attention, although much of the former is focused on executives, and attention to both of these appears to be greater in the teaching rather than research oriented literature.  Pro-social behavior in other roles, such as a socially responsible investor (Dunfee, 2003) and consumer (Webba, et. al., 2008) and a member of a voluntary civic association (Kourula & Laasonen, 2010), have received attention, but the emphasis has typically been on the phenomena, rather than the individual decisions to engage in these actions and the individual actions themselves.  On the other hand, the business and society literature has, however, paid attention to the social responsibility roles of small business owners (Burton & Goldsby, 2009) and social entrepreneurs (Peterson and Jun 2009) focusing on both their social impacts and their motivations, decisions and actions.

 

Individuals’ pro-social actions in most of the roles mentioned above, however, have received little attention from business and society scholars. For example, the child-rearing practices of parents are undoubtedly one of the strongest influences on the future ethical, social and environmental behavior of individuals, yet discussion of the role of parents in promoting social responsibility is virtually absent.  At the other end of family relationships, decisions of adult children regarding how to care for aging parents have tremendous implications for the costs of housing, health care and for the development of grandchildren, yet discussion of the social implications of caring for parents is unaddressed within the field, except as it relates to the question of corporate sensitivity to employees’ work-life balance concerns.  The role that students, particularly college students, have played in addressing social issues such as civil rights, war, environmental protection, apartheid, and more recently campus sustainability has been extensive, has contributed to the improvement of society, and has had significant impacts on business behavior, but has again received little scholarly attention within the field.  While religious organizations do much to shape the moral development of individuals and have also attempted to address many social and environmental issues, attention to the role of individual congregants and clergy in influencing the social efforts of their churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and secular institutions has been virtually absent in our field.  Even as sociologists have chronicled the decline of social capital and the implications of this for social problems (Putnam, 2000), attention to pro-social actions of individuals within their neighborhoods and local communities has received little attention within the business and society literature. 

 

One final role played by a small number of citizens but the vast majority of IABS members, is that of an academician, particularly an academician focusing on the business-society interface.  Attention is occasionally given to the social responsibilities of the educational organizations in which we work (Boyle, 2004), rarely given to the part played by academics in promoting social responsibility (Waddock, 2008), and only tangentially to whether our role as scholars should include an activism component (Carroll, 2000).

 

Questions of Interest for IABS 2012

 

Proposals are invited on all business and society topics, but particularly on topics related to the conference theme of “Personal Responsibility for Improving Society.”  Questions related to the theme that could be explored could include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

What are the most important personal responsibilities for improving society?  Why?

 

Which personal responsibilities for improving society are most commonly perceived and acted upon?  Least commonly perceived and acted upon?  Why?  How could this be changed?

 

What personal responsibilities for improving society are becoming more common, and why?

 

What are the key research questions and challenges in studying personal responsibilities for improving society?  How can these challenges best be addressed?

 

What implications does the research on positive organizational scholarship (Cameron, Dutton and Quinn, 2003) have for the study of personal responsibilities for improving society?  What insights can other theoretical perspectives offer into these questions?

 

Should the business and society field pay greater attention to personal social responsibilities?  Why or why not?  How might doing so affect the field?

 

Does a classroom focus on the social responsibilities of businesses and governments, give students the impression that actions by these institutions are the only means by which social conditions can be improved?  Are we giving students an excuse for not assuming personal responsibility for addressing social problems?

 

How can acceptance of personal responsibilities for improving society be facilitated in the classroom?  Should this be a goal of business and society educators?

 

What personal responsibilities do we – as academicians and particularly as business and society scholars – have for taking individual action to address social and environmental problems in our own lives? 

 

Are our personal responsibilities for improving society fulfilled by our choice to focus our research and teaching on social issues, or does this choice bestow upon us additional obligations, and if so what and why?

 

Can we simultaneously be effective researchers and educators, and be actively trying to fulfill personal responsibilities for improving society?

 

Should we share our attempts to fulfill our perceived personal responsibilities for improving society with our students?  If so, how can we do so most effectively?

 

Which suggested personal responsibilities for improving society are most readily accepted by students?  Which are most resisted?  Why?  How can this be changed?

 

 

References

 

Andersson, L., and Bateman, T. 2000. Individual environmental initiative: Championing natural environmental issues in U.S. business organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 548-570.

Boyle, M. 2004. Walking our talk: Business schools, legitimacy, and citizenship. Business & Society, 43, 1, 37-68.

Burton, B.K. and Goldsby, M. 2009. Corporate social responsibility orientation, goals and behavior: A study of small business owners.  Business & Society, 48, 1, 88-104.

Cameron, K.S., Dutton, J.E. and Quinn, R.E.  2003.  Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline,  San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Carroll, A.B. 1979. A three-dimensional model of corporate social performance. Academy of Management Review, 4, 497-505.

Carroll, A.B. 2000.  A commentary and an overview of key questions on corporate social performance measurement.  Business & Society, 39, 4, 466-478.

Dunfee, T.W. 2003. Social Investing: Mainstream or Backwater? Journal of Business Ethics, 43, 3, 247-252.

Kourula, A. and Laasonen, S.  2010. Nongovernmental Organizations in Business and Society, Management, and International Business Research: Review and Implications From 1998 to 2007. Business & Society, 49, 1, 35-67

Miceli, M.P. and Near, J.P.  2006. How can one person make a difference?  Understanding whistle-blowing effectiveness. In The Accountable Corporation. Ed. Epstein, M.; Hanson, K.. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Peterson, R.T. and Jun, M. 2009.  Perceptions on social responsibility: The entrepreneurial vision.  Business & Society, 48, 3, 385-405.

Waddock, S. 2008.  The Difference Makers: How Social and Institutional Entrepreneurs Created the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement, Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing.

Webba, D.J., Mohrb, L.A. and Harris, K.E. 2008.  A re-examination of socially responsible consumption and its measurement. Journal of Business Research, 61, 2, 91-98.

Wood, D.J.  1991. Corporate social performance revisited.  Academy of Management Review, 16, 4, 691-718.