Yritys tuottaa - sidosryhmät käyttävät? : WINCSR-hankkeen tuloksia yritysvastuutiedon tuottamisesta ja käyttämisestä

From Rationality to Emotionally Embedded Relations: Envy as a Signal of Power in Stakeholder Relations

Although stakeholder salience theory has received a great deal of scholarly attention in the business ethics and management literature, the theory has been criticized for overemphasizing rationality in managerial perceptions. We argue that it is important to better understand what socially constructed emotions signal in business relations, and we posit the role of envy as a discursive resource used to signal and construct the asymmetrical power relations between small business owner–managers and their stakeholders. Our study is based on a qualitative study on discursive accounts elicited from 33 interviews with small business owner–managers in Finland. Our study makes two primary contributi…

Hypes and the birth of new sustainable market categories – a socio-cultural perspective on the emergence of the meat substitute category in Finland

Hypes can be a significant contributor in the mainstreaming of sustainable products. Former research on hypes has been supplier oriented, and thus little is known of their effect on new market formation. Our paper contributes to this research gap by examining the establishment of the ‘meat substitute’ category in Finland using press articles, retailer interviews and consumer panel data. We show how the emergence and legitimation of the meat substitute category depended heavily on the hype arising around a single product, called Pulled Oats (PO). This hype was anchored in its association with trendy and socio-culturally relevant values and practices. We further discover that the hype had pos…

Configurations of High Corporate Environmental Responsibility with Regard to Business Legitimacy:A Cross-National Approach

Get some respect – buy organic foods! When everyday consumer choices serve as prosocial status signaling

Status considerations have recently been linked to prosocial behaviors. This research shows that even everyday consumer behaviors such as favoring organic foods serve as prosocial status signaling. Key ideas from the continuum model of consumer impression formation and the theories of costly signaling and symbolic consumption are synthetized to make sense of this phenomenon. Two web-surveys (Ns = 187, 259) and a field study (N = 336) following experimental designs are conducted. This approach allows the analysis of both the more and less conscious reactions of consumers. Study 1 shows that the image of consumers favoring organic product versions is marked by characteristics consistent with …

The Legitimacy Paradox of Business Schools: Losing by Gaining?

In recent years, many scholars have argued that business schools have jeopardized their legitimacy and identity. However, business schools have also been praised as a success story of higher educat...

One Rule to Rule Them All? Organisational Sensemaking of Corporate Responsibility

Corporate responsibility (CR) has often been criticised as a decoupled organisational phenomenon: a publicly espoused rule that is not followed in daily organisational practices. We argue that a crucial reason for this criticism arises from the dominant in-house assumption of CR literature, which mitigates tensions and contradictions in organisational life by claiming that integrated rules result in coupled practices. We aim to provide new insights by problematising this in-house assumption and by examining how members of two organisations discursively make sense of CR, as a daily rule-bound practice, via three strategies: integration, differentiation and fragmentation. We elaborate the con…

Empowered by stigma? Pioneer organic farmers' stigma management strategies

Abstract Pioneers of organic farming often faced social challenges as their innovative ideas on agriculture not only encountered opposition in the conventional farming community, but led to stigmatization of organic farmers as social deviants. In this study, we examine what kind of stigma management strategies pioneer organic farmers engage with in order to cultivate an alternative positive image of themselves. Our research is based on the interviews with 14 pioneer organic farmers. Based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews, we provide a model of those strategies that the creation from a stigmatized to valued identity requires. Our study increases the understanding of the institutio…

From the Editors: Varied Perspectives on Social Sustainability

The Dynamics of (De)Stigmatization : Boundary construction in the nascent category of organic farming

This study finds that it is possible for organizations in emerging categories to resist stigmatization through discursive reconstruction of the central and distinctive characteristics of the category in question. We examined the emerging market of organic farming in Finland and discovered how resistance to stigmatization was both an internal and an external power struggle in the organic farming community. Over time, the label of organic farming was manipulated and the practice of farming was associated with more conventional and familiar contexts, while the stigma was diverted at the same time to biodynamic farming. We develop a process model for removal of stigma from a nascent category t…

Power of Paradox: Grassroots Organizations’ Legitimacy Strategies Over Time

Fringe stakeholders with limited resources, such as grassroots organizations (GROs), are often ignored in business and society literature. We develop a conceptual framework and a set of propositions detailing how GROs strategically gain legitimacy and influence over time. We argue that GROs encounter specific paradoxes over the emergence, development, and resolution of an issue, and they address these paradoxes using cognitive, moral, and pragmatic legitimacy strategies. While cognitive and moral strategies tend to be used consistently, the flexible and paradoxical use of pragmatic strategies has important consequences, both for GROs’ legitimacy and for their potential influence over powerf…

Constructions, Claims, Resonance, Reflexivity: Language and Market Categorization

doi: 10.1177/2631787720968561 Studies on market categorization exhibit substantial agreement that language plays a central role in articulating and constructing meanings among market participants and crafting consensus to produce a collective of interacting market actors. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the growing body of research on language and market categories. This review has two aims. We begin by identifying how scholars have applied a variety of language constructs in category research, providing an understanding of the differences between these constructs and elaborating their uses and functions in the studies on market categorization. The second part of the review th…

How they walk the talk : Responsible management education in Finnish business schools

Responsible management education (RME) has become a common initiative in the educational discourse of business schools worldwide. However, little is known about how (non-)engagement with RME in the past influenced the way RME is organised today. We examine this in one of the pioneering countries of RME, Finland, using extensive qualitative research materials. Our results suggest that RME has been embedded with authenticity-driven change (local context and research) since the 1990s. In the late 2000s after the legal educational reforms implemented in Finland, the prestige-driven change (accreditations) began to shape the embedding of RME. In the 2020s, both the authenticity- and prestige-dri…

Moral panic, moral regulation and essentialization of identities: Discursive struggle over unethical business practices in the Finnish national media

The study sheds light on the language of moral panic and moral regulation in the Finnish news media over a 9-year period on the subject of cartels and cartel agreements. What makes the case particularly interesting is that the object of the most explicit moral panic was the introduction of new laws (leniency programmes) designed to regulate illegal cartel behaviour. The main argument is that the construction of both moral regulation and moral panic in news media takes place through essentializing discursive claims that contribute to national identity construction. The study contributes to current literature on moral panics as ideologico-discursive phenomena and throws some light on the powe…

Towards a Variety of Meanings - Multiple Representations of Reputation in the Small Business Context

This paper examines the discursively constructed meanings for reputation in the small business context – an area of reputation research that has so far attracted little attention. We argue that viewing reputation as a social construction makes it possible to uncover and understand the variety of meanings attached to the concept in small businesses. On the basis of 25 thematic interviews with owner-managers we (re)constructed four meanings for reputation: reputation as an economic resource, as social recognition, as a restrictive control mechanism and as a risk for personal status. We also investigate the variety of discursive events in which these meanings are created. The study further emp…

Farming on the margins : Just transition and the resilience of peripheral farms

Sustainability transition demands fundamental changes taking place at the farm system level. At the same time, many farms are operating on the verge of financial profitability, especially in geographically disadvantaged peripheral regions with a limited range of production opportunities. These observations raise concerns about the transition's justice aspects. Using the concept of resilience, we analysed farmers’ capacities for transformation in a peripheral context in Finland. The results from our farmer survey (n = 577) indicated that the regime exerts a strong cost-price squeeze on farmers, escaping of which is difficult also for farmers deliberately seeking new pathways beyond it. Due t…

Placing resilience in context: Investigating the changing experiences of Finnish organic farmers

Understanding how farmers are resilient is critical for effective government and individual\ud management responses in an increasingly uncertain world. Through an inter-temporal focus on\ud Finnish organic farmers, we explore changing identities, attitudes and practices, and reflect on\ud ramifications for farming resilience. Despite the essentialising binaries perpetuated by discussions of\ud conventionalisation and bifurcation in the organic movement, organic production systems are, and\ud always have been, heterogeneous. This paper offers a nuanced analysis of the fluctuating and mixed\ud practices and identities that compose the sector. Considering the experiences of both ‘pioneer’ and\…

Stakeholder salience for small businesses : a social proximity perspective

This paper advances stakeholder salience theory from the viewpoint of small businesses. It is argued that the stakeholder salience process for small businesses is influenced by their local embeddedness, captured by the idea of social proximity, and characterised by multiple relationships that the owner-manager and stakeholders share beyond the business context. It is further stated that the ethics of care is a valuable ethical lens through which to understand social proximity in small businesses. The contribution of the study conceptualises how the perceived social proximity between local stakeholders and small business owner-managers influences managerial considerations of the legitimacy, …

‘World-class’ fantasies : A neocolonial analysis of international branch campuses

In this article, we build on postcolonial studies and discourse analytical research exploring how the ‘world-class’ discourse as an ideology and a fantasy structures neocolonial relations in international branch campuses. We empirically examine how international branch campuses reproduce the fantasy of being so-called world-class operators and how the onsite faculty members identify with or resist this world-class fantasy through mimicry. Our research material originates from fieldwork conducted in business-school international branch campuses operating in the United Arab Emirates. Our findings show the ambivalent nature of mimicry towards the world-class fantasy to include both compliance …

Praised from birth : social approval assets in the creation of a new university

Purpose – The authors explore how social approval assets, namely status and reputation, are used to legitimate and categorise a new national university. They argue that in the course of the legitimation process, status and reputation work as stakeholder-oriented value-creating benefits. The authors specifically analyse the discursive constructions and labels used in the process and how the process enables nationwide university reform. Design/methodology/approach – The authors’ longitudinal case study utilises critical discourse analysis and analyses media and policy discourses regarding the birth of Aalto University. Findings –The findings suggest that the legitimation of the new university…

On the discursive construction of a socially responsible organization

Summary Drawing upon critical discourse analysis, this article investigates how a newspaper organization is discursively legitimized as a socially responsible organization. The empirical data are based on 16 interviews conducted among the employees of a newspaper organization. The study has two main implications. First, I suggest that corporate social responsibility in a newspaper organization is constructed around a discursive struggle concerning the role and goals of the newspaper business. More importantly, such debate includes a discursive struggle between professional, social and economic claims. This study further contributes to the literature concerning discursive legitimation strate…

‘We are all responsible now’: Governmentality and responsibilized subjects in corporate social responsibility

The corporate social responsibility promise is a fascinating one: companies are able and willing to regulate themselves, and self-regulation is manifested in collaborative efforts that promote individual well-being. Yet, this macro-level promise has a silenced flip side in organizational contexts. We argue that corporate social responsibility has diffused the idea of employee responsibilization into organizational environments, so it entails a dual role for employees: employees become both the objects and the subjects of corporate social responsibility. The primary aim of this article is thus to develop a theoretical understanding that acknowledges the role of individual members of the org…

Discarding the mirror : the importance of intangible social resources to responsibility in business in a Finnish context

Sweet taste of prosocial status signaling: When eating organic foods makes you happy and hopeful.

As the current research suggests that there are links between prosocial acts and status signaling (including sustainable consumer choices), we empirically study (with three experiments) whether food consumers go green to be seen. First, we examine how activating a motive for status influences prosocial organic food preferences. Then, we examine how the social visibility of the choice (private vs. public) affects these preferences. We found that when consumers' desire for status was elicited, they preferred organic food products significantly over their nonorganic counterparts; making the choice situation visible created the same effect. Finally, we go beyond consumers' evaluative and behavi…

Business in society or business and society: the construction of business–society relations in responsibility reports from a critical discursive perspective

In this article, we analyse the discursive construction of business–society relations in Finnish businesses’ social and environmental responsibility reports. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, we examine how these discursive constructions maintain and reproduce various interests and societal conditions as a precondition of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our study contributes to the recent discussion on discursive struggles in business–society relations and the role various interests play in this struggle. We find that not only are power asymmetries between actors veiled through the universalization of interests, but reporting can also be seen as a communicative action that prov…

Monimuotoisuuden johtamisen ristiriitaisuus : diskurssianalyysi suomalaisista mediateksteistä

The diversity management paradox – A discourse analysis of Finnish media texts The phenomenon called ‘diversity management’ originating in North America has recently emerged in Europe. Although the importance of a diverse workforce has been emphasised in Finland, research on diversity management has been rather limited. In this study, we examine the discursively constructed meanings of diversity and diversity management in Finnish media texts. On the basis of our analysis, we (re)constructed five discourses for understanding diversity and diversity management. Based on our analysis, we suggest that the significance of the diversity discussion in Finland lies primarily in encouraging busines…

From the Editors: Problematizing the Power of Responsibility