Editorial

Citation

Pesqueux, Y. (2012), "Editorial", Society and Business Review, Vol. 7 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sbr.2012.29607caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Society and Business Review, Volume 7, Issue 3

This issue is built with six papers.

In “How to reconcile business with sustainable development: an innovation approach”, Johan Bouglet, Olivier Joffre, and Eric Simon defend the idea that “there’s no alternative to sustainable development”. The interest for SD seems to strengthen, among people as well as economic and political decision-makers. However, SD has first been perceived as a hindrance to economic growth. Its detractors think that SD hinders economic objectives. Henceforth, innovation and sustainable development have not been considered as complimentary forces and could be perceived as an obstacle, because the incurred costs to respect ecological constraints. Today, the opposition between innovation and SD is less evident. Complementarities are equally emerging to the macro and microeconomic level. At the macroeconomic level, the turning point occurred in the 1990s with, notably, the Earth Summit organized at Rio de Janeiro (1992), the Social Summit of Copenhagen (1995) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997). At the microeconomic level, companies seem to have integrated the SD notion to their strategies, in making a source of the competitive advantage. The results of a recent studies show that today, entrepreneurs consider that the departments dedicated to SD and to social responsibility should be shared at all levels of the firm. Admittedly, companies can be tempted to use SD as a rhetorical argument: behind a posture pointing up SD as an organization model, these practices are often disparate. In this new context, it is necessary to wonder on the links between the notions of innovation and SD.

With “CEO rhetorical strategies for corporate social responsibility (CSR)”, Magalie Marais explains that legitimacy has become one of the most critical issues for companies in the twenty-first century. In a post-crisis age, companies are facing growing expectations from diverse stakeholder groups. In addition to greater financial scrutiny, they are also experiencing more pressure to address social and environmental issues. In this context, calls have been launched to incite or force them to take into account these aspects. Problems nevertheless arise in establishing which and how CSR information should be communicated in order to satisfy the information needs of stakeholders and thereby legitimate corporate behavior. These difficulties are amplified when CSR and its degree of integration into a company’s strategy are not perceived as desirable by all stakeholder groups. The role of top managers, and especially CEOs, is thus of crucial importance in making good communication choices as they represent the organization’s interests to society. CEOs are responsible for developing an adequate CSR communication strategy in order to present their company’s achievements and drive organizational change. For these reasons, CSR rhetoric is fundamental not only to theory. In this paper, the author seeks to determine how CEOs respond to stakeholder pressures through CSR communication strategies. It explores their rhetorical choices to enhance corporate legitimacy. An exploratory study was conducted on a sample of 90 French listed companies in 2010. Several objectives are pursued through this study. It is first focused on CEO CSR rhetorical choices about how to communicate on CSR issues. Then, it evaluates how communication channels dedicated to specific stakeholder influence CEO CSR rhetorical choices. Last, it tests the influence of specific stakeholder pressures on how CEO choices contribute to build corporate legitimacy.

In “Mediation of TV advertising to children: an empirical study of Indian mothers”, Pavleen Soni and Raghbir Singh are doing an investigation about the strategies used by marketers to reach children as they constitute a substantial and a profitable market segment. Television continues to be a dominant medium for marketers to communicate with children. TV ads are seen to be informative whereby children gather information on brands and prices and are able to evaluate them. So, the parents find them to be much well informed and seek their participation in purchase decision-making process. However, the ability to understand ad messages and advertising intent develops only with age. Young children are particularly influenced by TV ads as they enjoy the ad for its jingle. Liking and trust in ads (that they enjoy) is so high that are persuaded to buy the advertised products. This leads to a situation whereby they request their parents for a large number of products, make repeated requests, and nag their parents to buy the advertised product. Parents are neither in a position nor likely to honour all the requests made by children. More so, a huge proportion of all ads are comprised of ads for unhealthy foods. As children watch lots of TV ads every day in India, they are exposed to numerous commercials for food. This in turn consumption of these unhealthy foods is found to increase the incidence of health disorders in children such as Type II diabetes, stroke, and cancer. Therefore, some action needs to be taken to protect children from ubiquitous food advertising. As parents are directly involved in feeding children and are concerned about their well being, they are likely to mediate TV viewing by their children. The manner in which parents mediate exposure to TV advertising depends upon a country’s culture. Indian culture is characterized of joint and extended families (in which children, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins) stay together. However, nuclear families are also rapidly emerging in India as children move out of the family to seek an occupation. Traditionally, Indian society is patriarchal in character and so the parents have been identified to be authoritarian in their style of parenting. This means that strict obedience is sought from children and they have limited rights to make independent decisions. Therefore, TV viewing by children is also controlled by Indian parents because it is perceived to have a negative influence on cultural values of children However, a comparison of Indian parents with others across different cultures reveals that Indian parents put fewer restrictions on TV viewing by children. Since the influence of media is on the rise in developing parts of the world such as India, mediation strategies used by parents must be explored. In addition to this, a comparison has also been drawn for mediation strategies used by parents across age groups of children.

In “Conceptualising public-private partnerships: a critical appraisal of approaches to meanings and forms”, Nikolai Mouraviev and Nada K. Kakabadse show that different countries employ varying approaches to public-private partnerships (PPPs) and their development. As PPPs become more common and the literature about them is growing, the discussion of partnership aspects may occasionally cause confusion due to differences in terminology and underpinning concepts. This article surveys various meanings attached to a PPP in Western literature, contrasts and compares them, and identifies commonalities and differences between them. Additionally, the article surveys the understanding of what is called PPP forms, as well as models. This is followed by a discussion of yet another PPP categorization, namely who initiates partnerships. The article also compares and highlights the disparities in the use of PPP terminology and concepts in Western literature as opposed to the Russian language literature. The latter captures PPP development not only in Russia, but also in other former Soviet countries in which Russian is widely used. The article concludes that future research in the PPP field in transitional countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, or Ukraine, particularly in the area of organizational and power arrangements in partnerships, may delineate new terms and concepts such as government as a guarantor of a PPP project, what social significance of a PPP project means, and what risk management denotes in the country’s contextual environment.

With “Leadership wisdom from the Jewish tradition models of leadership in times of crisis” Hannah Kehat argues that one of the major exams of leadership skills of a leader is the challenge of managing conflicts within the organization or within society he heads. Perhaps, this is the biggest challenge especially when there is a situation of external threat on that society. In this situation when the leader who is unable to maintain internal cohesion, then the danger is that it will accelerate the breakdown in make it easier for the external enemy to destroy that society. In this article she wants to show how Jewish tradition, using formative ancient stories, tried to teach us how a leader should behave in a crisis, and how not to behave.

She wants to show how stories reveal three models of leadership:

1. 1.

   A weak and cowardly leadership that enables the growth of terrorist leadership.

2. 2.

   An extreme and dogmatic leadership against a tolerant leadership.

3. 3.

   A nonviolent leadership.

The situations in which leadership is being tested are varied. At time of a great crisis of society at risk, during the siege of Jerusalem, one of the stories takes place precisely in the house, between two people, with the presence of leaders, to show the social disintegration among the common people, and the failure of leaders to build a moral society. The rabbis of the Jewish tradition, that had written the Babylonian Talmud, reviewed the defeat of the Jewish people, in 70th as a failure of the leaders. They pointed out the weaknesses of the leaders and saw them as the main responsible for the loss occurred, when Jerusalem fell. In contrast, other stories show us how other leaders, deserved to overcome a major crisis and come out stronger. These leaders continue to be extreme and fanatical, even against the Roman Empire and weak against the terrorists from Jerusalem. Their inspiration they received was from their religious of dogmatic House of Learning doctrine (Beit Midrash) – the house of Shammai. The positive example of overcoming the crisis and conflict, occurs after the destruction of Jerusalem in the Beit Midrash of the survivors in Yavneh. And perhaps the trauma of destruction leads the leaders to resolve the conflict in nonviolent way.

In “Legitimacy, shared ethos and public management” Ruth Kabbesa-Abramzon argues that the idea of consolidating spiritual tradition (Heaven) and management practices (Earth) poses an exceptional challenge in the connection of two very different approaches to the human experience, approaches that appear to be diametrically opposed. The paradox of connecting heaven and earth also underlies the Jewish spiritual tradition motivating Jewish action: It expresses this in various practices of Jewish life, known as the mitzvoth – precepts – and spiritual ideas and intentions, known as emunah – faith. This article will try to identify the image of the public emissary. The author thinks that the concept of “Public emissary” is one that is suspended between heaven and earth, and points to the fact that the position holder receives his authority from the community in order to best represent it before the supreme spiritual authority, God – a major concept for Judaism because the public emissary is accountable to both the community and God. He is neither community servant nor the leader, but his role as emissary is somewhere in the middle, between these two poles.

Yvon Pesqueux