Editorial

Citation

Pesqueux, Y. (2018), "Editorial", Society and Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 2-4. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBR-02-2018-123

This issue is built with eight papers.

In the viewpoint of “Towards a Relational Innovation”, Bernard Pauget and Dammak Ahmed remark that innovation has got a place that goes well beyond organizations and affects the whole society. This dogma around innovation, sometimes associated with growth sometimes with progress, has been questioned for some 15 years. The relational processes around innovation, and even the innovation linked to relationships, are still quantitatively minor. This seems more surprising given that since the mid-2000s, many researchers have wanted to promote innovations centered on individuals and their relationships. Following their aftermath, since 2012, they have noticed a resurgence of interest in the community of management science researchers for the notions of organizational innovation. This viewpoint returns initially to the difficulty of speaking about innovation. They then establish a chronology and a definition of the innovations linked to relations (administrative innovation, organizational innovation and managerial innovation). Finally, they provide a different perspective of innovation: a relational innovation. The latter is related to the concept of culture, revisited by the earliest studies of cultural anthropology and especially relational patterns.

In “Social Innovation and SONO Filter for Drinking Water”, Ahmed Jashim, Tinne Wahida Shahan, Al-Amin Md and Rahanaz Maliha start from the point that Bangladesh is facing an alarming situation with the drinking water in its most areas as groundwater used for drinking has been contaminated with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Many entrepreneurs, along with the government, are trying to cope up with this problem. SONO filter is one of them; it is based on the social innovation concept. This paper examines the concepts of social innovation, which advocates enhancing values to society, and the social benefit to all the stakeholders. It is an exploratory study that presents the evolution, the development of the social business model and its implementation.

In “Desperately Seeking the Civil Society: the New Challenge oh the Multinational Companies”, Karim Medjad observes that multinational corporations (MNCs) entering into so-called state contracts in developing countries, notably in extracting industries or infrastructures, typically find themselves seeking a long-term commitment from the – often illegitimate – government of a state whose life expectancy might be shorter than the duration of the contract. Nowadays, the threat that the sovereign prerogatives of the host states used to represent has been substantially reduced, but MNCs are now increasingly challenged at home by various actors of the civil society, notably activist non-governmental organizations, against which the contractual protection they obtained abroad is totally irrelevant. As a result, MNCs are now more exposed outside of state contracts, for it is precisely the lack of contractual commitment on the part of the civil society that is a potential challenge to their activities. Accordingly, they are now forced to accomplish a vote-face to seek the endorsement of the very actor they ostensibly ignored in the past. But who – or what – is the civil society and how does one bind it? The purpose of this article is to describe this sinuous evolution of the state contract and to discuss the challenges it announces.

In “Local Inefficiencies in French Public-Private Diversity and Inclusion Policies: Envisioning a Locality-Based Intersectional Analysis”, Rémi Jardat and Florimond Labulle start by the fact that vocational and social inclusion in the context of discrimination is one of the key issues affecting relations between businesses and society at large. An upsurge in liberal economic reform has witnessed a widespread withdrawal of public action and a focus on tax incentives aimed at addressing these issues. Simultaneously, there has been a shift toward rampant de-institutionalization, opening the way for the emergence of new forms of governance that have sometimes lacked clarity. Despite a long tradition of state intervention, France has not escaped this movement toward de-institutionalization, which has led, in particular, to the rise of “locality-focused” governance resembling “institutional layer cakes”, held together by politico-administrative filling of variable but growing thickness. Moreover, in that context, it has become increasingly difficult to evaluate public policies, which have become “public-private” in nature, and more difficult still to disentangle the complexities behind the causes and consequences of their failures. This study was conducted in precisely such a context where there was a need to take a diagnostic view of inclusion and anti-discrimination initiatives undertaken by various public, semi-public and private actors in an impoverished suburb undergoing de-industrialization. In this paper, they intend to provide an overview of certain unexpected findings, namely, the fact that policy failures were not due to a lack of resources or a lack of coordination on the part of the participating social actors, but, rather, to a design flaw. Decision-makers had apparently failed to discern the true complexity of situations of marginalization, and local actors found themselves caught up in an intractable double bind. The notion of intersectionality, which emerged from Anglo-American research, seems to be one of the keys to understanding this failure, although its use calls for serious adaptations if it is to be applied effectively outside the institutional setting where it originated. In that paper, they try to address two main correlated issues: is intersectionality relevant in a non-Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian context, although it has been hitherto neglected or rejected elsewhere, in particular, by French scholars?

If they try to “translate”, in a wider sense, the concept of intersectionality outside its cultural area of birth, what adaptations must it undergo to be epistemologically and practically productive?

In “Sanctioning, Qualifying, and Manipulatin: Dramatic Phases in President’s Letter”, Webb Andrew and Richelieu André try to better understand the management of accounts that sport for development agencies provide. A methodology for analyzing narratives is mobilized to collate a longitudinal sample of one agency’s president’s letters. Using Greimas’s actantial model as a framework, this study analyzes role allocation through president’s letters. The analysis of empirical data demonstrates the managerial functions of sanctioning and qualifying organizational performance, and manipulating current, as well as potential, partners into becoming actors in the studied network. This study proposes that a new typology and associated roles are needed for one category of actors. Redefining the destinator category of actors previously used in management literature with a new sender label is proposed.

In “Signing up for Voluntary Simplicity – Consumer Motives and Effects”, Holmlund Maria and Pravet Irina examine consumers’ motives in signing up for a weeklong voluntary simplicity experiment, No Impact Week (NIW), and reducing their consumption during and afterward. The empirical data come from informants who filled out a pre-week email inquiry, completed a daily diary template centered on eight themes, responded to a post-week email inquiry and answered follow-up questions one month after completion.Those who participate in NIW were motivated by personal factors, such as curiosity and desire to be more aware, to learn tips for eco-living applicable to daily life and to challenge themselves. People who chose not to participate did so largely because they did not understand what would be required of them. Participants incorporated the experiment into their lives, but the outcomes remained dependent on existing structures, in this case, environmental and personal factors. The findings indicate the existence of a value–action gap and an awareness–behavior gap. While a mismatch between consumers’ consumption values and behavior is not uncommon, enabling behavior in line with values is crucial for reducing consumption. Although voluntary simplicity is a drastic form of consumption reduction that appeals only to a small but growing niche of people, the motives for and consequences of engaging in it highlight pressing issues of consumer behavior and consumption.

In the viewpoint “Renewed Hope for the Low-Profit Limited Liability Company”, Toson Sonia challenges the notion that low-profit limited liability companies (L3Cs) as ineffective or flawed choice of entity for social entrepreneurs. Most of the literature surrounding L3Cs has been critical of the form; however, a detailed analysis shows that the form is not only still viable but is, in fact, experiencing growth. This viewpoint utilizes key literature and an analysis of current L3C activity in the USA. Analysis demonstrates that despite criticisms throughout the legal community, the L3C is experiencing recent growth and continues to be a viable choice of entity for social entrepreneurs. This paper furthers the literature by providing the business academy with an in-depth analysis of the legal components of L3Cs and draws research-based conclusions about the state of the form and its viability for social entrepreneurs. It is unique in that it challenges the prevailing legal opinion that the L3C form is useless and unnecessary.

In the viewpoint “Helping Behaviors Can Negatively Impact Long-Term Well-Being: How ‘Skin in the Game’ More Effectively Helps Others”, Von Bergen Clarence W., Bressler Martin S. and Boatmun Tim argue that many have argued and written in favor of acts of charity, mercy and kindness in the context of the ethic of beneficence. Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Native American spiritual traditions highlight the flourishing that follows from a life of unselfish love, compassion and altruism. Some philosophers have asserted a moral obligation to assist people in need. Is helping good or bad? In this paper, they suggest that a more appropriate question may be: under what conditions is helping positive or negative for those assisted? Accordingly, their goal is to build a bridge across the gulf separating research on the beneficial and detrimental outcomes of help for actors by incorporating both perspectives into one theoretical model. They first discuss the positive and negative aspects of helping and then introduce two key examples that provide a sharper focus on the costs and unintended consequences of prosocial phenomena. Their intent here is not to be comprehensive, but instead to offer a broad overview of studies that illustrate the positive and negative consequences of helping.