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Certified B Corporations (B Corps) represent a prominent manifestation of applying stakeholder principles in practice by emphasizing social and environmental performance and striving to create value for all stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate an important question that has been unexplored so far in a vast body of literature on stakeholder management and fast-growing research on B Corps: does the timing of a B Corp’s certification impact the firm’s economic and social performance?

The research on the timing of obtaining B Corp certification is built around three intriguing puzzles: the impact of certification timing on a firm’s economic performance, social performance overall and social performance per stakeholder. In particular, the study examines the relationship between B Corp’s certification date and firms’ financial and social performance between 2017 and 2020.

Based on the data from 168 privately owned B Corps in the USA, the results of our study suggest that while there is no financial benefit associated with earlier certification, there are significant improvements in social performance. Yet, a firm’s social performance improvement is not uniform among its stakeholders.

This study explored the impact of B Corp certification’s timing on the firm’s economic performance within only three years, from 2017 to 2019. This limitation comes from the specifics of the PrivCo database. Measuring a firm economic performance over a longer period may benefit the research on B Corp certification’s timing and which can be a promising path for future research.

When it comes to practical implications, it is important that firms deciding to pursue a B Corp certification understand that certification may not result in an immediate financial impact. This practical implication, though, may need to be calibrated depending on the extent to which participating organizations publicize their certification.

Despite the growing popularity of B Corps in the USA and worldwide, it has been a black box when it comes to understanding when exactly firms should start to pursue B Corp certification to enhance their social value creation. Thus, this study is well timed to contribute to unpacking this black box by showing that the earlier a firm obtains B Corp certification, the more social value it would create. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study to date that explored the social performance implications of timing to certify as a B Corp.

When it comes to practical implications, it is important that firms deciding to pursue a B Corp certification understand that certification may not result in an immediate financial impact. This practical implication, though, may need to be calibrated depending on the extent to which participating organizations publicize their certification.

Disagreements related to processes, priorities, and purpose surface within organizations. Disagreements may be between colleagues, or between internal and external protagonists, or between managers and their direct reports. Rather than avoiding or ignoring or even trying to eradicate disagreement, this paper highlights the potential value to be extracted from disagreement and offers some ideas on how best to be in a position to do so.

This paper is the result of the insights offered by one of the world’s leading ethicists and the reflective thought based on hundreds of discussions by all three authors with practicing managers combining for over 60 years of such engagement.

Practical considerations, examples, and suggestions for extracting the benefit resident in disagreement are presented and discussed.

The ideas and outcomes posed are immediately and broadly applicable.

Readers are provided with an array of field-observed benefits that are potential outcomes from a conscientious engagement with disagreement. Within an organizational “climate of possibilities”, ten potential benefits from constructive engagement with disagreement are presented and discussed. In addition, ten means for enhancing the likelihood of capturing those benefits are presented.