Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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    Can MNCs promote more inclusive tourism? Apollo tour operator's sustainability work
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2018-08-08) Zapata Campos MJ; Hall CM; Backlund S
    Outbound tour operators are key actors in international mass tourism. However, their contribution to more sustainable and inclusive forms of tourism has been critically questioned. Drawing from new institutional theories in organization studies, and informed by the case of one of the largest Scandinavian tour operators, we examine the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability work in large tour operators and the challenges faced in being more inclusive. On the basis of in-depth interviews with corporate officers, document analysis and media reports, we show how top-down coercive and normative pressures, coming from the parent company and the host society shape the ability of the daughter corporation to elaborate a more inclusive agenda. However, daughter companies do not merely comply with these institutional pressures and policy is also developed from the ‘bottom-up’. We show how the tour operator's sustainability work is also the result of organizational responses including buffering, bargaining, negotiating and influencing the parent organization. By creating intra and inter-sectoral learning and collaborative industry platforms, MNCs not only exchange and diffuse more inclusive practices among the industry, but also anticipate future normative pressures such as legislation and brand risk. Daughter organizations help shape their institutional arrangements through internal collaborative platforms and by incorporating local events and societal concerns into the multinational CSR policy, especially when flexible policy frameworks operate, and the corporate CSR agenda and organizational field are under formation. However, risks do exist, in the absence of institutional pressures, of perpetuating a superficial adoption of more inclusive practices in the mass tourism industry.
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    Does Entrepreneurs’ Darwinian Social Identity Contribute to Business Performance via Corporate Social Responsibility in China? The Role of Entrepreneurs’ Well-Being
    (Frontiers Media S A, 2021-12-14) Chen J; Chen NC; Yu K; Hall CM; Zhou W
    Although the impact of entrepreneurs’ social identity on successful entrepreneurship has attracted much scholarly attention, it is often to evaluate successful entrepreneurship through direct channel to financial performance. Recently, there is a growing body of researches beginning to pay attention to the impact of entrepreneurs’ social identity on corporate social responsibility (CSR) regarded as indirect social aspect channel to successful entrepreneurship. However, little is known regarding how entrepreneurs’ Darwinian social identity affects CSR, which in turn, affects business performance. This study addresses this issue by combining stakeholder theory with social identity theory, to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurs’ Darwinian social identity and business performance via CSR. In addition, the moderating effect of entrepreneur’s well-being is further examined to uncover the interaction effect of the individual psychological resource on business performance. The empirical results indicate that entrepreneurs’ Darwinian social identity contributes positively to CSR, so as further to business performance. In addition, this relationship is further found to be significantly moderated by entrepreneurs’ well-being. The results indicate that entrepreneurs can achieve business success via CSR, by which entrepreneurs can further acquire successful entrepreneurship through caring more about their well-being.
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    Application of the Five Domains model to food chain management of animal welfare: opportunities and constraints
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2023-06-09) Beausoleil NJ; Swanson JC; McKeegan DEF; Croney CC; Keeling LJ
    For businesses involved in animal production, ensuring high animal welfare standards has become the cornerstone of corporate social responsibility practices. Since animal welfare cannot be verified by consumers at the point of purchase, industry-led audits provide important assurance that animals used to produce food lived an acceptable quality of life and experienced a humane death. The Five Freedoms offer a simple tool to conceptualize the complex, multi-dimensional concept of animal welfare, and they have been widely adopted as a basic operational framework for compliance. However, the Five Freedoms are problematic in that they focus on the absence of negative welfare states, underemphasize the importance of positive experiences, are absolute, and represent a (mostly unattainable) ideal. The Five Domains model represents inter-related aspects of an animal’s welfare state, with four physical/functional domains used to infer likely mental experiences in the fifth domain. This model allows for consideration of both positive and negative affective experiences, recognizes degrees of welfare compromise, acknowledges that animals cannot be free from all negative experiences (and that indeed, some are essential for survival). Thus, the model better reflects current scientific understanding of animal welfare and – that ultimately, we are interested in how animals experience their lives. Nevertheless, caution is needed when inferring mental states, which can never be directly observed or measured, and hence the ultimate outcomes of the model’s application should be qualitative. Operationalization of the Five Domains offers several opportunities to improve the breadth and quality of welfare audits for production animals. The model can incorporate both resource/management- based and animal-based measures of welfare; the former reflect risks to animals’ welfare while the latter often provide direct information on the animal’s welfare state at the time of assessment. Existing welfare indicators may be linked to relevant mental states and evaluated accordingly, and new metrics may be scientifically identified. Importantly, the Five Domains structure demands scrutiny of the affective state consequences to animals of housing, handling, and husbandry procedures, and could improve the effectiveness of animal welfare training for auditors and stockpersons. Adoption of the Five Domains framework could facilitate improved communication about animal welfare in the food chain with customers and consumers.
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    Changing overwork culture: Stakeholder management for employee wellbeing and social sustainability in large Japanese companies
    (ERP Environment and John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2024-05-13) Kobayashi K; Eweje G; Tappin D
    Effectively addressing overwork culture in business remains a challenge, despite growing concerns about its negative impacts on employee wellbeing and productivity. This paper investigates corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and stakeholder management promoted by large Japanese companies to address overwork culture. Based on interviews with managers and stakeholders from 31 companies, the study reveals that despite being part of CSR, overwork reduction initiatives often come into conflict with entrenched institutional pressures. These pressures are embedded in a cultural-cognitive and institutional context that prioritises quality and cooperation over individual productivity. We argue that improving stakeholder relationships is vital for developing a healthy and productive workstyle and for reactivating institutional dynamics that are fundamental to employee wellbeing, productivity and broader social sustainability. By clarifying the role and processes of stakeholder management, this paper contributes to the discourse on overwork and CSR, offering new insights into how to effectively address overwork culture.
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    Disentangling Consumers’ CSR Knowledge Types and Effects
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2022-09-22) Avis M; Konopka R; Gregory-Smith D; Palakshappa N; Trinh G; Sharp A; Driesener C
    This paper examines consumers’ objective knowledge of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for brands over different product categories, and investigates whether objective knowledge influences attitudes to CSR, and the relationships between demographics and objective knowledge. The research uses an innovative approach to examining consumer CSR knowledge via (largely) unprompted recall. The analysis uses independent judges to score actual consumer objective knowledge of the CSR of well-known brands against the policies and actions of the brand owner. The research reveals that participants’ objective knowledge of CSR was limited or, in many cases, there was no knowledge. Further, the number and type of CSR policies did not influence overall evaluations of CSR. However, where objective knowledge was held, it did positively influence evaluations. The findings of the research direct managerial attention towards improvement of the communication of CSR, including using the research methodology here to evaluate the success of current communications
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    Discourse, agency, and social license to operate in New Zealand
    (The Resilience Alliance, 17/01/2020) Newton M; Farrelly T; Sinner J
    The construction of discourse through choice of wording and sentence structure can affect power relations between people and groups. Social license to operate (SLO), broadly defined as the public’s acceptance or approval of a company and its operations, is an emergent concept in New Zealand’s marine economy. The way the public discourse around SLO is constructed and communicated can empower some at the expense of others, whether deliberately or inadvertently. This study employed critical discourse analysis to investigate how SLO is used in public documents relating to commercial activities in New Zealand’s marine environment between 1996 and 2017. Specifically, the study explores the implied power relations between government, industry, New Zealand’s Indigenous tribes (hereafter, iwi), communities, and other stakeholders. We find that industry and central government dominate SLO-related public discourse, and they frequently vest SLO agency with industry rather than community groups, iwi, or the wider public. Indeed, iwi are largely absent from the SLO discourse in public documents. Definitions of SLO vary extensively across the documents and are largely captured by industry and central government. We conclude that New Zealand’s marine SLO public discourse empowers industry at the expense of communities and the public, contrary to the notional intent of the concept.