Call for Papers

Organizations are at crossroads, and so too are boards of directors. Defined as a crisis situation or a point in time when a critical decision must be made, a crossroad symbolizes an urgent invitation to or even a call for urgent action. A similar call was made in 2001, after the Enron corporate scandal, leading to the emergence of the corporate governance as a discipline, and an increase of scholarly work. In this sub-theme proposal, we argue that as organizations are being increasingly responsible for broader social issues, there is a pressing need to revisit the crossroads of boards’ decision making and the challenges associated with them, and to define avenues that require urgent scholarly attention in support of contemporary corporate governance.
 
When looking back to what was urgent then in 2001 and what is relevant and urgent now, we see a curious shift of priority topics associated with the corporate governance (CG) work, from focusing on boards’ task function to boards’ mechanisms and its members, with more attention to the societal issues of CG today. In the earlier 2000’s, crossroads of corporate governance were concerned with comparative analysis of the corporate governance practices across countries, including the topics of value maximization, ownership, control, CEO pay, and ethics (Jensen, 2005). A few years down the road, the urgent topics shifted to the study of corporate social responsibility and sustainability, governance mechanisms, control mechanisms and disclosures, board diversity, corporate governance in family firms and in other cultural contexts (Pandey et al., 2022). However, thus far little attention has been given to the larger social concerns of the boards’ work, including, but not limited to issues like providing and protecting for human mental and physical health in society, addressing issues of national security, taking on grand challenges like climate change and global peace, and providing norms surrounding the use of artificial intelligence and digital technologies.
 
Indeed, the past several years have pulled boards to engage with more and more societal issues as part of their routine decision making as ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted public health as one of the grand challenges to be addressed in order to provide for the well-being of society as a whole (Montiel et al., 2022). In addition, the mental burden of the Covid-19 pandemic has taken its toll on numerous stakeholders (Sinclair et al., 2020), turning attention to how to mitigate the negative impact of the increasingly emotional and mental nature of work on society (Gallup Consulting & Gallup, 2017). There is also a reawakening, on individual and societal levels, of the desire to engage in meaningful, sustainable efforts, to be busy with the right things for individual, organizational and societal gain (Bapuji et al., 2020; Lysova et al., 2019). In sum, there is much opportunity in investigating the role of business and their boards with public mental and physical health issues (e.g. Husted, Ledley, Montiel, Brown & Park, 2022).
 
The war between Russia and Ukraine and a consequent energy crisis made is also clear that peace is not the topic that is up to the politicians but is also a concern of corporations. In 2022, one of the significant decisions that many international multinationals had to make it whether to stay in Russia and continue their business as usual, or whether to close its operations. According to the Council on Foreign Relations's Global Conflict Tracker, there are currently 27 ongoing conflicts worldwide. Which role should business play in national and international conflicts? What does this mean for boards of directors? Much of management research is turning to this important topic with the idea that firms might become effective peacebuilders (Ford, 2015; Forrer & Katsons, 2015; Ganson et al., 2022); yet, the corporate governance literature seems to be silent about the topic.
 
Finally, addressing concerns with digital security is one of the leading challenges of contemporary organizations. As tensions in digital organizations intensify, organizations increasingly find it difficult to implement security governance as part of their regular organisational activities, particularly as they wrangle with ethical issues (Martin, 2020; Martin & Shilton, 2022). In a fast-paced digital world, organizations need to achieve their strategic goals and maintain a competitive advantage with digital innovation, while they simultaneously need to protect and secure the assets by implementing digital security governance mechanisms. Both demands strive for business survival in the long run, but mandate for complete opposite organizing strategies (risk taking vs. risk reduction), revealing tensions (Schinagl & Shahim, 2020).
 
How do boards of directors deal with these challenges? Dealing with these wicked and complex concerns requires integrative leadership, collaborating through partnerships (Alban-Metcalfe & Alimo-Metcalfe, 2010; Van Bueren, Klijn, & Koppenjan, 2003), addressing social activism (DesJardine, Marti & Durand, 2021; Thompson & Davis, 1997), conducting effective strategic dialogue (Bourgoin, Marchessaux, & Bencherki, 2018), confronting governance paradoxes (Sundaramurthy & Lewis, 2003), addressing faultlines (Veltrop, Hermes, Postma, & Haan, 2015), taking an open systems perspective (Brown, deBakker, Bapuji, Rehbein & Spicer, 2022) and overcoming decision-making barriers (Boivie, Bednar, Aguilera, & Andrus, 2016), among other leadership and governance tactics.
 
With this Call for Papers, we aim to contribute to the research on boards of directors and their stakeholders, general corporate governance, and the related areas of ESG performance, social activism, board decision-making and collaboration. We seek to contribute to organizational studies, management, corporate governance and leadership literature. We seek papers that adopt any relevant and fruitful epistemological, theoretical, and methodological perspective to address relevant questions, including socio-psychological approaches (particularly dealing with upper echelons or leadership), institutional theory, power or political perspectives and communication theory, linguistics, narrative, discourse, or rhetorical analysis. Papers can focus on the performative effects of codes and rules, the performative effects of language and of framing on executives and non-executives and their stakeholders; attend to the interactive and communicative construction of institutions; and involve a retrospective and prospective process, prescriptive, and descriptive approaches to studying board governance processes.
 
Below is a list of relevant, but not exhaustive topics and questions related to the sub-theme:

• What are the responsibilities of corporate boards and other governance overseers in the crossroads of business and society?

• How do social movements, corporate political activists, the media, and other stakeholders shape the roles of corporate overseers?

• How have new organizational forms (hybrid organizations, blockchain) influenced corporate governance and vice versa?

• Moving beyond agency, what leadership theories and frameworks help shape an organization’s board decision-making practices, especially in light of newer technology and an increasingly connected world?

• How has board decision making changed (or not changed) in light of increasing uncertainty and the grand challenges posed by society?

• How might boards address the ethical tensions inherent in tackling some of these grand challenges?

References

• Alban-Metcalfe, J., & Alimo-Metcalfe, B. (2010). Integrative leadership, partnership working and wicked problems: a conceptual analysis. International Journal of Leadership in Public Services, 6(3), 3–13.
• Bapuji, Hari, Charmi Patel, Gokhan Ertug, & David G. Allen. (2020). Corona crisis and inequality: Why management research needs a societal turn. Journal of Management 46 (7), 1205- 1222.
• Boivie, S., Bednar, M. K., Aguilera, R. V, & Andrus, J. L. (2016). Are boards designed to fail? The implausibility of effective board monitoring. Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 319- 407.
• Bourgoin, A., Marchessaux, F., & Bencherki, N. (2018). We need to talk about strategy: How to conduct effective strategic dialogue. Business Horizons, 61(4), 587–597.
• Brown, J. A., de Bakker, F. G., Bapuji, H., Higgins, C., Rehbein, K., & Spicer, A. (2022). Building on Its Past: The Future of Business and Society Scholarship. Business & Society, doi.00076503221097298.
• DesJardine, M. R., Marti, E., & Durand, R. (2021). Why activist hedge funds target socially responsible firms: The reaction costs of signaling corporate social responsibility. Academy of Management Journal, 64(3), 851-872.
• Ford, J. (2015). Perspectives on the evolving “business and peace” debate. Academy of ManagementPerspectives, 29(4), 451-460.
• Forrer, J. J., & Katsos, J. E. (2015). Business and peace in the buffer condition. Academy of Management Perspectives, 29(4), 438-450.
• Gallup Consulting, & Gallup. (2017). State of the Global Workplace. State of the Global Workplace. New York.
• Ganson, B., He, T. L., & Henisz, W. J. (2022). Business and peace: The impact of firm– stakeholder relational strategies on conflict risk. Academy of Management Review, 47(2), 259-281.
• Gillan, S. L. (2005). Corporate governance at the crossroads: A book of readings. Boston, Mass: McGraw-Hill.
• Husted, B., Ledley, F., Montiel, I, Brown, J. & Park, J. (2022). Health is everyone's business: Embodying business-health research," Special Issue Call for Papers, Business & Society.
• Lysova, E. I., Allan, B. A., Dik, B. J., Duffy, R. D., & Steger, M. F. (2019). Fostering meaningful work in organizations: A multi-level review and integration. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 110, 374-389.
• Martin, K., & Shilton, K. (2022). Business and the ethical implications of technology: Introduction to the symposium. In Business and the Ethical Implications of Technology (pp. 1-11). Springer, Cham.
• Montiel, I., Park, J., Husted, B., & Velez-Calle, A. (2022). Tracing the connections between international business and communicable diseases. Journal of International Business Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-022-00512-y
• Pandey, N., Andres, C., & Kumar, S. (2022). Mapping the corporate governance scholarship: Current state and future directions. Corporate Governance: An International Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12444
• Schinagl, S., & Shahim, A. (2020). What do we know about information security governance? “From the basement to the boardroom”: Towards digital security governance. Information & Computer. Security, 28(2), 261–292.
• Schinagl, S., Khapova, S., & Shahim, A. (2021). Tensions that hinder the implementation of digital security governance. In IFIP International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (430-445). Springer, Cham.
• Sinclair, R. R., Allen, T., Barber, L., Bergman, M., Britt, T., Butler, A., & Yuan, Z. (2020). Occupational health science in the time of COVID-19: Now more than ever. Occupational Health Science, 4(1–2), 1–22.
• Sundaramurthy, C., & Lewis, M. (2003). Control and collaboration : Paradoxes of governance. Academy of Management Review , 28(3), 397-415.
• Thompson, T. A., & Davis, G. F. (1997). The politics of corporate control and the future of shareholder activism in the United States. Corporate Governance: an international review, 5(3), 152-159.
• Van Bueren, E. M., Klijn, E. H., & Koppenjan, J. F. M. (2003). Dealing with wicked problems in networks: Analyzing an environmental debate from a network perspective. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 13(2), 193–212.
• Veltrop, D. B., Hermes, N., Postma, T. J. B. M., & de Haan, J. (2015). A Tale of Two Factions : Why and When. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 23(2), 145-160.
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