Edited By: Ralf Barkemeyer, Dima Jamali, Stefan Markovic, Georges Samara
Online ISSN:2694-6424
Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal dedicated to business ethics and business and society research. The journal seeks original high-quality scholarship relating to Business Ethics, the Environment, and Social Responsibility. The range of contributions reflects the variety and scope of ethical, sustainability, and responsibility issues faced by business organizations worldwide. Of note, the journal seeks under-represented views and voices across the globe, with particular emphasis on high-quality scholarship contextualized in developing countries. BEER employs a comprehensive view of scholarship, drawing on a variety of methodologies and disciplinary perspectives, to advance knowledge, discourse and practice in relation to Business Ethics and Business-Society relations in the broadest sense.
Guest editors and contact information
Guglielmo Faldetta
Kore University of Enna, guglielmo.faldetta@unikore.it
Ignacio Ferrero Muñoz
University of Navarra, jiferrero@unav.es
Edoardo Mollona
University of Bologna, edoardo.mollona@unibo.it
Massimiliano Pellegrini
University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, massimiliano.pellegrini@uniroma2.it
Roberta Sferrazzo
Audencia Business School, rsferrazzo@audencia.com
Background and Motivation
Recent discussions of alternative forms of work organization (AFWO) are widespread among both academics and practitioners. New organizational designs for spatiotemporal flexible work practices are part of this change, especially due to the rise of networked digital information and communication technologies (Kingma, 2019). New ways of sharing work, managerial, and leadership tasks and responsibilities belong to this growing experimentation, for example through the adoption of a participatory model of management (Daudigeos et al., 2021), the holacracy model (Robertson, 2015), or ‘liberating leadership’ practices (Getz, 2009). Extant research conceptualizes AFWO and their business benefits both at the individual and organizational levels (Kingma, 2019). Moreover, organization and management scholars are exploring the potential benefits that may result from AFWO such as liberation management (Ramboarison-Lalao & Gannouini, 2019). AFWO have emerged from current societal challenges: digitalization, sustainability, and democratization of the workplace. These developments pose complex dilemmas for managers (Picard & Islam, 2020).
Despite the tensions they generate, AFWO are gaining ground in practice (Bardon et al., 2021). However, while a few investigations have explored how AFWO impact and are impacted by business ethics (BE) (Sferrazzo and Ruffini, 2021), significant gaps in the academic literature remain. For example, how a philosophical and ethical approach could nourish research on the treatment of workers working from home (vs. from their office) needs further exploration. Similarly, flexible workspaces enabled by digital network technologies could be analyzed from an ethical and philosophical perspective. Furthermore, this latter approach could also provide a new conceptual lens with regards to work, management, and leadership practices oriented towards sharing, participation, freedom, friendliness, and empowerment–all buzzwords associated with AFWO.
A special issue dedicated to applying a BE approach to AFWO could help to overcome some of the existing contradictions already identified in this emerging literature. Amidst the current studies which have highlighted the tensions embedded in AFWO, Mielly et al. (2022) have recently shed light on the contradictions resulting from the emphasis on the positive 2 aspects of AFWO on the one hand contrasted with the diffuse and persistent anxiety, fear, and other forms of subjective suffering deriving from AFWO’s implementation and promotion on the other hand.
BEER’s recent editorial (Jamali et al., 2021) emphasizes that there is scope for academics to clarify how business ethics matter. In this special issue, researchers could examine the challenges and issues for BE in AFWO by asking why, how, for whom or what purpose are BE important? Specifically, they could answer the following questions: How can AFWO be embedded in a BE logic? What philosophical and ethical foundations can inspire AFWO?
Scholars could undertake different research approaches to answer these questions. For instance, they could reflect upon the normative aspect or the philosophical foundations of AFWO, both in theory and in practice. They could pursue interdisciplinary approaches such as the following: continental philosophy (Bevan & Corvellec, 2007; Painter-Morland, 2010; Painter-Morland & Ten Bos, 2011); virtue ethics (Ferrero & Sison, 2014; Kaptein, 2017; Sison & Ferrero, 2015; Zollo et al., 2017); social and political philosophy (Heath et al., 2010; Pullen & Rhodes, 2014; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011; Whelan, 2012); a sociological perspective (Rodriguez-Lluesma et al., 2021); a feminist approach (Mandalakai & Fotaki, 2020) or a process-ontological perspective (Valentinov & Chia, 2022).
Adopting the lens of critical management studies, scholars could include in their reflections the debates concerning new forms of control in a post-bureaucratic and neo-normative scenario (Bardon, et al., 2021). These may include aspects of resistance (Courpasson et al., 2012); democracy (Johnson, 2006); participation (Daudigeos et al., 2021); well-being (Jenkins & Delbridge, 2013); authenticity (Fleming, 2009); work/life conflation (Land & Taylor, 2010; Maravelias, 2018); and proactivity (Ekman, 2014). These new forms of control could help create ‘enchanted’ workplaces (Endrissat et al., 2015), and give rise to a new management ideology (Chiapello & Fairclough, 2002; Islam & Sferrazzo, 2022).
Focused on AFWO and BE, this special issue may incorporate current research about business and leadership practices that enhance a humanistic workplace coupled with a sustainable business model. Topics could include human dignity (Islam, 2012; Sison et al., 2016); caring, compassion, and forgiveness (Elley-Brown & Pringle, 2021; Faldetta, 2022); meaningful work (Kim & Scheller-Wolf, 2019); gift-giving and gratuitousness (Baviera et al., 2016; Faldetta, 2011; Frémeaux & Michelson, 2011); authentic leadership or other ethical-based leadership (Ferrero et al., 2020). These topics could be useful to explain dynamics in the AFWO.
The guest editors would welcome contributions that clearly articulate their theoretical as well as practical implications of implementing business ethical approaches to AFWO. Suitable topics of interest may be related (but are not limited) to the following questions:
How can a business ethics approach help to overcome the tensions and ambivalent choices of post-bureaucratic and neo-normative forms of work organization?
How can human dignity be extensively promoted within AFWO?
How is it possible to foster meaningful work within AFWO?
Can a humanistic management perspective be implemented within AFWO?
What kinds of solutions could be implemented to deal with ethical dilemmas in leadership amidst AFWO?
What business ethics considerations arise when artificial intelligence and big data are associated with AFWO?
Can virtue ethics and practical wisdom be sources of inspiration for AFWO?
How can business ethics interact with the digital transformation of the workplace?
How can CSR, and more generally sustainability, be infused into AFWO?
What ethical dilemmas emerge in corporate political activity (i.e., work participation and democratization) applied to or in AFWO? How and to what extent may the concept of corporate political responsibility be the answer to these dilemmas?
This list of questions and issues is illustrative rather than exhaustive. The call is open to all types of papers, conceptual, theoretical, and empirical and to all research methods that support novel, rigorous and innovative academic analyses.
Contributions
Full papers are invited to be considered for publication in the journal’s special issue. Paper submissions should not exceed 8,000 words for theoretical papers and empirical studies and should follow the author guidelines.
Submitted papers should make clear their relevance to business, ethics, the environment, responsibility, management practice, and academic significance. We also welcome joint papers by academics and practitioners.
Submission Instructions
Authors should refer to the author guidelines for instructions on submitting to BEER: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14678608/homepage/forauthors.html
Questions about expectations, requirements, appropriateness of a topic, etc., should be directed to the guest editors of the special issue.
Submissions must be delivered via ScholarOne:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/beer
Select “Special Issues” and then “Alternative Forms of Work Organization and Business Ethics”
Submission deadline
31 October 2023
References
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