Frank de Bakker | IESEG School of Management (original) (raw)

Papers by Frank de Bakker

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

Motivation crowding theory examines how external intervention may undermine intrinsic motivation.... more Motivation crowding theory examines how external intervention may undermine intrinsic motivation. Earlier research has shown that intrinsic motivation plays a decisive role in fostering environmental performance of households and consumers, but that external pressures may "crowd out" the intrinsic motivations. Similar patterns could be expected in business organizations. However, only a few studies consider crowding effects of financial incentives on businesses' intrinsic motivation to environmental responsibility, whereas none addresses the impact of external pressures from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and media, despite their prominent role. This study aims to address this gap by offering a mediation framework explaining how pressures from NGOs and media affect intrinsic motivation. Empirically, the paper adds to the scant empirical research by estimating a model on a sample of 4,364 enterprises from twelve European countries. We find that NGOs and media pressures increase financial benefits from environmental responsibility, which in turn crowd in intrinsic motivation in enterprises.

Business & Society

This short editorial note introduces the 60th volume of Business & Society. We are very excited t... more This short editorial note introduces the 60th volume of Business & Society. We are very excited to celebrate this milestone, which has been achieved only with the help and support of all of you-our contributors and readers. Sixty years ago, the journal began with a "Declaration of Interdependence" by a fairly small group of scholars. Today, we are privileged to work with a similarly dedicated, but expanded community of editors, associate editors, editorial board members, social media editors, production editor, authors, and reviewers who have made Business & Society one of the leading outlets for scholarly work in the broad domain of business and society. Our impact has increased considerably over decades of hard work, measured in "traditional" academic journal impact measures such as those published in the Journal Citation Reports and in online visibility and overall reputation for highquality scholarship. Perhaps more importantly, our geographic scope continues to expand, with the journal receiving manuscripts from more than 90 countries in the last 5 years. Over the course of our anniversary year, we plan to celebrate the journal's 60th volume in several ways. First, we have solicited short reflections from leading contributors to our field, whose contributions to the journal have been among the most cited, asking them to contemplate on the state of business and society scholarship from their perspective and discuss their predictions for the future of the field. Throughout the year, you will see some of these Business & Society Perspectives papers published in the journal-the first one by Archie Carroll will appear soon, with other scholars like John Mahon and Jennifer Griffin to follow. In the near future, we plan to have similar pieces written by other scholars who made significant contributions to the journal and the field. Second, earlier this year, we issued a "Six Decades of Business & Society: Looking Back, Looking Ahead" call for proposals for literature reviews. This is the first time we have solicited review papers for the journal, with the aim to publish reviews that reach beyond summarizing and integrating a particular stream of research to also identify emerging topics and invigorate future theory development. In terms of Breslin and Gatrell's (2020, p. 1) miners and prospectors continuum, we hope for these reviews to go in depth into "a bounded and established domain of study" and also to Editorial 979059B ASXXX10.

Sustainability

Organization & Environment

Strengthening sustainability in global supply chains requires producers, buyers, and nonprofit or... more Strengthening sustainability in global supply chains requires producers, buyers, and nonprofit organizations to collaborate in transformative cross-sector partnerships (CSPs). However, the role played by nature in such partnerships has been left largely unattended in literature on CSPs. This article shows how strategizing nature helps CSPs reach their transformative potential. Strategizing nature entails the progressive revealing and reconciling of temporal tensions between “plants, profits, and people.” We show how a CSP took a parallel approach—recognizing the divergent temporalities of plants, people, and profits as interlaced and mutually determined—toward realizing their objective of implementing living wages in a sub-Saharan African country’s the tea industry, simultaneously driven by the revitalization of tea plantations. The promise of better quality tea leaves allowed partners to take a “leap of faith” and to tackle pressing issues before the market would follow. Our findin...

Business & Society

After 5 years, our tenure as co-editors at Business & Society is coming to an end. At times the j... more After 5 years, our tenure as co-editors at Business & Society is coming to an end. At times the job seemed interminable, but now in retrospect, it is amazing how fast the time has passed. So it is with a sense of great satisfaction that we look back at the last 5 years since we assumed editorship of the journal in January 2015 1 and assess what the journal has accomplished during this time and what remains to be done. Generally speaking, these last 5 years represent good times for business and society scholarship. The number of articles published in our field has increased exponentially. Take the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). A recent review of the CSR literature from 1968 to 2018 found no articles with relevant search terms until 1973 (Barnett, Henriques, Husted, & Layrisse, 2019). In the 1990s, 65 articles were published, increasing to 831 articles in the 2000s. The present decade starting in 2010 has seen the publication of 5,314 CSR-related articles (Barnett et al., 2019)! The concerns that our field has embraced for decades (de Bakker, Groenewegen, & den Hond, 2005) have now become mainstream-both for business and scholarship. At the same time, these have been challenging years for management journals in general. First, the sheer number of submissions has risen dramatically as the welcome participation of scholars from around the world has increased. However, the challenge has been finding reviewers for all of these papers! The demands on reviewer time have increased so much that many journals now make decisions with just two reviews and editors are increasingly deskrejecting papers if they believe that papers will not pass muster with reviewers. The second challenge has been the increase in questionable research practices as business schools tie salary and promotion incentives to publishing in top journals (Honig, Lampel, Siegel, & Drnevich, 2014). Furthermore, concern has been raised about the narrowing of acceptable kinds of research and the ever decreasing relevance of such research for practice (Harley, 2019). Scholarship in business and society has not been exempt from these Editors' Insights

Business & Society

These days, major journals in business and management studies increasingly draw our attention to ... more These days, major journals in business and management studies increasingly draw our attention to "grand challenges" (Ferraro, Etzion, & Gehman, 2015; George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016) defined as "specific critical barrier(s) that, if removed, would help solve an important societal problem with a high likelihood of global impact through widespread implementation" (George et al., 2016, p. 1881). Often these challenges stretch beyond what was traditionally seen as the domain of business and management studies, incorporating attention for interactions between business and society on issues such as climate change (

Business & Society

Introducing and implementing corporate sustainability poses many challenges to business organizat... more Introducing and implementing corporate sustainability poses many challenges to business organizations. In this longitudinal, inductive study, we focus on how such challenges are handled in a Dutch bank that is developing its sustainability policies. We examine why there is such a high degree of tension and conflict within the organization and identify how the development of these policies is affected by the interplay between subcultures and institutional logics. We show how different subcultures affect the enactment of logics by infusing the rational and mindful behavior coming from logics with (sub)cultural values, beliefs, and assumptions. In turn, conflicting logics amplify subcultural characteristics between groups by shaping different behavior and practices. Together, this leads to a magnification of subcultural differences while, at the same time, logics are increasingly being perceived as incompatible.

Organ Stud, 2010

The Organization Studies Workshop is an annual activity, originally launched in June 2005, to fac... more The Organization Studies Workshop is an annual activity, originally launched in June 2005, to facilitate high-quality scholarship in organization studies. Its primary aim is to advance cutting-edge research on important topics in the field by bringing together a small and competitively selected group of scholars, who will have the opportunity to interact in depth and share insights in a stimulating and scenic environment. From 2010 on, the OS Workshop will be sponsored by Sage in order to help attracting talented scholars from ...

Business & Society

Social innovations are urgently needed as we confront complex social problems. As these social pr... more Social innovations are urgently needed as we confront complex social problems. As these social problems feature substantial interdependencies among multiple systems and actors, developing and implementing innovative solutions involve the re-negotiating of settled institutions or the building of new ones. In this introductory article, we introduce a stylized three-cycle model highlighting the institutional nature of social innovation efforts. The model conceptualizes social innovation processes as the product of agentic, relational, and situated dynamics in three interrelated cycles that operate at the micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis. The five papers included in this special issue address one or more of these cycles. We draw on these papers and the model to stimulate and offer guidance to future conversations on social innovations from an institutional theory perspective.

Research handbook of sustainability agency, 2021

Public outcry over environmental issues has taken on stellar proportions in the past few years. W... more Public outcry over environmental issues has taken on stellar proportions in the past few years. We currently witness an intense struggle over meaning around climate change between eco- nomic, political and civil society actors and it is not clear which narrative will win (Augenstein & Palzkill, 2016). Conceptualizations range from populist views of climate denialism (Brulle, 2014) to neoliberal views of technological progress and faith in the efficiency of capital markets (Ekins, 2000), and from idealist views of mobilization and the potential for positive disruptive change of the climate movement (Buttel, 2003; Della Porta & Parks, 2013) to critical realist apocalyptic views (Bendell, 2018, 2020) which call for deep adaptation to the probable (if not inevitable) breakdown of industrial consumer societies. All these narratives are advanced by a variety of social movement organizations (SMOs). Social movements, in brief, “are one of the principal social forms through which collectivities give voice to their grievances and concerns about the rights, welfare, and well-being of themselves and others by engaging in various types of collective action” (Snow, Soule & Kriesi, 2004: 3).
In this chapter we focus on such civil society actors and their agency for sustainable organ- izing because their influence has been significantly amplified over recent years, and these organizations increasingly attract scholarly interest across academic disciplines. Indeed, next to the growing attention in management and organization studies (den Hond & de Bakker, 2007; Soule & King, 2015; Yaziji & Doh, 2013), environmental sociologists have suggested that social movements and activism may be “the most fundamental pillars” of environmental reform (Buttel, 2003: 306). The links between social movements and climate concerns, for instance, are regularly studied (Caniglia, Brulle & Szasz, 2015; McAdam, 2017), attributing an important role to SMOs in shaping and influencing debates around climate change. Our focus on SMOs spans a variety of initiatives of collective action to advance environmental concerns, even though in practice many movements nowadays focus specifically on the grand challenge around climate change. Examples include Fridays for Future, 350.org, transition towns, buen vivir and Extinction Rebellion. In this chapter, we provide a subjective review of the organizational literature on sustainability SMOs, building on a set of articles about sustainability social movements over the past decade. To contextualize this overview, we first offer a brief overview of the SMO field more generally, which has developed in organizational analysis since the late 1990s.

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have deployed various strategies in motivating businesses to sourc... more Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have deployed various strategies in motivating businesses to source sustainably, such as the co-development and promotion of sustainability certification and direct collaboration in cross-sector partnerships (CSPs). This is an important current-day priority, given the ambitions set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and SDG 17 in particular. Increasingly, NPOs have taken up a role as conveners of such CSPs. Research on CSPs has, to date, often considered conveners as a 'resource' to the CSP, contributing to its effectiveness. In this study, we shift the focus towards the convener by considering a case of a 'mission-driven convener', an NPO that initiates CSPs as a strategy to realize its own sustainability objectives. Our explorative case study-comparing the NPO's efforts across six countries in setting up national coffee platforms-reviews the concept of a mission-driven convener vis-à-vis established notions on convening and identifies which strategies it applies to realize a CSP. These strategies comprise productively combining certification-driven efforts with CSPs, combining process and outcomes of CSPs, and drawing on cross-level dynamics derived from outsourcing of convening work to local actors. With our study, we contribute to research on CSP conveners by offering an alternative interpretation to the relation between the CSP and the convener, attributing more agency to the convener as a mission-driven organization. Strengthening our understanding of CSPs and conveners is an important means to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Academy of Management Discoveries, 2018

In the issue-selling literature, little attention has been paid to the struggles of those manager... more In the issue-selling literature, little attention has been paid to the struggles of those managers who try to sell social issues to potential issue buyers who are not particularly sensitive to the normative elements of these social issues. In this study, we examine the case of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and concomitant dynamics of selling social issues and address two interrelated questions. First, how do the sellers of social issues perceive themselves and their organizational roles, and how does this motivate them to engage in selling social issues in the first place? Second, how do these perceptions influence the strategies that issue sellers employ to win over skeptics? To answer these questions, we focus on the relationships that issue sellers build with buyers and on the role of this form of engagement in overcoming resistance to social issues. Our findings shed new light on the motivation, aspirations and strategies of issue sellers and suggest that a relational approach can provide important insights into understanding selling and buying social issues within organizational contexts. Furthermore, our findings pave the way for future research on selling social issues as a relational endeavor.

The Annual Review of Social Partnerships, 2012

Organ Environ, 2009

Jennifer Howard-grenville has written a sparkling account of how change toward new environmental ... more Jennifer Howard-grenville has written a sparkling account of how change toward new environmental practices takes place within a large high-technology firm: Chipco, an anonymous chip manufacturer. Rather than looking at all structural elements that are or should be in place and that are often attracting the attention in the corporate environmental management literature, she highlights the role of cultural processes within one company to understand its responses to environmental issues. The author defines culture as “the ...

An academic directory and search engine.

The Ecology of the New Economy: Sustainable Transformation of Global Informatio, 2002

Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2001

Keywords continuous improvement (CI) life-cycle management product stewardship Responsible Care s... more Keywords continuous improvement (CI) life-cycle management product stewardship Responsible Care stakeholders total quality management (TQM)

Economisch Statistische Berichten, Apr 15, 2010

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

Business & Society

Sustainability

Organization & Environment

Business & Society

Organ Stud, 2010

Business & Society

Research handbook of sustainability agency, 2021

Academy of Management Discoveries, 2018

The Annual Review of Social Partnerships, 2012

Organ Environ, 2009

An academic directory and search engine.

The Ecology of the New Economy: Sustainable Transformation of Global Informatio, 2002

Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2001

Economisch Statistische Berichten, Apr 15, 2010

In: Ryan Verstegen, L. & J. M. Logsdon (eds.). IABS 2005 Proceedings. Sixteenth Annual Conference... more In: Ryan Verstegen, L. & J. M. Logsdon (eds.). IABS 2005 Proceedings. Sixteenth Annual Conference. Sonoma Valley, California. March 31-April 3, 2005. 160–165.

This paper reports on comparative research on how textual representations of issues related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in corporate annual reports from Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands have changed over time. The results show a substantial increase on a number of topics that can be linked to the general CSR- discourse in the 2001 sample in comparison to the 1991 and 1981 samples. The rise in the CSR-discourse appears to be related to a drop in other discourses related to issues of social responsibility regarding the social, economic and political development of a company’s native country.