The theme for IABS 2025, Redesigning business for the common Good, invites us to examine how businesses can shift their practices to achieve more societal benefits that contribute to sustainability. In terms of making these shifts, it is ultimately actors within and around corporations, such as CEOs (Olkkonen & Morsing, 2023), owner-managers (Soundararajan et al., 2018), public relations officials (Coen & Vannoni, 2020), sustainability officers (Wickert & de Bakker, 2018), professional lobbyists (Tyllström & Murray, 2021), industry association representatives (Marques, 2017), politicians and bureaucrats (van den Broek, 2024), social activists (den Hond et al., 2014), and many others who are doing the work to push for these societal shifts—or sometimes to oppose them. While doing this ‘political work’, the individuals engaged in it can be exposed to ethical dilemmas and opportunities as they navigate an increasingly complex and personalized landscape of corporate politics.
In this workshop, we explore some of the pressing ethical dilemmas in political work that takes place in a business context. These dilemmas stem increasingly from polarizing societal challenges such as deglobalisation, inequality, climate change, sexual discrimination, and increased digitalisation (Swigart et al., 2020). More fundamentally, we work on topics to explore how these societal trends may challenge the ways that scholars have traditionally conceptualised the intersection between business and politics. As such, we aim to take the discussion beyond business outcomes and put focus on the direct and indirect implications of political work for the broader society (Rehbein et al., 2020). We also aim to uncover the potential for alternative ideas, voices, and activities that go beyond the narrow idea of the “corporate” (Girschik et al., 2021).
The workshop will, first, identify some of the ethical challenges that individuals engaged in political work (in or around organizations) may face. Second, we will discuss these political dilemmas in smaller groups, led by business & society scholars who are actively working on these topics in their research. By organizing this workshop, we aim to support the participants in developing ways to move the field forward by taking a more nuanced understanding of corporations as a context for a myriad of political activities and political roles.
Workshop structure
The workshop will be organized with an inclusive format, consisting of a debate, discussion tables, and a final wrap-up.
We will start the session by organizing a debate, where the table facilitators (listed below and divided into two teams for the debate) defend the following opposing statements:
- To be ethical, political work should aim for consensus and avoid contentious societal topics
- To be ethical, political work should aim for multiple views and take part in shaping contentious societal topics
Both teams (A and B) are instructed to make a provocative opening statement, and then react to others’ statements according to the position that they were assigned to. To include the audience, people in the room are asked to move in the room to express their agreement or disagreement with the statements—that is, to physically join the team whose statements they support.
After the debate, we divide the participants into smaller discussion tables, each addressing a more specific group/context for ethics and political work. The workshop participants choose which table to join based on their own interests. The topics for the discussion tables are:
1. Political work by shareholders and employees (facilitated by Kathleen Rehbein and Verena Girschik)
2. Political work by CEOs and boards (facilitated by Tazeeb Rajwani and Tanusree Jain)
3. Political work in SMEs (facilitated by Onna Malou van den Broek and tbc)
4. Political work by NGOs and lobbyists (facilitated by Frank de Bakker and Arno Kourula)
The facilitators will first help to connect the debate to the more specified context, after which the participants can reflect on their thoughts. While we keep the discussions open to questions and comments that emerge organically, we will also keep in mind some current societal developments around LGBTQAI+ movements, multiculturalism discourses, populism, modern slavery debates, territorial disputes and related armed conflicts, ecological imbalances, and post-truth objections. As the end result from the discussions, the participants will together craft three research questions that would deserve more research in the future.
The workshop will end with a wrap-up phase where we share the main points of discussion from each table.
The duration of the workshop is 90 minutes in total and it is divided to 40 minutes for the instructions and debate, 30 minutes for the discussion tables, and 20 minutes for the wrap-up. The overall facilitation and timekeeping is taken care by one of the organizers, Laura Olkkonen, whereas the rest of the organizers are in charge of running the individual tables.
Facilitators and short bios
Kathleen Rehbein is a Professor of Management at Marquette University in the US. Her research focusses on business/ government interactions, looking at which companies are most likely to be involved in the political arena and the regulatory sector, which companies are seeking corporate political access. This work has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Business & Society, and the Southern Economic Journal. More recently, she has been examining shareholder activism, specifically looking at the corporate responses to shareholder activists and understanding which corporations get targeted. She has served as the program chair and President of the International Association of Business and Society, and she is a former Co-Editor-in-Chief of Business & Society.
Verena Girschik is Associate Professor of Business and Society at Copenhagen Business School. Her research explores how companies negotiate their social responsibilities in the context of complex societal problems and humanitarian crises. She is passionate about conducting in-depth qualitative studies that dive into novel phenomena, especially in the areas of employee activism and business-humanitarian collaboration. Her research has been published in Business & Society, Journal of Management Studies, and Human Relations, among others. She is currently serving as Associate Editor for Business and Society.
Tazeeb Rajwani is a Professor of International Business and Strategy at the University of Surrey, UK. His work focusses on topics of strategic management, political risk, nonmarket strategy, corporate political activity, sustainability, and business model innovation. He has published in journals such as Organization Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management Perspectives, Global Strategy Journal, International Business Review, Management International Review, Strategic Organization, British Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of International Management. He is an Associate editor of Journal of International Management and Co-Editor-in Chief of Multinational Business Review. He serves on the editorial board of Journal of Management Studies, British Journal Management, Journal of World Business, Long Range Planning and Journal of Business Research.
Tanusree Jain (PhD, ESADE Business School) is a Associate Professor of Corporate Sustainability at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark. Her multi-disciplinary research lies in the fields of corporate governance and corporate responsibility and irresponsibility. Her work is published in academic outlets such as the Journal of Management, Journal of World Business, Journal of Business Ethics, Corporate Governance: An International Review, and Business & Society, among others including reputed practitioner outlets such as the California Management Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. Her research has also been featured in mainstream media outlets such as The Irish Times, The Observer, and New Zealand Herald along with interviews on the BBC, New Zealand National Radio, Financial Times, and the Business Post. She is a senior editor at the Journal of Business Ethics and Corporate Governance: An International Review.
Onna Malou van den Broek is a Lecturer in Sustainable Business and Politics at the University of Exeter, and a Marie Curie Skłodowska Research Fellow at Copenhagen Business School. She finished her PhD, which won that year’s outstanding thesis award, at King’s College London (UK) in 2022 on the political economy of corporate sustainability. Her work explores the interface of business, politics, and sustainability, and in particular how corporations discursively interpret, influence, and diffuse rules around sustainability, and how this impacts institutional contexts. Her work has been published, amongst others, in Journal of Management Studies, International Studies Quarterly, and Business and Politics, where she won the best paper award (“David Baron Prize”) in 2019. She is the current social media editor at Journal of Business Ethics.
Frank de Bakker is a Professor of Business and Society at IESEG school of management in Lille, France. He is coordinating ICOR, the IÉSEG Center for Organizational Responsibility. In his research he combines insights from institutional theory, social movement studies and stakeholder engagement to examine interactions between activist groups and business corporations on issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR). He also studies corporations’ responses to such interactions, examining corporate political activity (CPA) and the role of sustainability managers within corporations. His research appeared in journals like Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management Journal, Business & Society, Organization Studies, Journal of Business Ethics and many others. He serves on the editorial boards of Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Organization & Environment and Business Strategy and the Environment, and is a former Co-Editor-in-Chief of Business & Society.
Arno Kourula is a Professor of Business & Society at University of Amsterdam Business School. He is the Chair of Strategy and International Business Section and Director of Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability. His research interests include cross-sector interaction, sustainability partnership and alliances, business-civil society relations, corporate responsibility regulation, and political roles of corporations. His work has been published in journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Organization Studies, Human Relations and Business & Society. He serves as a section editor for the Journal of Business Ethics and is a Member of the Editorial Board at Business & Society.
Laura Olkkonen is an Associate Professor of Sustainable Business at LUT University (Business School), Finland. Her work combines perspectives from management studies, communication science, and political science. Her current research focuses on companies’ public engagement in socio-political debate and companies’ political positioning through communication. Her research has been published in journals such as Business & Society, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Journal of Media Ethics. Besides her research, she is a Team Leader at LUT Business School for Sustainable Business, and the local coordinator for Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME, United Nations).
References
Coen, D., & Vannoni, M. (2020). The strategic management of government affairs in Brussels. Business & Society, 59, 612–641.
den Hond, F., Rehbein, K. A., de Bakker, F. G. A., & Kooijmans-van Lankveld, H. (2014). Playing on two chessboards: Reputation effects between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA). Journal of Management Studies, 51(5), 790– 813.
Girschik, V., Svystunova, L., & Lysova, E. I. (2022). Transforming corporate social responsibilities: Toward an intellectual activist research agenda for micro-CSR research. Human Relations, 75(1), 3–32.
Marques, J. C. (2017). Industry business associations: self-interested or socially conscious? Journal of Business Ethics, 143, 733–751.
Olkkonen, L., & Morsing, M. (2023). A processual model of CEO activism: Activities, frames, and phases. Business & Society, 62(3), 646–694.
Rehbein, K., Leonel, R., den Hond, F., & de Bakker, F. G. A. (2020). How do firms that are changing the world engage politically? Rutgers Business Review, 5(2), 203–225.
Swigart, K. L., Anantharaman, A., Williamson, J. A., & Grandey, A. A. (2020). Working while Liberal/Conservative: A review of political ideology in organizations. Journal of Management, 46(6), 1063–1091.
Soundararajan, V., Spence, L. J., & Rees, C. (2018). Small business and social irresponsibility in developing countries: Working conditions and “evasion” institutional work. Business & Society, 57(7), 1301–1336.
Tyllström, A., & Murray, J. (2021). Lobbying the client: The role of policy intermediaries in corporate political activity. Organization Studies, 42(6), 971–991.
van den Broek, O. M. (2024). How political actors co‐construct CSR and its effect on firms’ political access: A discursive institutionalist view. Journal of Management Studies, 61(2), 595–626.
Wickert, C., & de Bakker, F. G. A. (2018). Pitching for social change: Toward a relational approach to selling and buying social issues. Academy of Management Discoveries, 4(1), 50– 73.
