Marie-France Turcotte

The Paradox of Multistakeholder Collaborative Roundtables

This study examines the outcomes of a large-scale Multistakeholder Collaborative Roundtable (MCR) on environmental protection. The findings shed a considerably more realistic light on the concrete outcomes of MCRs than does the image portrayed by the literature and some practitioners. We observed that consensus was achieved, albeit on general principles only. Various types of learning did occur, but they were limited to networking competencies. Problem solving was detected, albeit in the form of incremental innovation only. Overall, the major result of the MCR studied was that it contributed “small wins” to its initial grand objective. The case illustrates the paradox of MCRs. It teaches us that we should be cautious about their real potential to help solve complex collective problems. Yet, it shows that MCRs do serve a useful purpose, that of giving direction to “metaproblems, ” a result that apparently can hardly be attained otherwise.

The legitimization of social entrepreneurship

Purpose - The paper aims to answer how important institutional actors, such as academic researchers, consulting firms, and foundations, are tracing the boundaries of social entrepreneurship (SE) and how they justify SE as a legitimate form of social purpose organization. Design/methodology/approach - The paper employs a discourse analysis methodology. Findings - The paper finds traces of the legitimacy issues in the literature on non-profits and, based on this, argue that a new institutional domain is being constructed. The paper concludes that in this new domain not only is the use of market-based initiatives seen as a legitimate means of funding a social mission, but also it has now become the normative way and one that is promoted by consultants and foundations concerned with social entrepreneurs and their initiatives. Originality/value - This paper highlights the developing norms of SE.

Path dependence and path creation: Framing the extra‐financial information market for a sustainable trajectory

Purpose - This paper aims to analyze so-called sustainability, corporate social responsibility or citizenship reports, as artefacts of a compromise between an institutional entrepreneur (IE), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and companies. Some companies take on this invitation but to which extent the information they produce as a result corresponds to the ideal promoted by the IE? Design/methodology/approach - A sample of ten reports from Canadian companies were analyzed using a combination of deductive and inductive coding techniques. The discourse and pictures were analyzed to identify whether they represent path creation (adherence to the sustainability ideal) or path dependence (the expression of traditional business interests and practices). Findings - The study findings show that companies adopt the sustainability reporting guideline and ideal promoted by IE, but only partially. Path dependence and path creation are in tension, a condition typical of innovative processes according to the actor network theory (ANT) framework. It suggests that the market for sustainability information is under construction. Originality/value - The value of the paper is that it examines voluntary disclosure of social and environmental performance by companies, using the notion of IE from the neo-institutionalist theory, as well as the innovation model from the ANT. The originality of the paper also lies in its methodology – particularly the use of a mixed method—including the composition of “poems” with “verses” extracted from the corporate reports.

Culture and Ethics Management Whistle-blowing and Internal Reporting within a NAFTA Country Context

This article examines the relation of culture to the propensity for, and potential effectiveness of, both internal reporting and whistle-blowing as ethics management tools within a North American context. Samples from a total of 10 regions in the US, Canada and Mexico increased the accuracy and meaningfulness of the findings. Hofstedes cultural dimensions uncertainty avoidance and power distance had the most consistent and significant relationship to propensity for both whistle-blowing and internal reporting, while collectivism was not found to be significantly related to either ethics management tool. Managers who better understand the cultural links to ethics management are more likely to craft the most effective organizational ethics strategies. Researchers can gain from increased insight, allowing departure from assumptions to an empirically based examination of how cultural dimensions might influence ethics management instruments.

With a Little (Urgent) Help From Our Friends Management Academic Leadership for a Sustainable Future

Welcome to our first Organization & Environment (O&E) Collaborative Guest Editorial! As O&E enters its second year of new directions and approaches, and in an effort to test the first of several innovative ideas suggested by our stakeholders, coeditors Alberto Aragon-Correa and Mark Starik have invited Professor Marie-France Turcotte of UQAM to join Mark in collaborating on this first O&E editorial of 2014. Marie-France, in general, contributes her decades-long interest and expertise in both sustainability management and collaboration to this effort and, specifically, offers several suggestions on one of this issue’s main subthemes—urgent academic sustainability management actions. Regarding that theme, actions to reverse a number of now-familiar but still critical unsustainability trends (Brown, 2011) appear to many of us, who have made careers in any of a wide array of sustainability-related professions, to be urgently needed. Earth’s human population continues to expand by more than 200,000 “new” individuals (net) each and every day, with nearly all of this increase occurring in developing countries. Global carbon emissions continue to grow by more than 2% each year, resulting in additional concentrations that, by the end of this decade, will be nearly 50% higher than preindustrial levels, triggering increases in sea levels, reductions of Arctic sea ice, and more violent weather events, among other negative environmental (and subsequent socioeconomic) effects. Differences in incomes within many countries, both developed and developing, have continued to increase, and a billion people still live in extreme poverty, with nearly all of them suffering from hunger and malnourishment. Human trafficking, illegal child labor, poor working conditions, and other social ills continue to contribute to an extremely low quality of life for millions of people worldwide. Rates of biodiversity loss are several orders of magnitude compared with their historical levels and do not appear to be decreasing with time. And, while some sustainability indicators, such as life span, infant mortality, and access to clean water, have shown positive signs in the recent past, many related to the sustainability factors of ocean acidification, desertification, deforestation, and worldwide violence do not. Numerous environmental and socioeconomic organizations, from the various entities within the United Nations, to a multitude of regional, national, and local public and private institutions, agencies, and programs have sounded these warnings for most of our adult lives, so much so that such lists have become, for some observers, little more than familiar litanies of worldwide bad news.

Characteristics of Companies Targeted by Social Proxies: An Empirical Analysis in the Context of the United States

We compare the traits of companies receiving social policy shareholder resolutions with those of a set of matching firms. We show that targeted firms tend to be much larger and riskier, less profitable and less socially performing than their counterparts. The five largest investors in firms receiving social proxies tend to hold a lower stake in those firms vis‐a‐vis the matching firms. Firms in both samples, however, are not statistically different in terms of percentages of shares held by institutional and insider investors. We provide possible explanations for our results.

Power and learning in managing a multi‐stakeholder organization: an initiative to reduce air pollution in Ontario, Canada, through trading carbon credits

The paper explores a case study of a multi‐party collaboration that used learning in an inter‐organizational context to address an environmental problem by experimenting with emission reduction credits trading. Learning was associated with politics: individual learning with non‐decision‐making or two‐dimensional power, while inter‐organizational learning with three‐dimensional power and the construction of hegemony, while strategic institutional learning occurred through the creation of obligatory passage points.

Lessons from a Broken Partnership

This chapter examines the outcomes of a Multistakeholders Collaborative Roundtable (MCR) in the context of environmental problems. The case studied is the multistakeholder initiative ARET (Accelerated Reduction/Elimination of Toxics), a voluntary non-regulatory program, which aims to achieve virtual elimination of emissions of 30 persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances (PBTs), and the reduction of another 87 toxic substance emissions to levels insufficient to cause harm. ARET grew out of a proposal from leading industry executives and environmentalists (The New Directions Group) to the Canadian Minister of Environment in late 1991.