Companies could develop eco-friendly products or support social programs, and meanwhile damage the environment or experiment governance failures. Corporate Social Responsibility is multidimensional. Often, though, responsible investors (and customers) are interested in synthetic rankings that sum up the ESG (Environmental, Social and corporate Governance) scores. Such composite scores raise fundamental questions which, surprisingly, are widely overlooked by academics and practitioners.
If the question of fungibility (“do good actions compensate bad ones?”) is essential and has been discussed in the literature, this article focuses on commensurability (the “apples and oranges” problem). For instance, Oil & Gas companies are mostly criticized on environmental issues, while corporate governance is the main stake for Banks. Overall ratings that sum equally environmental, social and corporate governance marks would not reflect the sectors’ concerns. One size does not fit all.
We develop a new method of CSR rating, based on news disclosed by the media and nongovernmental organizations. Thanks to the Covalence EthicalQuote database, we analyze more than 70,000 positive or negative ESG news, regarding the world’s largest companies. Our results suggest that rating agencies and previous academic research underweight the environment and corporate governance. Mostly, our method allows fitting the ratings to the sectors’ specific stakes. It can be used to assess Corporate Social Performance better.
The abstract for the paper:
Although the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is fundamentally multidimensional, most studies use composite scores to assess corporate social performance (CSP). How relevant are such composite scores? How the CSR dimensions are weighted? Should the weighting scheme be the same across sectors? This article proposes an original weighting scheme of CSR strengths and concerns, at the sector level, which is proportional to media and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) scrutiny. The authors show that previous CSP assessments underweight environmental and corporate governance concerns. Moreover, findings suggest that firms that are exposed to the closest scrutiny are usually criticized on one single dimension: for instance, banks for bad corporate governance, and basic-resource firms for environmental damage. Composite scores based on equal weights hence misrepresent CSP and the difference in CSR between sectors.
Gunther Capelle-Blancard (PhD, University of Paris 1) is professor of economics at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and research fellow at the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne and Labex RéFi (Regulation financière). His research examines socially responsible investment, corporate social performance, and financial market regulation. His articles have appeared in such journals as Business Ethics: A European Review, European Financial Management Journal, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Journal of Investing.
Aurélien Petit (PhD, University of Paris 1) is research fellow at the Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne. His research interests focus on corporate social responsibility and information disclosure strategies.
Business and Management INK puts the spotlight on research published in our more than 100 management and business journals. We feature an inside view of the research that’s being published in top-tier SAGE journals by the authors themselves.
This article addresses the pivotal question of what sets well-governed companies apart from those jeopardizing stakeholders’ wealth and well-being, and argues that the key to sustainability and effective governance lies in the presence of an enlightened chair.
Tatiana Bachkirova and Peter Jackson reflect on coaching and other factors that led to the publishing of their research article, “What do leaders really want to learn in a workplace? A study of the shifting agendas of leadership coaching,”
In this article, Juan Bogliaccini and Aldo Madariaga explore leftist governments in peripheral economics — the topic of their recently published article, […]
Thanks to a collaboration between the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), applications are now being accepted for […]
Solicitations are now being sought for the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, and in an unheralded […]
What are the three biggest challenges Australia faces in the next five to ten years? What role will the social sciences play in resolving these challenges? The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia asked these questions in a discussion paper earlier this year. The backdrop to this review is cuts to social science disciplines around the country, with teaching taking priority over research.
Social psychologist Felice Levine, who has served as executive director of the American Educational Research Association for more than 22 years, will step down in 2025.
Karine Morin, whose experience in the policy world spans health and health research, the physical sciences and equity, diversity, and inclusion, has been named the new president and CEO of Canada’s Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The award recognizes achievement in the social and behavioral sciences that advances understanding of pressing social issues. Deadline: September 16, 2024.
Sage (the parent of Social Science Space) and the Surviving Society podcast have launched a collaborative podcast series, Social Science for Social […]
The Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences has launched the Big Thinking Podcast, a show series that features leading researchers in the humanities and social sciences in conversation about the most important and interesting issues of our time.
In this month’s installment of The Evidence newsletter, journalist Josephine Lethbridge explores recent research into sexual violence prevention programs and interviews experts […]
The June 2024 installment of The Evidence newsletter puts post-war conflict resolution practices under the microscope – taking a closer look at how women are adversely affected by these peacebuilding exercises.
‘What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Irish Border?’ is a new book from Katy Hayward that applies social science to the existing issues and what they portend.
Brexit seems likely to extend the hostility of the UK immigration system to scholars from European Union countries — unless a significant change of migration politics and prevalent public attitudes towards immigration politics took place in the UK. There are no indications that the latter will happen anytime soon.
A new report from the Royal Society about the effects on Brexit on science in the United Kingdom has our peripatetic Daniel Nehring mulling the changes that will occur in higher education and academic productivity.
In this article, co-authors Jurgen Willems and Kenn Meyfroodt reflect on the inspiration behind their open-access article, “Group Research: Why are we […]
In this article, Jenna Adriana Maeve Barrett, Elina Jaakkola, Jonas Heller, and Elizabeth Christine Brüggen reflect on the way that customers engage with certain brands and services.
Social psychologist Felice Levine, who has served as executive director of the American Educational Research Association for more than 22 years, will step down in 2025.
Karine Morin, whose experience in the policy world spans health and health research, the physical sciences and equity, diversity, and inclusion, has been named the new president and CEO of Canada’s Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Political theorist and public intellectual Achille Mbembe, among the most read and cited scholars from the African continent, has been awarded the 2024 Holberg Prize.
The National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics seeks nominations for members of an ad hoc consensus study panel — sponsored by the U.S. Census Bureau — to review and evaluate the quality of the 2020 Census.
In this month’s installment of The Evidence newsletter, journalist Josephine Lethbridge explores recent research into sexual violence prevention programs and interviews experts […]
It is estimated that all journals, irrespective of discipline, experience a steeply rising number of fake paper submissions. Currently, the rate is about 2 percent. That may sound small. But, given the large and growing amount of scholarly publications it means that a lot of fake papers are published. Each of these can seriously damage patients, society or nature when applied in practice.
The retraction of academic papers often functions as an indictment against a researcher’s reputation. Tim Kersjes argues that for retractions to function as an effective corrective to the scholarly record, they need shed this punitive reputation.
You’ve likely heard the hype around artificial intelligence, or AI, but do you find ChatGPT genuinely useful in your professional life? A free course offered by Sage Campus could change all th
The retraction of academic papers often functions as an indictment against a researcher’s reputation. Tim Kersjes argues that for retractions to function as an effective corrective to the scholarly record, they need shed this punitive reputation.
The authors describe how by chance they learned how some actors have added extra references, invisible in the text but present in the articles’ metadata, when those unscrupulous actors submitted the articles to scientific databases.
An article in the journal Psychological Science, “The New Statistics: Why and How” by La Trobe University’s Geoff Cumming, has proved remarkably popular in the years since and is the third-most cited paper published in a Sage journal in 2013.
The conference will focus on three themes: Engagement and Communication, Policy, Funding and Recognition, and Infrastructures, Facilities and Tools. Experts from all […]
Information literacy is at the heart of fostering critical thinking skills, which are essential for questioning the status quo and developing informed […]
This year, the American Sociological Association (ASA) will be holding their 119th annual meeting with the theme “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of […]
Thanks to a collaboration between the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), applications are now being accepted for […]
What is the best strategy for finding someone missing in the wilderness? It’s complicated, but the method known as ‘Lost Person Behavior’ seems to offers some hope.
The President’s Management Agenda Learning Agenda: Public Participation & Community Engagement Evidence Challenge is dedicated to forming a strategic, evidence-based plan that federal agencies and external researchers can use to solve big problems.
Christopher Everett, outgoing student body president at the University of North Carolina, reflects on the role of student governance in the modern, and conflicted, university
Instead of adhering to a corporate model based on individual achievement, the authors argue that universities need to shift towards co-operative governance that fosters collaborative approaches to teaching and research
An article in the journal Psychological Science, “The New Statistics: Why and How” by La Trobe University’s Geoff Cumming, has proved remarkably popular in the years since and is the third-most cited paper published in a Sage journal in 2013.
Social sciences can also inform the design and creation of ethical frameworks and guidelines for AI development and for deployment into systems. Social scientists can contribute expertise: on data quality, equity, and reliability; on how bias manifests in AI algorithms and decision-making processes; on how AI technologies impact marginalized communities and exacerbate existing inequities; and on topics such as fairness, transparency, privacy, and accountability.
It is estimated that all journals, irrespective of discipline, experience a steeply rising number of fake paper submissions. Currently, the rate is about 2 percent. That may sound small. But, given the large and growing amount of scholarly publications it means that a lot of fake papers are published. Each of these can seriously damage patients, society or nature when applied in practice.
The new AI Disclosures Project seeks to create structures that both recognize the commercial enticements of AI while ensuring that issues of safety and equity are front and center in the decisions private actors make about AI deployment.
The retraction of academic papers often functions as an indictment against a researcher’s reputation. Tim Kersjes argues that for retractions to function as an effective corrective to the scholarly record, they need shed this punitive reputation.
The Accelerator For Innovation and Research Funding Experimentation (AFIRE) is a new tool dedicated to boosting and revitalizing the design, synthesis, and implementation of experiments through innovation and research funding.
Social psychologist Felice Levine, who has served as executive director of the American Educational Research Association for more than 22 years, will step down in 2025.
Karine Morin, whose experience in the policy world spans health and health research, the physical sciences and equity, diversity, and inclusion, has been named the new president and CEO of Canada’s Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The new AI Disclosures Project seeks to create structures that both recognize the commercial enticements of AI while ensuring that issues of safety and equity are front and center in the decisions private actors make about AI deployment.
An article in the journal Psychological Science, “The New Statistics: Why and How” by La Trobe University’s Geoff Cumming, has proved remarkably popular in the years since and is the third-most cited paper published in a Sage journal in 2013.
Christopher Everett, outgoing student body president at the University of North Carolina, reflects on the role of student governance in the modern, and conflicted, university
The upcoming UK General Election is often framed as ‘Rishi or Kier for PM.’ This is not, write the authors a textbook on UK politics, the questions being asked by actual Britons.
Yes, dad jokes can be fun. They play an important role in how we interact with our kids. But dad jokes may also help prepare them to handle embarrassment later in life.
What is the best strategy for finding someone missing in the wilderness? It’s complicated, but the method known as ‘Lost Person Behavior’ seems to offers some hope.
As he stands down from a two-year stint as the president of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences, or FABBS, Social Science Space took the opportunity to download a fraction of the experiences of cognitive psychologist Philip Rubin, especially his experiences connecting science and policy.
David Canter reviews his experience of filling in automated forms online for the same thing but getting very different answers, revealing the value systems built into these supposedly neutral processes.
The word censorship might bring to mind authoritarian regimes, book-banning, and restrictions on a free press, but Cory Clark, a behavioral scientist at […]
Overton spoke with Jonathan Breckon to learn about knowledge brokerage, influencing policy and the potential for technology and data to streamline the research-policy interface.
Social Science Space’s sister site, Methods Space, explored the broad topic of Social Good this past October, with guest Interviewee Dr. Benson Hong. Here Janet Salmons and him talk about the Academy of Management Perspectives journal article.
Thanks to a collaboration between the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), applications are now being accepted for […]
Funding for the U.S. National Science Foundation would fall by a half billion dollars in this fiscal year if a proposed budget the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee takes effect – the first cut to the agency’s budget in several years.
The U.S. National Science Foundation’s new Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT) program supports research, implementation, and educational projects for multidisciplinary, multi-sector teams
The negative consequences of relying too heavily on metrics to assess research quality are well known, potentially fostering practices harmful to scientific research such as p-hacking, salami science, or selective reporting. To address this systemic problem, Florian Naudet, and collegues present six principles for assessing scientists for hiring, promotion, and tenure.
Candace Jones, Mark Lorenzen, Jonathan Sapsed , eds.: The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 576 pp. $170.00, […]
Yes, dad jokes can be fun. They play an important role in how we interact with our kids. But dad jokes may also help prepare them to handle embarrassment later in life.
U.S. President Joseph Biden’s administration has laid down a marker buttressing the use of social and behavioral science in crafting policies for the federal government by releasing a 102-page Blueprint for the Use of Social and Behavioral Science to Advance Evidence-Based Policymaking.
The U.S. National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have teamed up present a 90-minute online session examining how to balance public access to federally funded research results with an equitable publishing environment.
Five organizations representing knowledge networks, research libraries, and publishing platforms joined the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences to review the present and the future of open access — in policy and in practice – in Canada
The retraction of academic papers often functions as an indictment against a researcher’s reputation. Tim Kersjes argues that for retractions to function as an effective corrective to the scholarly record, they need shed this punitive reputation.
Daniel Read argues that one way the late Daniel Kahneman stood apart from other researchers is that his work was driven by a desire not merely to contribute to a research field, but to create new fields.
As the U.S. Congress debates the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, a new paper in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences urges lawmakers to focus on provisions aimed at increasing the numbers of black and Latinx teachers.
To help in decisions surrounding the effects and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the the journal ‘Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences’ offers this collection of articles as a free resource.
Psychologist Susan Fiske was the founding editor of the journal Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. In trying to reach a lay audience with research findings that matter, she counsels stepping a bit outside your academic comfort zone.
SAGE Publishing — the parent of Social Science Space – will hold its Third Annual Critical Thinking Bootcamp on August 9. Leaning more and register here
On May 13, the American Academy of Political and Social Science hosted an online seminar, co-sponsored by SAGE Publishing, that featured presentations […]
On Friday, April 23rd, join the Population Association of America and the Association of Population Centers for a virtual congressional briefing. The […]
The author’s team is developing ways to connect policymakers with university-based researchers – and studying what happens when these academics become the trusted sources, rather than those with special interests who stand to gain financially from various initiatives.
The new AI Disclosures Project seeks to create structures that both recognize the commercial enticements of AI while ensuring that issues of safety and equity are front and center in the decisions private actors make about AI deployment.
The upcoming UK General Election is often framed as ‘Rishi or Kier for PM.’ This is not, write the authors a textbook on UK politics, the questions being asked by actual Britons.
Kaye Husbands Fealing, an economist who has done pioneering work in the “science of broadening participation,” has been named the new leader of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.
Annie Pilote, dean of the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies at the Université Laval, was named chair of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences at its 2023 virtual annual meeting last month. Members also elected Debra Thompson as a new director on the board.
The award recognizes achievement in the social and behavioral sciences that advances understanding of pressing social issues. Deadline: September 16, 2024.
Public interest attorney Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, will receive the 2024 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize from the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
To address racial and ethnic inequalities in the U.S. criminal justice system, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine just released “Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice and Policy.”
The ECPR-IPSA World of Political Science Survey 2023 assesses political science scholar’s viewpoints on the global status of the discipline and the challenges it faces, specifically targeting the phenomena of cancel culture, self-censorship and threats to academic freedom of expression.
The social and behavioral sciences supply evidence-based research that enables us to make sense of the shifting online landscape pertaining to mental health. We’ll explore three freely accessible articles (listed below) that give us a fuller picture on how TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and online forums affect mental health.
With research-based evidence increasingly being seen in policy, we should acknowledge that there are risks that the research or ‘evidence’ used isn’t suitable or can be accidentally misused for a variety of reasons.
Over a 10-year period Carol Tenopir of DataONE and her team conducted a global survey of scientists, managers and government workers involved in broad environmental science activities about their willingness to share data and their opinion of the resources available to do so (Tenopir et al., 2011, 2015, 2018, 2020). Comparing the responses over that time shows a general increase in the willingness to share data (and thus engage in Open Science).
Yes, dad jokes can be fun. They play an important role in how we interact with our kids. But dad jokes may also help prepare them to handle embarrassment later in life.
David Canter rues the way psychologists and other social scientists too often emasculate important questions by forcing them into the straitjacket of limited scientific methods.
The double-blind review process, adopted by many publishers and funding agencies, plays a vital role in maintaining fairness and unbiasedness by concealing the identities of authors and reviewers. However, in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, a pressing question arises: can an author’s identity be deduced even from an anonymized paper (in cases where the authors do not advertise their submitted article on social media)?
The claim that academics hype their research is not news. The use of subjective or emotive words that glamorize, publicize, embellish or exaggerate results and promote the merits of studies has been noted for some time and has drawn criticism from researchers themselves. Some argue hyping practices have reached a level where objectivity has been replaced by sensationalism and manufactured excitement. By exaggerating the importance of findings, writers are seen to undermine the impartiality of science, fuel skepticism and alienate readers.
Jasper Knight identifies five key issues that underlie working with human subjects in research and which transcend institutional or disciplinary differences.
The Accelerator For Innovation and Research Funding Experimentation (AFIRE) is a new tool dedicated to boosting and revitalizing the design, synthesis, and implementation of experiments through innovation and research funding.
Learn from and engage with experienced librarians, behavioral scientists, and others at Sage’s fifth annual Critical Thinking Bootcamp, which is taking place on Tuesday, August 6
A new database houses more 250 different useful artificial intelligence applications that can help change the way researchers conduct social science research.
Yes, dad jokes can be fun. They play an important role in how we interact with our kids. But dad jokes may also help prepare them to handle embarrassment later in life.
Aiming to spur greater connections between the life and social sciences, Science magazine and NOMIS look to recognize young researchers through the NOMIS and Science Young Explorers Award.
Opinions on immigration are not set in stone, suggests Rob Ford – but they may be set in generations. Zeroing in on the experience of the United Kingdom since the end of World War II, Ford – a political scientist at the University of Manchester – explains how this generation’s ‘other’ becomes the next generation’s ‘neighbor.’
Economist Tavneet Suri discusses fieldwork she’s done in handing our cash directly to Kenyans in poor and rural parts of Kenya, and what the generally good news from that work may herald more broadly.
Sage used the opportunity of Responsible Business Management week 2024 to ask its authors, editors, and contacts what responsible management education means to them.
Tejendra Pherali, a professor of education, conflict and peace at University College London, researches the intersection of education and conflict around the world.
In the first post from a series of bulletins on public data that social and behavioral scientists might be interested in, Gary Price links to an analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The next in SAGE Publishing’s How to Get Published webinar series focuses on promoting your writing after publication. The free webinar is set for November 16 at 4 p.m. BT/11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT.
At a time when there are so many concerns being raised about always-on work cultures and our right to disconnect, email is the bane of many of our working lives.
The Accelerator For Innovation and Research Funding Experimentation (AFIRE) is a new tool dedicated to boosting and revitalizing the design, synthesis, and implementation of experiments through innovation and research funding.
A new database houses more 250 different useful artificial intelligence applications that can help change the way researchers conduct social science research.
Modern-day approaches to understanding the quality of research and the careers of researchers are often outdated and filled with inequalities. These approaches […]
This March, the Sage Politics team launches its first Politics Webinar Week. These webinars are free to access and will be delivered by contemporary politics experts —drawn from Sage’s team of authors and editors— who range from practitioners to instructors.
The U.S. National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have teamed up present a 90-minute online session examining how to balance public access to federally funded research results with an equitable publishing environment.
