IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04461114.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

“When money is more valuable than people…”: The pandemic as a call for business to care

Author

Listed:
  • Heidi Reed

    (Audencia Business School, Nantes)

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic created extreme conditions in which the need for care was overwhelming and led to competing stakeholder demands. What are society's expectations of business in such conditions, and how might these expectations challenge traditional understandings of the business in society relationship? Using a qualitative survey during the initial stages of the pandemic, the study draws on participants from the US public to identify what they viewed as responsible and irresponsible business behavior in response to the COVID‐19 crisis. Analysis reveals that participants' perceptions are strongly rooted in ethics of care reasoning. This reasoning exposes gaps in CSR and stakeholder theories around "who and what really counts", while offering a different conception of balancing business self‐interest with external demands. Drawing on this finding, the study joins scholarship highlighting the need for a political care movement and argues that untangling care from neoliberal capitalist logics would resolve many of the competing stakeholder demands and paradoxes that characterize grand challenges such as the COVID‐19 pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Heidi Reed, 2023. "“When money is more valuable than people…”: The pandemic as a call for business to care," Post-Print hal-04461114, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04461114
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.13080
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://audencia.hal.science/hal-04461114
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://audencia.hal.science/hal-04461114/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/gwao.13080?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCarthy, Lauren, 2017. "Empowering Women Through Corporate Social Responsibility: A Feminist Foucauldian Critique," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 603-631, October.
    2. Michael C. Jensen, 2010. "Value Maximization, Stakeholder Theory, and the Corporate Objective Function," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 22(1), pages 32-42, January.
    3. Gerard J. Tellis, 2017. "Interesting and impactful research: on phenomena, theory, and writing," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 1-6, January.
    4. Emmanouela Mandalaki & Noortje van Amsterdam & Ajnesh Prasad & Marianna Fotaki, 2022. "Caring about the unequal effects of the pandemic: What feminist theory, art, and activism can teach us," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 1224-1235, July.
    5. Leah Ruppanner & Xiao Tan & Andrea Carson & Shaun Ratcliff, 2021. "Emotional and financial health during COVID‐19: The role of housework, employment and childcare in Australia and the United States," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 1937-1955, September.
    6. Burton, Brian K. & Dunn, Craig P., 1996. "Feminist Ethics as Moral Grounding for Stakeholder Theory 1," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 133-147, April.
    7. Liedtka, Jeanne M., 1996. "Feminist Morality and Competitive Reality: A Role for an Ethic of Care?," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 179-200, April.
    8. Hedley Smyth, 2008. "The credibility gap in stakeholder management: ethics and evidence of relationship management," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(6), pages 633-643.
    9. Camilla Quental & Yuliya Shymko, 2021. "What life in favelas can teach us about the COVID‐19 pandemic and beyond: Lessons from Dona Josefa," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 768-782, March.
    10. Sergiy D. Dmytriyev & R. Edward Freeman & Jacob Hörisch, 2021. "The Relationship between Stakeholder Theory and Corporate Social Responsibility: Differences, Similarities, and Implications for Social Issues in Management," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(6), pages 1441-1470, September.
    11. Tobias Hahn & Frank Figge & Jonatan Pinkse & Lutz Preuss, 2018. "A Paradox Perspective on Corporate Sustainability: Descriptive, Instrumental, and Normative Aspects," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 235-248, March.
    12. Sara C. Motta, 2020. "F*** professionalism: Or why we cannot return to ‘normal’," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5), pages 868-871, September.
    13. A. Wren Montgomery & M. Tina Dacin, 2021. "Burning Down the House: COVID‐19 and Institutions," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(5), pages 1426-1430, July.
    14. Jane Fielding & Nigel Fielding & Graham Hughes, 2013. "Opening up open-ended survey data using qualitative software," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(6), pages 3261-3276, October.
    15. Aditya Jain & Stavroula Leka & Gerard Zwetsloot, 2011. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Psychosocial Risk Management in Europe," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 101(4), pages 619-633, July.
    16. Emmanouela Mandalaki & Marianna Fotaki, 2020. "The Bodies of the Commons: Towards a Relational Embodied Ethics of the Commons," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 166(4), pages 745-760, November.
    17. Banu Özkazanç‐Pan & Alison Pullen, 2020. "Gendered labour and work, even in pandemic times," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5), pages 675-676, September.
    18. Kate Grosser & Jeremy Moon, 2019. "CSR and Feminist Organization Studies: Towards an Integrated Theorization for the Analysis of Gender Issues," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 321-342, March.
    19. Timo Busch & Gunnar Friede, 2018. "The Robustness of the Corporate Social and Financial Performance Relation: A Second‐Order Meta‐Analysis," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 25(4), pages 583-608, July.
    20. Merja Lähdesmäki & Marjo Siltaoja & Laura J. Spence, 2019. "Stakeholder Salience for Small Businesses: A Social Proximity Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 373-385, August.
    21. Mary Phillips & Alice Willatt, 2020. "Embodiment, care and practice in a community kitchen," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 198-217, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heidi Reed, 2024. "“When money is more valuable than people…”: The pandemic as a call for business to care," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 435-455, March.
    2. Heidi Reed, 2022. "When the Right Thing to Do Is Also the Wrong Thing: Moral Sensemaking of Responsible Business Behavior During the COVID-19 Crisis," Post-Print hal-04531082, HAL.
    3. Layla Branicki & Senia Kalfa & Alison Pullen & Stephen Brammer, 2023. "Corporate Responses to Intimate Partner Violence," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(4), pages 657-677, November.
    4. Roya Derakhshan, 2022. "Building Projects on the Local Communities’ Planet: Studying Organizations’ Care-Giving Approaches," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(4), pages 721-740, February.
    5. Silke Machold & Pervaiz Ahmed & Stuart Farquhar, 2008. "Corporate Governance and Ethics: A Feminist Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 81(3), pages 665-678, September.
    6. Valentinov, Vladislav & Chia, Robert, 2022. "Stakeholder theory: A process‐ontological perspective," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 31(3), pages 762-776.
    7. Simone Carmine & Valentina De Marchi, 2023. "Reviewing Paradox Theory in Corporate Sustainability Toward a Systems Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 139-158, April.
    8. Valentinov, Vladislav, 2023. "Stakeholder theory: Toward a classical institutional economics perspective," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 188(1), pages 75-88.
    9. Danny Zhao‐Xiang Huang, 2022. "An integrated theory of the firm approach to environmental, social and governance performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1567-1598, April.
    10. Gerard Farias & Christine Farias & Isabella Krysa & Joel Harmon, 2020. "Sustainability Mindsets for Strategic Management: Lifting the Yoke of the Neo-Classical Economic Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-14, August.
    11. Melanie Richards, 2023. "When do Non-financial Goals Benefit Stakeholders? Theorizing on Care and Power in Family Firms," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(2), pages 333-351, May.
    12. Kate Grosser & Jeremy Moon, 2019. "CSR and Feminist Organization Studies: Towards an Integrated Theorization for the Analysis of Gender Issues," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 321-342, March.
    13. Jose-Luis Godos-Díez & Roberto Fernández-Gago & Laura Cabeza-García, 2015. "Business Education and Idealism as Determinants of Stakeholder Orientation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(2), pages 439-452, October.
    14. Wee Chan Au & Siân Stephens, 2023. "I Am Not Just a Nurse: The Need for a Boundaried Ethic of Care in the Context of Prolific Relationality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 186(3), pages 493-510, September.
    15. Kahloul, Ines & Sbai, Hicham & Grira, Jocelyn, 2022. "Does Corporate Social Responsibility reporting improve financial performance? The moderating role of board diversity and gender composition," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 305-314.
    16. Silvia Gherardi & Oliver Laasch, 2022. "Responsible Management-as-Practice: Mobilizing a Posthumanist Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(2), pages 269-281, November.
    17. Maximilian Focke, 2022. "Do sustainable institutional investors influence senior executive compensation structures according to their preferences? Empirical evidence from Europe," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(5), pages 1109-1121, September.
    18. Danilo Drago & Concetta Carnevale & Raffaele Gallo, 2019. "Do corporate social responsibility ratings affect credit default swap spreads?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(3), pages 644-652, May.
    19. Ben Lahouel, Béchir & Ben Zaied, Younes & Managi, Shunsuke & Taleb, Lotfi, 2022. "Re-thinking about U: The relevance of regime-switching model in the relationship between environmental corporate social responsibility and financial performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 498-519.
    20. Antonio Argandoña, 2011. "Beyond Contracts: Love in Firms," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 99(1), pages 77-85, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04461114. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.