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A Jun-zi oriented enterprise is one which acts like a Jun-zi or noble man, the behavioral standard upheld by Confucius and elaborated in the Analects, one of the most important if not the most important Confucius canons. According to the Analects, a large number of Jun-zi ethical principles have been identified, which can be distilled into five cardinal virtues: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and integrity, which form the components under our Jun-zi orientation construct. / Despite the fact that socially responsible corporate behavior and conscious capitalism have been advocated for more than three decades, we still witnessed numerous instances of corporate scandals both in the East and the West that caused unrecoverable damages to mankind and existing institutions. From the never ending product safety scares of Chinese products to the financial tsunami that has spread from the US to the rest of the world, we are constantly at the mercy of unscrupulous corporate executives who have few qualms about exploiting the system to the fullest extent for big profit. The doctrine of societal marketing orientation and corporate social responsibility has proven to be ineffective in preventing corporate catastrophes. A new paradigm is urgently needed to restore our confidence in business undertakings, without which trust cannot be re-established and order cannot be restored. To this end, we propose the concept ofa Jun-zi orientation that we believe could not only ensure decent corporate behavior, but would also enable a firm to stand out of its competitors in the marketplace. / On the face of it, our Jun-zi orientation construct is not significantly different from the existing societal marketing construct or the conscious capitalist ideology. However, in actuality, a Jun-zi oriented business differs from a promotional socially responsible (CSR) enterprise in a very fundamental way. For a promotional CSR company, responsible behavior is only a promotional instrument to ensure the survival of a firm and business profit, whereas for a Jun-zi oriented enterprise, responsible behavior is institutionalized. Hence, corporate social responsibility is embraced throughout a Jun-zi organization and affects all the policies it generates and not just used as a promotional means to generate short-term effects. / We believe that the Jun-zi concept propounded in the Analects can provide an alternative framework to help business managers not only run a more successful company, but also build a better society for humankind. Given the growing importance of China in international business, it also provides important insights for businesses operating in a Chinese culture context. In this research, we have developed a new scale that is psychometrically valid and reliable to measure Jun-zi orientation, and have empirically tested that Jun-zi orientation is positively associated with business performance. / Tian, Vane Ing. / Adviser: Ching Biu Tse. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-202). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; some appendixes include Chinese.

Unacceptably high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality affect the Global North and the Global South. Among many challenges, policy-makers and researchers cite concerns about quality of care, respectful maternity care, and implementation of evidence-based strategies and national guidelines at the frontlines of the health system. Informal payments are one concern that cut across these three challenges; they represent poor quality care; they are often experienced as disrespect by patients; and, health care worker demands for such payments by definition conflict with national policy. Social accountability and legal empowerment are two approaches that are increasingly used to address quality of care concerns in maternal health and poor implementation at the frontlines of the health system. This dissertation is comprised of three chapters (papers), all of which focus on these challenges in maternal health in low and middle income countries (LMICs). They apply concepts and methods from health policy and systems research (HPSR) to undertake theoretically-informed analyses that straddle two fields: (1) accountability, and, (2) global maternal health. The first chapter is a critical interpretive synthesis that summarizes the evidence base on the prevalence, drivers, and impact of informal payments in maternal health care; critically interrogates the paradigms that are used to describe informal payments; and, finally, synthesizes the policy and funding debates directly related to informal payments. The paper finds that though assessing the true prevalence of informal payments is difficult given measurement challenges, quantitative and qualitative studies have identified widespread informal payments in health care in many low and middle income countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Studies and conceptual papers identified both proximate, immediate drivers of informal payments, as well as broader systemic causes. These causes include norms of gift giving, health workforce scarcity, inadequate health systems financing, the extent of formal user fees, structural adjustment and the marketization of health care, and patient willingness to pay for better care. Similarly, there are both proximate and distal impacts, including on household finances, patient satisfaction and demand for health care, and provider morale. Despite the ground level relevance of informal payments, they are generally not adequately addressed in global policy frameworks and strategies, or in standard metrics of health system performance. Though this absence does not necessarily imply lack of financial or other attention to informal payments, it makes inattention more likely, and regardless, represents a notable silence. Informal payments have been studied and addressed from a variety of different perspectives, including anti-corruption, ethnographic and other in-depth qualitative approaches, and econometric modeling. Synthesizing data from these and other paradigms illustrates the value of an inter-disciplinary approach. Each lens adds value and has blind spots. These attributes in turn affect the solutions proposed. The paper concludes that the same tacit, hidden attributes that make informal payments hard to measure also make them hard to discuss and address. A multi-disciplinary health systems approach that leverages and integrates positivist, interpretivist, and constructivist tools of social science research can lead to better insight and policy critiques. The second chapter is a descriptive case study of a social accountability project seeking to decrease health provider demands that women make informal payments in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India. Women in UP are often asked to make informal payments for maternal health care services that the central or state government has mandated to be free. The chapter is a descriptive, contextualized case study of a social accountability project undertaken by SAHAYOG, an NGO based in UP. The study methods included document review; interviews and focus group discussions of program implementers, governmental stakeholders, and community activists; and participant observation in health facilities. The study found that SAHAYOG adapted their strategy over time to engender greater empowerment and satisfaction among program participants, as well as greater impact on the health system. Participants gained resources and agency; they learned about their entitlements, had access to mechanisms for complaints, and, despite risk of retaliation, many felt capable of demanding their rights in a variety of fora. However, only program participants seemed able to avoid making informal payments to the health sector; they largely were unable to effect this change for women in the community at large. Several features of the micro and macro context shaped the trajectory of SAHAYOG’s efforts, including caste dynamics, provider commitment to ending informal payments, the embeddedness of informal payments in the health system, human resource scarcity, the overlapping private interests of pharmaceutical companies and providers, and the level of regional development. Though changes were manifest in certain health facilities, as a group, providers did not necessarily embraced the notion of low caste, tribal, or Muslim women as citizens with entitlements, especially in the context of free government services for childbirth. SAHAYOG assumed a supremely difficult task. Project strategy changes may have made the task somewhat less difficult, but given the population making the rights claims and the rights they were claiming, widespread changes in demands for informal payments may require a much larger and stronger coalition. The third paper is an explanatory case study of a hybrid legal empowerment and social accountability effort led by the Mozambican NGO, Namati Moçambique. Established in 2013, Namati Moçambique runs a multi—pronged health paralegal and policy advocacy program that employs community paralegals as Health Advocates and trains Village Health Committees (VHCs). The study sought to uncover how the program affected the relationship between citizens and the health sector, how the health sector and citizens responded, and what role contextual factors played. The case study had two components: 1) a retrospective review of 24 cases 2) qualitative investigation of the Namati program and program context. The cases came from a total of 6 sites in 3 districts. Program implementers, clients, Village Health Committee (VHC) members, and health providers were interviewed or participated in focus groups as part of the research. The study found that though they are unable to address some deeply embedded national challenges, Health Advocates successfully solved a variety of cases affecting poor Mozambicans in both urban and rural areas. Health Advocates took a variety of steps to resolve these cases, some of which entailed interactions with multiple levels of the government. We identified three key mechanisms, or underlying processes of change that Namati’s work engendered, including: bolstered administrative capacity within the health sector, reduced transaction and political costs for health providers, and provider fear of administrative sanction. In addition to case resolution, stakeholders highlighted individual satisfaction at having one’s complaint remedied and individual empowerment among clients and Health Advocates as stemming from the project. Health Advocates and VHCs developed functional working relationships with providers, in part because they addressed issues that providers felt were important, and engendered community satisfaction with the Health Advocate, and ultimately, trust in the health system. The case resolution focus of legal empowerment brought procedural teeth, helping to ensure that new relationships result in immediate improvements, thus instigating a circle of relationship building and health system improvements.

Data are collected from twenty-nine corporations in Hong Kong, the Pearl River Delta, Beijing, and England. Concurring with the conceptual framework, competitiveness, legitimacy, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are identified as key motivations of CEB. Among these three motivations, CSR has the most obvious direct impact on CEB. Notably, attitudes toward CSR vary significantly among corporations, and CSR is critically linked to the extent of managerial engagement in CEB. With some corporations successfully linking CEB with competitive advantage, the findings clear the causal ambiguity between engagement in CEB and competitive advantage. Several strategies in terms of reputation building, productivity improvement, market positioning, and capability enhancement are identified. The study enriches theory development of the two divergent perspectives: (a) strategic management and (b) CSR by suggesting a theory of strategic management embracing CSR in building competitive advantage, and the latter affirming engagement of CEB in improving corporate financial performance. / Existing views on how corporations resolve environmental problems are polarized with one side seeing corporate environmental investment as a cost with an inherent trade-off between economic and environmental concerns; and the other side asserting the moral obligation for corporations to do so. This study adopts a holistic view to resolve the problem by proposing a conceptual framework of corporate environmental behavior (CEB) through the linking mechanism to synthesize the seemingly diverged views. / Croft Kan, Man Ping Lena. / "December 2006." / Adviser: Shige Makino. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-08, Section: A, page: 3457. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-279). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

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A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management specialising in Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation, Johannesburg, 2016 / Purpose Social investors are driven to sustainable investing for many different reasons: impact investors are concerned about the environment, social impact on the communities, as well as the sustainability and growth of their funds. Measuring that social impact can assist these organisations and fund managers to prove to their investors that their initiatives are benefiting the communities in which they operate. Measuring impact also helps social enterprises to evaluate their needs, aspirations, resources and incentives for their customers. It leads to improvement in performance, which often leads to job creation, survival and growth. This research evaluated and discussed impact investing industry in South Africa and focused on the effects or outcomes of the selected four major measurement metrics, namely: social impact, innovativeness, replicability and sustainability – for the fund managers. These measurement metrics were evaluated to ascertain if they would result in organisational performance/growth. Design, methodology and approach This is a survey based empirical study with 159 respondents who are players in the impact investing industries. A descriptive quantitative method was used to address the proposed relationships between measuring metrics and growth of the organisations. The instrument was checked for validity and for reliability: the variables were operationalised and measured against multi-dimensional scales. Analyses for the proposed relationships were measured using multiple regression and correlation analysis. Findings Results showed that impact organisations tend to grow more when they are transparent and accountable for their endeavours. Investors will increase funding to the fund managers who show in their reports how their objectives have been achieved. The study selected only four measurement metrics and tested how they affect growth of an organisation through increased funding. The results show that ii two metrics (social impact and sustainability) had a positive relationship with the growth of the organisation, meaning that the more the organisations report on the impact they are making in communities and the more they show how self-sustainable they are, the more the organisations showed signs of growth. The results also showed that when social organisations are innovative, they are able to replicate their projects into more communities. Research limitations and implications Main implications of this research are that fund managers will source more funds to grow their initiatives if they show transparency and accountability. If they report on how much social impact they are causing, how their initiatives have been innovative, how replicable they are and how self-sustaining the initiatives are, then impact investors will consider increasing their funding, resulting in growth. Contribution of study Impact investing industry is still new and requires more research to be conducted, especially in the South African context. Previous research has concentrated on definitions and on how to measure impact but not many have zoomed into the measurement metrics and analysed what they mean to the fund managers as well as to the investors. This research was conducted in order to cover that research gap. / GR2018

In this work I investigate how executive social connections and executive gender diversity dually affect firm Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a set of firm policies implemented to benefit the social, economic, and environmental welfare of all stakeholders, and how the changes in CSR driven by executive social connections and executive gender diversity in turn affect a range of corporate policies. This research adds to the social networks, gender, and CSR literature within finance in multiple ways. First, while much past work examines the impact on corporate policy of executive gender or executive social connections in isolation, no major work to date examines the impact of gender dependent executive social connections on corporate policy. Second, this work definitively ties the dual effects of executive gender diversity and social connections to firm CSR. The dual impact of social connections and gender diversity on CSR is shown to affect major corporate policies. In all, this work provides evidence that CSR helps drive important firm polices, including M&A and executive compensation policy, and that CSR is impacted by both a firm’s executive gender diversity and social network connections. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Bibliography: leaves 92-98. Considers the issue of achieving sustainable development in a society operating under the constraints of poverty, lack of environmental awareness and political instability.

Social controls influence the environmental performance of firms and require them to be more accountable for their environmental impacts. These controls include governmental interventions such as mandatory disclosure requirements, regulation and subsidisation, as well as less formal controls such as stakeholder opinion. This thesis examines the relative influence of environmental social controls on the acceptability of capital investment and provides insight into the perceptions of Australian managers concerning capital investment decision-making. An experiment is used to measure the relative influence of the four social control measures. This is supported by a survey to gauge firm size and industry influences and also a range of attributes of the controls on the capital investment decision. Experiment results suggest that the influence of stakeholder opinion on capital investment is very high and mandatory disclosure very low. The survey measured the influence of a range of indicators of each control and also firm size and industry effects. Firm size effects were weak while industry effects were much clearer and more consistent. A comparison of the influence of social control indicators and a range of financial and strategic indicators on the capital investment decision showed that the mainstream indicators had more influence. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The problems of unsustainable development and the increased-awareness of corporate power in the global era have contributed to an agenda of corporate citizenship. This thesis explores the meanings and practices that fall under the banner of the triple bottom line of corporate citizenship through forty-two in-depth interviews with representatives from the corporate sector and NGO sector (including trade unions) in Australia. This purposive sample includes a specific range of corporate industries and NGO types, all of which have involvement with various areas of sustainability. Interviewees described their feelings and experiences in relation to the concept of the triple bottom line, the potential and limitations of this type of sustainability and the purpose and impacts of partnerships between NGOs and the corporate sector. On the basis of this research, this thesis argues that corporate citizenship is at best, a set of initiatives for making minor adjustments to the way companies perform their day-to-day operations and at worst, a program for improving corporate image rather than performance and for shifting the agenda of sustainable development toward corporate interests. While radical steps are required to achieve a sustainable society and environment, the terms of corporate citizenship offer very limited opportunities for change. The self-regulatory and market based model of citizenship does not challenge the impact of consumerism or the legitimacy of particular industry types and their products, except where threats are perceived to the longevity of the companies involved. Furthermore, while the exploitation of the environment and society has occurred as a result of corporate self-interest, corporate citizenship is justified on the same basis. The self-interest rationale and the tyranny of the economic bottom line in particular, substantially limit the fields of responsibility that can be included in the citizenship paradigm. While there are undoubtedly some well-intentioned corporate representatives who are working toward attaining a more sustainable corporate culture, the discourse is primarily used to shift the sustainable development agenda toward corporate paradigms and interests.