The question of how multinational enterprises (MNEs) respond to local corporate social responsibility (CSR) expectations remains salient, also in the context of many African governments’ attempts to define and regulate business responsibilities. What determines whether MNEs respond to such local, state-driven expectations as congruent with their global commitment to CSR? Adopting an institutional logics perspective, we argue that a higher global CSR commitment will lead to higher local responsiveness when regulatory distance is low, but it will lead to lower local responsiveness when regulatory distance is high. We find support for our hypothesis using data on 93 MNEs’ responses to the South African state’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policy. We thus contribute to the global–local CSR literature and show how MNEs’ local CSR responsiveness will be shaped by not only the local context but also their home country and firm-internal environments.

What leads firms in South Africa (SA) to prefer specific CSR initiatives over others? The researchers analyzed secondary data from publicly available information of 231 listed firms on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. To determine national/institutional level preferences, ten CSR activities were identified among all firms and ranked in terms of their mean score of whether each firm participated in an activity or not. To determine industry/stakeholder influence, CSR activities were regressed against the firms’ industry. The preference for two CSR activities, education and training and enterprise development, are common across industries. This demonstrates the institutional effect of SA’s national Black economic empowerment (BEE) policy, which promotes such activities. Charitable donations, infrastructure provision, employee voluntarism and efforts in arts, culture and sports prevail in certain industries. The preferences of firms in the mining and construction industries stand out relative to other industries. Managers have to carefully select CSR activities that respond to various societal pressures. We show an example of management responses to pressures arising from both the national and industry level context. The study is the first to rank CSR activities of South African firms. We also reveal the promise of institutional theory to examine the phenomenon of CSR in the South African context.

PurposeThis article conceptualises how the economic well-being of an entrepreneurial household affects its members' mental accounting process to establish its affordable loss for a plunge decision.Design/methodology/approachThe article used research literature to analyze the resources available for entrepreneurial endeavours against a household's ability to maintain acceptable minimum material living standards, juxtaposing income and wealth against competing consumption and investment opportunities.FindingsMentally accounting for whether household resources can meet minimum material living standards is central to entrepreneurs' ability to raise affordable loss and decide to invest in a new venture. The article proposes that entrepreneurial households establish affordable loss by availing their money exceeding that required to maintain acceptable minimum material living standards. In low-income households, the author assumes that members are not employed and can thus avail their time (versus money) towards affordable loss.Originality/valueEconomic well-being introduces mental accounts of income and wealth and a hedonic reference outcome in the material living standards of households required to meet basic needs. The article introduces the tension entrepreneurial households face between using their income and wealth towards investing in a new business and maintaining their material living standards. It introduces the idea that a loss can be “affordable” according to an entrepreneurial household's ability to remain above its acceptable minimum material living standard. This view prompts scholars to consider a household unit of analysis and avoid assuming an entrepreneur makes the plunge decision in isolation.

Strong ecological values define the desire of individuals to exploit business opportunities in the circular economy. However, strong ecological values are unlikely to contribute to strong individual motivation when individuals sense that it is not feasible to exploit such opportunities. This chapter develops this argument conceptually using expectancy theory. Expectancy theory suggests that individuals derive their motivation from strong perceptions of both desirability and feasibility. Understanding an entrepreneur's motivation to participate in the circular economy is important for attempts at entrepreneurial development in this alternative economy. Policies as well as education and training programs must consider instilling the required ecological values in citizens as well as giving attention to technological, market, cultural, and regulatory constraints that render CE opportunities infeasible.

This paper contributes to the discourse about research methodology pedagogy towards the development of new scholarly researchers. Because students can better visualise causal effects within a single case, I propose that instructors, before moving onto to teach inferential statistics relying on impersonal numbers from many cases, use instead a case-oriented approach to emphasise the “case” as the basic pedagogic unit to scaffold the student’s learning of research methodology. A carefully chosen case can represent an instantiation of the same phenomenon that will eventually be used to demonstrate inferential statistics.  After all, for causal effects to show up at the population level, they must be operating within particular cases. I refer to this as an N-case approach. This approach locates various combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods on a continuum from exploratory to confirmatory research. This continuum can also be framed as one moving from the particular to the general. The single case allows students to grasp ideas about causal processes in a more direct manner than a survey can. Instructors can then build on single case insights to grasp similar ideas at a population level. My motivation for this approach is to turn away from a pedagogy where research methodology teaching begins with ideas set in quantitative approaches to understand causal processes occurring at a particular case level. I also believe that current research teaching ought to turn away from encouraging students to apply a research design according to their favoured identity along a qualitative-quantitative divide. Instead, the research problem should determine the required research design.