Dear Colleagues,

Ethical values and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have become two drivers of modern consumers’ buying processes, with a strong effect on both b2b and b2c behaviors. Consumers increasingly ask companies to align their strategies, their marketing policies and, in general, their activities to the same value set that consumers have. The behavior of ethical consumers has a long research tradition (Webb and Mohr, 1998; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001; De Pelsmacker et al. 2005; Del Mar Garcia de los Salmones et al. 2005) with several articles published in recent decades in academic journals that have tried to identify how and when consumers react to business ethics (BE) and CSR (Groza et al. 2011; Marín et al. 2016; Aramburu and Pescador, 2019; Iglesias et al. 2019).

Several studies have focused on the effect of ethical corporate activities on consumers’ perception, if they stimulate consumer loyalty and if consumers increase their willingness to pay a premium price for these companies’ products/services (Nyilasy et al. 2014; Kim, 2019; Bhattacharya et al. 2021).

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to understand how companies can act to address necessary social innovation processes (Le Ber and Brenzei, 2010; Herrera, 2015; Santoro et al. 2018; Oeij et al. 2019), and how these activities will be able to create corporate association (Brown and Dacin, 1997; Ellen et al. 2006; Bocean et al. 2018).

Therefore, there is a need to shed light—before, during and after a pandemic crisis in developed and emerging contexts—on the complex relationship between companies and their stakeholders. This Special Issue aims at providing insights and tools to help management scholars, as well as executives of SMEs, emerging market SMEs, MNEs and emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs), navigate the new field of the relationships between companies and their stakeholders in the afterlight of the COVID-19 global crisis. This Special Issue seeks contributions that will help to further develop stakeholder theory to take into account the new “social” business role, driving companies to change their organizational models, and to help understand business evolutions as a way to assist managers in adjusting and aligning their decision-making processes. Papers considered for this Special Issue must address a real-world CSR question before, during and/or after the COVID-19 crisis, with particular regard to scientific and/or managerial perspectives. The Special Issue will accept both purely theoretical papers (e.g., systematic literature reviews, qualitative meta-analysis review) and empirical papers that contribute to theory using any methodological approach (e.g., time-lag studies, longitudinal studies, surveys, cross-national comparative studies, case studies).

This Special Issue is seeking unpublished, high-quality empirical or theoretical research papers on, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Business ethics and ethical consumerism;
• CSR marketing and communication activities and consumer satisfaction;
• CSR initiatives and stakeholder engagement;
• Stakeholder networking strategies and new organizational models of change;
• CSR and business model evolutions;
• Social open innovation and sustainable business performance;
• Implementation of organizational models and sustainable business performance;
• The environment, social aspects, 17 SDGs and sustainable business performance;
• Environmental policy and sustainable business growth;
• Sustainable development goals and new governance models;
• Adoption of CSR activities in developed and emerging economies;
• CSR and the bottom of the pyramid approach.

Prof. Dr. Gianpaolo Basile
Prof. Dr. Mario Tani
Prof. Dr. Isabella Bonacci
Dr. Mohamed Hani Gheith
Guest Editors

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• corporate social responsibility
• ethical consumer values
• stakeholder engagement
• social innovation
• business model
• organizational change
• great reset