Chaos as opportunity

• Author: Ralf Barkemeyer,Jennifer S. A. Leigh,Georges Samara,Dima Jamali
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12327
• Published date: 01 January 2021

Business Ethics, Env & Resp. 2021;30:1–3. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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  1© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12327

EDITORIAL

Chaos as opportunity

1 | INTRODUCTION

To say 2020 has been unprece dented and ext remely chaotic is a n

understatement. Globally with the pandemic, we have experienced

revolutionary impacts on the economy, higher education, and the

importan ce of mental healt h awareness for bot h students and f ac-

ulty. For the journa l, we have experienced the addit ional disruption

from the unexp ected and sudde n suppression of ou r impact fact or

(see Jamali et al., 2 020). Also, we are well aw are that this year has

brought conside rable hardships , sorrows, and tr agedies for many

editorial team m embers and, no doubt, in m any of your lives as well.

As we bid farewell t o 2020, we take some moment s to reflect on the

past year's str ategic opportunit ies despite these mass ive challenges.

The most notab le is the evolution of BEER from a classi cal business

ethics journ al, to a journal that is broader in s cope, and in coverage,

and wider in reac h and impact, which has pro mpted us to move for-

ward with the cha nge of name of the journ al from Business Ethi cs:

A European Review, to Busin ess Ethics, Environment and Re sponsibility

(BEER). We elaborate mo re on the reasons b ehind the change an d

their implica tions in this Editorial. In tand em, we also reflect on the

amazing team ef fort that has mate rialized over this rece nt period,

including the e ngagement of our Associat e Editors, and our Editorial

Board, pulling t ogether as a real comm unity of schola rs, united

around a common v ision and purpose, namel y to restore BEER to its

standing as on e of the most respected jo urnals in the field. Fir st, we

provide a shor t review of our strategic unde rtakings.

2 | STRATEGIC IN ITIATIVES AND

CHANGES

This year was a year of int rospection a nd action. We bega n the

year reflecti ng on the trajec tory of BEER and too k this as an op-

portunit y to revise our Aims and Scope to alig n more with our as-

pirations and t he nature of the submissions that we re ceive. Now

our Aims and Scop e explicitly sign al the interdiscip linary, inclu-

sive, developme ntal characte r we aspire to with rega rd to both

the review proce ss, and dealing with subm issions in an empathetic

and developmental manner. We also emphasize that the journal is

open to receiving manuscripts that deal with different business

and society is sues, includin g, but not limited to, is sues of ethics,

the natural environment, fairness, internal and external social re-

sponsibility, sustainability, gender equality, and responsible gov-

ernance, among others.

We revitalized sever al awards, includ ing the traditi onal

Best Revie wer Award for the journal, the Be st Paper Award, and the

Lasting Imp act Paper Award. The Best Revi ewer Award is intended

to properly ack nowledge the ef forts of our com munity of review-

ers whose hidd en work fuels the pe er-review process and for t he

high-qualit y scholarship of our authors . We are thankful to ALL our

reviewers who con tribute to the qual ity of the paper s published in

the journal. Re lying on a rigorous profil e selection done in coll abora-

tion with our poo l of Associate Editors, we have bee n able to single

out eight of our bes t reviewers for the ye ar 2019. The 2019 Best

Reviewers cover all “cur ves” of the globe from the United K ingdom

to mainland Europe to Australia:

Ignacio J. Duran , ESADE, Spain

Zihan Liu, Swinburne Business School, Australia

Christof Miska , WU Vienna, Austria

Pablo Ruiz-Palomi no, Universit y of Castilla - La

Mancha, Spain

Cristina Sancha, ESADE, Spain

Melanie Steffens, University of Koblenz, Germany

Peter Stokes, De Mont fort University, UK

Qin Xin, Sun Yat-sen Business School, China

The Lasting I mpact Award recognizes the i mpact of one of BEER's

earliest edi tors, Jane Collier and h er co-author Rafael Es teban for their

2007 article titled, “Corporate social responsibility and employee com-

mitment,” which con tinues to be one of our m ost cited paper s. It is

an early attem pt to explore the link between C SR and employee mo-

tivation, thus setting the scene for more recent micro-CSR research.

We are sad to share that Ja ne Collier passed away in late 2019, so her

selection for this award holds additional meaning for the community.

And finally, the awa rd committee acknowledges t he more recent and

particularly impactful work by George Frynas and Camila Yamahaki for

their 2016 systemat ic review “Corporate social r esponsibility: Review

and roadmap of the oretical perspec tives.” The authors prov ide a great

overview of the C SR literature, s pell out the most s alient trends an d

patterns in ter ms of theoretica l lenses that have be en applied in this