BEER Heterodoxies: A new section to trigger unorthodox voices and perspectives

Academic journals in the fields of business and ethics often publish similar pieces of research, not only in terms of research paradigms and theories, but also with regard to methodology, structure and writing style. This generally translates into a routine of publishing incremental contributions, and drifts away from revelatory research that is likely to be bold and daring, and thus able to shift mainstream narratives, paradigms or mindsets (Corley & Gioia, 2011). We know that what lies outside of academic conventions faces a high risk of being rejected, which limits creativity and the broadening of the horizons of knowledge. Why would an author with an unorthodox idea or viewpoint invest time in crafting a manuscript for a well-established journal if they know beforehand that it is likely to be rejected? Hence, it is evident that, despite their benefits related to the provision of a steady basis for knowledge generation and dissemination, academic conventions limit major leaps of knowledge creation by being over conservative and risk averse, and thus discourage authors from sharing dissenting ideas and insights. That is why we have decided to launch a new journal section, entitled BEER Heterodoxies, to complement our regular submission channel. Our new BEER Heterodoxies section is intended to highlight dissenting perspectives by welcoming unorthodox types of contributions in terms of paradigms, theories, methodology, structure and writing style, provided that they have a strong theoretical basis and that they present a compelling argumentation. Below, we provide more detail about this new section: Contributions published in BEER Heterodoxies revisit or theoretically discuss a problem or thought, with the aim of outlining accounts that depart from and challenge the axioms of established paradigms in the literatures related to business ethics, corporate responsibility and sustainability. Contributions may challenge a particular view, breaking with the agreed use or standard practice that prevails in a given community of thought. BEER Heterodoxies is a reflection space in which necessary debates are started, discussed, contested or restarted. Submissions to BEER Heterodoxies are subject to a double-blind review process. Authors should be informed that the Associate Editors and the reviewers dealing with BEER Heterodoxies are well aware of the Aims and Scope of this new section, and thus the risk of rejecting a paper on the grounds of not following academic conventions or being too unorthodox will be virtually non-existent. Thus, we encourage authors to be brave, to challenge existing knowledge grounds, and to break away from academic silos and traditional conventions. In short, we encourage them to pursue revelatory research that allows examining imaginatively and unconventionally a theory, a phenomenon, a research question or a research model (Corley & Gioia, 2011) and that opens doors for new ways of thinking and future avenues and unchartered grounds. Amongst the first authors who have published a paper in BEER Heterodoxies, we can find Claus Dierksmeier, R. Edward Freeman, Gordon G. Sollars, and Sandra Waddock. Below, we provide a brief summary of their contributions. Their papers are currently Free Access on BEER’s website, so please feel free to check them out, and maybe react to them with your own Heterodoxies piece? In their paper entitled “A puzzle about business ethics”, R. Edward Freeman and Gordon G. Sollars (2021) propose a thought experiment on ethical problems and dilemmas, questioning, inter alia, whether we need more complex business ethics theories and to read the latest issues of business ethics journals in order to create an ethical company. In particular, do we really need a “theory of the firm”? The authors argue that business ethics exist, partly because the core idea of business has been detached from a moral discourse. Likewise, they argue that the moral discourse of business has been detached from business practices. Moreover, they emphasize that those who deal with business ethics theories are often detached from the actual business practice. Interestingly, the authors also mention that Rawlsians, amongst others, “all agree that some version of a principle of responsibility gets ethics off the ground” (p. 289), which links us with the second BEER Heterodoxies paper where the author questions whether we should “drop Rawls”. In an ample response to BEER Heterodoxies’ call for exploring fundamental challenges to key concepts in business ethics, in his paper “Drop Rawls?”, Claus Dierksmeier (2021) takes issue with the historically high expectations around the potential of John Rawls' philosophy to be applied to business ethics contexts. The author not only invites us to significantly adjust these expectations, but also finds in the claim that “Rawls deprived himself of substantially supporting the ethical kernel of his practical philosophy” (p. 319) a compelling explanation for the limitations he himself identifies. Following this claim, the author makes reference to all levels of analysis (global, macro, meso, and micro)—an ambitious project that leaves little room for deeper engagement with the specific concerns of business ethics alluded to. Hence, Dierksmeier's argument should be read as a twofold invitation: to review specific Rawlsian applications to business ethics issues by probing the appropriateness of Rawls's ontological and methodological premises for each of the relevant contexts; and to re-claim, more broadly, the need for a Kantian ethics core as a preventive measure against the dangers of reducing ethical analysis to “a rational calculus of interests” (p. 319). Extant knowledge is far from having puzzled out the laws of heredity that drive the evolution of cultures, unlike their biological counterparts whose molecular mechanisms governing physical heredity are well known. This has not prevented, however, the conjecturing of a unit of cultural heredity, analogous to a gene, namely, a meme, which is defined by, for instance, the Merriam-Webster dictionary as: “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” In her piece “Transforming Economics Values towards Life: From Heterodoxy to Orthodoxy,” Sandra Waddock (2021) posits that: “One reason that neoliberalism has been so successful as an ideology is that it consists of a few simple and often repeated ideas, that is, memes or core units of culture” (p. 293). Then, unlike other economic heterodoxies that take issue with the scientific grounds of orthodox economics, the author explores a different path, aiming to build a number of alternative memes with the goal of offering the basis for “anyone to construct their own, culturally and contextually appropriate stories that remain true to the core logic” (p. 293). Thus, Sandra Waddock elaborates on the principles of connectedness, diversity, wholeness, and consciousness with the hope to inform memes that can confront the influence that neoliberalism and mainstream economic thinking have had on a cultural level in Western societies. We hope that these brief summaries have triggered your curiosity, and that you will read the full papers and take active steps to contribute to BEER Heterodoxies with your own dissenting work. Before moving to the next section, the Co-Editors-in-Chief would like to give credit to our Associate Editors Alejandro Agafonow, Matthias Hühn, Dirk Moosmayer and Cristina Neesham, who have played a central role in ideating and designing this new journal section. We are very thankful for their leadership and stewardship of this new section and recognize that the launch of BEER Heterodoxies would not have been possible without them. The above-presented first papers published in BEER Heterodoxies are great representatives of what we are looking for in this section. As you may observe, they are all quite different in terms of structure, writing style, approach, theme and scope – and that is what makes them unique and potentially impactful. They are also quite different with regard to the level of heterodoxy, which is also fine, as we are interested in both low and high heterodoxy levels. This is aligned with the freedom of expression and empowerment that we want to give to our authors through this new dedicated section. Whilst you might have expected that in this section of the editorial, we were going to provide some concrete topics or themes that you could write on for BEER Heterodoxies, sorry but we are not going to do it. In line with the nature of this new journal section, we do not want to limit, condition or influence your ideas and thoughts in any way, but want to give you freedom, empower you and, if we may, wake up the genius inside you. We promise that we will receive your work with an open mind and handle it with utmost professionalism and efficiency. Although we prefer not to suggest some concrete topics for BEER Heterodoxies to avoid biasing the free spirit and mind that lies within you, we do want to share with you our intentions with this new section, being completely transparent as usual. With the introduction of BEER Heterodoxies, we intend to open up and revitalize the fields of business ethics, corporate responsibility and sustainability, by bringing in new ideas, thoughts and perspectives that not only foster reflection but also open the doors for trail-blazing ideas in uncharted ground and future research possibilities. We envision the contributions to this section to be courageous, intriguing, unusual and critical in nature, hence questioning taken-for-granted ideas and assumptions. We expect that this will not only attract new readers and authors to the journal but also provide a space and home for contending and dissenting voices, new debates and arguments, and innovative and augmented knowledge generation.