In this editorial to the autumn edition of BEQ, we celebrate the contributions made to the journal during the previous year, following up on our reports to the Society for Business Ethics annual conference. The quality of any scholarly journal depends on the contributions of everybody involved: readers, authors, reviewers, associate editors, and those individuals involved in the largely invisible work associated with managing the various processes from submission of a new manuscript to its appearance in print. We cannot emphasize enough how much we appreciate the time and effort—often on a voluntary basis—dedicated by all involved to maintaining BEQ as an outstanding journal in the field of business ethics. It is in this spirit that, every year, BEQ hands out two awards. We warmly congratulate the recipients of the awards for Outstanding Reviewer and Outstanding Article.
Outstanding Reviewer Award
Our recognition of the importance of reviewers for the journal is reflected in the annual award for an outstanding reviewer for BEQ. This year, we decided to put Robbin Derry, Lethbridge, in the spotlight.
The process of selecting an outstanding reviewer starts by soliciting nominations from the associate editors. In the process, various criteria play a role, such as frequency of reviewing, quality of review reports, and timeliness in returning review reports—without these criteria being reduced to a simple calculus. It is the editors’ privilege, then, to honor one of the many individuals who review for the journal with the Outstanding Reviewer Award. We believe that Robbin has excelled as a reviewer for BEQ over many years of service.
Handing out this award is also an opportunity to remind ourselves of what makes an outstanding reviewer. Reviewing is in many ways a juggling act that an outstanding reviewer masters. The invitation to review a particular manuscript always arrives at one’s desk when other pressing priorities are calling for attention; to accept an invitation to review thus implies a sacrifice of time and energy that otherwise would have been dedicated to teaching, writing, reading, or other activities that spice up and give meaning to one’s private life. A good reviewer is aware of this situation; such a person is altruistic and enjoys the opportunity to learn of a novel piece of research and to help advance its authors with their project. As, unfortunately, reviewing is not (yet) an activity that gets much recognition or weight in terms of advancing one’s career in academia, committing to do a review—and responding quickly to the invitation—is all the more highly appreciated.
To be an outstanding reviewer, one has to be fast (to attest, Robbin returns reviews within thirty-four days on average, well in advance of the actual deadline). Outstanding reviewers are also highly accurate, detail oriented, and critical, yet constructive (to attest, Robbin always offers the authors suggestions on clarifying sentences and improving the structure of the argument, without being pedantic). Robbin has served our community with a combination of rigor and humbleness, always being careful not to dictate but rather to nurture and support, even when recommending that a manuscript be returned to its author.
Reviewers who really help to improve a manuscript are also generous but fair. One can see Robbin’s generosity in how much time she spends reading and rereading manuscripts, offering constructive advice on how to make arguments and contributions stronger and focusing on making a paper’s contribution meaningful to both theory and practice.
When all is said and done, being an outstanding reviewer means being a loyal member of a team that wants to get the best possible manuscript over the finishing line. Outstanding reviewers are not the author’s adversary; instead, they are there to support the author—and the acting editor!—in pursuing a high-quality scholarly contribution. Reviewers are indispensable to improving and strengthening the business ethics community through excellent scholarship. Robbin receives this year’s Outstanding Reviewer Award for her impressive mastering of all the juggling that comes with reviewing.
Outstanding Article Reward
Whereas who merits the award for Outstanding Reviewer is left to the discretion of the journal’s editors, they have no say in nominating and selecting that single article, published in the previous volume of BEQ, that stands out among all the published articles. The selection procedure is as follows. The journal’s associate editors nominate their candidates for the Outstanding Article Award. The editors invite three individuals—typically from among the associate editors and members of the editorial board—to serve as the jury to select the winner, as well as one or two runners-up for the Outstanding Article Award. This year, Daniel Arenas, Vikram Bhargava, and Niki den Nieuwenboer kindly agreed to join the jury.
The jury considered four criteria in their decision-making, with an emphasis on the first and the last criteria. The article to be awarded had to be outstanding in terms of 1) novelty (timeliness, creativity, surprise), 2) rigor (in reasoning and argumentation), 3) flow (presentation for the interested, but perhaps uninformed, reader), and 4) being worthy of celebration (some quality in the article that “we’re happy to hold up for wide notice,” as the jury formulated it).
The jury honored “Relationships, Authority, and Reasons: A Second-Personal Account of Corporate Moral Agency,” written by Alan D. Morrison, Rita Mota, and William J. Wilhelm (BEQ 32 [2]: 322–47), with the BEQ Outstanding Article Award.
The jury motivated their choice as follows:
Many think we should hold corporations—over-and-above the individuals that make up the corporation—responsible for wrongdoing. But does it make sense to think of corporations as morally responsible? The corporate moral agency and group responsibility question is a long-standing debate in business ethics—importantly, the Society for Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly have been the home for much of the most important conversations in this debate.
We think this is an outstanding article because it manages to do something rare: it intervenes in a well-trodden debate, one where seemingly the entirety of the theoretical space has already been excavated, yet it also contributes something new and thought provoking. In their contribution, the authors build on the immensely important work of leading moral philosopher Stephen Darwall to suggest that progress in the debate requires a shift in perspective—toward a second-personal stance. Furthermore, the article brings to life the deep and difficult theoretical issues using rich and illuminating examples. This article is a sterling representative of high-quality philosophical business ethics research that cuts to the heart of a long-standing debate and that manages to do so without losing sight of practical stakes.
This article is also testimony to the fruitful conversations that may be had when the thought of moral philosophers who are less prominent or even entirely unknown in the business ethics conversation is included in our deliberations. Both analytic and Continental philosophy offer rich resources for deepening our insights and improving the rigor of our debates. This year’s winning article is an excellent example of what is possible if we expand our range of philosophical resources. We may also remind ourselves that the thought and models of anthropological, political, and sociological authors, to name but a few disciplines, may be fruitfully employed in sharpening our conceptual apparatus.
The jury honorably mentioned two more articles, namely, “Why a Right to an Explanation of Algorithmic Decision-Making Should Exist: A Trust-Based Approach,” written by Tae Wan Kim and Brian R. Routledge (BEQ 32 [1]: 75–102), and “Transnational Representation in Global Labour Governance and the Politics of Input Legitimacy,” written by Juliane Reinecke and Jimmy Donaghey (BEQ 32 [3]: 438–74).
We wholeheartedly endorse the jury’s choices because of the emphasis on relationality (Morrison et al. 2022) and the consideration of those at the “receiving end” of corporate policies (Kim and Routledge 2022) and practices (Reinecke and Donaghey 2022). Such emphasis and consideration are important qualities in business ethics research—whether grounded in empirical research or philosophical argumentation—as they show the authors’ awareness of, and willingness to engage with, present societal issues and questions. After all, business ethics research is—in our view—a “worldly” activity; it emerges from, engages with, relates to, and—one way or another—contributes to shaping for the better the world in which we live. There is no need for business ethics to defend and support the status quo, current practices, and vested interests unless they are unjustly challenged; it must criticize, challenge, and offer alternatives to the extent that the status quo, current practices, and vested interests are unfair, unjust, and self-serving. It is this productive conversation between the rich theoretical history of our field and emerging ethical challenges in an increasingly complex world that offers us the chance to have a meaningful scholarly life.
We close this editorial by thanking Kirstin Martin for her long-term service on the journal’s editorial board and warmly welcoming Christine Neesham as a new member of the editorial board and Ken Butterfield as a new associate editor. As we endeavor to ensure diversity of opinion and perspective, but also a broader representation along multiple dimensions within the journal’s leadership, we would be very thankful if members of our community would come forward to serve on the editorial review board. Achieving diversity, as well as representation of colleagues from other parts of the world than the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, remains especially challenging. Please help us by nominating colleagues who would be assets to our community or by encouraging them to put themselves forward. We are, after all, a growing community within an increasingly interconnected world, and our editorial practices should reflect this.
