A post-structuralist analysis of sustainability as a new hegemonic identity

China’s Strategic Narratives in Global Governance

Discussions of global governance increasingly turn on a question that is not captured by the idea of simply “having a voice”: who is able to define the terms in which international problems are understood? This article approaches that question through strategic narrative. It argues that China’s concern with discursive power is connected both to changes in its material position and to dissatisfaction with a governance discourse historically shaped by Western experience. Three reasons make this issue consequential for China: safeguarding expanding interests, seeking changes in an international order in which developing countries remain under-represented, and contributing to the provision of public goods. The article then examines strategic narrative as a mechanism rather than as a collection of slogans. Narratives locate China within particular identities, make complex international issues intelligible through selected frames, and attach political meaning to time, space, and norms. The final section turns from mechanism to practice. It considers how experience formed in China may become useful beyond the Chinese context, how domestic standards may acquire wider legitimacy through negotiation, and how broad visions may generate limited but workable areas of agreement. The central claim is that discursive power is produced through an interaction among narrative, institutional practice, and audience recognition; none of the three is sufficient on its own.

Bolt’s sustainability paradox: global expansion, local legitimacy and the role of public media in platform internationalization

This study aims to examine how digital platform firms (DPFs) navigate tensions between rapid international growth and sustainability, using Bolt as a case study. It investigates how sustainability paradoxes emerge as platform scalability encounters host-market legitimacy demands and highlights the role of media in mediating these tensions. The study uses a qualitative content analysis of 801 media articles, reader comments and corporate documents related to Bolt, primarily from Estonian media. Using emergent coding, the analysis is framed through the Platform-OLI (P-OLI) framework, organizational paradox theory and media framing theory to examine how corporate narratives, media framing and public discourse interact across phases of internationalization. The findings identify persistent sustainability paradoxes in Bolt’s international expansion, particularly between scalability and environmental credibility, algorithmic governance and labor rights and regulatory flexibility and accountability. Media emerges as a central arena shaping public legitimacy across institutional contexts. From an international entrepreneurship (IE) perspective, institutional and psychic distance are not eliminated by digitalization but reconfigured into post-entry legitimacy struggles driven by opportunity recognition focused on speed and scale. This study extends IE and platform internationalization research by integrating sustainability paradoxes and mediated legitimacy into the P-OLI framework. It demonstrates that for born-DPFs, distance operates less as an entry barrier and more as a driver of legitimacy contestation during scaling, offering new insights into sustainable internationalization under conditions of heightened visibility and public scrutiny.

Between Normative Ambition and Practical Reality: The Limits of New Public Governance in Algeria

The modernization of public management represents a central challenge for contemporary states, particularly in contexts where governance systems remain heavily centralized. In Algeria, the reform agenda has increasingly invoked the principles of digitalization, decentralization, and participatory democracy as pathways toward transparency, legitimacy, and responsiveness. Drawing on academic literature, policy documents, and comparative insights, this study employs a qualitative, analytical, and critical methodology to assess the trajectory of these reforms. The findings reveal a paradoxical dynamic: while digitalization has improved service accessibility and visibility since the acceleration of reforms in 2020, its impact remains uneven due to structural inertia, the digital divide, and weak regulatory frameworks. Similarly, decentralization, although constitutionally recognized and supported by initiatives such as the CapDeL project, continues to be constrained by strong central oversight, limiting local autonomy. Participatory democracy, though formally endorsed, remains largely symbolic, with citizen involvement in decision-making processes still marginal. Taken together, the analysis underscores that Algeria’s governance reforms embody a case of symbolic convergence without substantive transformation. Rather than producing an integrated model of New Public Governance, reforms have yielded fragmented and partial outcomes, highlighting the need for stronger institutional mechanisms and genuine political commitment. These findings contribute to broader debates on governance transitions in developing contexts, particularly regarding the adaptation of reform models originally designed in and for developed countries.

The common good in business ethics: disentangling a crucial concept

This paper aims to examine how the notion of the common good has evolved within the social sciences, with a particular focus on its application in business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Although scholars often cite the concept, they frequently use it ambiguously or without critical reflection. This study clarifies those shifts and positions the common good as a unifying ethical framework to confront contemporary business and societal challenges. This paper analyzes 1,690 Web of Science documents (1960–2022) using citation mapping and co-word analysis. This method tracks intellectual structures, thematic clusters and research trends, providing a systematic view of how continuities and transformations shape the discourse on the common good. This paper identifies three coherent foundational clusters: virtue ethics, Catholic Social Thought and procedural/institutional ethics. Newer interpretations display greater diversity but weaker integration. Six thematic clusters expose persistent tensions between moral agency and structural equity, universal principles and contextual adaptability and ethical imperatives and instrumental outcomes. Sustainability and digital ethics emerge as promising yet underexplored frontiers. Influential works drive much of the debate, but contributions remain uneven across regions and disciplines. Because of the chosen methodology, the study may underrepresent Global South perspectives and oversimplify complex philosophical debates. The findings encourage organizations to adopt ethical frameworks beyond environmental, social and governance compliance and urge policymakers to balance grassroots input with institutional accountability. This paper pioneers bibliometric methods to trace the evolution of the common good, highlighting its coherence and fragmentation and advocating revitalization through interdisciplinary and non-Western perspectives.

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«Soft Collectivism»: An Ethical Critique of the ESG Regime

The ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) regime has consolidated as the principal normative architecture of corporate activity in Europe. Academic critique of the phenomenon has been predominantly technical—divergence among rating agencies, agency problems, and empirical ineffectiveness—ethical critique remains pending. This article advances such a critique from the convergence of three traditions: the libertarian ethics of natural law in its Rothbardian formulation; Hayekian spontaneous order theory and its economic correlate in the Austrian theories of dynamic efficiency and synergasia (Ravier); and Catholic Social Doctrine, from Rerum Novarum to Caritas in Veritate. The principal conceptual contribution consists in coining the analytical category of soft collectivism to name how the ESG regime operates: it subjects the firm through conditioning rather than command, hollowing out the content of rights without altering their juridical form. The mechanics of this subjection operate through soft law, institutional isomorphism, the spiral of silence, and the bootleggers-and-baptists coalition within a state culture that Bagus's counterfactual criterion identifies as indirect coercion. The convergence between Catholic subsidiarity and Hayekian spontaneous order—two formulations of the same formal structure—yields a unanimous verdict against the ESG regime. Against the bureaucratic simulacrum of social responsibility, the article posits genuine entrepreneurial responsibility—voluntary, prudential, subsidiary, and oriented to real service—as the only coherent alternative within the converging ethical demands established by the analysis.