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Special Issue: "Business Ethics in a Global Economy"
... For example, the "Equity First" Management of the Royal Dutch Shell Company encountered a terrible crisis in the 1990s. Its relationship with major stakeholders like environmental organizations, consumers, the public and communities had been deteriorating, which therefore rapidly caused the austere reputation and business crisis [6]. It was the growing contradiction between the company and the different stakeholders that forced the company to rethink profoundly about its traditional management mode and approach and gradually carry out reforms of it. ...
Widely accepted social regulations are playing an important role in influencing human cooperation, which largely reduces the demand for information and helps in forming a stable cooperation partnership. Based on this, we put forward a rational and social consistent economic agent mode—The “Information Economic Man Assumption”. Taking Field Theory for reference, we established the organizational information mode and introduced the concept of capital vector. Also the capital vector of economic organization and value orientation are taken as core variables, thus we analyze the basic condition of cooperation maintenance from economic, cultural and moral factors at the same time.
This article explores the relationship between stakeholder management and international diversification. We differentiate between strengths and concerns in stakeholder management to demonstrate the differential effects of the two aspects of stakeholder management. Previous research on stakeholder theory often focuses on the importance of stakeholder relations, trying to build a business case of relational capital that results from strong stakeholder management. Such a relational approach, however, overlooks the process of managing stakeholders, a process that allows firms with strengths in stakeholder management to develop an important capability of managing tensions. In this study, we argue that this capability, an inherent part of stakeholder management, can be critical when firms face increased complexity during the process of international diversification. We therefore propose that strengths in stakeholder management are positively related to international diversification, while concerns in stakeholder management are negatively related to international diversification. Using panel data for 169 US multinational firms over a 10-year period, we find support that strengths in stakeholder management facilitate international diversification. We discuss the contributions of our findings to stakeholder theory and international business research.
The complex and uncertain nature of mega construction projects (MCP) require an effective stakeholder management (SM) approach to accommodate conflicting stakeholder interests. Previous reviews regarding SM in construction sector are generic as their attentions have been placed on relatively small scale projects. A systematic review on SM studies in relation to MCP seems to be lacking. This paper analyzes the latest research development of this domain by reviewing selected articles published from 1997 to 2014. Four major research topics are identified: “stakeholder interests and influences”, “stakeholder management process”, “stakeholder analysis methods” and “stakeholder engagement”. This study reveals that SM approaches in MCP are subject to national context of the project, indicating a need to identify the impact of national culture on this discipline. Moreover, traditional stakeholder analysis techniques are widely adopted in MCP notwithstanding their weaknesses; therefore a social network approach for managing stakeholder interrelationships in these projects is needed.
Little attention has been paid to the importance of social media in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. This deficit is redressed in the present paper through utilizing the notion of ‘citizenship arenas’ to identify three dynamics in social media-augmented corporate–society relations. First, we note that social media-augmented ‘corporate arenas of citizenship’ are constructed by individual corporations in an effort to address CSR issues of specific importance thereto, and are populated by individual citizens as well as (functional/formally organized) stakeholders. Second, we highlight that, within social media-augmented ‘public arenas of citizenship’, individual citizens are empowered, relative to corporations and their (functional/formally organized) stakeholders, when it comes to creating, debating, and publicizing, CSR-relevant issues. Third, we posit that information and communication technology corporations possess specific, and potentially very important, capacities, when it comes to creating, or helping construct, public arenas of citizenship from within which individual citizens can influence their broader political–economic environment. Following this, we discuss how social media can contribute to ‘dysfunctions’ as well as ‘progressions’ in corporate–society relations, and conclude with a number of suggestions for future research.
Purpose
– The pressure on companies to position themselves as responsible corporate citizens has been identified as a key driver of the increase in collaborative relationships between corporations and non‐profit organizations, with innovation and learning recognized as benefits to the firms from such relationships. This paper attempts to identify factors that can foster (or impede) the identification and development of firm‐related innovations that result from engagement with non‐profit stakeholders.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper reviews literature within the stakeholder, cross‐sector collaboration, and innovation genres, to examine business‐non‐profit relations specifically in the context of innovation generation.
Findings
– The outcome of the literature review is a conceptual process model of cross‐sector‐collaboration. This identifies firm motivations, engagement conditions and intra‐firm factors that would appear to influence innovation outcome, and which would benefit from empirical exploration.
Originality/value
– The paper begins to develop a framework for considering business‐non‐profit relations in the context of innovation generation and aims to further one's understanding of factors in the engagement process that can influence an innovative outcome.
Understanding firms’ interfaces with the community has become a familiar strategic concern for both firms and non-profit organizations.
However, it is still not clear when different community engagement strategies are appropriate or how such strategies might
benefit the firm and community. In this review, we examine when, how and why firms benefit from community engagement strategies
through a systematic review of over 200 academic and practitioner knowledge sources on the antecedents and consequences of
community engagement strategy. We analytically describe evidence on the rise of the community engagement strategy literature
over time, its geographical spread and methodological evolution. A foundational concept underlying many studies is the ‘continuum
of community engagement’. We build on this continuum to develop a typology of three engagement strategies: transactional,
transitional and transformational engagement. By identifying the antecedents and outcomes of the three strategies, we find
that the payoffs from engagement are largely longer-term enhanced firm legitimacy, rather than immediate cost–benefit improvements.
We use our systematic review to draw implications for future research and managerial practice.
Keywordscitizens-community engagement-community groups-corporate philanthropy-social partnerships-social strategy-stakeholder engagement-systematic review
This study sheds light on how project managers can use language as a resource for communicating with local communities and stakeholders alike, and protect the legitimacy of their decisions and actions. The verbal accounts produced by a senior project management team are examined in-depth. The accounts address the claims raised by residents affected by the expansion of the Heathrow airport. The context for the talk-in-interaction is one of conflicting interests: the promoter undertakes actions to mitigate the impacts of the construction works, but some residents feel frustrated that the business can grow at the expenses of their welfare. The findings reveal that managers tend to acknowledge all claims even when perceiving they lack legitimacy. The analysis of the words and phrasing in the conversational turns that form the accounts reveals three tones - caring, assertive, and apologetic - that managers use intentionally to frame linguistically the acknowledgements. The study discusses how the tones fit with the extent to which, first, managers consider that the claims are factually correct, fair, and precise as opposed to unfair, exaggerated, or opportunistic; and second, managers find technical or institutional references available for constructing the accounts. It also discusses the effects of congruence - or the lack of it - between what managers mean to say about what the project team will do, what managers actually say, how listeners interpret what was said, and what the project team actually gets done.
Organizations require legitimacy to attract constituents' support Legitimacy, however, is always problematic Thus, organizations frequently pursue legitimacy through a variety of substantive and symbolic practices But legitimacy is a social Judgment that is ultimately accorded the organization by its constituents Organizations that pursue this judgment run the risk of "protesting too much" of being perceived as precistly the opposite, manipulative and illegitimate Such organizations include (1) the clumsy actor, perceived as unethical, heavy-handed, or insensitive, (2) the nervous actor, perceived as dogmatic, intolerant, or evasive, and (3) the overacting actor, perceived to overstate claims to legitimacy or overreact to faults The analysis suggests that attempts to increase legitimacy may trigger a series of vicious circles which ultimately decrease legitimacy.
Executive Overview To cope with the environmental turbulence and uncertainty facing many U.S. industries, business executives must effectively manage their stakeholders. Stakeholders include those individuals, groups, and other organizations who have an interest in the actions of an organization and who have the ability to influence it. The stakeholder approach systematically integrates executives' concerns about organizational strategy with the organization's interests in marketing, human resource management, public relations, organizational politics, and social responsibility. This integrative perspective assumes thai an effective organization strategy requires consensus from a plurality of key stakeholders about what it should be doing and how these things should be done. By assessing each stakeholder's potential to threaten or to cooperate with the organization, managers' may identify supportive, mixed blessing. n on supportive, and marginal stakeholders. The 1989 strike at Eastern Airlines illustrates these different types of stakeholders. An analysis of the case underscores the importance of four generic strategies for managing different stakeholders. The case also demonstrates that executives should use an overarching strategy to change relationships with stakeholders from less favorable categories (e.g., nonsupporiive) fo more favorable ones (e.g.. mixed blessing). Article Fundamental, turbulent, and revolutionary changes took place in business organizations during the 1980s. External stakeholders called for greater corporate social responsibility among other things.' These changes continue during the 1990s and reflect the expectations and influences of stakeholders on issues ranging from organizational governance to operations. These changes have profound effects on managers, as reflected in a 1987 cover story in Business Week:
This paper examines some of the paradoxes and dilemmas facing firms in the extractive sector when they attempt to take on a more stakeholder-responsive orientation towards issues of environmental and social responsibility. We describe the case of Shell and the Ogoni and attempt to draw out some of the lessons of that case for more sustainable operations in the developing world. We argue that firms such as Shell, Rio Tinto and others may well exhibit increasingly stakeholder-responsive behaviours at the corporate, strategic level. However for reasons of strategy, lack of competency or institutional will this increasing level of corporate responsiveness may not be mirrored effectively in dealings between subsidiary business units and their most important direct stakeholders: for example local communities and in the developing world. We contrast the struggles of Shell to replicate its corporate stakeholder-responsiveness at the local level in Nigeria with the experiences of other firms that seem to have developed managerial capabilities at a somewhat deeper level throughout the firm with consequent benefits both for stakeholders and the business.
What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization
and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and
the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises:
rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to
change them. We describe three isomorphic processes--coercive, mimetic, and
normative-leading to this outcome. We then specib hypotheses about the impact of
resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty,
and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest
implications for theories of organizations and social change.
Stakeholder theory has been a popular heuristic for describing the management environment for years, but it has not attained full theoretical status. Our aim in this article is to contribute to a theory of stakeholder identification and salience based on stakeholders possessing one or more of three relationship attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. By combining these attributes, we generate a typology of stakeholders, propositions concerning their salience to managers of the firm, and research and management implications.
Using unique data provided by the CEOs of 80 large U.S. firms, we examined relationships among the stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, urgency, and salience; CEO values; and corporate performance. We found strong support for the attribute-salience relationship and some significant relationships among CEO values, salience, and corporate social performance but found no support for a salience-financial performance link. Our findings suggest a need for continued emphasis on the development of normative stakeholder theory.
Corporations can respond to expectations for socially responsible processes and outcomes in organizationally integrated ways or in easily decoupled fashion. This study focused on a particular type of socially responsible organizational process: formal corporate ethics programs. Theory suggests that external pressures for social performance encourage easily decoupled processes but that top management commitments can encourage both easily decoupled and integrated processes. Analysis of survey and archival data generally supported this position. Implications for social performance research, practice, and public policy are discussed.
The United States Sentencing Commission’s guidelines for the sentencing of organizations found guilty of violating federal laws recently became effective. Dramatically increased penalties are possible under these gudelines, but so too is a substantial reduction in the penalties imposed on organizations that have an effective program in place to prevent and detect violations. This provides corporations with a tremendous new incentive in inaugurate organizational ethics audits both to avoid violations in the first instance and to reduce the penalty imposed in the event that a violation occurs. We argue, however, that there have always been very good reasons for organizations to conduct such audits, which emphasize the identification of the organizational factors that create incentives for unethical behavior. Corporate ethics programs initiated without reference to such factors cannot reasonably be expected to be effective in improving a company’s internal ethical environment.
This article analyzes sustainability values reports published by The Body Shop International and by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The authors show how corporate discourses expressed in these precedent-setting texts both reflect and influence sociopolitical struggle over the meanings and practices of sustainable development. Specifically, the authors examine metaphors of transparency and care used to describe corporate rationales for increasing stakeholder communication, including reporting. Drawing on distinct discursive domains of business accountancy and personal ethics and sentiment, these metaphors promise to reconstruct the interface between the firm and society. Exploring the quite different assumptions on which each of these metaphors relies and their implications for corporate practices of sustainable development, the authors consider whether sustainability values reporting and the dialogue that it claims to facilitate can promote more democratic and socially and environmentally responsive corporate decision making, even as they impose new forms of managerial control.
This paper addresses eco-discourse by the corporate rhetor that emerged in the wake of two environmental disputes. While such green business rhetoric might be conventionally viewed as a category of crisis communication, it is treated here as an instrument of corporate sensemaking and discursive struggle. Specifically, I analyze the "language games" between the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and its critics that arose over Shell UK's plans to decommission the Brent Spar and Shell Nige ria's operations in Ogoniland, a tribal community in the Niger Delta. I demon strate that Shell's rhetorical contests had constitutive effects on its environmental and human rights policies and practices and led to its cautious embrace of the language of sustainable development. Combining sensemaking and Foucauldian approaches, I argue that such local conflicts over meaning-making around the nat ural environment must be understood in terms of discursive struggle at the socio- political level where they both reflect and influence the dynamics of cultural and institutional change.
In this study, Foucauldian theory is used to interpret a corporate social report published by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group to reveal the contours of an emerging corporate discourse of sustainability and the knowledge-power dynamics entailed by social reporting. The report could be read simply as a corporate attempt to reestablish discursive regularity and hegemonic control in the wake of challenges by environmentalists and human rights activists. However, the author interprets it in the context of the larger sociopolitical discursive struggle over environment and social justice and finds that Shell’s “embrace” of the concept of sustainable development has transforming effects on the company and on the notion of sustainability itself. This contradictory and ambiguous result is characteristic of discursive struggle, which is where, according to Foucault, power is played out and social change occurs.
This study developed and tested a conceptual model explaining variability in the organizational structures firms develop to identify, analyze, and respond to their social and political environments. Institutional and resource dependence theories offer plausible explanations for these structural differences; we tested both, finding that those explanations are distinct but complementary. Issues management is both an institutional response and a strategic adaptation to external pressures. But contrary to our predictions, each theory provided only a partial explanation by accounting for particular responses. Institutional constraints appeared to limit managerial discretion over corporate social responses. We propose a new contingency model of corporate social performance based on these findings.
The weakening of the traditional management hierarchy, the hollowing out of corporations, and an increasing management emphasis on boundarylessness have created a new mind set concerning external stakeholders. Increasingly, organizations are moving beyong traditional stakeholder management techniques to partnering tactics that lead to the achievement of common goals. In spite of these trends, there has been very little effort in the management literature to tie stakeholder management and partnering tactics. This article demonstrates how successful partnerships with stakeholders create such valued benefits as increased product success rates, increased manufacturing efficiency, the development of distinctive competencies arising from partnerships with local communities or government agencies, reduced unfavorable litigation, reduced levels of negative publicity, and favorable regulatory policies.
Based on a survey of 2,361 directors in 291 of the largest companies of the Southeast States, this study empirically examined boards of directors'' stakeholder orientations. The results indicate that (1) there exist distinct stakeholder groups perceived by directors, (2) directors have high stakeholder orientations, (3) directors view some stakeholders differently depending on their occupation (CEO directors v. non-CEO directors) and type (inside directors vs. outside directors).
Profits and Principles-Does There Have to be a Choice? The Shell Report
- Shell International
Sustainable Development-Making it Happen
- Shell International