1st Edition

A Stakeholder Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility Pressures, Conflicts, and Reconciliation

    Corporate social responsibility has grown into a global phenomenon that encompasses businesses, consumers, governments, and civil society, and many organizations have adopted its discourse. Yet corporate social responsibility remains an uncertain and poorly defined ambition, with few absolutes. First, the issues that organizations must address can easily be interpreted to include virtually everyone and everything. Second, with their unique, often particular characteristics, different stakeholder groups tend to focus only on specific issues that they believe are the most appropriate and relevant in organizations' corporate social responsibility programs. Thus, beliefs about what constitutes a socially responsible and sustainable organization depend on the perspective of the stakeholder. Third, in any organization, the beliefs of organizational members about their organization's social responsibilities vary according to their function and department, as well as their own managerial fields of knowledge. A Stakeholder Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility provides a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge theories and research that can lead to a more multifaceted understanding of corporate social responsibility in its various forms, the pressures and conflicts that result from these different understandings, and some potential solutions for reconciling them.

    Contents: Foreword; Part I Empirical-Based Frameworks for Understanding Pressures, Conflict and Reconciliation: Understanding Stakeholder Conflicts and Mobilization: The impact of socioeconomic and political factors on stakeholder dialogs, Matthias S. Fifka; What makes a stakeholder act? Exploring the impact of the issue in the stakeholder relationship, Sally Davenport and Shirley Leitch; Swapping stories: how firms and stakeholders use blogs as narrative discourse to create efficacy and meaning for corporate social responsibility, David M. Boje, Stephanie Maynard-Patrick and Steven M. Elias; Brent Spar revisited: conflict and cooperation from a stakeholder perspective, Matthias S. Fifka; Engaging with the enemy: understanding the adversarial stakeholder processes and outcomes, Maureen Bourassa and Peggy Cunningham. Managing Risks of Stakeholder Conflicts: A license to operate for the extractive industries? Operationalizing stakeholder thinking in international business, Romy Kraemer and Rob van Tulder; Risk management and communication: pressures and conflicts of a stakeholder approach to corporate social responsibility, Robert L. Heath, Michael J. Palenchar, Katherine A. McComas and Stephanie Proutheau; Risk conflicts and demands for social and environmental accounting: an empirical study, Georgios Georgakopoulos and Ian Thomson. Engaging with Stakeholders and Implementing a Stakeholder Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility: The evolution of corporate social responsibility in Gucci: from risk management to stakeholder engagement, Massimiliano Bonacchi, Paolo Perego and Rosella Ravagli; The working stakeholder: new perspectives on corporate social responsibility and the employee, Peter Fleming; Giving credit where credit is due: distributive justice and corporate volunteerism, Mary Runté and Debra Z. Basil; Indigenous people, stakeholders and corporate social responsibility, Tom Cooper and Terry Hickey; Resolving environmental and social conflicts: responsib

    Biography

    Dr Adam Lindgreen is Professor of Marketing at Cardiff Business School. He received his Ph.D. from Cranfield University. He is widely published. His most recent books are Managing Market Relationships and Memorable Customer Experiences. Dr Philip Kotler is the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, and is hailed as 'the world's foremost expert on the strategic practice of marketing.' He is the author of numerous books including Marketing Management, the most widely used marketing book in graduate business schools worldwide. Professor Kotler has consulted for such companies as IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Honeywell, Bank of America, Merck, and Samsung, and he has advised foreign governments. Dr Joëlle Vanhamme is Professor of Marketing at Edhec Business School. She received her Ph.D. from the Louvain School of Management, the Catholic University of Louvain. She is widely published. Her most recent books are The Crisis of Food Brands and Memorable Customer Experiences. Dr François Maon is Assistant Professor of Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility at the IESEG School of Management. He also received his Ph.D. from the Louvain School of Management. He has published in several journals.

    'Oriented to researchers and professionals, this volume is an important research and reference volume on organizational leadership and corporate social responsibility. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections.' Choice Vol. 50 #7 'In a world where corporations are seen as ominous threats, this innovative collection invites us to take a new look. It shows how the "stakeholders" of the modern corporation encompass far more than its shareowners, and how the corporation that attends to all of those who have a stake in its success - owners, employees, customers, and the public - is a successful corporation.' Tom Donaldson, University of Pennsylvania, USA 'This is the best of CSR scholarship. It advances the state of the art in CSR and Stakeholder Theory. The mix of theory and practice should be an iconic example of how to do interesting and useful research.' R. Edward Freeman, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, USA 'This extraordinary collection of essays supports what the editors call "one clear message", namely, that "not all organizations can or should proceed down the same corporate social responsibility path. For some organizations, it simply may be impossible to reconcile the pressures and conflicts they confront". Beginning with a framework characterizing organizations as faced with diverse internal and external pressures and conflicts, the sections and chapters of the collection are crafted to show that diverse paths toward reconciliation cannot be avoided. I can't recall seeing any collection on CSR that is more comprehensive, well-organized or persuasive than this one.' Alex Michalos, Chancellor and Emeritus Professor, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Ethics 'Future generations might perceive the current financial crisis as the historic turning point at which the decade-long dominance of shareholder value ideology was broken and replaced by a broader, stakeholder-oriented understanding of corporate responsibility. What does it mean to manage corporations with a stakeholder-view and what are the managerial consequences of such an enlightened understanding of responsibility? This highly innovative research anthology is a source of orientation for both practitioners and scholars. It is valuable for scholars who look for the most recent (trans-disciplinary) thinking in stakeholder theory and for practitioners who want to understand, how they can analyze and manage their stakeholder relations in times of growing complexity.' Guide Palazzo, École des hautes Études Commerciales (HEC), University of Lausanne, Switzerland