Aurélien Acquier

Rediscovering Howard R. Bowen’s Legacy: The Unachieved Agenda and Continuing Relevance of Social Responsibilities of the Businessman

Many business and society scholars hail Howard R. Bowen as the founding father of the academic conception and study of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Yet little is known widely about his life and the true agenda of Social Responsibilities of the Businessman (Bowen), his landmark book. This article explores the historical and current significance of Bowen’s seminal work. The authors contend that the analytical perspective Bowen proposed nearly 60 years ago, although regrettably underappreciated in past decades, is more relevant than ever to stimulating future research on CSR and to revitalizing business and society scholarship.

From Stakeholder to StakeSholder Management in Crisis Episodes: A Case Study in a Public Transportation Company

Stakeholder perspectives on crisis management provide a useful descriptive framework to analyse crises and to develop crisis narratives. However, their ‘actionability’ for crisismanagement, i.e. the possibility to use stakeholder management models in operationalcrisis management processes, remains an under-investigated research question. Thisarticle, built on a qualitative case study of successful crisis management in a publictransportation company, discusses the operational value of stakeholder frameworks forcrisis management.We investigate the actions set up by the crisis cell to manage internaland external stakeholders during the crisis. The successful management of the crisisinvolved: (1) good stakeholder diagnostic capabilities to design an appropriate corporatepositioning; (2) an ability to identify and coherently manage emerging and heterogeneousissues involving stakeSholders, i.e. actors that are concerned with multiple issues of thecrisis; and (3) the capacity to set up a tightly coupled ad hoc organization, articulatingboth crisis cell members and various ‘anchorage points’, i.e. actors previously involved inthe project. Finally, we discuss the implications and potential value of stakeholderperspectives for crisis management.

Just Do It? The Adoption of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Programs from a Supplier Perspective

Although many multinational companies are engaged in formal sustainability programs in order to upgrade social and environmental conditions within their supply chains, little is known about adoption at the supplier’s level. Using neo-institutional theory and building on an indepth case study of a middle-sized supplier of a multinational company in the food industry in Latin America, we explore how the firm integrates the requirements of a supplier development scheme and to what extent these demands are diffused to next-tier suppliers. Beyond coercive pressures, our results reveal the role of embedding sustainability demands into local network ties to foster adoption and diffusion in the upstream chain.

Les business models du développement durable

Comment organiser des initiatives combinant les enjeux environnementaux et sociaux avec ceux de l’activite de l’entreprise ? Les constats cles d’une etude recente.