Bradley K. Googins

Stages of corporate citizenship

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Entrepreneurship: Introducing Shared Innovation into the Business Model

All of the great American Entrepreneurs from Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, David Packard and Steve Jobs, had a driving theme to their entrepreneurship: a burning desire to contribute something great to society. It defined their entrepreneurism and fueled their passion and relentless pursuit of their dreams (Isaacson 2011). Today’s business model focuses primarily on shareholder returns, which characterizes much of the prevailing model of capitalism around the globe. This would be the least interesting driver for these visionaries, and in most cases they had to fight hard to keep their vision from the clutches and narrow interests of their investors. For the true entrepreneur there is little distance between the business model and the role of business in society. In fact the ultimate measure of a business is its contribute to society. This vision seems a far cry from the trajectory of the reigning business model. Even more telling is the relentless pursuit of a bottom line measured primarily by profit and loss statements.

Next Generation Corporate Citizenship

Jack Welch, dubbed “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine in its review of twentieth-century business, multiplied General Electric’s market value from

Engaging Employees as Citizens

14 to

Engaging Employees as Social Innovators

400 billion during his twenty-year tenure and he continues to be a role model for business leaders and certainly many of our M.B.A.s.1 But one of his final acts, according to insiders, “left GE looking like a bunch of slugs.”

Catalyzing Social Entrepreneurship in Africa: Roles for Western Universities, NGOs and Corporations

In the United States, three of four young people entering the workforce want to work for a company that “cares about how it impacts and contributes to society.”1 The Center has, for several years, characterized employees as the “missing link” in corporate citizenship. Now a case is being made to engage employees under the mantle of citizenship—and in progressively deeper and more meaningful ways. Here’s why.

Toward Shared Governance for Sustainability: U.S. Public and Private Sector Roles

This article explores a variety of ways employees are being engaged as social innovators in their companies or as co-creators in partnerships with other businesses, NGOs, and/or government agencies. They are engaged as intrapreneurs in company innovations contests, in partnerships with external social entrepreneurs, and in pro bono global service programs, and as members of innovation teams in organization-wide innovations. The study compares and contrasts four employee engagement platforms and assesses their impact on participating employees, companies, and communities from these efforts.

Taking Citizenship to Market

This article reviews research on promoting social entrepreneurship and enterprise in Africa. It also presents brief case studies on how select Western universities, NGOs and corporations are partnering with African institutions to help train and launch social entrepreneurs, to open up sources of venture funding and mentoring and to fortify social entrepreneurship ecosystems. The case material highlights opportunities and challenges encountered in supporting social entrepreneurship in Africa and points to research and practical opportunities pertinent to African scholars, educators and practitioners.

Integrating Citizenship into the Business

Abstract Purpose This chapter examines public versus private sector roles in addressing CSR/Sustainability issues in the United States. It provides an historical perspective on the primacy of market-driven corporate practice in the United States and recent moves by the state to “balance” private and public interests through both regulatory and non-regulatory means. A typology of government and business roles, based on “who leads” and “who makes the rules,” illustrates shared governance of CSR/Sustainability in a variety of multisector and public–private partnerships. Design/methodology/approach Case studies examine how the U.S. government interacts with business and NGOs and its varied roles in the shared governance of sustainability. Examples from field interviews with business leaders in global operator General Electric (Global Business Initiative on Human Rights), apparel maker-and-seller Patagonia (Aquatic “Hitchhikers”), electronics retailer Best Buy (product recycling), IBM (global corporate volunteering), and others illustrate varieties of shared governance between business and the state in operation today. Findings Depending on “who leads” and “who makes the rules,” there are variations in whether responsible actions by the private sector are regulatory versus voluntary and whether government’s role involves mandating, partnering, facilitating, or endorsing private sector efforts. Successful shared governance depends on business’s “license to cooperate” and the multiple parties’s sharing responsibility for their goals, operations, and results. Originality/value There is a substantial literature on multi-business CSR-related networks and on business–NGO partnerships. Less attention has been given to the role of governments in this space, particularly in the United States where, partly for historical reasons, a company’s relationship with and obligations to society have been regarded as discretionary more so than regulatory activity and where government intervention in markets and in the affairs of companies has been sharply resisted, particularly by business interests, and is suspect among the citizenry.

New Rules for Business Success

“Jella Sujatamma is part entrepreneur, part healthcare advisor, part hygiene specialist and part mother in the many villages in India that she visits each week as Unilever India’s most successful Shakti Amma [empowered mother],” writes Janet Roberts, one of the student reporters at the October 2006 Business and World Benefit Conference in Cleveland.1 Sujatamma, a weaver who lost work when synthetic fabrics came into popularity, became the first Shakti entrepreneur on