Carola Hillenbrand

Giving your organisation SPIRIT: an overview and call to action for directors on issues of corporate governance, corporate reputation and corporate responsibility:

This paper links Corporate Governance, Corporate Reputation and Corporate Responsibility through an examination of stakeholder relationships. It argues that a focus on relationships will allow directors to manage the issues relating to these complex areas in a practical way. Definitions are as follows: governance is seen to be concerned with the mechanism by which businesses’ relationships are directed and controlled. Reputation is concerned with stakeholder views of a business in key relationships and in terms of key relationship issues. Responsibility is concerned with the way a business conducts its activities and in particular how it relates to its primary and secondary stakeholders. A tool to analyse relationships in these three ways is then presented. The tool is known as a Stakeholder Performance Indicator, Relationship Improvement Tool or SPIRIT, for short.

Unpacking the Mechanism by Which Corporate Responsibility Impacts Stakeholder Relationships

Most research on corporate responsibility (CR) has investigated CR from the perspective of organizations, often focusing on how organizations define, manage and implement CR to gain benefits or competitive advantage. The benefits of CR for organizations are, however, often said to be achieved through increased support of stakeholders. Despite this, limited attention has been given to understanding CR from the perspective of stakeholders and, in particular, the mechanism by which CR drives stakeholder support. This study addresses this deficit. Building on advances in the application of psychological theories to the field of management, the research develops and empirically tests a theoretical model of how CR-related experiences and beliefs drive stakeholder trust and positive intent. The research is conducted with customers (n = 708) and employees (n = 359) of a service organization in the UK that introduced a range of CR-related activities into their business. The findings contribute to literature by empirically demonstrating (a) the impact of CR-related experiences on the development of beliefs about, and trust towards, the organization; (b) the importance of ‘others-related’ CR experiences even in the presence of ‘self-related’ CR experiences; and (c) the role of beliefs as partial mediators in how experiences of CR, both ‘self-related’ and ‘others-related’, translate into trust and positive intent.

Putting positive psychology to work in organisations

This article takes positive psychology concepts from the domain of individual psychology and applies them to the workplace. The adaptation of the Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire (Seligman, 2002), developed by Martin Seligman, suggests that the three dimensions of pleasure, engagement and meaning are relevant to employees in the organisational context. In addition, Seligman´s (2002) classification of Character Strengths and Virtues is explored, and their relevance for workplace performance is discussed. The paper concludes by suggesting that positive psychology is a useful lens through which approaches to work and employee potential can be explored further and suggests some future research in the area.

Innovation performance measurement: current practices, issues and management challenges

Innovation is indisputably one of the most important strategic and operational levers available to managers for creating competitive advantage. Recent studies suggest that there remains a serious disconnect between what firms are hoping for, and what they, in fact, are reaping from their investments in innovation. Conventional approaches to performance measurement have as yet had little impact in the area of innovation management. The purpose of the research reported in this paper has been to address some of the more pertinent of the many questions raised by innovation practitioners and managers today concerning the measurement of innovation performance.

Corporate Responsibility Research: Past—Present—Future

The concept of corporate responsibility (CR) has moved a long way over the past six decades, since Bowen’s book titled Social Responsibilities of the Businessman marked a modern era of business and society research. In this article, we trace the development of business and society literature to provide contextual background to contemporary studies of CR. As well as looking backward, however, we also project forward arguing that fundamental changes in the current business environment are likely to propel CR to new heights in the future. In particular, we explore the mechanisms by which CR affects stakeholder behavior and suggest ways in which scholars and practitioners may want to apply advances from psychology to link CR strategy to human motivation and the notion of balance in organizations and society.

Unpacking the mechanism by which psychological ownership manifests at the level of the individual: a dynamic model of identity and self

Increasing prominence of the psychological ownership (PO) construct in management studies raises questions about how PO manifests at the level of the individual. In this article, we unpack the mechanism by which individuals use PO to express aspects of their identity and explore how PO manifestations can display congruence as well as incongruence between layers of self. As a conceptual foundation, we develop a dynamic model of individual identity that differentiates between four layers of self, namely, the “core self,” “learned self,” “lived self,” and “perceived self.” We then bring identity and PO literatures together to suggest a framework of PO manifestation and expression viewed through the lens of the four presented layers of self. In exploring our framework, we develop a number of propositions that lay the foundation for future empirical and conceptual work and discuss implications for theory and practice.

Modelling bi‐directional research: a fresh approach to stakeholder theory

Purpose – While Freemans stakeholder management approach has attracted much attention from both scholars and practitioners, little empirical work has considered the interconnectedness of organisational perspectives and stakeholder perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to respond to this gap by developing and empirically testing a bi‐directional model of organisation/stakeholder relationships.Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual framework is developed that integrates how stakeholders are affected by organisations with how they affect organisations. Quantitative data relating to both sides of the relationship are obtained from 700 customers of a European service organisation and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling technique.Findings – The findings provide empirical support for the notion of mutual dependency between organisations and stakeholders as advocated by stakeholder theorists. The results suggest that the way stakeholders relate to organisations is dependen...

Building Employee Relationships Through Corporate Social Responsibility The Moderating Role of Social Cynicism and Reward for Application

We explore the role of deeply held beliefs, known as social axioms, in the context of employee–organization relationships. Specifically, we examine how the beliefs identified as social cynicism and reward for application moderate the relationship between employees’ work-related experiences, perceptions of CSR, attitudes, and behavioral intentions toward their firm. Utilizing a sample of 130 retail employees, we find that CSR affects more positively employees low on social cynicism and reduces distrust more so than with cynical employees. Employees exhibiting strong reward for application are less positively affected by CSR, whereas their experiences of other work-related factors are more likely to reduce distrust. Our findings suggest the need for a differentiated view of CSR in the context of employee studies and offer suggestions for future research and management practice.

Reputation in relationships

With their article on “Reputation in Relationships,” Money, Hillenbrand, and Downing respond to concerns with regard to existing measurement tools for corporate reputation. As topical issues concern stakeholder groups differently, and are likely to have varying levels of importance for different stakeholders, such insight gets lost in traditional rankings of reputation. The model introduced by Money, Hillenbrand, and Downing deals with these concerns and focuses on reputation in a particular stakeholder relationship. The application of structural equation modeling allows for prioritizing which aspects of reputation are likely to make the most impact on stakeholder behavior. With this approach, it is emphasized that reputation is not an end in itself. Rather, it aims at fostering favorable stakeholder behavior which can directly influence the financial performance of firms in terms of shareholder value. Therefore, the authors’ approach has the potential to be used as a tool by management to improve the performance of the firm.

Exploring the Impact of Social Axioms on Firm Reputation: A Stakeholder Perspective

This study proposes a model of how deeply held beliefs, known as ‘social axioms, moderate the interaction between reputation, its causes and consequences with stakeholders. It contributes to the stakeholder relational field of reputation theory by explaining why the same organizational stimuli lead to different individual stakeholder responses. The study provides a shift in reputation research from organizational-level stimuli as the root causes of stakeholder responses to exploring the interaction between individual beliefs and organizational stimuli in determining reputational consequences. Building on a conceptual model that incorporates product/service quality and social responsibility as key reputational dimensions, the authors test empirically for moderating influences, in the form of social axioms, between reputation-related antecedents and consequences, using component-based structural equation modelling (n = 204). In several model paths, significant differences are found between responses of individuals identified as either high or low on social cynicism, fate control and religiosity. The results suggest that stakeholder responses to reputation-related stimuli can be systematically predicted as a function of the interactions between the deeply held beliefs of individuals and these stimuli. The authors offer recommendations on how strategic reputation management can be approached within and across stakeholder groups at a time when firms grapple with effective management of diverse stakeholder expectations.