David Grayson

Embedding corporate responsibility and sustainability – everybody's business

Purpose – This paper aims to deal with the significance of leadership as driver of corporate responsibility and complementary, dynamic organizational change. It seeks to focus on the continuous attention required by competitiveness, and the cultural complexity of renewing business processes in a global environment.Design/methodology/approach – The paper opens by adopting the insecurity context that is clearly reflected in a range of contemporary management and non‐management discourses. Among the negative attributes of advanced globalization the authors trace the erosion of trust between society and institutions to perceptions of impropriety by managers in large firms. Reflecting on their extensive joint experience of the corporate responsibility vanguard from the early 1990s, they suggest some interesting themes that will be familiar to governance and CSR academics and practitioners alike. Strands of social, political, economic, cultural and environmental complexity are evident in the narratives.Findings...

Facilitating organizational change for embedding sustainability into academia: a case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to capture, codify and communicate an implicit change‐management process to embed corporate responsibility and sustainability at the Cranfield School of Management.Design/methodology/approach – To explain the (on‐going) change‐management process, the authors retrospectively applied change‐management literature to the implicit process in which they have, themselves, been intimately involved.Findings – The implicit change‐management process had unconsciously mobilized a variety of tactics identified in the change‐management literature; a more explicit articulation of the “as‐is” and “desired” states, and a more explicit, systematic and regular communication of the journey and goal, might have enabled faster progress. However, the nature of a highly autonomous and decentralized organization, such as an academic institution, means that sustainable change management may be slower than in commercial institutions.Research limitations/implications – The authors have been clo...

Joint Management-Stakeholder Committees: A New Path to Stakeholder Governance?

Purpose: This paper describes the emerging practice of Joint‐Management‐Stakeholder‐ Committees (JMSCs) in which corporate executives take decisions in collaboration with stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: To identify firms involving stakeholders in their governance arrangements, we analysed 51 companies regularly participating in the Business in the Community s Corporate Responsibility Index in the UK. We then analyzed the data provided by the index as well as corporate reports to evaluate the impact of JMSCs on corporate decisionmaking. Findings: This research finds that JMSCs strongly influence corporate governance mechanisms such as monitoring, measurement as well as policy development of firms. Research limitations/applications: Our analysis builds on corporate responses given to the questionnaire sent by the Corporate Responsibility Index as well as corporate reports. Future research is encouraged to triangulate findings with stakeholder opinions on the effectiveness of JMSCs. Practical implications: JMSCs prove to be an effective tool to involve stakeholders in corporate decisionmaking processes. Due to their effectiveness JMSCs are more likely to create trust between firms and their stakeholders. Originality/value: This paper is the first empirical investigation into the effectiveness of engaging stakeholders in Joint‐Management‐Stakeholder Committees, demonstrating the impact and effectiveness of such engagement.

Social intrapreneurism and all that jazz : how business innovators are helping to build a more sustainable world

Foreword Introduction 1. How social intrapreneurs are rising to global business and social challenges 2. Understanding individual social intrapreneurs 3. How companies react 4. Enabling environment inside companies5 External enabling environment 5. External enabling environment 6. Impacts of social intrapreneurism 7. Recommendations and practical tips 8. The way ahead Conclusion: Towards a new way of doing business Appendix: Our research References Index About the authors

Beyond BP: The Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon Disaster 2010

This case explores a company’s responsibility for its social, environmental and economic impacts; and in particular, the risks associated with failing to manage negative social, environmental and economic impacts. These can be especially complex in joint ventures with multiple, external contractors; and industries operating at the forefront of proven technologies. The case examines the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the consequences for BP. The case can also be used to examine crisis-management strategies and techniques.

Jobs: the Need for Immediate Relief

There is a dichotomy: parts of the economy are booming, while unemployment remains high. This is not a conventional recession — a simple down-turn in the normal economic cycle. Powerful new industries like computers, electronics, genetics and aerospace are springing up at the same rate as the old smoke-stack industries like steel and textiles decline. To quote Alvin Toffler, the American futurologist: What’s happening is not a recession as such, but a re-structuring of the entire techno-economic base of society. It’s like an earthquake that throws up a new terrain. Unless that’s understood, no tinkering with interest rates, taxes, wage and price policies, or trade relations, can save us. (Alvin Toffler, Previews and Premises, 1984)