James E. Post

Managing the Environmental Change Process: Barriers and Opportunities

Organizations face formidable obstacles to the institutionalization of environmental management programmes. Longitudinal studies show that companies face two major types of barriers to change: industry‐specific barriers, which affect all organizations in a line of business; and organizational barriers, which are not specific to environmental problems, but may impede a company′s capacity to deal with any form of change. Evidence shows that these barriers can be overcome through effective environmental management programmes. Argues that by overcoming these barriers, organizations can move along an environmental performance curve, consisting of phases involving adjustment to regulatory and market realities; adaptation and anticipation of emerging issues; and innovation in achieving economically and environmentally sustainable performance through change programmes involving internal and external elements.

Social Entrepreneurs and Catalytic Change.

In the past few years, U.S. society has witnessed the proliferation of an increasing number of initiatives that have extensively used the media to capture public attention about an issue of social concern in the hope that social action and changes in public policy would ensue. Examples include Hands Across Americas efforts to raise money for and awareness about the problem of hunger and homelessness in the United States, the Partnership for a Drug-Free Americas ad campaign to change public attitudes toward drug abuse, Earth Day 1990s re-emphasis on environmentalism, and The Business Enterprise Trusts attempts to improve corporate social performance by seeking out and publicizing good corporate citizenship. Each of these initiatives was headed by an individual that we call a catalytic social entrepreneur. A brief description will highlight the roles that catalytic social entrepreneurs played in the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and Hands Across America.

Private Management and Public Policy

How should corporate managers respond to social concerns and political pressures? The authors suggest that appropriate guidelines for corporate social performance are to be found within the framework of public policy, and illustrate their approach with four examples.

The Public Affairs Function

Corporate public affairs is a relatively young staff function. As such, its management is a challenge to both staff specialists and the general managers who oversee its role within the organization. This article examines the management dimensions of the public affairs field and discusses the responsibilities and alternatives to senior general managers in shaping the public affairs function.

The public affairs function in American corporations: Development and relations with corporate planning

Abstract The increase of social and political turbulence has led to the development of new organizational response mechanisms. Public affairs units are among the most widely adopted forms in U.S. companies. This paper reports findings from a major research study of the public affairs function in American corporations. Analysis of the public affairs function in several hundred firms strongly suggests that a critical stage in the organizations response to environmental change involves the integration of the corporate planning and public affairs perspective. This paper reviews data from the study and discusses the planning/public affairs relationship in terms of survey and case research data.

The Greening of the Boston Park Plaza Hotel

This article discusses the relationship between personal, family, and organizational values in the development and implementation of an environmental action program at the family-owned and -operated Boston Park Plaza Hotel. In this instance, a ‘spirit of responsibility’ that evolved through three generations of the family meshed with a traditional ‘spirit of ownership’ to produce a program that is a financial and public relations success and that is recognized as the most progressive in the industry. Moreover, the hotel and family have received significant awards for industry leadership and environmental achievement.

Assessing the Nestlé Boycott: Corporate Accountability and Human Rights

The cause of human rights is frequently disparaged among business executives, faculty, and students. This is regrettable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that human rights concerns are an increasingly prominent part of the business environment. The recently resolved consumer boycott of the Nestle company provides an important case study of the manner in which the conflicts between human rights and commercial interests ebb, flow, and sometimes produce profound changes. The infant formula controversy, and the Nestle boycott as its most visible manifestation, were precedent-setting events in modern American business industry.

Adapt or adapt: lessons for strategy from the US telecoms industry

Using multiple measures of performance, we related performance differentials between the most and least adaptive firms in the telecommunications equipment industry in the United States to differences in their alignment properties. We found that winners excel uniformly in terms of internal alignment as well as external alignment as compared to losers on all the performance measures considered. However, the contribution of the alignment characteristics to different dimensions of performance varies. This finding has important managerial implications for how these characteristics could be configured for superior strategic adaptation in a rapidly changing industry.

The United Nations Global Compact A CSR Milestone

The author focuses attention on some of the historical antecedents of the United Nations Global Compact. Developments such as the Global Compact do not arrive “whole cloth” but require people and institutions to be in a “state of readiness” for the idea. The article discusses Secretary-General Annan’s challenge to action, the historical background of three stages of corporate social responsibility, and the future of global corporate responsibility.

Public Consequences of Private Action: The Marketing of Infant Formula in Less Developed Countries

This article presents a framework for the analysis of multinational corporation9s dealings in less developed countries. The marketing of infant formula demonstrates the conflict inherent in these dealings, and the rationale and impact of marketing strategies are presented. Alternatives that could contribute to the social and economic welfare of LDCs are suggested.