Josep M. Lozano

Towards the relational corporation: from managing stakeholder relationships to building stakeholder relationships (waiting for Copernicus)

The starting point of this paper is the traditional view of stakeholders (encompassing the binomial affecting – affected by the company), and identifies the analytical, managerial and normative dimensions implicit in this view. It goes on to suggest that all stakeholder approaches should make explicit their models, what we call a company model, a management model, a description model, a values clarification model and a legitimacy model. The next issue raised is how far most stakeholder approaches are constructed from a view of the corporation focused inwards, at the center of a universe with stakeholders revolving round it. The complexity of contemporary society (the network society) may require us to learn how to interpret the company’s economic and social relationships system, so that thinking about the company means thinking about it both within and without the network. This is why we propose the term relational corporation, to refer to a corporation that changes its approach to links with its stakeholders, moving from managing relationships to building relationships.

From Risk Management to Citizenship Corporate Social Responsibility: Analysis of Strategic Drivers of Change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand whether firms evolve towards more comprehensive postures of CSR and what strategic factors drive the change. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is deductive-inductive research based on six critical case studies and supported by extensive review of related literature. The paper provides historical analysis of six firms leaders in their industry (Nike, Shell, General Electric, 3M, CEMEX and IBM) combining primary and secondary data. Findings – Firms evolve over time towards more complex CSR postures. This evolution is driven by some key strategic factors. The article sets out a three-stage framework connecting CSR evolution and the strategic change factors. Practical implications – The paper provides managers with a framework to promote strategic CSR change in their organizations. Originality/value – The paper is a joint research study on the evolution of CSR and strategic drivers of change.

SME social performance: a four‐cell typology of key drivers and barriers on social issues and their implications for stakeholder theory

Purpose – Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are often neglected in the context of business and society theory building. The purpose of this article is to build a model of why SMEs address social issues by integrating internal and external drivers and barriers to social performance (SP).Design/methodology/approach – Using thematic analysis, barriers and drivers to SME social performance are clustered along key stakeholders and presented in a theoretical model. The analysis dates from 1973 until 2006 and is grounded in an extensive literature review that represents a total of 83 countries. It includes academic and practitioner accounts stemming from theoretical and empirical work, as well as conference proceedings. A total of 80 drivers and 96 barriers to SME high social performance are identified.Findings – This paper develops an SME four‐cell ideal type of social issues management (SIM) response typology based on drivers and barriers of social performance.Practical implications – The importance of under...

Ethics and Management: A Controversial Issue

This paper is a part of a broader research project which aims to examine how ethical paradigms are related to theories of organization and management. Using an analysis of various studies on the issue of Business Ethics as its point of departure the paper points out that there are two converging lines of thought. The first emphasizes that management should be reexamined in the light of the cultural changes taking place and maintains that management is a key factor in this change. The second proposes that ethics in general (and Business Ethics in particular) should be understood to mean more than simply “applying certain values” and stresses that this definition of ethics should be rethought in order to foster a closer relationship between ethics and the decision-making processes.

CSR or RSC? (Beyond the Humpty Dumpty Syndrome)

Purpose – Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has often been presented as a challenge for management. This is due to the fact that the CSR debate has been associated with the business practices that are linked to it. But CSR is also an approximation to the business practices that require us to question the underlying corporate business model. Therefore, as it deals with a companys business model, the term CSR at once reveals its potential and its limitations. The ambiguity of the term “social” and the risk of not combining this with the term “economic” is by no means less significant: neither is the diversity of interpretations and approaches allowed by the term “social”. Using the words of the Lewis Carrol character, Humpty Dumpty, as a metaphor–according to which a words meaning depends on the power of the person who uses it – the purpose of this paper is to propose a shift away from talking in terms of CSR (corporate social responsibility) to talking in terms of responsible and sustainable corporat...

The Role of Governments in Fostering CSR

The purpose of this paper2 is to analyse differences in the approaches of European government policies in the light of their ideals, and four different models of government action are put forward. Our proposal’s theoretical coherence stems from the fact that CSR is not a new and isolated item for inclusion on the political agenda. On the contrary, it forms part of the current debate on the role of companies in society, clearly shaping the current challenges to the welfare state and its governance, and the socio-economic development of each country. This initial hypothesis has been given a relational reading that emphasises the strategy of dialogue and collaboration between company, government and the organs of civil society.

Integrating business and ethical values through practitioner dialogue

In practice, the relationship between business and ethics is not well-settled. In the past, organisations have developed an interest in setting value charts but this has been approached from a purely managerial perspective following the momentum and interest aroused by research on organisational cultures. Although interest in managing organisational cultures has slowly died down, for both theoretical and practical reasons we argue that there are feasible ways to explore values as part of an organisational culture. Indeed it is our claim that it is feasible and productive to discuss values within organisations. However, rather than developing sophisticated theoretical frameworks, more efforts should be put into thinking about the conditions under which participants can enter into productive dialogue. It is our claim that if processes are carefully examined people within organisations can make better sense of their work and discover their own perspective to account for what they actually do and to project themselves into what they think they should be doing. Thus, values identified within the organisation can eventually reach a point where they become an expression of a shared commitment. The experience we describe aims to illustrate only one example of a concrete application of this approach.

A New Chance for Management — A New Challenge for Spirituality

This Paper was presented at the Spirituality in Management workshop held in Szeged, Hungary in July 2001. It is a stimulating paper which starts with the following premise: “Could we agree with the presumption that every management model or paradigm implies (or is based on) an anthropological model or paradigm, a certain concept of what the human being is and what should be done so that he can reach his full potential?” That which determines organisational structure is not only output or strategy but also the anthropological model we use, whether explicit or implicit. If we agree with the above, we are in a better position to tackle the subject of our meeting because spirituality then becomes an “anthropological option”. In other words, our point of departure is that spirituality is a “constitutive dimension of the human being”.

What emerges when a market emerges

Purpose – What emerges when a market emerges? Does giving emphasis to the term emerging markets not represent a form of economic reductionism, neglecting the social context in which a market emerges? In this respect, CSR can be seen as a contribution from the business community, one that does not separate the economic and social dimensions in this process. However, more global approaches are needed to face todays challenges and to reflect on the criteria to be borne in mind. This paper seeks to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – For this reason, the paper feels it might be useful to respond to the question posed in the title, in dialogue with Pope Benedict XVIs latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (CV). The latter represents one of the few current attempts to provide a global and integrated view, incorporating specific guiding values and criteria for action. This paper is thus divided into three parts entitled: in times of globalization and crisis: integral human development as a criteri...

An approach to organizational ethics

When we talk about Organizational Ethics we are referring to the set of values that identify an organization, from within (which comes down to the understanding that those who are part of the organization have about it) as well as from outside (which comes down to the perception that those who have a relation with an organization have of it). Such set of values can be considered in a broad sense (that is, the set of values structuring the organization and its practices, be they instrumental or final values, positive or negative) or in a stricter sense (and then we will refer only to those values that express the vision, the raison d’etre and the commitments of the organization, and that are linked to their corporate and moral identity). Synthetically we could say that in the first case we would find those organizations that ask themselves how to make progress in search of excellence; in the second, those organizations that ask themselves what is necessary for corporate moral excellence?