Keith Macmillan

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.

Corporate social reporting revisited

The intensity and scope of attention to the (negative) impacts of business activities on the social and natural environment have waxed and waned over the past forty years. A revival of interest on a wide scale is visible and audible again today. Numerous organizations, including the United Nations, the European Commission, national governments, and public interest groups, are calling for business to publish reports documenting their impacts on society and the environment. What can be learned from the early years of work in the area of corporate social responsibility and responsiveness, and how must the methods be altered in light of the changes that have occurred in the way the topic is defined today and in light of the new media available, especially the internet? This article tackles these two questions first by recalling which of the original concepts were found particularly useful, outlining their key strengths and weaknesses, and then by exploring the factors that currently characterize the field.

Governance and Performance: Goodwill Hunting

Corporate governance has changed dramatically over the past five years, but needs to change further. A new emphasis in performance and leadership is advocated.

The development of standards of good practice for boards of directors

Explains the model which underlies the Institute of Directors′ Standards of Good Practice for Boards of Directors produced in association with Henley Management College. These standards were derived from an extensive, rigorous research and consultation process over a period of two‐and‐a‐half years involving over 1,000 directors. The model consists of three major parts: organizing and running the board; personal competences and knowledge; and the tasks of the board which are supported by indicators of good practice.

Editorial: Prophecies and Profits

Milton Friedman has argued that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. He has also predicted that Britains economy will collapse with a consequent loss of freedom and democracy. Can British managers reconcile these views of the most esteemed living political economist? The outlook both for themselves and for the economy may hardly be conducive to developing a new sense of entrepreneurial mission but the Editor of JGM argues that this is precisely what they must do. For once their social responsibilities are clear: they must generate profits and jobs. This adaptation of Milton Friedmans famous dictum is the only way his depressing prophecies for the British economy can be proved false.