Lee E. Preston

Managing the Extended Enterprise: THE NEW STAKEHOLDER VIEW

This article enlarges the extended enterprise metaphor from its origins in manufacturing-logistics management to embrace the full range of constituencies that are vital to the survival and success of the corporation. This article presents a new Stakeholder View of the firm which holds that stakeholder relationships are the ultimate sources of the firms wealth-creating capacity. According to this view, long-term business success requires a firm to develop and integrate relationships with its multiple stakeholders within a comprehensive management strategy. In order to illustrate the validity of this approach, this article describes and analyzes the evolution and impact of comprehensive stakeholder management policies in three major firms.

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.

Corporate social accounting reporting for the physical environment: A critical review and implementation proposal

Abstract Protection of the physical environment and abatement of specific pollution problems are now generally recognized as major aspects of the corporation-society relationship. This paper views a number of attempts to develop formal corporate policy statements and accounting-reporting procedures dealing with these problems. A specific implementation proposal is presented and illustrated with data from several different field studies conducted by the authors.

The Third Managerial Revolution

The appearance of professional management as the dominant means of organizational control in society is referred to as the managerial revolution. This required, however, a prior revolution—the appe...

Comparing Corporate Social Performance: Germany, France, Canada, and the U.S.

Worldwide concern about the social and human impact of modern business activity is reflected in recent surveys of corporate social performance in three important industrial countries—Germany, France, and Canada. These studies reveal important similarities in corporate social concern, as well as sharp distinctions among them and comparisons with U. S. experience. The results help indicate trends in business and society relationships.

Reputation as a source of corporate social capital

This note summarises key features of the concept of corporate social capital as it has been developed in the recent literature, and argues that corporate reputation is an important form and source of such capital. This argument contrasts sharply with much of the reputation literature of the last decade, which treats reputation either as a characteristic of the firm entirely different from its other features and resources, or as a composite index applying to all of them. We argue here that reputation is a form of capital in itself, created by investment and innovation, and – like other forms of capital – subject to risk, depreciation and obsolescence.

Dual Distribution and Its Impact on Marketing Organization

Concern over the extent of dual distribution has arisen because of changes in the activities of firms in manufacturing and distribution. One expression of this concern was a recent congressional investigation whose findings are herein assessed.

The World of Small Business: A Suggested Typology

Detailed study of a sample of more than 200 originally-small firms in a single major industrial area, plus an examination of new business successes as identified by Fortune, reveals five major types of small enterprises, only a minority of which can be described as successful “post-industrial” activities based on new areas of knowledge and new sources of demand. By far the overwhelming portion of the firms studied were found to be operating within traditional “small business industries”, in highly specialized activities with very small total demand, and in satellite roles to major industries or large firms.

Measuring Corporate Responsibility

The idea that corporate management is responsible for the social impact of business activity, as well as for economic and financial results, has evolved over the past couple of decades from a controversial contention to a widely accepted principle. There remains, however, considerable uncertainty both as to the specific responsibilities involved and as to the techniques of analysis and implementation required to carry them out. Indeed, it may well be that these ambiguities have hastened the widespread acceptance of the idea itself; it is difficult to organize opposition to a proposition that seems both beneficent and undefined. At the same time, serious analysts and concerned executives have attempted to refine the corporate responsibility concept and have experimented with a variety of implementation techniques. Although some of these developments must, in all fairness, be dismissed as mere public relations efforts, significant recognition of and genuine commitment to the idea of corporate social involvement characterizes an increasing number of private corporations, both large and small. The present state of consciousness of the most far-sighted executives has been summarized by a leading American spokesman as follows:-

Coming of Middle Age in Business and Society [with Responses]

When it was a new, lively field of study, Business and Society quickly gained an important place in the curriculum by addressing issues largely ignored in business education. Today, that growth is slowing down, not because the issues are less important, but because many of them are being addressed by the functional fields of business. The future of the field will be importantly determined by its ability to become part of the evolving changes shaping the business curriculum. This article is based on the keynote address presented at the Annual Research Workshop on the Social Issues Division of the Academy of Management, San Francisco, California, August 12, 1990. CMR invited three other leading scholars in the field—Lee Preston of the University of Maryland, James Post of Boston University, and Karen Paul of the Rochester Institute of Technology—to offer their comments on Cheit9s address. Their responses follow the article.