Monika I. Winn

Building Stakeholder Theory with a Decision Modeling Methodology

This article focuses stakeholder theory on that critical juncture where stakeholder relationships and corporate policy decisions converge. A case study methodology is described that permits detailed analyses of multiple stakeholders’ objectives; it is suitable for studies of major corporate strategic decisions that are complex, controversial, involve multiple stakeholders, and require strategic trade-offs. The methodology is applied here to the dramatic decision by a Pacific Northwest forest company to phase out traditional clear-cut harvesting methods of old-growth forests. The study’s findings point to new research questions and have theoretical implications for a finer grained conceptualization of stakeholder groups, stakeholder objectives, and stakeholder issues.

Business, Ecosystems, and Biodiversity: New Horizons for Management Research

Whether to secure critical resource inputs or responding to demands ranging from local communities to international stakeholders, leading multinational companies increasingly engage in ecosystem management by developing operations models with biodiversity, ecosystem conservation, and ecosystem restoration in mind—often in partnership with international conservation organizations. While promising to infuse business strategy with knowledge from natural science, specifically ecology, the emerging practice appears well ahead of research in this area. This article aims to encourage research into how organizations can manage their relationship with the natural environment so as not to destroy the very life-supporting foundations provided by nature. Bridging knowledge domains, the article introduces key concepts from ecology and social ecology to organization and management studies—ecosystems, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and ecological resilience. We illustrate these concepts with advances in ecosystems management and conclude with suggestions for future research in sustainability management, organization theory, and strategic management.

Building Chains and Directing Flows : Strategies and Tactics of Mutual Influence in Stakeholder Conflicts

This article aims to deepen the understanding of the processes and specific actions aimed at influencing and shaping business practices through dynamic stakeholder relationships. An inductive, longitudinal study of all players involved in a stakeholder conflict identified four clusters of influence tactics that were used by both secondary stakeholders and their target firms: issue raising, issue suppressing, positioning, and solution seeking. The stakeholders studied built elaborate influence chains and worked to direct influence flows. The study contributes to stakeholder theory by offering a refined understanding of both bilateral and mutual-influence tactics, expanding the theorys focus beyond bilateral relationships, and highlighting the use of dependence relationships among multiple embedded organizations to build influence over a specific target, and more generally, an organizational field. These findings are discussed in light of work on social movement organizations and institutional theory.

A Modeling Methodology for Multiobjective Multistakeholder Decisions Implications for Research

anagementsciencescurrentlydonotoffera systematic approach to model thedynamics and effects of multiple stake-holders’ objectives on corporate decisions. The pur-pose of this article is to introduce a structured qualita-tive methodology that provides researchers with ameans to systematically model, analyze, and comparecases of context-rich, idiosyncratic organizationaldecisions that involve multiple sets of objectives ofmultiple and divergent stakeholders.The multiobjective multistakeholder decisionmodeling methodology consists of a stepwiseapproach for inferring organizational priorities bymodeling organizational objectives hierarchies. Anobjectives hierarchy classifies related, more specificsubsets of objectives into higher level categories ofbroader, more general objectives in a hierarchical treestructure. In the modeling methodology, we combinequalitative and structured elements to achieve twotraditionally exclusive research goals: retain a highlevel of the decision’s complexity and simultaneouslyprovidemeansforsystematiccomparisonswithinoneor among several decision cases. With this methodol-ogy, we aim to broaden the empirical base of stake-holder theory by expanding its methodologicalarsenal.The modeling methodology is nontraditional inthat it links two formerly distinct streams of research:(a) multiattribute decision analysis and, specifically,the objectives hierarchies method from decision anal-ysis (Keeney, 1992; von Neumann & Morgenstern,1947;vonWinterfeldt,1987)and(b)recentdescriptivedevelopments in the stakeholder literature (Freeman,1984; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997). The objectiveshierarchies method creates tree structures that orga-nize the objectives of a decision maker into related

A New Future for Business? Rethinking Management Theory and Business Strategy

In this introductory article, we discuss the need for a rethinking of the theoretical foundations of management and the practice of business strategy in view of a range of social, environmental and ethical challenges that highlight the limits of ‘business as usual’. Calls for a reconsideration of current approaches have come to the fore in the fields of management, accounting, marketing and finance and we briefly review them here. We then introduce the four papers included in this special issue, each of which answers previously unechoed calls from different field of business research. We highlight how each paper contributes to novel perspectives on a future for business - perspectives that more adequately reflect the challenges faced today by both the private sector and society at large. Areas for further research are indicated as well.

Herausforderungen an das Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement bei zunehmenden ökologischen Diskontinuitäten

Das Konzept des Sustainable Development hat seit den 80er Jahren eine weltweite Anerkennung erfahren und erlangt in Politik und Managementpraxis zunehmend einen Leitbildcharakter. Wenngleich der Begriff „Sustainable Development“ bzw. Nachhaltige Entwicklung vielfach als unscharf und nebulos gekennzeichnet wird, so sind im letzten Jahrzehnt jedoch viele Bemuhungen unternommen worden, diesen Leitbildgedanken operationaler zu fassen. Sowohl theoretische sowie konzeptionelle Uberlegungen haben dazu beigetragen, leitbildgerechte Handlungsprinzipien und Zielformulierungen zu prazisieren. Hierbei wird immer wieder an die Ursprungsdefinition des Sustainable Development im Brundtland-Report angeknupft: “Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”1

Policy Vacuums and Institutional Voids in Global Climate Governance

Climate change poses severe threats to ecosystems, human security, and the sustainability of current social-economic systems. Adapting to, and stemming further acceleration of, climate change requi...