Tommy Jensen

Stakeholder Theory and Globalization: The Challenges of Power and Responsibility

Globalization is a blind spot in stakeholder theory and this undermines its explanatory power and usefulness to managers in global corporations. In this paper we build on Edward Freeman and colleagues’ attempts to construct divergent stories about how to create value for the corporation and its stakeholders when developing a stakeholder theory that is more sensitive to globalization. We achieve this by highlighting two particular challenges that globalization brings to stakeholder theory. The first challenge is to acknowledge new power relations (sub-political movements, new forms of bureaucracy and hierarchy) and the second is to acknowledge new dimensions of responsibility (a political responsibility). In the paper we relate our developments of stakeholder theory to two previously published case studies.

Internationalization of the organizational field: Swedish grocery retailers in the European integration process

Abstract This article describes how import of ideas and practices influence an industry that is in an early stage of internationalization, as well as part of European integration. By using institutional theory, such a situation is depicted as an expansion of the organizational field, in which international isomorphism between organizations has commenced. Studying Swedish grocery retailing, a new set of ideas was found regarding what constitutes an efficient organization. This included centralization, vertical integration and brand management, and it was strongly influenced by foreign actors and markets. We conclude that isomorphism occurs in a decreasingly national field, although not entirely pan-European in character, and that international diffusion of ideas and practices reshape markets, partly independent of goods and capital flows.

Re-articulating the ethical corporation : the case of the Woolf Committee Report

Purpose – Efforts to address the role and responsibilities of large global corporations have predominantly focused on the need for increased and more effective global corporate governance, but this ...