1,354,128 research outputs found
Company engagement with nongovernmental organizations from a corporate responsibility perspective
Get PDFOrganizations from a Corporate Responsibility Perspective Purpose – This doctoral dissertation examines the relationship between corporations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The key research question of the thesis is the following: Why and how do companies engage with nongovernmental organizations to demonstrate corporate responsibility in different institutional contexts? The most important motives for engaging with NGOs include gaining legitimacy and knowledge, managing risk, improving reputation and increasing operational efficiency. The thesis argues that companies need to understand NGO relations in a more comprehensive and strategic way, adopt a portfolio model to evaluate NGO engagement forms and strategies, improve the assessment of business and societal outcomes of engagement as well as understand the effect of national institutional and civil society base issues on NGO engagement. Company-NGO engagement should not be seen as the primary concern of all companies in the management of operations or investment decisions, but especially large multinational companies have a lot to gain from improved stakeholder management and corporate responsibility programs.
Theories and methods – The summary part and the four articles of the thesis are grounded in concepts and theories from four related and intertwined academic literatures: those of international business, business and society, management, and civil society. One of the articles is a literature review and the other three are based on single or multiple case study methodologies. The summary of the thesis and the three case studies emphasize the corporate responsibility perspective.
Article summaries – The thesis includes four articles: A) a systematic literature review of 88 articles published in the academic fields of business and society, international business, and management analyzes the current state of research on the company-NGO interface (Kourula & Laasonen, forthcoming 2010); B) a cross-national case study of a forest products company examines the importance of institutional context on NGO-corporate relations (Kourula, forthcoming 2010); C) a multiple case study categorizes the engagement of companies with NGOs into three corporate responsibility actions – philanthropy, integration and innovation – and examines the business and societal outcomes of engagement (Kourula & Halme, 2008); D) a longitudinal multiple case study examines the socially responsible purchasing strategies, organizational forms and tools that retail companies adopt in response to stakeholder pressure (Haltsonen, Kourula & Salmi, 2007).
Key contributions – The thesis has two main contributions: bringing geographic and institutional context to company-NGO engagement research and developing and refining corporate responsibility frameworks. More specifically, key theoretical developments of the thesis and articles are 1) building of a comprehensive framework of company-NGO engagement, 2) development of a new concept (civil society distance), 3) evaluation of a classification of company-NGO engagement strategies (sponsorship, dialogue and partnership), 4) refinement, adaptation and empirical examination of corporate responsibility models (an international CR model, a classification of CR types into philanthropy, integration and innovation and a categorization of socially responsible purchasing strategies), 5) a hypothesis regarding the business and societal outcomes of NGO engagement, and 6) the presentation of theoretical propositions related to company-NGO engagement
Ecological approaches to corporate sustainability and responsible business
No full textThe relationship and place of firms within their natural environment is a central element of corporate sustainability. In this chapter, we provide a brief history of corporate sustainability from an ecological perspective, examine major related trends and challenges, and explore the core principles that such a perspective on corporate sustainability adopts. Several lenses to understand firms within their natural environment have been proposed; we selectively present and contrast twelve key ones relevant to business and management. We conclude by not only advocating for systems thinking as one core principle of corporate sustainability, but also calling for systems action
Sustainability partnerships
No full textCompanies engage in sustainability partnerships as a way to address complex social and environmental challenges that exceed the coping capacity of single organisations, even societal sectors (public sector, corporate and civil society). In this chapter, we examine corporate engagement in such sustainability partnerships along the questions of ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘with whom’. We further guide you through the different stages of the partnering process and suggest critical questions to ask and best practices to consider. We address the key challenges involved and also look at the potential dark side of sustainability partnerships, before we close this chapter by exploring which individuals skills will help you successfully engage in these partnerships
Inclusive innovation through alliance networks
Get PDFWe are facing a range of grand challenges in aiming to achieve inclusive and sustainable development. While traditionally we have used hierarchical government-led and/or market-based approaches to try to solve these challenges, we are seeing a burgeoning of initiatives in the form of collaborative networks. In this chapter, the author examines developments in the field of alliance network studies, focusing particularly on developing the recent notion of an organizational role. In line with the analysis of a particular alliance network, the Better Buildings Alliance, by Peterman, Kourula and Levitt (2014; 2015), a role is seen to consist of three key interrelated elements: the drivers of an organization to participate within the network, the organizational resources applicable to the network, and the relationships to other actors within the network. A role and its constitutive elements are important tools to understand both organizational outcomes in alliance networks as well as the broader dynamics, efficiency and effectiveness of the entire network. Thus, the concept of roles allows us to better understand the individual, organizational, network and broader institutional context related dimensions of alliance networks as drivers of inclusive innovation. This chapter offers an overview of underexplored themes and questions in inclusive innovation for each of these levels of analysis and a research agenda for future exploration of these forms of alliances from a role-based perspective.</p
Corporate sustainability – What it is and why it matters
Get PDFThis chapter starts by discussing the changing overall context in which business, nature and society operate. It is important to understand this context, because it shapes the problems that corporate sustainability aims to address, and it influences how firms can cope with these problems. We then introduce the concept of corporate sustainability. We discuss similarities and differences to related concepts such as corporate social responsibility and business ethics. Next, we review some of the main environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that firms are asked to address as part of their corporate sustainability commitments. Finally, the chapter reviews four key motivations (instrumental, ethical, stakeholder-based and political) that underpin firms’ corporate sustainability commitments
Corporate Sustainability: Where Are We Going?
No full textIn the concluding chapter of the book, we reflect on the future of corporate sustainability. We summarise the key topics covered in each of the four sections – approaches, actors, processes and issues. We present past and future developments for each of these sections. We also reflect on how some of the tensions as presented in the introduction remain and become core to corporate sustainability debates. Finally, we end on a reflection of our personal roles in advancing sustainability
Power of paradox: Grassroots organizations’ legitimacy strategies over time
No full textFringe stakeholders with limited resources, such as grassroots organizations (GROs), are often ignored in business and society literature. We develop a conceptual framework and a set of propositions detailing how GROs strategically gain legitimacy and influence over time. We argue that GROs encounter specific paradoxes over the emergence, development, and resolution of an issue, and they address these paradoxes using cognitive, moral, and pragmatic legitimacy strategies. While cognitive and moral strategies tend to be used consistently, the flexible and paradoxical use of pragmatic strategies has important consequences, both for GROs’ legitimacy and for their potential influence over powerful organizations associated with them. We enrich our framework with the help of two illustrative cases and discuss the implications of the framework for GROs’ legitimacy strategies in business and society literature
Bringing political context back into international business studies of human rights
Get PDFIn this article, we respond to Giuliani, Santangelo, and Wettstein’s (2016) call formore international business (IB) research on the theme of human rights (HR).While we surely agree with the need for increasing research on the topic, we arguethat future research should emphasize and elaborate on the role of political context. Moving the spotlight from states to companies as HR violators runs the risk of undermining the contextual complexities where violations take place. Companies are deeply embedded in their interaction with a variety of different stakeholders, including public sector and civil society organizations as well as other firms. We see that HR scholars can gain insights from the blooming literature of political corporate social responsibility (CSR) to bring back political context (Frynas &Stephens, 2015; Mäkinen & Kourula, 2012; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011; Scherer,Rasche, Palazzo, & Spicer, 2016; Schremp-Stirling, 2016). HR research can be seen as a more empirically driven project and thus a political theory grounding can offer a solid foundation for this important stream of scholarship
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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