This volume critically analyzes the convergence of technology, business practices, public policies, political ideologies, and societal values for improving business performance at the global-local paradigm. It also enriches knowledge on contemporary business strategies against conventional wisdom of managing companies today. Shifts in the global economic and political order have significantly affected the business patterns within developed, developing, and emerging markets. The reversal of political ideologies from liberal to protectionist business frameworks are disrupting the trade flows that were rooted in the international economy since the mid-twentieth century. The essays contemplate developing new visions and business perspectives to match with the changing political ideologies in emerging markets. This volume will serve as a valuable tool to readers looking for global market management strategies to generate cost-effective business models and create convergence with political and social values to drive better governance of businesses.

This text deals with inter-relationships among businesses, government and society, and how this relationship affects business managers. It includes the latest thinking on the ethical implications of business and its relation to society.

This volume critically analyzes the convergence of technology, business practices, public policies, political ideologies, and societal values for improving business performance at the global-local paradigm. It also enriches knowledge on contemporary business strategies against conventional wisdom of managing companies today. Shifts in the global economic and political order have significantly affected the business patterns within developed, developing, and emerging markets. The reversal of political ideologies from liberal to protectionist business frameworks are disrupting the trade flows that were rooted in the international economy since the mid-twentieth century. The essays contemplate developing new visions and business perspectives to match with the changing political ideologies in emerging markets. This volume will serve as a valuable tool to readers looking for global market management strategies to generate cost-effective business models and create convergence with political and social values to drive better governance of businesses.

This book is about promoting corporate responsibility in its original meaning: businesses should have a positive impact on society, and society should not only be a lever of making a profit. When we treat social responsibility as an external function of the core business, we are exposed to the worst. Business for Society seeks to redress the balance and promotes the original idea of corporate responsibility. This first book in the series of the same name sets the scene and presents the key theories across the various management disciplines to answer the following questions: ‘How, why and under what conditions can business act for society?’ The book narrows and discusses examples of businesses which are making impressive strides in delivering positive impacts for society as well as their bottom lines; but as the concept of corporate responsibility has become more mainstream in recent years, many organisations have adopted the term and reduced it to a marketing message. Areas covered include a historical perspective on the hijacking of business responsibility towards society, management knowledge and value, the Business for Society project against hijacking, accounting for society, finance for society and governance for society and democracy. The book will be of interest for scholars and students in the fields of corporate social responsibility, business ethics and governance.

Governance and Business Models for Sustainable Capitalism touches upon many of the central themes of today’s debate on business and society. In particular, it brings attention to a recurrent tension between efficiency, innovation, and productivity on the one hand, and fairness, equity, and sustainability on the other. The book argues that we need radical rethinking of business models and economic governance, beyond the classical doctrine, which sees social and ecological responsibility as lying with public-policy regulation of purely profit-seeking firms. In spite of the popular CSR agenda, business – as we know it today – is both too transient and too limited in its motivation to carry the regulatory burden. We need to adopt a much wider concept of 'partnered governance', where advanced states and pioneering companies work together to raise the social and environmental bar. The book suggests that civil engagements based on moral rather than formal rights, and amplified through the media, may provide a healthy challenge both to autocratic planning and to solely profit-centered commercialization. The book also proposes a triple cycle theory of innovation for sustainability: a novel framing of the efficacy of green and prosocial entrepreneurship as intertwined with political visions and supportive institutions. In addition, the book offers reflections on the ways in which further digital robotizaton may enable transition to an ‘Agora Economy’ where productive efficiency is combined with expanded civic freedoms. Aimed primarily at researchers, academics, and students in the fields of political economy, business and society, corporate governance, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability, the book will additionally be of value to practitioners, supplying them with information regarding the challenges associated with the shaping of sustainable or ‘civilised’ market capitalism for a better world.

Business and Society: Ethical, Legal, and Digital Environments prepares students for the modern workplace by exploring the opportunities and challenges they will face in today′s interconnected, global economy.

Corporations dominate our societies. They employ us, sell to us and influence how we think and who we vote for, while their economic interests dictate local, national and global agendas. Written in clear and accessible terms, this much-needed textbook provides critical perspectives on all aspects of the relationship between business and society: from an historical analysis of the spread of capitalism as the foundation of the 'corporate' revolution in the late nineteenth century to the regulation, ethics and exclusionary implications of business in contemporary society. Furthermore, it examines how corporate power and capitalism might be resisted, outlining a range of alternatives, from the social economy through to new forms of open access or commons ownership.

Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.