Corporate social responsibility has grown into a global phenomenon that encompasses businesses, consumers, governments, and civil society, and many organizations have adopted its discourse. Yet corporate social responsibility remains an uncertain and poorly defined ambition, with few absolutes. First, the issues that organizations must address can easily be interpreted to include virtually everyone and everything. Second, with their unique, often particular characteristics, different stakeholder groups tend to focus only on specific issues that they believe are the most appropriate and relevant in organizations' corporate social responsibility programs. Thus, beliefs about what constitutes a socially responsible and sustainable organization depend on the perspective of the stakeholder. Third, in any organization, the beliefs of organizational members about their organization's social responsibilities vary according to their function and department, as well as their own managerial fields of knowledge. A Stakeholder Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility provides a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge theories and research that can lead to a more multifaceted understanding of corporate social responsibility in its various forms, the pressures and conflicts that result from these different understandings, and some potential solutions for reconciling them.

Corporate social performance has come of age. In a business environment characterized by its perpetual state of flux, the ability to recognize and react to global forces becomes paramount. The fallout of such rapid change - the fast-paced developments in communications and technology, the continual change to global markets, shifting demographics, the homogenization of personal values - have all contributed to the widespread new interest in issues such as ecology and environment, human rights and diversity, health and well-being, and communities. All of these issues are now potential liabilities for companies, and are very much back on the agenda for business. Once regarded as peripheral management concerns, they are now recognized as hard to predict and hard for business to deal with when they go wrong. This book offers an insight into how corporate social performance can be measured and why this is an important aspect of corporate social responsibility. Using detailed case studies, it provides readers with the foundations for understanding and applying corporate social performance, providing a stakeholder framework by which corporate social performance can be measured, alongside a detailed consideration of the value of different stakeholder measures. The book also applies this framework to new social accounting standards, enabling the reader to consider the validity and appropriateness of these standards. The increasingly important role of the internet for corporate social reporting is also considered.

This unique collection of international papers integrates CSR theory, research and practice. The book examines the challenges of regulating and reporting CSR application, exploring issues concerning all agencies involved. Recommendations for performance enhancement are complimented by insightful enterprise and case studies on CSR sustainability.

Blending theory with practical application, this comprehensive text supports courses at the intersection of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate strategy, and public policy. Part I provides an overview of the field, defining CSR and placing it in the context of wider corporate strategy. Part II contains chapters on CSR issues related to the organization, the economy, and society, and provides detailed case studies on a variety of well-known firms. Adopting a stakeholder perspective, the authors explore CSR issues within the complex global business environment in which corporations operate today.

This book shows how companies can maximize the value of their CR initiatives by fostering strong stakeholder relationships.

Re-issue of a foundational work in the field of business ethics from R. Edward Freeman.

In 1984, R. Edward Freeman published his landmark book, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, a work that set the agenda for what we now call stakeholder theory. In the intervening years, the literature on stakeholder theory has become vast and diverse. This book examines this body of research and assesses its relevance for our understanding of modern business. Beginning with a discussion of the origins and development of stakeholder theory, it shows how this corpus of theory has influenced a variety of different fields, including strategic management, finance, accounting, management, marketing, law, health care, public policy, and environment. It also features in-depth discussions of two important areas that stakeholder theory has helped to shape and define: business ethics and corporate social responsibility. The book concludes by arguing that we should re-frame capitalism in the terms of stakeholder theory so that we come to see business as creating value for stakeholders.

Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation, and Success, the culmination of twenty years of research, interviews, and observations in the workplace, makes a major new contribution to management thinking and practice. Current ways of thinking about business and stakeholder management usually ask the Value Allocation Question: How should we distribute the burdens and benefits of corporate activities among stakeholders? Managing for Stakeholders, however, helps leaders develop a mindset that instead asks the Value Creation Question: How can we create as much value as possible for all of our stakeholders?Business is about how customers, suppliers, employees, financiers (stockholders, bondholders, banks, etc.), communities, the media, and managers interact and create value. World-renowned management scholar R. Edward Freeman and his coauthors outline ten concrete principles and seven practical techniques for managing stakeholder relationships in order to ensure a firm’s survival, reputation, and success. Managing for Stakeholders is a revolutionary book that will change not only how managers do business but also how they recognize and evaluate business opportunities that would otherwise be invisible.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) expresses a fundamental morality in the way a company behaves toward society. It follows ethical behavior toward stakeholders and recognizes the spirit of the legal and regulatory environment. The idea of CSR gained momentum in the late 1950s and 1960s with the expansion of large conglomerate corporations and became a popular subject in the 1980s with R. Edward Freeman's Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach and the many key works of Archie B. Carroll, Peter F. Drucker, and others. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008–2010, CSR has again become a focus for evaluating corporate behavior. First published in 1953, Howard R. Bowen’s Social Responsibilities of the Businessman was the first comprehensive discussion of business ethics and social responsibility. It created a foundation by which business executives and academics could consider the subjects as part of strategic planning and managerial decision-making. Though written in another era, it is regularly and increasingly cited because of its relevance to the current ethical issues of business operations in the United States. Many experts believe it to be the seminal book on corporate social responsibility. This new edition of the book includes an introduction by Jean-Pascal Gond, Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility at Cass Business School, City University of London, and a foreword by Peter Geoffrey Bowen, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver, who is Howard R. Bowen's eldest son.

Most practitioners and decision makers look at corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a socially responsible management practice on top of what company leaders generally do: focus on the sustainable, long term financial profitability of their corporation. This book focuses on a political understanding of CSR: the author bridges politics with corporate social responsibility and in a creative and provocative manner. Braun seeks to explore why and how corporations are to be seen as political actors with important roles in our current societies. The first part discusses the social context, the various stakeholder approaches and it also endeavors – with the help of the historic/political parallel of the bourgeois revolutions in the 19th century – to define the corporate polity. The second part analyses the new kind of political operational logic from the viewpoint of the different areas of corporate operation; it gives an overview of the consequences for the individual areas of operation and indicates how corporate policy can be realized in the given field of operation. The third part of the book introduces the institutions necessary for the creation of the corporate polity.