This book focuses on the legitimacy of corporate power wielded by corporate groups, integrating legal doctrine, economic analysis, and theoretical approaches. It reassesses how corporate groups can maintain legitimacy whilst exercising corporate power. Corporate groups are a prominent commercial feature of many jurisdictions and present unique challenges. The book argues that when analysed through the lens of corporate social responsibility, a legitimacy deficiency emerges. This arises from a lack of historical debate, diluted control mechanisms, and inflated growth, utilising unique features of the corporate group. It explores how the magnified power of the corporate group presents acute challenges for corporate legitimacy. Data is utilised alongside current examples of corporate groups which identify structural architectural patterns. It explores new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and blockchain as ways of attaining legitimacy. It presents methods of attaining legitimacy for the continued wielding of power to be held within corporate groups. This book spans several research interests under the corporate law umbrella. It will be of interest to traditional black letter company lawyers. Additionally, it will be of interest to those who have an interest in business and those who are interested in the role of technology.

Business ethics, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, values-driven management, corporate governance, and ethical leadership are necessary horizons for the legitimacy of corporations in the process of globalization. Based on hermeneutics and institutional analysis, this book discusses the place of values in corporations and the role of ethics in management. With the theories of business ethics as a starting point, it is possible to propose a vision of the good citizen corporation. The book presents theories, concepts of responsibility for stakeholder justice, and basic ethical principles of respect for autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability. This is the foundation for an analysis of the ethical relations to internal and external constituencies of the firm, i.e. shareholders, owners, investors, management, employees, consumers, and local community. The interaction with the environment is further analyzed with a focus on ethical principles as the basis for sustainability. This investigation culminates with the conceptualization of the firm as a collective and institutional moral agent. The content also includes analysis of concrete political developments in the US, Europe, and the United Nations. Finally, the book provides a framework for a new corporate strategy based on global business ethics.

The interaction between corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has become an important topic in the debate about corporate social responsibility (CSR). Yet, unlike the vast majority of academic work on this topic, this book explicitly focuses on clarifying the role of NGOs, not of corporations, in this context. Based on the notion of NGOs as political actors it argues that NGOs suffer from a multiple legitimacy deficit: they are representatives of civil society without being elected; the legitimacy of the claims they raise is often controversial; and there are often doubts regarding the legitimacy of the behaviour they exhibit in putting forward their claims. Set against an extended sphere of political action in the postnational constellation this book argues that the political model of deliberative democracy provides a meaningful conceptualization of NGOs as legitimate partners of corporations and it develops a conceptual framework that specifically allows distinguishing legitimate partner NGOs from two related actor types with whom they share certain characteristics but who differ with respect to their legitimacy. These related actor types are interest groups on the one hand and activists on the other hand. In conclusion it argues that a focus on the behaviour of NGOs is most meaningful for distinguishing them from interest groups and activists.

Starting from a discussion of the theoretical underpinning of the place companies occupy in society, this book explores the consequences of adherence to free market contractualist theory, including the lack of regulatory control of a sufficiently robust nature. Professor Dine comments on the absence of a concept of governance of groups from a comparative perspective and considers the consequences of this absence for the conflict of laws. In particular, she highlights the tragic consequences of globalization by transnationals including polarization of income and environmental damage, and suggests a possible legal framework to prevent future damages.

This Handbook forms part of wider research in responsibility, ethics and legitimacy of corporations. Through an interdisciplinary perspective with comparative integration of sociological, politological, philosophical, theological, ethical, economic, legal, linguistic and communication theoretical approaches this Handbook will clarify how the interrelation between company and environment is mediated by legitimating notions in public spaces and public relations; how and why these notions have changed radically; how these transformations strike on the epistemological as well as practical dimension of business companies; and the problems involved in these transformations at the macro-, meso- and micro levels. The Handbook begins with a historical introduction and chronology of the development of business legitimacy, providing a comprehensive assessment of the concept’s evolution and identifying the most influential authors and their works. These may be divided into authors who follow (1) a philosophical, sociological, or conceptual tradition in management and leadership in their treatment of legitimacy and those who belong to the research tradition of (2) application of the concept in management science and leadership as well as in organizational theory and business practice in the interdisciplinary perspective of the different approaches. The Handbook continues with systematic approaches and major themes developed in the concept of business legitimacy. Contributions here may be conceptual, empirical/applied or case studies. The different parts of the volume deal with the different topics to which business legitimacy has been applied, with how legitimacy is relevant in the various operational areas of the firm, and with the legitimacy theory’s responses to some of the most important issues that businesses and organizations currently face.

Institutional Investors' Power to Change Corporate Behavior

Grassroots movements can pose serious challenges to both governments and corporations. However, grassroots actors possess a variety of motivations, and their visions of development may evolve in complex ways. Meanwhile, their relative powerlessness obliges them to forge an array of shifting alliances and to devise a range of adaptive strategies. Grassroots Environmental Governance presents a compilation of in-depth ethnographic case studies, based on original research. Each of the chapters focuses specifically on grassroots engagements with the agents of various forms of industrial development. The book is geographically diverse, including analyses of groups based in both the global North and South, and represents a range of disciplinary perspectives. This allows the collection to explore themes that cross-cut specific localities and disciplinary boundaries, and thus to generate important theoretical insights into the complexities of grassroots engagements with industry. This volume will be of great interest to scholars of environmental activism, environmental governance, and environmental studies in general.

Sustainability is a concept that unifies the environment, economy, and society, and has spread as a key concept in enterprise management. The United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, which require worldwide efforts to reach a sustainable society, and also applies to private enterprises.Sustainability should be developed in connection with management strategy, and Asia's role, including that of Japan, is important to improve global sustainability. This book addresses how sustainability management in the Asian context is currently practised and proposes practices for the future.Investigation of the effect of business domain characteristics on the integration of sustainability and management, and elucidation of the process and features of EMCS (Environmental Management Control System) inside and outside of companies have been indicated. The book points that companies need to use and design Sustainability Management Control Systems in order to implement a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) strategy and match employees' behavior to CSR activities.MFCA (Material Flow Cost Accounting) has started to expand rapidly into other Asian industries from Japan as a method of Environmental Management Control. The fundamental idea and procedure of MFCA and many case examples of Japanese MFCA have been reported. These findings help us to consider a policy for continuous use of MFCA. Moreover, the relationship between Toyota Production System and MFCA has been explained and 'Material Flow Time Costing' as a new management accounting concept is proposed.Based on the literature review, the study has made recommendations for Asian companies' strategic management and governmental policy-making to improve both quality and quantity of sustainability disclosure in Asia. One of the papers has identified the development and implementation of social and environmental accounting by Indonesian state-owned enterprises and their determining factors. In a Japanese manufacture, the effect of smoothed production has been analyzed as an example of environmental management. This led to an increase in production quality without additional capital spending.

In Leadership in a Slum Johnson looks at leadership in the Thai social context from a different angle than traditional studies that measure well-educated Thais on leadership scales derived in the West. Seeking a cultural account of social influence processes he turns to those who have been left behind in the race to participate in a globalizing world, the urban poor. Using both systematic data collection and participant observation he develops a culturally preferred model as well as a set of models based in Thai concepts that reflect on-the-ground realities. Johnson also examines the community-state relationship and finds that in the face of state power that brings both development and the forces of eviction, the community and its leaders are not passive in this relationship but modify, reject, or resist state views in their various forms. He concludes by looking at the implications of his anthropological approach for those who are involved in leadership training in Thai settings and beyond. This work challenges the dominance of the patron-client rubric for understanding all forms of Thai leadership and offers an alternative view for understanding leadership rooted in local social systems to approaches that assume the universal applicability of leadership research findings across all cultural settings.