Corporate Responsibility and Stakeholding: Volume 10

Stakeholder paradigm has been gaining currency over the past few decades and technological breakthroughs have been influential in building its momentum. Hyper-Transparency is emerging as a building block and as an indispensable concomitant of stakeholder paradigm. The crux of a Hyper-Transparent organization is trust. The new paradigm requires substituting translucent and opaque business practices with fully transparent ones under which lasting trust can be built between the organization and its stakeholders. However, the nub of the stakeholder paradigm is the changes inside the organizations as well as changes in relation to their external environment, and transparency is both a driver and a resultant of these changes. Transparency is an integral part of corporate social responsibility debate and an eristic issue for the stakeholders. Moreover, Hyper-Transparency empowers the stakeholders to considerably influence the decision making sphere. In this chapter, transparency, its drivers and tools as well as the power of stakeholders in the new age of Hyper-Transparency alongside a number of case studies are presented.

Stakeholder theory may be the Archimedes lever that allows defining a possible Economy for the Common Good; however, the theory’s current level of development does not enable it to escape the criticism that considers it nothing more than shared egoism. The expansion of the concept of stakeholder, including not only groups that collaborate in the creation of value or which are actively impacted by the organisation, but also incorporating those affected by omission – non-stakeholders – would lead to the reconciliation of stakeholder theory and the common good. Nevertheless, to set it within corporate practice, besides having selfish and altruist incentives, would be of interest for the conceptual development of shapeholders, understood as the link between non-stakeholders’ interests and needs, and firms.

The subject of this study developed from a personal interest in the financial crisis of developing countries. This chapter will try to give direction to the attractiveness of micro-credit and empowerment between the UK-based women small-scale entrepreneur and women microfinance-based entrepreneur who live in developing countries.

This chapter will exemplify that debt is not an effective tool for helping most poor women to enhance their economic conditions also the state of management of microfinance-based enterprises. This chapter proposes microfinance insights points to areas where new research is desirable, particularly around possibilities and constraints for serving poor women and social effects.

Obviously the resources of the planet are finite and this is a limiting factor to growth and development. The depletion of the resources of the planet is one of the factors which has helped create the current interest in sustainability. Nevertheless the economic system under which the world operates is predicated on an assumption that development is possible and so the concern is with acquiring the additional resources required for that development. This is perfectly in accordance with the assumptions made by Brundtland and accepted ever since. However environmentalists have been showing that the resources of the world are overused and usage is not sustainable at this level and there is starting to be a general understanding of the meaning of resource depletion. While this has been occupying the minds of people in the developed western world a number of countries have adopted a strategy of rapid growth and economic development. Principal among these have been the BRIC countries. These countries have access to a large proportion of the remaining natural resources of the world while also having large populations and therefore great scope for rapid economic growth. This leads of course to an unstable global economy as there is a looming imbalance between supply and demand, leading to problems of governance in this new environment. We consider a diagnosis and prognosis for this situation.

Most corporations consider their stakeholders to be those, who can be defined in a relatively narrow periphery. Customers, workers, investors, authorities, neighbours, suppliers and various interest groups, for instance NGOs. However, during the last decades, phenomena such as the financial crisis, the global warming, the disasters of global consumerism in terms of the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in the fashion industry, are examples of how the stakeholder concept cannot continue to be defined as narrow as corporations usually does. The butterfly effect of globalism has shown to be – yes, global. Even the smallest company, the single consumer and the tiniest decision made by anyone may in the future – perhaps even tomorrow – affect stakeholders, we didn’t know existed. The future generation is also to be considered as stakeholders, which decisions made today may affect. Companies, consumers, everyday people including children already know this even from the first day at school if not before. What we need is not knowledge about these phenomena – it is how to think globally when we decide locally: in companies, in daily households, in education of our future generations.

This chapter discusses how to revise the stakeholder concept according to corporate responsibility, company stakeholding and globalism. It points to shortcomings in various global trade systems such as banking, fashion and IT markets, and through these it suggests and discusses a new way of defining the stakeholder concept in a globalised and future perspective considering using the RESIST-model against ‘business-as-usual’ based on the butterfly effect of the smallest decision.

This study examines the factors that influence the uptake of stakeholder engagement in the sustainability accounting and reporting process. The chapter addresses the scarcity of research in the area of stakeholder engagement by highlighting the factors that accelerate involvement of stakeholders in the sustainability accounting and reporting process. Case study research was used to explore the influences on stakeholder engagement practices of three Australian local councils. Data collection methods included interviews and document analysis.

This research highlights external as well as internal factors that can encourage meaningful stakeholder engagement in the sustainability accounting and reporting process in public sector organisations. The findings of this research recognise government regulations as the key driver behind the uptake of stakeholder engagement policies and practices. However, managerial commitment and professional bodies’ support is observed as necessary to encourage and sustain creative and meaningful engagement. These findings also have implications for stakeholder engagement in the private sector.

This study aims to analyse the extent of online social responsibility (SR) information disclosure by Portuguese municipalities and to identify related determinant factors, based on Institutional Theory and Legitimacy Theories.

A content analysis was performed on webpages from 60 sampled municipalities, and an information disclosure index was created.

Descriptive statistics obtained indicate the Total Disclosure Index (TDI) value was 0.46. The Economic Information sub-category exhibits the highest value (0.66), followed by the Social and Environmental Information categories (0.61 and 0.36, respectively).

The multivariate analysis results indicate that LA21 implementation the existence of tax burdens, the characterisation of a municipality as urban and environmental/SR certification application positively influence SR information disclosure. TDI is negatively affected by the existence of an inactive population (i.e. by the percentage of individuals ≤19 and ≥65 years of age).

Through globalization, businesses are gaining more power, since stakeholder demands to behave ethically and socially responsible (CSR) are increasing dramatically. Acting ethically from a sense of social responsibility is a competitive advantage that improves economically an organization’s financial performance in the long term. This chapter analyzes the relationship between an organization’s focus on ethical/corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors and financial performance based on share price analysis proceeding from public announcement of ethical/CSR commitment. The methodology used in this study is based on both the event study method in efficient markets and the market model. The calculation of unexpected returns and the analysis of the impact of public announcements on the share price value of the Generali Insurance Company (GIC) case study are presented (historical data taken from S&Pmib). The results show that there is a tendency toward share value increasing and decreasing, but these changes are not significant in the light of public information related to CSR.

This chapter aims to understand to what extent the use of cause-related marketing, can become a tool of strategic positioning and differentiation for influencing consumption decisions of a critical type of external stakeholder, that is, the customers (participants and non-participants), in the context of school sports events. Accordingly, quantitative empirical research was carried out resorting to a questionnaire. A sample of 829 pupils in mainland Portugal was gathered, covering both participants and non-participants in School Sports events associated with food products, namely, Compal Air and Nestum Rugby. The results reveal that customers’ perception of the attributes of social responsibility and of the general attributes of the brand has a positive influence on consumption decisions, especially with regard to participants in this type of event. In addition, individual motivations, determining the decision to participate or not in events, are found to influence the consumption decision.

This chapter primarily aims to revisit and explore the theoretical underpinnings of social entrepreneurship and dwell into what unfolds while amalgamating the conventionally considered to be dissimilar design of business entrepreneurship and the social impact? Can the prefix “social” of social entrepreneurship transform the innate characteristics of entrepreneurship? Is social entrepreneurship an essentiality in a ground-breaking playing field in the business research to facilitate new theories and concepts or a rehash of the corporate responsibility debate? Is it just an appellation or does the underscored social label and its construct allow for new possibility to be explored into the sociality of entrepreneurship along with the new-fangled entrepreneurialism in society? The chapter attempts to decode these more germane and interwoven issues like do we have to tell apart between a capitalist entrepreneurship and a non-capitalist one? Or between pioneering and replicative entrepreneurs. Can we sanctify the political in the social spheres and who (which actors) actually sets the discourse of social needs. The chapter also tracks multiple cases in the Indian locale to determine the robust application of the concept while unpacking the Indian context of social entrepreneurship. These cases are randomly selected from assorted sectors and are wide in its sweep and scope. These cases highlight on the lived experiences, where the task is truly played out. This adds to the sensibilities of new entrepreneurs and policy framers who face the challenges.

This study examines different types of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices across the industries in Pakistan along with their effectiveness. The main aim of this study is to research the CSR practices and growing trends of CSR in developing countries like Pakistan. Companies adopting CSR as a vital part of their company have frequently been encouraged across the industry and by the governments of their respective countries. A total of 120 individuals from public and private sector institutions participated in this research. The findings suggest that CSR is very effective across the industry. Furthermore, the practices of CSR will result in better social welfare of society. CSR practices have worked a great deal in increasing a company’s goodwill and raising its brand name. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings have been discussed in this chapter. Lastly, this research concludes with details of top effective practices adopted by different companies within same industry as well as across different industries.