Redefining the Corporation: Stakeholder Management and Organizational Wealth - Hardcover

Post, James E.; Preston, Lee E.; Sachs, Sybille

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804743045 ISBN 13: 9780804743044

Publisher: Stanford Business Books, 2002

Synopsis

The modern corporation is an institution of enormous economic power and social impact. Corporations have grown in size and numbers all over the world because of their ability to mobilize productive resources and create new wealth. The evolution of the corporation has given rise to new opportunities and challenges that require a redefinition of the corporation and its objectives.

The legitimacy of the corporation as an institution, its "license to operate" within society, depends not only on its success in wealth creation but also on its ability to meet the expectations of diverse constituents who contribute to its existence and success. These constituencies and interests are the corporation's stakeholders―resource providers, customers, suppliers, alliance partners, and social and political actors. Consequently, the corporation must be seen as an institution engaged in mobilizing resources to create wealth and benefits for all its stakeholders.

This book presents a stakeholder view of the corporation in both theoretical and practical terms. Its central proposition is that organizational wealth is created (or destroyed) through a corporation's interactions with its stakeholders. Effective stakeholder management develops and utilizes relationships between a corporation and its stakeholders for mutual benefit, thereby accomplishing the fundamental purpose of wealth creation.

Following the empirical maxim that "Corporations are what they do," the authors examine the stakeholder management practices of three major corporations: Cummins Engine Company, Motorola, and the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. These companies are very different, and their current stakeholder management policies and practices have evolved in very different ways. However, they share a common commitment to humanistic values and to continuous learning. Their varied experiences illustrate some of the opportunities and challenges of stakeholder management, and confirm the appropriateness of the stakeholder view of the corporation as a basis for strategy and policy.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“A flood of academic research in the past two decades has taken a "stakeholder" perspective. Much of it has been shrouded in academic jargon and focused on parochial academic disputes, and none has been fully integrated with functional aspects of academic management. With this book, Post, Preston, and Sachs have given voice to the stakeholder intuition in a way that both managers and academics can recognize. The authors are highly respected scholars, themselves instrumental in popularizing the stakeholder terminology. When Preston, Post, and Sachs discuss stakeholders, academics listen. With this book, managers can listen as well.”—Thomas Donaldson, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
“This is an important book, not only for its abundant empirical evidence gathered from the experiences of Cummins Engine Company, Motorola, and Shell, but also for its insightful theoretical analysis. Written by some of the major scholars in the field, Redefining the Corporation is the thinking person’s guide to maintaining corporate vitality while living in a humane community.”—Oliver F. Williams, Center for Ethics in Business, University of Notre Dame

About the Author:

James E. Post is Professor of Management at Boston University. Lee E. Preston is Professor Emeritus of the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Sybille Sachs is Associate Professor at the Institute for Research in Business Administration, University of Zurich.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford Business Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0804743045
• ISBN 13: 9780804743044
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376