The Stakeholder-based View of the Firm – Nicola Misani

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來自 Università Bocconi 的課程

Corporate Sustainability. Understanding and Seizing the Strategic Opportunity

21 個評分

Università Bocconi

Corporate Sustainability. Understanding and Seizing the Strategic Opportunity

21 個評分

The achievement of a balanced economic, social and environmental development - as expressed in the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development - is recognized as one of the major challenges humanity is facing today. What is less clear is whether and how organizations can generate business opportunities and value for their stakeholders while tackling such challenges. In this course, thought leaders in a wide variety of management and economics fields illustrate how to assess and seize the opportunities offered by these global emergencies. They will offer new ways to understand the purpose and the logic of success of the business enterprise in this new context, providing ideas and examples on how to manage the transition process to realize the value creation potential from corporate sustainability for all involved stakeholders. Learning objectives The course will allow you to: - Understand What the macroeconomic and microeconomic consequences of both climate changes, poverty, hunger, gender or race discriminations, lack of communication between the State, Civil Societies, and businesses, etc are. - Understand Why it is important for businesses to tackle sustainability issues in order to create more and better business opportunities; - Learn How each individual, organization and system can start to analyze its behaviors and change towards more sustainable practices and models.

從本節課中

Understanding the Sustainability Challenge: the Business Level

In this section you will learn the core concepts of corporate sustainability and the key dimensions that distinguish a sustainable organization. Instructors will discuss the foundations of the stakeholder-based view of the firm, and the logic for and against the primacy of shareholder value maximization as guiding purpose for firms' existence. We will then explore sustainability challenges and opportunities for organizations across some of the key dimensions of business, and conclude with a roundtable discussion on the nature of the sustainable enterprise.

What is a Sustainable Enterprise? (part 1) – Maurizio Zollo10:06

What is a Sustainable Enterprise? (part 2) – Maurizio Zollo10:30

The Purpose of the Corporation – Nicola Misani5:52

The Stakeholder-based View of the Firm – Nicola Misani6:05

The Shareholder-Stakeholder Debate – Nicolai J. Foss, Maurizio Zollo28:14

Corporate Governance – Xing Kelly Chen4:49

Understanding the Environmental Footprints of Companies – Michael Russo11:45

Business Ethics & Sustainability – Maurizio Zollo, Celia Moore4:05

Responsible Leadership – Massimo Magni3:30

International Implementation of Sustainability – Anne Jacqueminet10:13

Roundtable on the Nature of the Sustainable Enterprise – Maurizio Zollo, Christiane Bode, Armando Cirrincione, Anne Jacqueminet, Michael Russo, Miles Bernard Gietzmann29:41

與講師見面

Maurizio Zollo
Dean’s Chaired Professor in Strategy and Sustainability
Management and Technology Department

Stakeholder theory is an approach that proposes that firms must abandon the traditional focus on

shareholders and adopt a wider perspective. This theory was developed and

championed by Edward Freeman in the 1980s. According to Freeman, business can be understood

as a set of relationships among groups that have a stake in the activities that make up the business. These groups

are called stakeholders. Stakeholders are groups or individuals who are substantially affected by

or is in the position to affect the firm’s activities.

There are two major types of stakeholders. The primary stakeholders, that is, those who are vital to growth

and the survival of any business, customers, employees, suppliers, communities

and the financiers, that is, shareholders and debt holders.

The secondary stakeholders are those who affect primary stakeholders such as media,

government, the competitors.

All these stakeholders have a legitimate interest in the company. Stakeholder theory assigns the managers the responsibility

of building positive

and reciprocally satisfying relationships with them. This responsibility involves integrating social

and governmental issues in the firm’s strategies

and improving the joint firm outcomes for all the interested parties, which is the link between a stakeholder theory

and the social responsibility of the firm. Stakeholder theory can be understood ethically as implying that

stakeholder interest should be respected for their own sake. The reason is that stakeholders

contribute essential resources to companies, which are as important as the capital provided by shareholders.

Moreover, stakeholders make company specific investments that are difficult to be moved out of the company.

As strategy scholar Sumantra Ghoshal said, most shareholders can sell their stocks far more easily

than most employees can find another job. This implies that stakeholders deserve at least the same

degree of protection as shareholders.

But stakeholder theory can also be understood instrumentally, that is, as implying that satisfying stakeholder

interest is instrumental to making profit. Why?

One, if primary stakeholders are unsatisfied, they will withdraw their contributions, which are essential to a firm’s

value creation activities. Think of talented employees that accept job offers from a firm’s competitors

or customers, whose reach to other brands. Second,

unsatisfied secondary stakeholders have the means to influence negatively primary stakeholders

or to make life hard for companies. Think of governments

that step in with a new regulation in response to socially harmful corporate behavior or NGOs

that mount a protest against the company. For these reasons, it is unlikely that a company that manages for

shareholders at the dispense of other stakeholders can sustain its performance.

Conversely, a firm that manages for stakeholders can build positive relationships

that contribute to trust, legitimacy, cooperation and the firm's specific investments

by primary stakeholders. Managing for stakeholders means balancing and keeping

an alignment among the better stakeholder interest, including those of shareholders. This could be difficult because

these interests are not necessarily consistent with each other. For example, raising salaries makes employees happy,

but it could mean higher prices for customers.

So managing for stakeholders requires the adoption of certain broad principles. First, the different

interests of the various stakeholder groups go together only over time. This means that managing for

stakeholders means adopting a long-term perspective. This is in contrast with the short-term perspective that

often characterizes

the shareholder value approach. Second, it is difficult to align these different interests if firms

do not have a unifying purpose, a sense of what they stand for. This purpose must include creating value for at

least the customers and employees, if not for society as a whole. This purpose is sometimes stated in

a mission statement or in a more

or less explicit enterprise strategy. For example, Steve Jobs’ mission statement for Apple in 1980 was to make a contribution

to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind. Notice how this mission does not mention

shareholders. Third, even if one understands stakeholder theory instrumentally, firms cannot put aside ethics or value questions

because stakeholders expect treatment that is fair. Therefore, corporate leaders must be engaged in the conversation

about what is the proper role of business in society. Fourth, managing for stakeholders is not confined to the arena of

abstract principles but should be included in everyday business processes. These processes include stakeholder

dialogue, consultation, engagement

and some degree of involvement of the stakeholders in day by day decision making by a company.

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