Corporate Behavior and Sustainability: Doing Well by Being Good

Description

Companies can no longer expect to engage in dubious or unethical corporate behaviour without risking their reputation and damaging, perhaps irrevocably, their market position. Irresponsible corporate behavior not only deprives shareholders of long-term returns but also ultimately imposes a cost on society as a whole. Sustainable business is about ensuring that entities contribute toward positive social, environmental, and economic outcomes. Bad business behaviour is costly for stakeholders, for markets, for society, and the economy alike. To ensure that a company behaves well, the buy-in of the leadership team is crucial. The full commitment of the board of directors, in conjunction with the senior managers of the organization, is required if an organization is to be socially responsible. In this sense, leadership does not reside with an individual (the CEO) within the organization but with all of those at the apex of corporate power and control. Effective change management requires enlightened and capable leadership to instigate and drive the process of embedding a sustainable and socially responsible corporate philosophy and culture that supports good business decision-making. A profound understanding of the requirements of such a leadership process will help corporate managers become highly effective change agents. Governance will be the main driver of this change. For the economy and financial markets to become sustainable and resilient, radical changes in corporate leadership need to take place. Integrated reporting, government regulation, and international standards will all be important factors in bringing about this change. As well as understanding the effects of corporate behavior on financial markets, such an understanding is also now imperative in relation to the social and environmental contexts. Contents List of figures List of tables About the authors Series editor’s preface Introduction: doing well by being good for sustainable business • Güler Aras and Coral Ingley Part I: Market behavior, stakeholders’ approach and good governance 1 Agency theory: explaining or creating problems? Good governance and ethical behaviour for sustainable business • Güler Aras and Paul Williams 2 Using a stakeholder approach to understand success: empirical tests in Indian business • Shallini S. Taneja, Jennifer J. Griffin, Pawan K. Taneja, Radha R. Sharma, D. Kirk Davidson and Rupamanjari Sinha Ray 3 Behaviour in academe: an investigation into the sustainability of mainstream scholarship in management studies • Miriam Green Part II: Effective business behavior for corporate sustainability 4 The walls between us: governance for sustainability • Philippa Wells and Coral Ingley 5 Governing corporate responsibility: the role of soft regulation • Alice Klettner 6 Corporate citizenship, ethics and accountability: the significance of the process of trust for corporate legitimacy in late modernity • Jacob Dahl Rendtorff Part III: Monitoring and reporting on sustainability 7 Positioning of corporate social responsibility in media reporting: the role of media setting • Jamilah Ahmad and Suriati Saad 8 A pathway to corporate sustainability – social accounting • Douglas M. Branson 9 ESG matters in the boardroom • Alison L. Dempsey Part IV: The requirements for implementation of sustainability 10 The drivers of change • Suzanne H. Benn 11 From ego to eco – theoretical challenges and practical implications of a “next generation” responsible leadership as a collaborative endeavor • Elke Fein, Jürgen Deeg and Jonathan Reams 12 Valuing corporate governance – a way out of the current impasse?: changing the leadership focus to behaviours and values rather than codes and compliance • Bob Garratt 13 Defining and achieving good governance • Shann Turnbull Conclusion Index