John Mackey’s book, Conscious Capitalism (written with Raj Sisodia) gives some interesting stories. It has inspired a movement so that is wonderful. The core idea in the book, mainly that stakeholders matter, is a great message. Next post I’ll explain that some things Mackey says don’t work for me. That said, if it does persuade…
Category: Stakeholder Analysis
Lawyers Debating What Corporations Are For
Are you interested in lawyers debating what corporations are for? If so, I have just the historical reference for you. The Harvard Law Review in the early 1930s saw a series of debates about what firms are there to do. This was discussed by Joseph Weiner a generation later in the Columbia Law Review. It…
Benefiting Owners And Much More
Ed Freeman is one of the most significant figures in the world of stakeholder business. (I had Ed as a professor when I did my MBA at Darden. This was more than 20 years ago and he was already a well-known figure). A few years ago he joined with a couple of colleagues to write…
Stakeholder Management As A Threat
For my second and final post on Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke Inc. I want to discuss his view of stakeholder management. Especially, the idea of stakeholder management as a threat (specifically to democracy). Stakeholder Management And Woke As I mentioned in a prior post part of the challenge with definitions is that people aren’t clear what…
Branding For A Purpose
David Aaker’s The Future Of Purpose-Driven Branding is written by a true legend in the field of branding. What is more, his message is a good one. Branding for a purpose is on the up. It has a great future. The Two Jobs Of Purpose-Driven Branding Purpose-driven branding has a great future because branding expertise…
Managing For Stakeholders
My second post on Paul Polman’s (former Unilever CEO) and Andrew Winston’s great book, Net Positive, covers a random bunch of advice and ideas that they give on managing for stakeholders. How best to manage a firm with more than just the shareholders in mind? Better Business Practice Can Lead To Better Opportunities Many in…
The Impact Of Sustainable Business
One of the big problems in life is understanding achievements. We often find it fairly simple to look at the resources devoted to some activity. This isn’t always a terrible thing to look at because a pretty good correlation can exist between resource input and good things happening. Yet, this connection is far from perfect….
Certification And Better Business
One challenge with stakeholder/better business ideas is that there are so many things to be good (and bad) at. Is it enough to be good for the environment if you are awful to your employees? If you give money to your local community does that absolve other sins? Opinions might reasonably differ. As such we…
Strategic Change And Stakeholders
A recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review looks at how we can analyze strategic change. The model by Tom Hunsaker and Jonathan Knowles (a coauthor of mine) looks at the nature of change needed by firms. The model helps us focus on strategic change and how this fits with stakeholders. Specifically, the authors…
Improving Stakeholder Involvement In Government Decision Making
In this blog post I discuss our work on improving stakeholder involvement in government decision making. The Journal of Business Ethics published this in July 2020. Understanding The Views of Stakeholders A major problem in government is understanding the views of its stakeholders. A stakeholder is those who are impacted by, or can impact, the…
