Business Strategy & Sustainability - Complete Articles Summary - 2020
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Course
Business Strategy and Sustainability (6314M0315Y)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
This structured summary contains all articles from the course year . The main elements: goal by the teacher, introduction, and results are included for each article.
Sophie van Sonsbeek
MSc Business Administration
University of Amsterdam
6314M0315Y
,Table of content
1. Introduction to CSR and sustainability ...................................................................................................3
1.1. Crane & Matten (2006) - Business ethics: managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the
age of globalization ............................................................................................................................................3
1.2. Bansal & Roth (2000) - Why companies go green: a model of ecological responsiveness ...................6
1.3. Friedman (1970) - The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits ..................................9
1.4. Porter & Kramer (2006) - Strategy & society: the link between competitive advantage and corporate
social responsibility ...........................................................................................................................................10
2. Stakeholders: Companies and nongovernmental organizations ............................................................16
2.1. Freeman & Elms (2008) - The social responsibility of business is to create value for stakeholders ....16
2.2. Mitchell ea (1997) - Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the
principle of who and what really counts ...........................................................................................................17
2.3. Spar & La Mure (2003) - The power of activism: assessing the impact of NGOs on global business..19
2.4. Hoffman (2009) - Shades of green ......................................................................................................22
2.5. Georgallis (2017) - The link between social movements and corporate social initiatives: toward a
multi-level theory ..............................................................................................................................................23
3. Competition: Sustainability and (financial) value .................................................................................27
3.1. Porter & Kramer (2011) - Creating shared value: how to reinvent capitalism and unleash a wave of
innovation and growth .....................................................................................................................................27
3.2. Barnett & Salomon (2012) - Does it pay to be really good? Addressing the shape of the relationship
between social and financial performance .......................................................................................................31
3.3. Ambec & Lanoie (2008) - Does it pay to be green? A systematic overview ........................................31
3.4. Marcus & Fremeth (2009) - Green management matters regardless ................................................34
3.5. Lankoski & Smith (2008) - Alternative objective functions for firms ...................................................37
4. Challenges: Climate change and beyond ..............................................................................................38
4.1. IPCC (2018) - Climate change 2018: special report global warming of 1.5 degrees. Summary for
policymakers .....................................................................................................................................................38
4.2. Street (2011) - Farham Street’s blog on Hardin’s tragedy of the commons .......................................39
4.3. Whitman ea (2013) - Planetary boundaries: ecological foundations for corporate sustainability .....40
4.4. Kim & Davis (2016) - Supply chain accountability ..............................................................................41
4.5. Bhattacharya (2017) - Sustainability lessons from the front lines ......................................................42
5. Change: Business sustainability solutions .............................................................................................46
5.1. King & Toffel (2009) - Self-regulatory institutions for solving environmental problems: perspectives
and contributions from the management literature. ........................................................................................46
5.2. Griskevicius ea (2012) - The evolutionary bases for sustainable behavior: implications for marketing,
policy and social entrepreneurship ...................................................................................................................48
5.3. Hoffman (2018) - The next phase of business sustainability ..............................................................49
5.4. Cohen & Winn (2017) - Market imperfections, opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship ........51
Sophie van Sonsbeek- 2020 2
, 1. Introduction to CSR and sustainability
1.1. Crane & Matten (2006) - Business ethics: managing corporate citizenship
and sustainability in the age of globalization
Authors Crane, A. & Matten, D. (2006)
Institution Oxford University
Pages Chapter 3: pages 75-95
Goal by Often the arguments in favor of corporate social responsibility and
teacher sustainability revolve around ethics or morality.
• This book chapter summarizes some of the most influential ethical
theories.
• Try to understand the main principle behind each of these theories.
Introduction In business context, coming to an ethical decision is complex.
Most importantly, in the business context there is often a need for these
decisions to be based on systematic, rational, and widely understandable
arguments so that they can be adequately defined, justified and explained
to relevant stakeholders.
Similarly, if it is believed that the organization has done wrong: at what
point can we say that a particular behavior is more than just different from
what we would have done, but in some way actually wrong?
Here normative ethical theories come into play.
Normative = ethical theories that purpose to prescribe the morally correct
way of acting.
Ethical theories = are the rules and principles that determine right and
wrong for any given situation.
This article looks at major ethical theories and analyze their value and
potential for business ethics.
The role of There are two extreme positions regarding ethical theory by Richard De
ethical theory George:
Ethical absolutism
- Is on the one side of the spectrum
- Is a position of ethical absolutism
- Claims that there are eternal, universally applicable moral principals
- According to this view, right and wrong are objective qualities that
can be relationally determined.
Ethical relativism
- Is the other extreme
- Is the position of relativism
- Claims that morality is context dependent and subjective
- There is no right and wrong that can be rationally determined, it
depends on the person making the decision and the culture in
Sophie van Sonsbeek- 2020 3
, which they are located, therefore, it occurs in international business
issues.
- The logic of relativism is that everything is everything is just
different and nothing is wrong.
- Ethical relativism is different from descriptive relativism:
o Descriptive relativism suggests that different cultures have
different ethics
o Ethical relativism proposes that both sets of beliefs can be
equally right and is still a normative theory.
Most traditional ethical theories tend towards absolutist position.
More contemporary ethical theories often tend towards relativistic
position.
However, both of these positions are not particularly useful. Therefore, this
makes the position pluralism. This occupies a middle ground between
absolutism and relativism.
Pluralism accepts different moral convictions and backgrounds while at the
same time suggesting that a consensus on basic principles and rules in a
certain social context can, and should, be reached.
Theory can help to clarify situations. This view rests on two basic things
that Kaler (1999) suggests we already know about morality before we even
try to introduce ethical theory into it.
1. Morality is foremost a social phenomenon: we need morality
because we constantly have to establish the rules and
arrangements of our living together as social beings.
2. Morality is all about harm and benefit: right and wrong are largely
about avoiding harm and providing benefits.
Normative Individual versus institutional morality
ethical - Normative ethical theories in America tend to be more applicable
theories: a to individual behavior whereas in Europe the design of institutions
European in the economic system seems to be the main influence in
perspective developing and applying theory.
Consequences versus duties
- Anglo-American business ethics focus on consequences of actions
and conceptualize moral status in terms of the pleasure or the pain
of any of these outcomes.
- Europe focuses on the duties of the economic actors, since they are
part of a larger entity. The individual is deeply embedded in a wider
social and economic environment.
Questioning versus accepting capitalism
- American literature does not question the existing framework of
management but rather sees ethical problems occurring within the
capitalist system, which it treats as a given.
Sophie van Sonsbeek- 2020 4
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