Responsible leadership
Responsible leadership in times of financial crisis
(Göthberg, Pauline)
Responsible leadership: building blocks of individual, organizational and societal behaviour
(Ketola, Tarja)
Responsible leadership or a profit-maximizing strategy? The reality behind corporate environmental self-regulation
(Kudlak, Robert)
What are barriers to be a CSR leader? –CSR comparison between Germany and Japan
(Nishimura, Kensuke)
Use of environmental value scales from environmental psychology and sociology in environmental management studies
(Peltola, Mikko)
(1)
Responsible leadership in times of financial crisis
(Göthberg, Pauline)
Summary
"...we cannot afford to put climate change into the international ‘pending' tray because of the present economic difficulties, as some might urge." said Gordon Brown on 10 November 2008. The financial crisis that started in August 2007 within the housing- and financial market in the USA soon spread to Europe. In Sweden it escalated during 2008 with a standstill in the credit market and industry requests for government bailouts.
In light of these events what is happening to the development of CSR within corporations? How is the financial crisis affecting management’s commitment to the social and environmental work within companies? How do managers respond responsibly in times of crisis? This paper explores the impact of the financial crisis on the CSRwork carried out within the Swedish finance sector. Main contribution is an increased understanding of how topmanagement within a key industry handles the CSR-issues in times of crisis. It also highlights how a financial crisis affects management’s commitment to social and environmental work and a responsible leadership. In order to answer the questions interviews with CEO: s and persons responsible for CR-issues is being conduct during spring 2009. Organizations are embedded in an institutional context of ideas that defines the appropriate corporate behavior. Organizations actively translate such ideas to fit their own local organizational contexts. However, studies that build on translation models rarely make comparative studies between organizations within a field and they rarely include analysis of conflict. This study aims to fill those white spots in the translation literature.
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(2)
Responsible leadership: building blocks of individual, organizational and societal behaviour
(Ketola, Tarja)
Responsible leadership achieves best results when high levels of individual, organizational and societal leadership responsibility coincide.
How to find one's responsible leadership identity in the midst of the changing and chaotic world? The building blocks for this can be found in psychologist Erik H. Erikson's way of resolving individual identity crises.
The purpose of this paper is to adapt Erikson's model to individually, organizationally and societally responsible leadership, so that it would be possible to integrate them to achieve the best results. If an individual, organization or society finds itself in an identity crisis, it can look at six areas of difficulty in which to work towards a responsible leader's identity: (1) value basis, (2) self-image vs. external image, (3) time perspective, (4) role experimentation, (5) anticipation of achievement, and (6) leader-follower relation.
There are many good examples to follow: some individuals, organizations and societies have found their responsible leadership identity. At individual level, we can learn responsible leadership from political, corporate and non-governmental (NGO) leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Al Gore, Anita Roddick, Muhammad Yunus and Wangari Maathai. At organizational level, good responsible leadership examples to follow include e.g. California (in environmental issues), The Body Shop (even after Anita Roddick), Grameen Bank and Green Belt Movement. At societal level, it is possible to compare for instance the USA and Bhutan. Contrary to common belief, societies do not have to be rich to be responsible. Wealth may seduce to irresponsible behaviour, like wasteful consumption patterns. While other developing countries copy the USA and other developed countries in their aim to maximize their Gross National Product (GNP), an indicator of economic welfare, Bhutan aims to maximize Gross National Happiness (GNH), an indicator of the quality of life.
Under peaceful circumstances it is easier to act ethically than in crises when behaviour may go either way: it may be responsible, even sacrificing, or irresponsible, even exploitative. Responsibility and irresponsibility are contagious. Individuals, organizations and societies can boost or repress responsible behaviour: inspiring leaders can pull others with them to higher ethical levels of behaviour while greedy leaders may push others back to lower levels of behaviour.
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(3)
Responsible leadership or a profit-maximizing strategy? The reality behind corporate environmental self-regulation
(Kudlak, Robert)
Abstract
At present environmental management systems (EMS) are the most popular form of corporate selfregulation in the realm of corporate social responsibility. This article's goal is to identify the reasons for implementing such initiatives in companies in a post-communist country and to analyse these reasons from the point of view of selected corporate idiosyncrasies. Replies collected from 281 companies with certified EMS in place were analysed with respect to the company's size, year of system implementation (1996-2006), industry and type of ownership (domestic versus foreign, private versus public). The results suggest that EMS are mainly driven by firms' willingness to enhance their image and attempts at eliminating adverse impact on the environment. A very small number of companies expects tangible benefits like cost reduction, an increased market share or increased exports as the results of a better environmental performance. It has also been concluded that foreign enterprises are better motivated by their willingness to limit their impact on the environment than the domestic ones. Private entities tend to implement EMS more frequently as a result of their care for the natural environment while state-owned companies are more driven by their willingness to enhance their image and relations with various groups of stakeholders including the local government, local community, media, authorities in charge of environmental protection.
Key words: corporate environmental self-regulation, environmental management systems, reasons for implementation, post-communist country, Poland.
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(4)
What are barriers to be a CSR leader? –CSR comparison between Germany and Japan
(Nishimura, Kensuke)
Abstract
In this article it is tried to compare German and Japanese CSR, specifically environmental CSR, to explore why some firms promote CSR, and others don't. An important notion is that disclosure which is affected by relations of firms and stakeholders determines formation and integration level of CSR. Different driving forces brought a different path of CSR-development in these countries but these paths in 1970s didn't lead two of them to be a CSR leading country because of lagging in a disclosure development.
Japanese firms, under pressure of legitimacy acquisition, tried to fulfill their responsibility through pollution control agreements. In this case disclosure was restricted to the extent to information about technologies to which firms were available. In Germany conditions for CSR was better than in Japan, but a large number of laws caused a thought that compliance was sufficient for CSR. A hostile relation of firms and NGOs hampered corporate disclosure because firms faced a threat of implementation of new laws which NGOs would require.
In 1990s the situation was changed. Japanese firms started to integrate an environmental management system into their management system, received requirements of ISO 14001. In Germany NGOs strategy changed to influence on firms directly which Baron called private policy. But the most influential driver is the EU. Germany and Japan are under foreign pressure for CSR.
The result is that German and Japanese firms have observed at least environmental CSR seriously since 1970s, but the form of CSR was a barrier for its father development.
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(5)
Use of environmental value scales from environmental psychology and sociology in environmental management studies
(Peltola, Mikko)
Abstract
Within environmental psychology and environmental sociology there is a myriad of both conceptual and empirical research assessing the environmental values and attitudes. In the existing empirical studies, the research population has in most cases been an average citizen, with some studies taking a closer look at specific populations, such as car drivers (Gärling, Fujii, Gärling & Jakobsson 2003; Grob 1995) or farmers (Bjerke & Kaltenborn 1999). However, to my best knowledge, empirical studies applying environmental value and attitude scales from above mentioned fields within management studies, with company employees, managers or customers as the object of the study, are with a few exceptions (for example Fraj & Martinez 2006 marketing-oriented study) practically non-existent.
This paper attempts to outline some guidelines for how these scales might be used in an interdisciplinary manner in environmental management studies, focusing on organizational reality and using employees and managers as population. An analysis of environmental value patterns among employees and managers can offer explanations to overall environmental performance of the firm, as well as tools to analyze the impact of values and value differences between organizational levels and units on the success of environmentally related activities.
From the methodological perspective, the usability and applicability of the relevant scales within environmentally related management studies is discussed and ideas for development of the scales to take the business environment and reality into consideration are proposed.
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