Building The Responsible Enterprise

Building the Responsible Enterprise: Where Vision and Values Add Valueprovides students and practitioners who are new to sustainability and corporate social responsibility with a practical, yet academically rooted, introduction to the state-of-the-art in the field. Sandra Waddock and Andreas Rasche help readers to understand key, complex dilemmas for responsible companies and the multiple perspectives embedded in every decision about these quandaries. The book consists of four parts, highlighting different aspects of corporate responsibility. Part I starts by discussing the context in which corporate responsibility occurs. Part II focuses on developing corporate responsibility, looking at three critical issues: the development of vision at the individual and organizational levels, the integration of values into the responsible enterprise, and the ways that a responsibility vision and core values create added value for a firm. Part III highlights the actual management practices that enable enterprises of all sorts to achieve excellence, and focuses on the roles that stakeholder relationships play in improving performance. The book concludes with a conversation about responsible management in the global village, examining the emerging responsibility infrastructure in which enterprise finds itself today. The text relies on unique frameworks to explain the relationship between business and society, and to better understand the role that vision, supported by core values, plays in a company's success. Throughout the text, cases exemplify key concepts and highlight companies that are guiding us into tomorrow's business environment.