Two-Lenses Model to Unfold Sustainability Innovations: A Tool Proposal from Sustainable Business Model and Performance Constructs

This research combines corporate sustainability performance and sustainable business model concepts to improve the corporate sustainability of organizations. The main objective of this article is to propose and apply a tool to identify sustainable innovation opportunities through a structured brainstorming process while providing a systemic business perspective and a strong multi-stakeholder orientation. The present qualitative research was carried out in two phases. The first phase consisted of a critical analysis of literature that enabled the proposition of the Two-Lenses Model (2LM) for sustainability innovation. The corporate sustainability performance lens encompasses strategic drivers, business processes, capabilities, stakeholders’ satisfaction and contributions. The sustainable business models lens considers value proposition, value creation and delivery system and value capture and sharing. The second phase consists of applying the 2LM in two industrial cases. The results show that the proposed model has the potential to trigger the identification of opportunities through two mechanisms: misalignments between performance dimensions and gaps in stakeholder satisfaction. Further research opportunities lie on deepening into these findings and investigating the implementation process for the identified innovation opportunities.

Humanizing Stakeholders by Rethinking Business

Can business humanize its stakeholders? And if so, how does this relate to moral consideration for stakeholders? In this paper we compare two business orientations that are relevant for current business theory and practice: a stakeholder orientation and a profit orientation. We empirically investigate the causal relationships between business orientation, humanization, and moral consideration. We report the results of six experiments, making use of different operationalizations of a stakeholder and profit orientation, different stakeholders (employees, suppliers, labor unions), and different participant samples. Our findings support the prediction that individual stakeholders observing a stakeholder-oriented firm see the firm’s other stakeholders as more human than individual stakeholders observing a profit-oriented firm. This humanization, in turn, increases individual stakeholders’ moral consideration for the firm’s other stakeholders. Our findings underscore the importance of humanization for stakeholders’ moral consideration for each other. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the firm as a moral community of stakeholders. Specifically, we move away from a focus on managers, and how they can make business more moral. Instead we direct attention to (other) stakeholders, and how business can make these stakeholders more moral.

Pathways in Stakeholder Research

Stakeholder-focused research seeks to explain relationships among firms and stakeholders, using approaches that predominantly follow normative, instrumental, or descriptive pathways. Following circulation of the 1963 Stanford Memo and the 1984 publication of Freeman, the stakeholder perspective has become a sizable area of research in diverse fields, with growing influence in the business community as indicated in 2019 by the commitment of the US Business Roundtable to stakeholder principles. Still, the tendency to offer stakeholder theory as a replacement for neoclassical theories of the firm somewhat limits its adoption. An approach more likely to advance the trend toward an increasing stakeholder orientation is one of theory collaboration, in which researchers explore how self-interested action in the market system can be tempered by others-interested action. To this aim, the three stakeholder research pathways might be extended, as follows: (a) adding a moral and ethical leadership component to normative stakeholder theory research to move from a philosophy-centric literature toward one that better explains the how and why of normatively based actions toward stakeholders; (b) adopting a stakeholder-work-focused approach to instrumental stakeholder theory research to afford it the benefits of moral neutrality; and (c) returning the focus of descriptive stakeholder theory research to stakeholders as “natural persons,” as compared to corporations as “juristic persons.” With these extensions, scholars can encourage the ongoing reorientation in society toward the stakeholders of firms.

The role of multi-stakeholders in market orientation and sustainable performance

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the relationship between market orientation (MO) and stakeholder orientation (SO) in sustainable corporate performance, with a focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) results.Design/methodology/approachThis research is operationalized by way of a structural equation model (SEM) involving 208 energy companies and covering a worldwide context. Primary data relating to MO and SO were collected by survey questionnaire, while secondary data on sustainable performance were collected from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability report.FindingsThe results reveal that SO not only enhances strategic positioning and activities linked to market intelligence, but also serves as a determining factor of superior performance. The findings provide new insights into how MO is connected with sustainable corporate performance.Practical implicationsThe impact of this study leads to improvements in planning marketing and in market intelligence process, which are essential activities of managers and marketing planners. There are also implications for other organizational processes. The authors point out the relevance including multi-stakeholders, whose impact is perceived in the organization's results, and improving relations with them.Originality/valueThe authors' first contribution is empirically examining organizational competence with regard to the MO and marketing intelligence that have the greatest impact on sustainable performance. Second, the authors operationalized the SO construct, which until then had been treated in isolation in the literature.

KEHADIRAN STARBUCKS SEBAGAI LAMBANG KAPITALISME AMERIKA SERIKAT DI TIONGKOK

This paper discusses the impact of Starbucks presence as a style of Western capitalism in China through the analysis of Conscious Capitalism developed by John Mackey and Professor Raj Sisodia. The glory of Starbucks in China has started since the opening of its first outlet in 1999. The high level of consumerism in China is the reason behind the success and glory of Starbucks capitalism in China. In contrast to other patterns of consumerism and business capitalism, which tend to cause economic, ecological and humanistic crises, in this paper the author argue that the presence of Starbucks in China has a positive impact. This can be proven by the application of the principles of Conscious Capitalism by Starbucks in the midst of the flow of Chinese consumption, consumerism and capitalism. The principles of conscious capitalism applied by Starbucks are; (1) higher purpose; (2) stakeholder orientation; (3) culture orientation; and (4) conscious leadership.