News from the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility,
Cranfield, Edition 19, Summer 2014
Sustainability and responsibility at the heart of successful management
SOCIAL INTRAPRENEURISM AND ALL THAT JAZZ
“Social Intrapreneurism and All That Jazz” Is a new book (available in paperback and Kindle edition) by David Grayson and
Doughty Centre colleagues Melody McLaren and visiting fellow Heiko Spitzeck (formerly with the Doughty Centre and now a
professor at Fundação Dom Cabral in Brazil). It was published in March and draws on five years research from the centre
team, including interviews with social Intrapreneurs around the world. David launched the book at the annual conference of
CSR Europe in Brussels in March, and Heiko spoke about it at the Sustainable Brands conference in São Paolo in April. The
book was positively reviewed in the Financial Times (April 23rd) and in two Forbes.com pieces. The authors summarised
some of the key points in an Ethical Corporation essay. There have also been several blogs including one by Melody McLaren
explaining the links to jazz. ADP are generously hosting a celebration of the book and social intrapreneurism in London on
July 10.
STAGES OF CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY MATURITY
Numerous academic and practitioner writers have presented models of CR stages of maturity. Centre visiting fellow Ron
Ainsbury and David Grayson have now synthesised and developed these and linked them to existing Centre models of how
companies embed their commitment to corporate sustainability. In partnership with Legal & General and drawing on
consultations and feedback from more than thirty academic, consultancy and in-company specialists, Ron and David have
now produced a working paper presenting a number of hypotheses for further study and elaboration. The working paper was
launched for wider consultation at Legal and General’s London headquarters on May 21st. Click here to download the paper.
DEVELOPING A SUSTAINABILITY CULTURE
The research on corporate culture for sustainability continues, which Nadine Exter is leading, including work on a change
dashboard in collaboration with Italian consultancy Methodos. Nadine is also working with a number of UK-headquartered
organisations specifically looking at organisational culture change in the UK banking sector, which has been highlighted by the
recent Banking Standards Review Lambert Report as critical in developing a City culture than enables responsible values and
behaviours. Nadine's work builds on her 2013 book, Employee engagement with sustainable business: how to change the
world whilst keeping your day job, published by Routledge now available in paperback and in a Kindle edition. Nadine
successfully led a module on Employment Practices and organisational culture on the prestigious Cambridge Institute for
Sustainability Leadership programme in March, with Barclays Bank as guest case study. An occasional paper which
describes the relevance between organisational culture and sustainable business will be available in June/July. If you would
like a copy please contact Thea.
BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS SHOULD BE TAUGHT TO MBAs
So declared Ken McPhail, Professor of social and ethical accountancy at Latrobe in Melbourne, in a Financial Times soapbox
article in March. By coincidence, the full-time Cranfield MBAs had just days earlier experienced a two-hour class on just this
topic. The class was based on the new teaching resource for MBAs on business and human rights, written by Centre visiting
fellow Chris Marsden for the Doughty Centre in collaboration with the Institute for Human Rights and Business. This teaching
resource is available from the Case Centre and also from the Institute for Human Rights and Business. Chris Marsden
explains the rationale for the resource in a new centre video. The teaching resource has earned the praise from the "father" of
the business and human rights world, Harvard professor John Ruggie, author of the eponymous Ruggie (UN) Principles of
Business and Human Rights., who said “Kofi Annan once said: ’If globalization cannot be made to work for all, in the end it will
work for none.’ To make globalization work for all, human rights – the inherent dignity of every individual, everywhere – must
become core elements of corporate policy and conduct. Chris Marsden’s fabulous module on business and human rights
shows what companies must do, and what future executives must learn, to help achieve a socially sustainable globalization.”
EXTENDING REACH THROUGH THE BLOGOSPHERE
Social media is growing as an additional means of publicising reports and articles. The Centre has pulled together recent
Doughty Centre authored blogs published by Guardian Sustainable Business, CSR Europe, and others, including one from
current full-time MBA student Leonard Della-Moretta, whom the Centre sponsored to attend the student-run Doing Well by
Doing Good conference at the IESE Business School in Barcelona. Click here to read his blog.
LEADERSHIP SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES FOR SUSTAINABILIY
We are delighted to welcome the Doughty Centre's latest visiting fellow Anita Hoffman, an experienced businesswoman,
executive search specialist and boardroom/ senior leadership coach. Anita has already contributed to the Cranfield MSC
programme in International Human Resource management - talking about her 2012 study with CR coalition business for
Social responsibility on leadership competencies for sustainability. We look forward to working with Anita and IHRM faculty
colleagues to further explore the implications of her BSR paper. Meantime, Centre director David Grayson joined Polly
Courtice from CISL and Prof Yoannis Ioannou from London Business School for a Guardian Sustainable Business webinar on
management education for sustainability and contributed to a Guardian Sustainable Business blog on the same subject.
THE ROLE OF CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY COALITIONS IN PROMOTING RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS PRACTICES
Since the publication of “Corporate Responsibility Coalitions: The Past, Present & Future of Alliances for Sustainable
Capitalism,” (available in hardback and Kindle versions) in early 2013, co-authors David Grayson and Jane Nelson (director of
the CSR Initiative at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard) have separately presented, based on the book, to a wide
range of business, Civil Society and policy-makers, totalling several thousand opinion-formers. For a list of these events see
Greenleaf’s website.
David Grayson addressed a private meeting of the board of Belgium Business & Society about his book "Corporate
Responsibility Coalitions: The Past, Present and Future of Alliances for Sustainable Capitalism" on April 28th. His remarks and
the ensuing discussion were captured by a visual rapporteur. David Grayson will be heading to China ahead of the main
Cranfield Study Tour in June, to launch the Mandarin edition of the book, sponsored by Intel and produced in partnership with
a Chinese CR coalition WTO Tribune GoldenBee.
There is now a growing focus by academics and practitioners on concepts such as 'collective impact' (see Stanford Social
Innovation Review, FSG and the Collective Impact Forum); transformative partnerships (see UN Global Compact; McKinsey
papers); and Global Solution Networks. “Corporate Responsibility Coalitions” provides the only thorough historic review of the
business leadership networks that pioneered this approach, plus a forward-looking analysis on the role of collective business
impact in future.
RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION
Responsible Innovation, a project led by Dr Palie Smart, Doughty Centre Reader in Corporate Responsibility, seeks to
minimise unintended social and technological consequences by considering wider technological and societal implications in
early front-end innovation processes. Ten underlying themes related to responsible innovation have been identified in a
systematic literature review, which include a need to manage ethical rifts as well as unintended consequences in complex
environments, along with growing efforts to legitimize innovation processes and outcomes. Managing innovation responsibly
requires that both the foundational societal and technological core premises and future implications are explored with a wider
stakeholder audience in order to ensure an ability to reflect, anticipate and respond to potential technological and societal
threats. The findings of this research project have been presented at the British Academy of Management conference at
Liverpool in September 2013. Moreover a quick guide has been developed in collaboration with the EPSRC Centre for
Industrial Sustainability to facilitate dissemination to an industrial audience.
PhD STEFAN HEMEL
Organizations seeking sustainability-led innovations are challenged with a need to discover innovative market offerings for
sustainable value creation. Moreover increasing legislative, regulative and societal pressures on corporations to ‘do no harm’
suggest a need to better manage environmental, social and economic impacts of innovations. Firms that explore
sustainability-led innovations beyond familiar grounds are found to be involved in a search of extra-organizational knowledge
in hybrid organizational forms that bring together seemingly paradoxical market and social ambitions as reflections of their
unique institutional origins, for mutual gain.
While such hybrid organizational forms offer innovation opportunities through juxtaposing and combining different
organizational logics, unintended consequences and value conflicts may arise owing to their institutional origins which hamper
innovation. This observation drives Doughty Centre doctoral student Stefan Hemel’s doctoral study which explores how such
emerging paradoxical tensions are reconciled during the search for sustainability-led innovations in different hybrid
organizational forms. The outcome of this research is an empirically informed conceptual model that supports organizations in
their endeavour to search for sustainability-led innovations. Practitioners are expected to benefit from different reconciliation
strategies which accelerate sustainability-led innovation.
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For more information on these news items please contact Thea Hughes
(thea.hughes@cranfield.ac.uk)