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This chapter highlights some of the tensions and most promising points of convergence between the strategic management and stakeholder theory literatures. We briefly examine the early development of both areas, identifying some of the background assumptions and choices that informed how the fields evolved, and how these factors led the two fields to engage in scholarly pursuits that seldom intersected for a period of years, followed by a renewal of interest among strategists in themes that are central to stakeholder theory. From this discussion, we develop a larger agenda with specific topics as examples of areas that offer promise for integrative research that can advance knowledge in both fields. Our vision of the future is one in which the larger aspirations of scholars in strategy and stakeholder theory are more fully realized with human purposes, broadly defined, as the focal point.

Sees to argues that administrative evil is inherent in the administrative hierarchies currently governing work organizations, and to explore the means by which instrumentally rational processes morph into administrative evil.

A critical theory methodology for identifying and describing administrative evil is outlined.

Administrative evil refers to the use of technology, professionals, and hierarchical organizational structures in ways that divorce collective actions from their moral context. The role of technical accounting expertise, manifested as various devices, facilitates “ordinary” human beings' “rational” participation in “administrative evil” through a series of technically competent and instrumentally rational decisions, facilitated by information technology.

Divorcing actions from their moral context removes a sense of personal responsibility and accountability on the part of the organizational participants and renders public interest considerations captive to prevailing ideology and social structures.

By better understanding the facilitating processes of administrative evil, possibly one can begin to develop alternative criteria that empower individuals to circumvent the negative consequences of instrumental rationality and enable them to act more responsibly in the public interest.

Critical theory is used in better understanding administrative evil and in developing strategies for change.

To provide a futures‐oriented perspective on institutional change.

Presents methods and case studies of attempts to engage in institutional change. An international authority on future studies draws on his field to provide a futures‐oriented perspective on institutional change. This perspective includes the use of futures tools, strategy, capacity building, the central role of memes, emergence of self‐organization, and the underlying role of meaning and symbols. Five case studies are used to illustrate these principles.

One company was struggling over its governing choice of institutional metaphor: the tortoise versus the hare. Another was caught up in treating hackers as good versus evil, but realized that they needed new concepts to grasp the frontier of cyberspace. A third case involved moving from developing a monolithic plan to forming self‐organizing groups of stakeholders that actually created a collective new vision. A city council was able to recognize the need to shift toward an innovative organizational structure. The final case challenged a group of mayors to adopt a “rainforest” model of cities that is inclusive, green, human‐centered.

Mapping, understanding and transforming the “myths” discussed in this paper are crucial for the move from individual to organization to institutional change.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of stakeholders in the creation, development and ultimately ownership of place brands. The paper contributes towards laying the foundations of a participatory view of place branding. It establishes an urgent need to rethink place branding towards a more participation‐oriented practice. This is based on the centrality of stakeholders in the creation, development and ownership of place brands. The role of stakeholders goes well beyond that of customers/consumers as they are citizens who legitimize place brands and heavily influence their meaning.

The paper highlights a turn towards stakeholder‐oriented place branding in recent literature. This is contrasted to a critical evaluation of place branding practice where stakeholders are paid “lip service” regarding their participation, rather than being given opportunities to get more fully involved in the development of their place brand.

An emerging discussion is identified on the significance of stakeholders. This is integrated with additional arguments for stakeholders' participation found in the political nature of place branding, in the concept of “participatory branding” and in the changes that on‐line communication has brought about.

The participatory approach introduced here re‐evaluates the role of both stakeholders and place brand managers. It also implies a significant change in the perceived role of analysis within the place branding process. A re‐direction of branding budgets is also suggested.

The paper provides a clear description of the role of stakeholders in place branding. It brings together for the first time in an integrated manner several arguments for stakeholders' participation. These lead to the conclusion that effective place brands are rooted in the involvement of stakeholders and substantiate the call made here for participatory place branding.

This paper seeks to explore an alternative direction to break the theoretical impasse in CSR.

The study employs ancient insights from the core of Buddhist teaching, featuring the Four Noble Truths and the concept of “me” and “mine”, for the modern application of CSR by investigating the crux of major related theories.

The Noble Truths emphasize that suffering should be eradicated at its root. The Buddhist model of CSR suggests that beyond doing good such as supporting philanthropy and avoiding evil as mitigating the impact of corporate malpractice, which are consistent with major CSR theories, it is also crucial to purify the hearts of stakeholders from the “self” and “what belongs to self”, the genesis of suffering. Detachment is the key.

The shift from an institutional to an individual level, more specifically the transformation from a mindset of over‐consumption to one of conscious consumption, is an alternative direction to the progress of theory and practice in CSR.

Defiled by greed and profitability, consumers and investors, who provide income and funding to an organization and define its business practice, are of the highest priority among all stakeholders to start the change according to the Buddhist model of CSR.

This paper takes Buddhism as timeless insight, rather than a religious belief, to propose an alternative model and direction to development of CSR in theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to describe maintenance in a generic process model, in order to support an alignment of maintenance with other company internal processes aimed at fulfilling external stakeholder requirements.

The proposed maintenance process model is based on existing theories and is illustrated by examples from a paper‐mill case study related to the maintenance of DC‐motors.

The proposed model supports a holistic view of maintenance and the alignment of the maintenance process with other company internal processes, in order to fulfil external stakeholder requirements.

Further research could include an application of the proposed maintenance model to test its usefulness to identify stakeholders and also hazard diagnosis.

The importance of vertical and horizontal alignment between the maintenance process and other processes in order to achieve effectiveness and efficiency is illustrated. The model can be used to increase the understanding of the role of maintenance within a company. Thereby, the proposed process model provides valuable support for effective, efficient, and continuous risk reduction.

The proposed process view highlights that maintenance can contribute to the fulfilment of external stakeholders' requirements, which strengthens the proposition that maintenance should be seen as a business‐process that creates value and not as something that is a “necessary evil”.

Seeks to provide practitioners of management with a sense of the importance of strategically leveraging social responsibility in that it provides a sustainable competitive advantage and requires a culture that can successfully execute a combination of activities. These activities include deeply studying the forces that can shape the future of the industry and gathering intelligence about current and potential social and political issues, involvement of stakeholders, managing stakeholder expectations, decision making, incorporating the decisions into the strategic plan and tactical activities, communicating symbols to stakeholders, and ethical business behavior.

A review of the applied literature on practices and actual examples in the Pittsburgh area have shown that innovative responsible strategy, exceeding government requirements and considering multiple stakeholders, is a long‐term objective.

A firm must control the triple‐bottom‐line, or the environmental, societal, and economic aspects of the firm's performance, especially with the strategic aspects of the resource‐based view of the firm as its foundation. Historically, a concentration on improved operational effectiveness and overcapacity created a temporary economic advantage accompanied by increased profit and firm value. Such an advantage is short‐lived; investors may be satisfied, but competing companies will eventually mimic technological and material improvements.

This article describes how corporate evolution from the early 1900s where few organizations were acting in a socially responsible manner and they were criticized; it was thought that these companies were too large and had too much power. With the recent ethical disasters of Enron and WorldCom, the same criticisms are being voiced as a major flaw in American business education.

It would be difficult to find someone who views socially responsible behavior as a negative. However, social responsibility is not without its skeptics. The prolonged advantage of corporate social responsibility ensures sustainable economic advantage and should be a long‐term objective of any organization.

The study aims to determine whether a relationship exists between the potential significance of corporate controversies for stakeholders and how organisations respond to them in their annual and sustainability reports.

This paper employs content analysis on annual and sustainability reports of 48 listed companies from the Refinitiv database. The logit regression was used to estimate the model.

The study revealed that the main factors increasing the probability of a controversial issue being addressed in a corporate report are the controversy’s potential significance, companies’ financial performance and lawsuits.

Our study has three major limitations. These are a relatively small sample of companies and reports, focusing on disclosures made in corporate reports and omitting other channels of communication, for example, social media, and a certain amount of subjectivity in the process of coding information.

Former studies show that corporations face a serious risk of their hypocritical strategies becoming too evident for stakeholder groups. Our findings suggest that the risk is already materialising and may undermine the idea of CSR and sustainability reporting.

Our research focuses on high-profile adverse incidents widely reported in the media, the omission of which from corporate reports seems to constitute a particular case of organised hypocrite. It also demonstrates that companies use an impression management strategy to defuse adverse publicity and that major controversies cause minor ones to be omitted from their reports.