In today's highly networked and competitive global economy, mounting social and environmental problems are forcing corporations to focus on more than just their stockholders' interest in meeting bottom line profitability. More and more companies are recognizing the value of identifying and building relationships with all of their organization's stakeholders-employees, customers, suppliers, and even communities. In fact, recent research has shown that companies that treat their employees well, create jobs in the local economy, develop innovative products and services, take care of the environment, and contribute to the community, are often more profitable.

In The Stakeholder Strategy, sociologist Ann Svendsen presents an effective and practical step-by-step guide that companies can use to forge a network of powerful and profitable collaborative stakeholder relationships.

While some forward-thinking corporations have tried limited collaborative approaches-focusing on one stakeholder group at a time-few have taken a comprehensive and strategic approach to building relationships with all of their stakeholders, notes Svendsen. And, while considerable commitment to the idea of stakeholder collaboration exists, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding about how to develop these relationships. The Stakeholder Strategy is the first book to show business leaders and managers how to establish and maintain positive, mutually beneficial stakeholder relationships. Based on a synthesis of ideas from community relations, corporate philanthropy, stakeholder management, organizational change, sustainability, and the corporate social responsibility literature, it offers an integrated framework, as well as the practical tools for developing new kinds of collaborative relationships.

Svendsen uses easy-to-grasp concepts from everyday life, such as the process we go through in finding a mate or developing a long-term friendship, to illustrate these relationship-building strategies. She lays out the steps a company should take to create a collaboration-friendly organization: establishing a social mission, values, and ethical guidelines; assessing corporate readiness for collaboration; and making changes in communication, information and reward systems to support internal and external collaboration. Featuring case study examples from companies in North America and Europe who are working to build collaborative relationships with their stakeholders, The Stakeholder Strategy is the first book to provide a detailed explanation of how to conduct stakeholder audits and social audits so that companines can evaluate their relationship-building success and keep on track.

• Provides an integrated framework for understanding a corporations responsibilities to a broad array of stakeholders-from customers to suppliers, employees, and communities.
• Offers a step-by-step guide as well as practical strategies that companies can use to forge a network of powerful and profitable collaborative
• stakeholder relationships.
• Features case study examples of companies across North America and Europe that are building collaborative relationships with their stakeholders.

With so many recent examples of corporate greed and abuse of power, there is an obvious need for some kind of check on their behavior. But government has largely given up on regulating business, so what alternative is there?

In this important new book Steven Lydenberg outlines how the government can transform the marketplace so that market forces, rather than top-down regulations, move corporations away from such all too typical practices as plundering natural resources, dumping costs on society, and diverting assets to exorbitant executive payouts.

Lydenberg sees the proper role of corporations as creating long-term wealth--wealth which creates value in relationships with stakeholders, employees, customers and communities The heart of this book lies in a series of recommendations for creating practical tools that individuals and governments could use to encourage corporations to act in the public interest. The keys are information, analysis, and consequences.

Corporations and the Public Interest details how data on the social and environmental records of corporations could be made broadly available; how systems for analyzing, interpreting, and discussing that data can be developed and made accessible to the public; and how investors, consumers and others could use this information to reward those companies who are creating long-term wealth and punish those who are not.

These are not small tasks. Without them, however, society cannot reasonably expect that corporations will be directed to act in the public's long-term interests. Only a systematic approach like the one Lydenberg advocates can move corporations to see beyond this quarter's profits.

• Addresses corporate misdeeds and provides antidotes to scandalous corporate behavior
• Details how government can use the marketplace, rather than regulations, to make corporations act more responsibly
• As a pioneer in the field of socially responsible investing, Steven Lydenberg is uniquely qualified to write on this topic

Outlines a new leadership approach tailored to the realities of the 21st Century.

No organizational leaders can succeed in today’s fast evolving and highly connected world on their own. To succeed, today’s leaders must not only optimize all their own faculties—mental sharpness, emotional depth, imagination, and creativity—but also utilize the full capacities of those around them in a collaborative and creative manner. The prestigious contributors to this volume draw on psychology, sociology, neuroscience, social networking theory, organizational change theory, myths and traditions, and actual experiences to discover how leaders today achieve transformational results. The Transforming Leader offers an overview of what transformational leadership is, how it works, and how it is evolving. In doing so it reframes the challenge of leading in today’s interdependent, unpredictable world.

• Outlines a new leadership approach tailored to the realities of the twenty-first century

• Features chapters by such leading authors as Matthew Fox, Diana Whitney, and Alan Briskin

• Edited and annotated by the author of the bestselling The Hero Within

 

The traditional model of the heroic leader single-handedly piloting the organization was always something of a myth, but it is especially unrealistic now. We live in a complex, fast-evolving, highly connected world. There is simply too much for a single person to keep track of or to address successfully. Leaders today must not only optimize all their own facultiesmind, body, and spiritthey must harvest the full capacities of those around them.

To discover what leadership models are working now, the prestigious Fetzer Institute, along with the University of Marylands School of Public Policy, and the International Leadership Association, brought together an impressive, interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners. The group drew on psychology, sociology, neuroscience, organizational change theory, myths and wisdom traditions, social networking theory, and the actual experiences of successful leaders to discover how leaders today achieve transformational results.

The first part of the book offers an overview of what transformational leadership is, how it works, and how it is evolving. The second part shows readers how to increase cognitive complexity, link up their conscious and unconscious minds, and lead in ways that connect mind, heart, and spirit. The third part describes ways of leading groups to harvest collective wisdom and promote coordinated performance in the service of transformational ends. The conclusion explores how transformational communication can anchor new learnings so that they become habitual.

Overall, The Transforming Leader reframes the challenge of leading in todays interdependent, unpredictable world. Its message is that if we update our thinking, enhance the quality of our being, deepen our sense of relatedness with the ecology of our natural and social worlds, and practice transformational communication, things no longer have to be so hard.