Tracking strategic alignment with EcQ - The Strategic Alignment Monitor

This article discusses and analyzes a new measure designed specifically to track employee alignment and its drivers, named “EcQ® - The Strategic Alignment Monitor”. How can managers identify whether employees support the company’s strategic issues? The EcQ provides companies with a tool capable of measuring this alignment and reveals weaknesses and strengths in its drivers.Este artigo discute e analisa uma nova medida desenvolvida especificamente para mensurar o alinhamento interno das empresas e seus determinantes. Essa medida é denominada “EcQ® - Monitor de Alinhamento Estratégico”. Como identificar se os empregados estão alinhados às questões estratégicas da empresa? O EcQ permite mensurar esse alinhamento e revela os pontos fracos e fortes de seus determinantes.Tiene por objetivo discutir y analizar una nueva medida desarrollada específicamente para mensurar el nivel de alineación interna de las organizaciones y sus determinantes. Dicha medida se denomina “EcQ® - Monitor de Alineación Estratégica”. ¿Cómo se puede identificar si el comportamiento de los empleados está alineado con los objetivos estratégicos de la empresa? El EcQ permite mensurar esa alineación y revela los puntos fuertes y débiles de sus determinantes

Valuing stakeholder engagement and sustainability reporting

This conceptual paper sheds light on some of the major intergovernmental benchmarks, guidelines and principles for corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance and sustainability reporting. It reports on several governments’ regulatory roles as their societal governance is intrinsically based on interdependent relationships. There are different actors and drivers who are shaping CSR communications and policies in relational frameworks. This paper mentions some of the countries that have already introduced intelligent substantive and reflexive regulations. It also shows how certain businesses are stepping in with their commitment for sustainability issues as they set their own policies and practices for laudable organisational behaviours. Very often, corporate businesses use non-governmental organisations’ regulatory tools such as process and performance-oriented standards. These regulatory instruments focus on issues such as labour standards, human rights, health and safety, environmental protection, corporate governance and the like. Afterwards, this paper discusses about the relationship between governance and sustainability. It makes reference to some of the relevant European Union Expert Group recommendations for non-financial reporting and CSR audits. Relevant academic contributions are indicating that customers are expecting greater disclosures, accountability and transparency in sustainability reports. This contribution contends that the way forward is to have more proactive governments that raise the profile of CSR. It maintains that CSR communications and stakeholder engagement may bring shared value to business and society. Ultimately, it is in the businesses’ interest to implement corporate sustainability and responsibility and to forge fruitful relationships with key stakeholders, including the regulatory ones, in order to address societal, environmental, governance and economic deficits.peer-reviewe

Stakeholder integration

This study examines the central contention ofinstrumental stakeholder theory— namely, that firms that breed trust-based, cooperative ties with their stakeholders will have a competitive advantage over firms that do not.Acase study of the introduction ofgenetically modified food products in the Netherlands provided the basis for the empirical analysis. The results support the instrumental stakeholder management thesis, showing that stakeholder integration, through the development ofmutually enforcing relationships with external parties, may result in both organizational learning and societal legitimacy

Planned Organizational Identity Change : Insights from Practice

International audienc

Stimulating Strategically Aligned Behaviour Among Employees

Strategically aligned behaviour (SAB), i.e. employee action that is consistent with the company's strategy, is of vital importance to companies. This study provides insights into the way managers could promote such behaviour among employees (who can be managers as well) by stimulating employee motivation, by informing employees, and by stimulating the development of their capabilities. The results of surveys conducted in three organizations suggest that, first, perceived efforts by management aimed at motivating and informing employees (both managers and non-managers), and at developing their capabilities, each are related to SAB. Second, among the perceived efforts to stimulate motivation among employees, providing a rationale for the strategy and an open communication climate have a stronger relationship with SAB than participation in decision making and supportiveness. Third, the perceptions of the different types of managerial effort are related to each other. For this reason, the efforts have direct as well as indirect relationships to SAB. Fourth, each of the perceived efforts seems to be complementary to the others, in the sense that the relationship of one type of effort to SAB is stronger when other types of effort are perceived to be higher. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009.

Managing Impressions in the Face of Rising Stakeholder Pressures: Examining Oil Companies' Shifting Stances in the Climate Change Debate

International audienceIn this paper, we examine how organizations’ impression management (IM) evolves in response to rising stakeholder pressures regarding organizations’ corporate responsibility initiatives. We conducted a comparative case study analysis over a period of 13 years (1997–2009) for two organizations—Exxon and BP—that took extreme (but different) initial stances on climate change. We found that as stakeholder pressures rose, their IM tactics unfolded in four phases: (i) advocating the initial stance, (ii) sensegiving to clarify the initial stance, (iii) image repairing, and (iv) adjusting the stance. Taken together, our analysis of IM over these four phases provides three key insights about the evolution of IM in the face of rising pressures. First, when faced with stakeholder pressures, it seems that organizations do not immediately resort to conforming but tend to give in gradually when pressures increase and start to come from relatively powerful stakeholders. Second, evolution of IM seems to be characterized by path dependence, i.e., even as organizations’ positions evolve, they continue to show their conviction in their initial positions and try to convey that their subsequent positions flow logically from the previous ones. Finally, IM involves navigation between symbolism and substance, and companies tend to strive toward harmonizing their symbolic and substantive actions as stakeholder pressure increases

Reputation Management Capabilities as Decision Rules

We draw on a detailed grounded theory study of the reactions of Dutch food firms to the recent introduction of genetically modified foods to inductively identify the capabilities that firms develop in response to reputational threats. Central to the view on capabilities we propose are the decision rules organizations use to link individual actions to organizational outcomes. Four reputation management capabilities were identified, which were aimed at, respectively: (1) engaging in a cooperative dialogue with relevant stakeholders; (2) presenting the organizational point of view favourably in the eyes of external beholders; (3) avoiding organizational 'ownership' of critical reputational threats; and (4) communicating meaningfully with affected parties, even under conditions of high adversity and time-pressure. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004.