Beyond national peculiarities, corporate governance practice is mainly centered on the protection of investors’ rights. However, this view neglects the fundamental changes of the operating conditions of business due to globalization and the weakening of regulatory frameworks. Weak or absent enforcement of contracts, increasingly unfettered negative externalities of corporate action, and involvement of private actors in the provision of public goods change the role of business in a fundamental way, rendering it a political actor in part. Resulting in the extension of corporate power these developments challenge the very assumptions of dominant corporate governance theory. Recurring misuse of this power poses a threat to organizational legitimacy as well as to the legitimacy of the system of market economy. Drawing on suggestions to restore organizational legitimacy by means of discursive processes, I argue that corporate governance needs to become open to such processes to contribute to the safeguarding of organizational legitimacy and therewith the legitimacy of the system of market economy in a globalized world. Based on these considerations, basic requirements as well as limits for an according modification of current corporate governance practice will be introduced.
Present-day discussions of corporate Governance is mainly centered on finance-related issues and the relation of shareholders and management. However, this view neglects the fundamental changes of the operating conditions of business due to globalization and the weakening of regulatory frameworks, not only changing the role of business, rendering it a political actor in part. Futhermore, the very assumptions of dominant corporate governance theory are challenged. These developments can be regarded as a potential threat for organizational legitimacy. Whereas in the traditional view, corporate governance safeguarded organizational legitimacy of the economic system as a whole, this congruence is not given in the situation of weak or even absent legal and regulatory frameworks. Drawing on suggestions to restore organizational legitimacy of the economic system as a whole, this congruence is not given in the situation of weak or even absent legal and regulatory frameworks. Drawing on suggestions to restore organizational legitimacy by means of discursive processes, I argue that corporate governance needs to become open to such processes to safeguard organizational legitimacy and therewith the legitimacy of the economic system in a globalized world. Based on these considerations, I will introduce basic requirements as well as limits for an according modification of current corporate governance practice.
Beyond national peculiarities, corporate governance practice is mainly centered on the protection of investors’ rights. However, this view neglects the fundamental changes of the operating conditions of business due to globalization and the weakening of regulatory frameworks. Weak or absent enforcement of contracts, increasingly unfettered negative externalities of corporate action, and involvement of private actors in the provision of public goods change the role of business in a fundamental way, rendering it a political actor in part. Resulting in the extension of corporate power these developments challenge the very assumptions of dominant corporate governance theory. Recurring misuse of this power poses a threat to organizational legitimacy as well as to the legitimacy of the capitalist system of market economy. Drawing on suggestions to restore organizational legitimacy by means of discursive processes, we argue that corporate governance needs to become open to such processes to contribute to the safeguarding of organizational legitimacy and therewith the legitimacy of the system of market economy in a globalized world. Based on these considerations, basic requirements as well as limits for an according modification of current corporate governance practice will be introduced.
In this paper I argue that the assessment and management of corporate sustainability potentially runs the risk of severe biases due to the application of inadequate criteria. Firstly, present praxis as well as theory of corporate sustainability assessment tend to not distinguish between structural and performance related features relevant for corporate sustainability. Secondly, the nature of corporate sustain-ability as the result of a constructive process of complexity reduction performed by social systems, which is highly context-specific, selective, and ambiguous, is ignored. Considering these two features as well as their interactions is described as one step towards rendering theorizing about and management of corporate sustainability able to adequately take into account the immense increase of complexity the adherence to the goal of corporate sustainability represents.
The discussion of corporate sustainability (CS) is hindered by a lack of definitional clarity of the concept of CS and neighboring concepts. Therefore in this paper a framework of corporate sustainability is construdted from information derived from guidelines concerning corporate sustainability. Within this framework, a differentiation between sustainability performance and its managerial antecedents is undertaken. This permits a differentiated appraisal of formal as well as informal prerequisites for sustainability performance within companies, enabling to tackle the immense increase of complexity of decision owed to corporate adherence to the goal of sustainability. Furthermore, it enables the analysis of different definitions of the concept of corporate social responsibility as well as of their relation to the concept of CS and sustainable development.
Companies play a central role on the way towards sustainable development. Over the last years, many approaches have emerged that attempt to measure companies’ contribution to sustainable development, i.e. corporate sustainability. Our analysis of existing approaches reveals two major shortcomings. First, value creation as a core condition for sustainability as well as for further contributions to economic sustainability is often ignored in these assessments. Second, existing approaches fail to differentiate between the actual contribution of a firm to sustainability on one hand and the structural and managerial measures aimed at attaining this contribution on the other hand. We argue that the implementation of sustainability oriented organizational structures and managerial instruments alone does not necessarily guarantee sustainability performance. In response to these shortcomings we put forward a generic framework for corporate sustainability assessment. Besides the dimension of current sustainability performance we introduce the notion of future-orientation of management as the second – and so far unrecognized – dimension of corporate sustainability assessment.
This paper empirically examines the determinants of the inclusion of European firms in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and the Dow Jones Stoxx Sustainability Index. While a restricted econometric analysis implies a positive effect of corporate financial performance, this impact becomes ambiguous in more flexible panel probit models. Our estimation results therefore strengthen the importance of the use of panel data and the incorporation of unob-served heterogeneity. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the sustainability assessment and selection process for the composition of the Dow Jones sustainability indexes and thus factors that need not necessarily be directly connected to corporate environmental or social activities also have an influence.
Die Gründe warum Nachhaltigkeit (noch) nicht ein selbstverständlicher Bestandteil der Bauwirtschaft ist, sind vielfältig. Fehlendes Verständnis der nachhaltigen Entwicklung, unzureichende Rahmenbedingungen und eine geringe Nachfrage des Marktes sind in diesem Zusammenhang zu nennen. Zwei zentrale Barrieren für das nachhaltige Bauen sind zum einen der Mangel an akzeptierten Bewertungssystemen für nachhaltiges Bauen und zum zweiten die unzureichende Berücksichtigung von Nachhaltigkeitsaspekten im Rahmen der Immobilienbewertung. Im vorliegenden Artikel werden beide Themenbereiche diskutiert und Thesen zur Überwindung der Barrieren aufgestellt. Mit dem CCRS Economic Sustainability Indocator ESI® wird ein konkreter Ansatz zur Berücksichtigung der Nachhaltigkeit in der Immobilienbewertung vorgestellt.
