Text adopted from the Corporate Governance Special Issue (Editors forewords): “Responding to Societal Expectations”, Lenssen, G., Van den Berghe, L. and Louche, C.

Certainly the power of civil society groups and their effect on the (re)positioning of traditional stakeholders like consumers, governments and trade unions, lead to a considerably more challenging decision and management environment, not least in a context of global competition. In the global business environment and the global knowledge economy, changing societal expectations are interdependent with political, economic and technological change and form part of the complexity faced by management.

Societal expectations are focussed largely (although not exclusively) on the wider social, environmental and hence governance responsibilities of business and as well as on the long term sustainability and viability of the firm, which includes its capability for sustained long term economic value creation.

The 3rd Colloquium of the European Academy of Business in Society (EABIS) organised at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium on 27-29 September 2004 called for business relevant contributions in terms of the impact of changing societal expectations on management and organisation at strategic, operational and governance levels. A business functional approach was choosen to group and discuss contributions in the areas of

1. Corporate governance,
2. Corporate and business strategy
3. Marketing and market development
4. Leadership and human resource management
5. Operations and supply chain management
6. Finance and accounting
7. Policy making and the role of government.

The organisors of the colloquium propose that the societal expectations towards business have so far been predominantly studied and discussed within the normative frameworks of business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). They want to contribute to a shift in attention to corporate responsiveness and performance by focussing on issues and questions of managerial relevance, thereby taking a more descriptive, analytical and instrumental approach.

This is not meant to diminish the importance of a normative background for description and analysis in terms of institutional legitimacy of business, public responsibility of companies and ethical choices of managers. Rather, the editors believe that in order for the field of Business & Society (B&S) to earn its place at the core of business theory and practice, it needs to address the ways in which responsiveness to society can be built into the core business functions. Processes of responsiveness and performance outcomes receive therefore more attention than principles of responsibility[1] .

From a business and organisational change perspective one could have opted for a systemic rather than a functional approach by looking at the impact of changing societal expectations on the purpose, strategy, culture, processes, systems, competencies and skills of business organisations. This might indeed become the framework for another colloquium of EABIS in future years.

The functional approach was chosen, not only because it is an approach Colloquium 2004 Edward Freemanmanagers find easy to relate to, but also because it makes it easier to draw conclusions from both academic research and managerial practice for business education, since business school curricula are usually built around courses in strategy, marketing, finance & accounting, operations management, and HRM.

Another important choice for the colloquium was to present both academic contributions and practitioner contributions in each functional area. The editors are concerned that the traditional academic peer review process does not necessarily produce contributions relevant to practitioners and, in turn, that business-to-business showcasing and benchmarking does not guarantee reflective and analytical quality. Therefore the two communities need to be connected in more meaningful ways than merely being guests at each other’s events and in publications. This aspiration has been at the heart of EABIS’s mission from the beginning and is also at the heart of the mission of the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School.

During the colloquium, it was repeatedly stressed that research and knowledge development requires a more collaborative approach between academics and corporates, in particular:

Corporate governance Corporate and business strategy Marketing and market development Leadership and human resource management Operations and supply chain management Finance and accounting

More than 70 papers and presentations (not including 17 papers by PhD students) were selected from more than 130 submissions to the colloquium. Genuinely, the selection process was not easy.

We want to also recognise other excellent contributions to the colloquium. Abstracts of all papers presented as well as the position papers for the keynotes by Prof Ed Freeman and Prof John Kay can be viewed at the Public community of EABIS Intranet .

The functional approach was considered to be an effective structure:for taking stock of the state of the art of academic research with respect to addressing business relevant issues for bringing in reflective contributions from practitioners allowing for assessment of the existing gaps between academic research and practitioner concerns for contributing to the “mainstreaming” of corporate responsiveness to society from a largely peripheral matter to the core of business theory and practice. The broad scope of papers presented at the colloquium provide a state of the art on the three accounts.

Whilst the scope and quality of academic research in the field of Business & Society is undoubtedly growing as evidenced here, there are still considerable gaps with corporate knowledge needs with respect to managing processes of responsiveness and performance outcomes. Collaborative research design should address these gaps and we look forward to seeing more of these design models taking shape in the future.

We could notice complementary views and approaches of academics and practitioners in the areas of Governance, Strategy, Leadership and Governance; as well as the marked differences in perceptions and approaches in the areas of Marketing, Operations and Finance. Whilst the quality and relevance of academic research has increased considerably (albeit only recently); there is still progress to be made with respect to the setting of and adhering to standards of reflective quality of practitioner contributions. Whilst still more business relevance of content is required from academics, more reflective quality of method is required from practitioners. Both requirements form the basis for a more fruitful dialogue and co-operation between the two communities.

Some links to the mainstream management literature are clearly missing:

• comparative strategic analysis between industry sectors
• strategic accounting and the balanced scorecard
• human resource management (across the board, with the exception of leadership development)

The collection of colloquium papers illustrate the considerable progress that has recently been made with respect to mainstreaming corporate responsibility and sustainability into the core of the functional management disciplines (albeit to different degrees).

It is now appropriate to start asking why the achievements of academic research and practitioner knowledge development are hardly noticeable in the core courses at most business schools. This should be addressed in a forthcoming special issue of this journal on CR and business education.

Overall, a functional approach has served us well in pursuing the 3 objectives mentioned above; but it also presents some drawbacks. Issues related to corporate responsiveness to growing societal expectations are often multi-functional and require a multi-disciplinary approach.

One may also regret the lack of fundamental research in the colloquium programme and in this special issue. Especially the need to better understand the economic, political and cultural drivers and consequences of globalization and how these affect and will affect societal expectations is left largely unaddressed. Equally, the effect of CR on the overall theory of the firm was hardly touched on. Our choice for a functional structure to bridge the academic-practitioner divide should not have been an impediment to addressing fundamental questions, but it might have been. The business community is keenly interested in fundamental questions that go beyond questions for instrumental and applied knowledge[2] . This is clearly food for thought whilst planning the next colloquia.

[1 ] We refer to the principles, processes and outcomes of Corporate Social Performance as in: Wood, D. (1991) Corporate Social Performance revisited. Academy of Management Review, 16(4) 691-718.

[2] see Lenssen G. & Dentchev N., Towards a business relevant research agenda for Business & Society, in Allouche J., Corporate Social Responsibility, London: Palgrave (forthcoming Spring 2005)