Measuring Corporate Responsibility - Linking Financial and Social Values

How can managers balance financial and social priorities when making business decisions?

Cranfield School of Management is leading a research project to investigate how practising managers can trade-off financial and social priorities when making decisions. The research builds on the expertise of the researchers in the mainstream financial and performance management fields to investigate how the latest thinking in these fields can inform approaches to the management of corporate social performance. 

The project is based on an action research methodology built around three case at three firms - EDF, Holcim and Lloyds TSB. Representatives of case study companies will work together with Cranfield to develop approaches and decision making tools which build on the latest thinking but work in practice in the organisation concerned. In addition these companies together with others will come together twice a year to help determine the issues and direction of the research as well as to develop practical management tools.

The case study companies and researchers will form a consortium which will develop approaches that can be tested for applicability more widely. SDA Bocconi, Henley Management College and Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School are involved in this process.

On 12 and 13 December 2006, Cranfield organised, together with Zurich University of Applied Sciences, a PhD day on "How to Deliver Value from Best Practice in Managing Relationships with Stakeholders" .

Ethical Corporation published in its July 2006 edition an article overviewing the key research questions that the project is trying to answer.

Please find here the executive summary of the project.

For more information, please contact Bart Neerscholten, Research Manager, EABIS or Mike Kennerley, Research Fellow, Centre for Business Performance, Cranfield School of Management.

EABIS members can visit the project space of this project on the EABIS Intranet where you can download project deliverables. If you are not a member yet of this project space, click "Measurement of CR" to join. Following the approval of your request to join, you can follow the link to the project space above. For further Intranet assistance, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

This project is part of the EABIS corporate funded programme sponsored by founding partners IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Shell and Unilever.