A two-day workshop was hosted at Cranfield
University, bringing together doctoral researchers working with Dr
Lance Moir at Cranfield and with Professors Sybille Sachs and Edwin
Ruhli at HWZ in Zurich. The theme, delivering value from best practice
stakeholder management, reflected the main research interests of the
two management schools.
Work at Cranfield focuses on developing an internal
business case for corporate responsibility (CR) and how value and
benefits arising from adopting a CR perspective can be measured. Within
this arena, two presentations were given to the seminar. Dr Mike
Kennerley, from Cranfield's Business Performance team, gave an overview
of business performance measurement and introduced the 'Performance
Prism' which takes a stakeholder-centric view of performance
measurement. This involves devising measures that take account not only
of stakeholder concerns, but can also demonstrate a stakeholder's
contribution to the organisation's aims. Following on from this, Dr
Moir outlined a framework for overcoming the apparent tension between
delivering shareholder value and conducting business responsibly, which
draws on the development of stakeholder based key performance
indicators.
Meanwhile, the comprehensive research project at HWZ
is concerned with understanding a firm's stakeholder orientation, the
practices and policies implemented as a result of this orientation and
the subsequent impact on company learning and performance. Dr Sachs
brought the seminar up-to-date with the current state of the project
which has focused on the telecommunications and financial services
sector, and presented key propositions the research has found with
respect to the strategic stakeholders of organisations in these sectors.
The presentations of the current research at
Cranfield and Zurich were interspersed with facilitated discussions of
the students' research topics. The final discussion sessions on the
second day drew out valuable insights, particularly in terms of
methodology which were helpful to the development of each research
project.
It was interesting to note the commonality of issues facing
the research teams, particularly with regard to data handling and
measurement. There was a shared interest in understanding how a
strategic stakeholder-responsive orientation can impact corporate
performance, and how this can be demonstrated through effective
measurement. To further this interest, the research teams are planning
to host a workshop for a wider academic audience later in 2007 to
discuss this topic at greater length.
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