The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard. Linking Sustainability Management to Business Strategy.

The Balanced Scorecard of Kaplan and Norton is a management tool that supports the successful implementation of corporate strategies. It has been discussed and considered widely in both practice and research. By linking operational and non-financial corporate activities with causal chains to the firm's long-term strategy, the Balanced Scorecard supports the alignment and management of all corporate activities according to their strategic relevance. The Balanced Scorecard makes it possible to take into account non-monetary strategic success factors that significantly impact the economic success of a business. The Balanced Scorecard is thus a promising starting-point to also incorporate environmental and social aspects into the main management system of a firm. Sustainability management with the Balanced Scorecard helps to overcome the shortcomings of conventional approaches to environmental and social management systems by integrating the three pillars of sustainability into a single and overarching strategic management tool. After a brief discussion of the different possible forms of a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard the article takes a closer look at the process and steps of formulating a Sustainability Balanced Scorecard for a business unit. Before doing so, the basic conventional approach of the Balanced Scorecard and its suitability for sustainability management will be outlined in brief.

The impact of equity markets and corporate governance on labour market flexibility

Drawing from various literatures, this article explores links between equity markets and labour market flexibility. Various data sources are used to test relationships for a set of OECD countries, controlling for other likely influences on flexibility such as government and industrial relations institutions. The results are generally supportive as regards employment flexibility: equity market trading activity is associated with shorter job tenure, higher activity rates, and greater employment change over the cycle. However, the relationship between equity markets and pay flexibility is less statistically robust to the addition of controls.

The Development of Corporate Identity: A Political Perspective

A corporate identity denotes a set of attributes that senior managers ascribe to their organization. It is therefore an organizational identity articulated by a powerful interest group. It can constitute a claim which serves inter alia to justify the authority vested in top managers and to further their interests. The academic literature on organizational identity, and on corporate identity in particular, pays little attention to these political considerations. It focuses in an apolitical manner on shared meanings when corporate identity works, or on cognitive dissonance when it breaks down. In response to this analytical void, we develop a political analysis of corporate identity and its development, using as illustration a longitudinal study of successive changes in the corporate identity of a Brazilian telecommunications company. This suggests a cyclical model in which corporate identity definition and redefinition involve power relations, resource mobilization and struggles for legitimacy. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.

Corporate Co-evolution: A Political Perspective

Corporate Co–Evolution is one of the first major works in Blackwell’s Organization and Strategy research series of business texts. By tracing the history and growth of Telemig, a major Brazilian telecommunications company, Corporate Co–Evolution develops broader macro–economic principles that can be applied to today’s international corporate environment. After a general introduction to political regulations and other domains of the corporate environment that impact the growth of companies, Corporate Co–Evolution delves deeply into Telemig’s past. The text closely documents and analyzes the dramatic changes over the course of 30 years that transformed Telemig from a “lumbering dinosaur to a soaring eagle” as privatization takes the corporation into the 21st century. The authors skillfully draw out the practical and policy implications of the Telemig experience to develop a broader systematic theory of corporate evolution that is highly relevant to the contemporary business world.

Managerial failure in mid-Victorian Britain?: Corporate expansion during a promotion boom

This article examines the mid-1840s expansion of the British railway network, which was associated with a large deterioration in shareholder value. Using a counterfactual approach and new data on railway competition, we argue that the expansion of the railway companies, and their subsequent decline in financial performance, was not due to managerial failure. Rather, the promotion of new routes by established railways and mergers with other companies was part of a managerial strategy to maintain incumbent positions, and may have been preferable to not expanding whilst their competitors did.