Corporate Sustainability, Strategic Management and the Stakeholder View of the Firm

This special issue of Finanza, Marketing e Produzione is based on the 5th Annual Colloquium of EABIS (the European Academy of Business in Society), which was organized and hosted by EABIS Founding Partner SDA Bocconi School of Management on September 11 and 12, 2006. More than 360 senior representatives from 29 countries and different sectors (business, academia, policy-making, and civil society) attended the conference. This year’s focus was «Corporate Sustainability, Strategic Management & the Stakeholder View of the Firm». The Colloquium was part of the EABIS-led «European Platform for Excellence in CSR Research (CSR Platform)», funded by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme for Research (FP6). The purpose of the Colloquium was to explore ways to link corporate social responsibility (CSR) with strategic management by proposing a strategic approach to stakeholder management. The main question that the debate raised was, «Is corporate responsibility simply an add-on policy, which does not affect the current behaviour of companies, or is it an innovative approach toward management based on a systemic stakeholder view of the firm and aimed at ensuring corporate sustainability?». Our view is that, in the present economic, social, and institutional environment and more and more into the future, the capacity of a firm to generate sustainable wealth over time is related to its relationships with its entire stakeholder network. Therefore, the sustainability of a company depends on the sustainability of its stakeholder relationships.