Stakeholder Politics: Social Capital, Sustainable Development, and the Corporation

Corporations are now publicly committed to sustainability. But, beneath the public relations happy face, executives and managers are perplexed. The majority of them have a genuine desire to work in an ethical and sustainable manner, yet, when they engage with their stakeholders for that purpose, they often encounter a world of hardball politics, full of hostile activists, self-interested elites, and unpredictable attacks. Stakeholder Politics: Social Capital, Sustainable Development and The Corporation gives companies a how to guide for addressing the twin problems of maintaining political legitimacy, and promoting sustainable development. The text presents a typology of stakeholder networks that helps managers and community leaders identify and improve the social capital patterns in their own networks. Once they know these patterns, they can move their networks towards those that foster sustainable community development. The book describes vivid cases in which managers and community stakeholders have used the authors' approach successfully, and in addition provides managers with handy tools for predicting and avoiding community-level socio-political risk around stakeholder issues. With its proven and practical approach, Stakeholder Politics promises to be a valuable guide for managers and academics who are invested in sustainable development worldwide and stakeholder issues alike.