Corporate Innovation Strategies. Nacer Gasmi
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Corporate Innovation Strategies - Nacer Gasmi страница 5

Название: Corporate Innovation Strategies

Автор: Nacer Gasmi

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Экономика

Серия:

isbn: 9781119804161

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

      ISTE Ltd

      27-37 St George’s Road

      London SW19 4EU

      UK

      www.iste.co.uk

      John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

      111 River Street

      Hoboken, NJ 07030

      USA

      www.wiley.com

      © ISTE Ltd 2020

      The rights of Nacer Gasmi to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944437

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

      ISBN 978-1-78630-654-8

      Introduction

      Human behavior has always been evaluated, both in terms of its effectiveness and acceptability. Companies are not immune to this type of behavior (Pasquero 2007). The effective component of corporate behavior, which is associated with financial performance, has always been at the heart of corporate discourse. This performance has led companies to only focus on innovation strategies that are likely to further enhance their competitiveness and therefore their profitability. Yet, increasingly, the acceptable dimension of their activities for external and internal stakeholders is also becoming a decisive strategic issue for companies. In recent years, there has been an expectation from consumers that a company’s brands should not only offer them functional advantages, but that companies should also invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, that is, community initiatives. Since World War II, through their activities to create value (profit), multinationals have generated significant growth that has made it possible to significantly reduce the rate of global poverty and to create positive externalities, such as new jobs, new services and state budgetary contributions through various taxes (Kaplan et al. 2018).

      Unfortunately, this growth has not benefited all populations. In developed economies, the most recent gains have benefitted a small proportion of the population, while many members of the working, rural and urban classes have suffered as a result of socio-economic decline. In addition, these enterprises often induce negative social and/or environmental externalities, such as lay-offs, psychosocial risks, occupational accidents and pollution due to climate deregulation. The trajectory of production models is always shaped by the economic, social and political climate of a given period. Until the 1980s, responses to problems of social responsibility were part of a reactive approach to gradually adapt to environmental and social regulations (Berry and Rondinelli 1998).

      While the idea of CSR is sometimes presented as a novelty (d’Humières and Chauveau 2001), concerns about the consequences of economic activities have always been prevalent. The idea of CSR, which involves discourse and practice between businesses and society, dates back at least to the beginning of the 20th Century in North America (Acquier and Gond 2007). In the industrial era, paternalism was an early modern form of CSR. Today, social practices must be sustainable because, as Lars Rebien Sorensen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Group, pointed out, “corporate social responsibility is nothing more than maximizing the value of the company over time, because in the long run, social and environmental problems become financial problems” (Ignatius 2015). The justification for CSR is associated with the representation of the nature and role of the enterprise and its raison d’être.

      The first issue corresponds to a strategy of legitimization anchored in the company’s institutional communication (Dimaggio and Powell 1983; Suchman 1995; Philips et al. 2004), and in the congruence of the company’s values with those deemed appropriate by society (Philippe 2006). The second issue, described as Porter’s hypothesis, subordinates societal investment to a vision based on the reduction of negative social and/or environmental externalities produced by the firm’s activities (societal performance) while improving its competitive advantage (financial performance). The concept of externalities generates external effects (positive or negative) that generally refer to relations between agents that do not pass through the price mechanism (i.e. non-market effects) and therefore do not receive monetary compensation. Positive societal externalities correspond to environmental and/or social practices that are perceived as generating private costs and collective environmental and social benefits. Their production thus contributes to the well-being of agents other than the adopter (Gasmi and Grolleau 2003). In the case of negative externalities, their counterpart is left to the stakeholders. Positive environmental and/or social externalities therefore result from innovations, to enable the company that develops them to “correct” market “failures” and, in particular, the negative external effects on society (Daudigeos and Valiorgue 2010), that result from its economic activity. Kapp (1971) defines these effects as direct or indirect losses incurred by third parties or the general public, as a result of a company’s activity. For example, a negative social externality may be associated with the manufacture of products that have a negative СКАЧАТЬ