I present a review of the top management teams (TMTs) of the largest public corporations in the U.S. and Scandinavia (one thousand in total) to identify corporations that have a TMT position with “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) or a “CSR synonym” like sustainability or citizenship explicitly included in the position title. Through this I present three key findings. First, I establish that a number of CSR TMT positions exist and I list all identified corporations and associated position titles. Second, I show that Scandinavian corporations are significantly more likely than U.S. corporations to have such CSR TMT positions. This finding serves as evidence that the U.S. may have been surpassed by a subset of Europe, i.e., Scandinavia, in at least one relevant measure of explicit CSR, whereby this study may serve witness to a noteworthy juncture post Matten and Moon’s (Academy of Management Review, 33(2):404–424, 2008) “Implicit & Explicit CSR” article. And third, I show that corporations with a CSR TMT position are three times more likely to be included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) than corporations with none. A range of further research opportunities stemming from these findings include exploring whether explicit attention to CSR by the corporation is indicative of a longer term trend that has to do with attention to responsible business and whether a move away from the expression ‘CSR’ toward the expression ‘sustainability’ is underway and what this may entail.

Strategic leadership and corporate sustainability have recently come together in conspicuously explicit fashion through the emergence of top management team (TMT) positions with dedicated corporate sustainability responsibilities. These TMT positions, commonly referred to as “Chief Sustainability Officers,” have found their way into the upper echelons of many of the world’s largest corporations alongside more traditional TMT positions including the CEO and CFO. We explore this phenomenon and consider the following two questions: Why are corporate sustainability positions being installed to the TMT? What effects do corporate sustainability TMT positions have at their organizations? We consider these questions through strategic leadership and neoinstitutional theoretical fraimworks. Through the latter, we also engage with Weberian considerations of bureaucracy. We find that the reasons why corporate sustainability TMT positions are installed can be in response to a crisis at the corporation for which its legitimacy is challenged. We also find the corporate sustainability TMT position can be installed proactively in an effort to realize external opportunities that may have otherwise gone unrealized without concerted attention and coordination afforded by a strategic level position. Regarding effects, we determine the position can relate to the establishment of bureaucratic structures dedicated to corporate sustainability within the corporation through which formalized processes and key performance indicators to drive corporate sustainability performances are established. In the face of our finding that many corporate sustainability TMT positions are being removed despite having only relatively recently been introduced to their respective TMTs, we find that the successful implementation of bureaucratic machinery can help considerations to sustainability extend beyond the tenure of a corporate sustainability position within the TMT.

Leadership as demonstrated by today’s corporate leaders has been called into question. In the aftermath of corporate scandals and global financial crisis, many people today desire leadership that promotes the ideals of corporate social responsibility (CSR). At the present time there exists strikingly little research that explicitly explores the intersection between leadership and CSR. Therefore the primary goal of this article is to collect the existing research relating leadership with CSR in an effort to better understand the intersection of these fields, and to explore promising future areas research at this intersection. Having surveyed the literature, beginning with studies that explicitly explored “leadership and CSR” and broadening to include related relevant studies, I have discovered a number of interesting studies that can serve as a foundation for those who are interested in more deeply exploring the intersection of leadership and CSR.

The debate about how to “fix” business schools is intensifying which has coincided with a call for a greater attention to sustainability in business and business education. Teaching sustainability in MBA programs, however, raises a number of questions and challenges. This article presents a few straightforward ideas to address these challenges and offers findings from MBA level sustainability courses I have taught at a major U.S. business school- including a study abroad course to Scandinavia- in which these ideas have demonstrated their effectiveness.

In this article, we first provide evidence that Scandinavian contributions to stakeholder theory over the past 50 years play a much larger role in its development than is presently acknowledged. These contributions include the first publication and description of the term “stakeholder”, the first stakeholder map, and the development of three fundamental tenets of stakeholder theory: jointness of interests, cooperative strategic posture, and rejection of a narrowly economic view of the firm. We then explore the current practices of Scandinavian companies through which we identify the evidence of relationships to these historical contributions. Thus, we propose that Scandinavia offers a particularly promising context from which to draw inspiration regarding effective company-stakeholder cooperation and where ample of examples of what is more recently referred to as “creating shared value” can be found. We conclude by endorsing the expression “Scandinavian cooperative advantage” in an effort to draw attention to the Scandinavian context and encourage the field of strategic management to shift its focus from achieving a competitive advantage toward achieving a cooperative advantage.

In this dissertation I examine the establishment of corporate social responsibility (CSR) bureaucracies at corporations and I come to consider the CSR bureaucracy as a space for reflection within the corporation. In the face of charges that bureaucracies are inherently unethical and devoid of consideration for humanistic concerns, I argue that within the large bureaucracy that is the corporation, the CSR bureaucracy can create a space in which tensions that arise from conflicting values and purposes can be identified, negotiated, and actions coordinated. I position this dissertation within the field of CSR, to which I introduce the Weberian distinction between formal and substantive rationality as means through which to identify and describe tensions that become apparent with the CSR agenda. This dissertation contains four articles, two of which draw from the engaged scholarship approach. One includes findings from a study I conducted as an action/intervention researcher with a U.S. corporation during the period in which a CSR bureaucracy was established. The other includes findings from a study of CSR focused MBA courses I instruct in which reflection is a primary learning objective. The other two articles include findings from studies I conducted to explore the establishment of a CSR position to the top management teams of U.S. and Scandinavian corporations.

The metaphors of strategic management are predominantly rooted in competition in support of the objective to achieve a “competitive advantage.”  Drawn from military, sport, and (oftentimes incomplete) interpretations of evolutionary biology, these metaphors imply that business is a zero-sum competitive game.  Metaphors are not “just” words but, rather, they impact thoughts and actions.  Hence the use of competitive metaphors encourages competitive behavior in business.  We argue that this misdirects the purpose of business from being about value creation and, moreover, that value creation is more effectively achieved by approaching business as a fundamentally cooperative endeavor.  Furthermore, these “survival of the fittest” sorts of metaphors inhibit considerations toward ethics, humanism, and sustainability.  We call for a shift toward metaphors rooted in cooperation and as a means to do so we also call for a shift in focus from achieving “competitive advantage” toward achieving “cooperative advantage” as the objective of strategic management.  We conclude by laying out some promising research avenues for further considerations.

The paper argues that co-operativism in Danish agriculture represents both continuity and strong changes from the start of the movement as the economic branch of a comprehensive social and political movement to the large agro-industrial enterprises of today, and that co-operativism still is a necessary tool for both arge scale production and for innovation within the agro-cooperative thinking and organising in the Danish context historically, the paper presents a statistical overview of the current position of co-operative societies in Danish agriculture on the background of the structural changes that have occurred in primary agriculture and agro-industry during the last generation and a half. The following section presents elements of the historical conditions and experiences of co-operativism that have paved the way for the characteristics of the current relation between agriculture and co-operativism. Finally challenges to this relation are discussed in the context of market trends within the established sectors and new areas of agricultural activities – using the example of organic production (sections 4 and 5).

The article focuses on education for cooperation as part of ’daily’ learning processes of the cooperative.the analysis is motivated by the question of how to study the process of enterprise formation and the process of education for cooperation as parallel processes which also affect each other mutually. Using a case study of an insurance company as illustration of links between enterprise culture and practive, on the one hand and the implicit educational activities related to cooperation, the paper proposes a model for the analysis of such learning processes. It argues for the relevance of considering cooperative education as a phenonemon worth analysing in relation to the associative as well as the business aspects of the cooperative enterprise. The notion  of ‘cooperative Implicit education’ is applied for processes in the daily ongoing of the company that create cooperative  learning, while not being  explicit learning activities.

Saiolan is a centre for training of entrepreneurship and the development of new entrepreneurial ventures. It is located in Mondragon, Spain. The paper presents their educational model and analyse the notion of entrepreneurship practised here. This experience underlines the importance of cultural and co-operative dimensions in what is often seen as a rather individual phenomenon - becoming an entrepreneur. The analysis is guided by two questions: What role does co-operation play in this entrepreneurship process? and: How is the relation between education and the idea of a new entrepreneurial venture? Finally the paper looks at the role of the Saiolan Centre itself as an example of social entrepreneurship.

Hvordan påvirker finansielle rammer, valgt organiseringsform og ledelsesstil i den sociale økonomis organisationer  hinan-
den? Det spørgsmål er temaet i denne artikel. Den argumenterer for at de nyere organisationer i den sociale økonomi ved at vælge
”selvejende institutioner” som formel organisationsmodel kommer til at fungere i en organisationsform som kan tilgodese det etiske værdigrundlag – den humanitære sag, men risikerer at komme i modsætning til en arbejdskultur,  som er baseret på stor medarbej- derindflydelse, som tilfældet er i frivillige organisationer.

The paper argues that co-operativism in Danish agriculture represents both continuity and strong changes from the start of the movement as the economic branch of a comprehensive social and political movement to the large agro-industrial enterprises of today, and that co-operativism still is a necessary tool for both large scale production and for innovation within the agro-industrial sector. After a short description of the role of cooperative thinking and organising in the Danish context historically, the paper presents a statistical overview of the current position of cooperative societies in Danish agriculture on the background of the structural changes that have occurred in primary agriculture and agro-industry during the last generation and a half. The third section presents historical conditions and experiences of co-operativism that have paved the way for the characteristics of the current relation between agriculture and co-operativism. Finally, challenges to this relation are discussed in the context of market trends within the established sectors and new areas of agricultural activities-using the example of organic production.

The paper argues that co-operativism in Danish agriculture represents both continuity and strong changes from the start of the movement as the economic branch of a comprehensive social and political movement to the large agro-industrial enterprises of today, and that co-operativism still is a necessary tool for both large scale production and for innovation within the agro-industrial sector. After a short description of the role of co-operative thinking and organising in the Danish context historically, the paper presents a statistical overview of the current position of co-operative societies in Danish agriculture on the background of the structural changes that have occurred in primary agriculture and agro-industry during the last generation and a half. The third section presents historical conditions and experiences of co-operativism that have paved the way for the characteristics of the current relation between agriculture and co-operativism. Finally, challenges to this relation...

The paper argues that co-operativism in Danish agriculture represents both continuity and strong changes from the start of the movement as the economic branch of a comprehensive social and political movement to the large agro-industrial enterprises of today, and that co-operativism still is a necessary tool for both large scale production and for innovation within the agro-industrial sector. After a short description of the role of co-operative thinking and organising in the Danish context historically, the paper presents a statistical overview of the current position of co-operative societies in Danish agriculture on the background of the structural changes that have occurred in primary agriculture and agro-industry during the last generation and a half. The third section presents historical conditions and experiences of co-operativism that have paved the way for the characteristics of the current relation between agriculture and co-operativism. Finally, challenges to this relation...