Developing Stakeholder Relationships Across Leading FTSE Companies: -

By:

Although it is now widely recognised by business leaders that their companies need to accept a broader responsibility than short-term profits, recent research suggests that as Sustainability and social reporting become more widespread, there is little empirical evidence of the range of stakeholders addressed through their Sustainability programmes and how such programmes are reported. Through a Sustainability framework which was developed in an exploratory study, we explore the nature of stakeholder relationships reported across leading FTSE companies and the importance they attach to communicating both social and business outcomes. It is evident from the hypotheses tested that the bigger FTSE companies, particularly extraction companies and telecoms, are more adept at identifying and prioritising their stakeholders, and linking Sustainability programmes to business and social outcomes. However, we draw the general conclusion that building stronger stakeholder relationships through Sustainability programmes – other than with customers – is not currently a priority for most companies. We also conclude that a limited sophistication in managing multiple stakeholders may compromise the impact of Sustainability upon business and social results. Finally, the managerial implications and the contribution of our study are discussed before closing with an acknowledgment of the limitations of this work and suggestions for further research.

Stream: Economic Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Simon Knox is a Professor of Brand Marketing at the Cranfield School of Management. Prior to joining Cranfield, he held several senior appointments in international marketing within Unilever and has published 5 books and over 100 papers on aspects of branding and strategic marketing. Current interests include researching the impact of climate change and sustainability on the corporate brand and developing a taxonomy for marketing management development. I am a devotee of asthanga yoga and pranyama breathing techniques!

Stan Maklan is a Senior Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management and a founding partner of the Forge, a marketing consultancy. His career spans senior appointments in Unilever, Cable & Wireless and Computer Science Corporation. Stan is also a prolific author and has written a number of books on branding and customer relationship management.