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On October 3 FEEM hosted the 10th Annual Forum on Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility in a Global Economy: “Back to basics: What is the Purpose of the Corporation?".  The Forum was organized by the Research Centre Politeia in partnership with the University of Milano, the IESEG School of Management – Lille-Paris, and the Global Compact Network Italy Foundation, and was supported by a Promoting Committee of several well-known Italian companies and organizations.

On October 3 FEEM hosted the 10th Annual Forum on Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility in a Global Economy: “Back to basics: What is the Purpose of the Corporation?". The Forum was organized by the Research Centre Politeia in partnership with the University of Milano, the IESEG School of Management – Lille-Paris, and the Global Compact Network Italy Foundation, and was supported by a Promoting Committee of several well-known Italian companies and organizations.

In the course of the Tenth Edition, experts explored this issues: What is the purpose of the corporation in today’s economy and society? How should corporations respond to the competing stakeholder pressures of corporate social responsibility and shareholder value maximization? How should we think about corporate obligations and responsibilities?

Here below we report the streaming of the event and some interviews held on that occasion:

 

 

 

 

Interview with R. Edward Freeman, University of Virginia

  • In what sense does the Stakeholder approach, as introduced by you thirty years ago, challenge the common way of framing the corporation’s purpose? What does “managing for stakeholders” mean?
  • In light of the deep changes that we are witnessing in the global economy (the success of new economies, the spread of new economic paradigms such as the sharing economy, etc.), do you think that the evolution of Stakeholder Theory will be sufficient or a further “revolution” (as the Stakeholder Theory has been over the last decades) in the next few years / decades is necessary?

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    Interview with François Maon, IESEG School of Management, Lille

    Starting from the formulation of the Stakeholder Theory by RE Freeman, what is your opinion on the evolution of the civil society towards multinational corporations? Are the Occupy movements a point of no return, which will force MNEs to change their behavior to avoid more violence in the future?

     

     

     

     

    Interview with Simone de Colle, IESEG School of Management, Paris

    Over the last years, the debate on the purpose of the corporation has benefited from the contribution of economists such as Judy Nelson, who introduced the concept of “economics per humans”, and of jurists such as Lynn Stout, who has questioned the myth of shareholder value. In what way does their contribution affect stakeholder theory?

     

     

     

    ***Find out more about the event here***