Abstract
In Germany in many industries like machine building, chemical or automotive family-owned companies stand for above average R&D activities, high quality products, close ties with their customers and outstanding agility. Many of those companies are also well-known for long-lasting and valuable activities in corporate citizenship, mainly focused on their direct neighborhoods and particular stakeholders. The financial success of those companies is often grounded on their networks, as it is typical for the German automotive industry with their close ties to OEMs (see Schäfer and Baumann 2013, pp. 1–2). Since the economic role of such networks for the success of companies in general is well understood, the study of the relevance of stakeholder networks embedded in firm-specific understanding and practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the role of in such a way created social capital and especially the links to family-owned companies are just at the beginning and only few empirical studies on that issue exist.
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Notes
- 1.
Definitions and understandings of CSR vary enormous (see Dahlsrud 2008). A common denominator is the understanding of CSR as an attempt to cause a fair internalization of negative external effects of an enterprise’s activities. This is highly relevant for stakeholders on the one hand side (see Carroll 1999). On the other hand side stakeholders can also be receiver of positive external effects of an enterprise’s operations (see Eells and Walton 1974). Practically seen, CSR is understood beyond legal obligations (‘the law to operate’) as it is determined by voluntarily undertaken business activities. They enable or ensure that stakeholders facilitate a firm’s operations or refrain to threaten them. This describes CSR according to the license to operate paradigm (see Gunningham et al. 2004). With the concept of the Sustainable Development as first offered by the Brundtland-Commission in 1987 and worked out on the UN-level, the anthropogenic form of the sustainability concept has been crystallized at the firm level as ‘Corporate Sustainability’. With a Corporate Sustainability approach, the complete entrepreneurial behaviour becomes explicitly collimated in the triad of economic, social and ecological dimensions (see WCED 1987).
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Schaefer, H., Voelker, F. (2018). Socially Driven Stakeholder Networks of German Family-Owned Companies as Enablers of Economic Success: A Theoretical and Empirical Study. In: Altenburger, R. (eds) Innovation Management and Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93629-1_18
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