2 results
3 - Integrating corporate citizenship: leading from the middle
- Edited by N. Craig Smith, INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, C. B. Bhattacharya, David Vogel, University of California, Berkeley, David I. Levine, University of California, Berkeley
-
- Book:
- Global Challenges in Responsible Business
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 29 July 2010, pp 78-106
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In scaling a wall of rock, a climber must find and make effective use of the meager or substantial handholds on the wall. Some handholds that seem promising may ultimately lead a climber to a dead end, while others allow a person to reach the desired destination. Different climbers, presented with the same rock face, may choose a different set of handholds and, therefore, follow a slightly different path.
Using this rock-climbing metaphor, Laurie Regelbrugge, then a manager of corporate responsibility at the oil and gas operator Unocal, described how she found ‘handholds’ to establish traction and create opportunities to align and integrate citizenship throughout her company. This is an account of how she and other middle managers led change in their companies, not from the typical planned, top-down model but rather through what some term an ‘emergent-pragmatic’ or catalytic approach.
Here we first look at the problems these practitioners faced, some of the tactics employed and their rationale for adopting the catalytic versus top-down model of change. The chapter then examines several key components of this model in action and what insights emerged about leading change from the middle. The data were gathered in the Executive Forum – a multi-year business/university learning group that brought these practitioners together to swap knowledge and offer one another advice and that provided the basis for this research on integrating corporate citizenship into firms.
16 - Transforming a company into a community
-
- By Philip Mirvis, Independent Consultant, Bethesda, MD, USA
- Edited by Ronald J. Burke, York University, Toronto, Cary L. Cooper, Lancaster University
-
- Book:
- Building More Effective Organizations
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 13 December 2007, pp 353-370
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
At their second annual retreat, 250 leaders of the Asia region of a multi-national food business spent two to three days in ashrams, spiritual centers, microenterprises and charities in India to learn about community life. There they tended the needy, offered what help they could, and asked swamis, spiritual leaders, community entrepreneurs, and dabawhallas how they could accomplish so much with so few resources. These business leaders were learning what a true mission is and concluded that they needed to find a “higher purpose” for their business.
The intent of visiting these communities was for these Asian business leaders to experience communal living in its many forms and deepen their collective understanding of the ingredients of community life (McMillan and Chavis, 1986). The expectation was that as the leaders informed themselves about the people and circumstances of the communities they visited, they would also ponder the meaning and implications for their own leadership body and business.
The idea of running this company as a community had been an aim of the new chairman since he took over the region two years prior. To this point, the region had operated as a confederation of fifteen national operating companies with a strategic regional overlay and managing board. He wanted to connect the senior leaders of national companies together more closely and to include the next layers of country marketers, supply chain managers and staff in strategic discussions and operational reviews of regional business. Behind this was a perceived need and personal desire to build the capacity of this entire leadership body 250 plus, to think and feel together, that is, to operate as a community of leaders.