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As the year draws to a close, it is time to take stock, and that is what many companies have done in annual reports published this month. Besides presenting their accounts, they review their achievements, their position compared to the competition, and the trend in their stock price. Some even boldly set themselves goals for 2004, which they hope will be "prosperous", or at least "stable".
At this time of good intentions, some companies have started to embellish their annual reports with statements of their resolve to work more closely and more committedly with society. Whether out of conviction or convenience, concepts such as "good governance", "corporate social responsibility" and "ethics" are coming out of marketing departments and finding their way into companies' key documents.
We here at IESE Insight have been pointing to this rising trend for months. In December, we return to the same subject with three unpublished research materials: one about social enterprise initiatives, one about corporate ethics in different parts of the world, and one describing the case of a company that has learned to profit from sustainability. It is our little contribution to making 2004 a better year for all. Happy Christmas.
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship |
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Social Entrepreneurship Opens up for Academic Research |
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| Ernesto Noboa, Johanna Mair |
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Nowadays there seem to be more and more exceptions to the rule that companies' only purpose is to maximize profit. A growing number of entrepreneurs look beyond the financials. Various types of commercial organizations have started to focus on issues such as fair trade, equal rights for all, or the need to conserve natural resources. At the same time, in sectors that traditionally have belonged to the public domain, such as education or health, there is a growing tendency to organize activities along business lines in order to improve efficiency. What these two trends have in common is the idea that money is not everything, that there are also social benefits to be considered. 
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Business Ethics |
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Corporate Ethics in Argentina, Brazil and Spain |
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| M. Cecilia Arruda, Patricia Debeljuh, Domčnec Melé |
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| Businesses around the world are now adopting formal policies to encourage ethical conduct among managers and employees. Yet, Corporate Ethical Policies (CEPs) are a more recent phenomenon in Latin America and Spain. This paper studies the status of ethical policies in the largest companies in Brazil, Argentina and Spain. The authors pay special attention to the documents that define a company's philosophy, values and norms of conduct: Corporate Ethics Statements (CESs).
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Organizations and People |
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Get Flexible or Die. A Guide for Collective Bargaining |
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| Sandalio Gómez |
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| Everyone talks about flexibility, but management and unions have very different ideas about what it means. For there to be any agreement between the two, collective bargaining must stop being an end and instead become a means - a means of ongoing dialogue in light of the firm's changing circumstances. So say the thirty or more human resource managers and union representatives who took part in the second edition of the White Book on Flexibility in Collective Bargaining.
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Service and Operations Management |
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What if...? |
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| Beatriz Cuadrado, Josep Riverola |
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| Some operational and service decisions entail serious risks for companies. One way of controlling these risks (or at least anticipating their effects) is to use simulations. However, as the book Arte y Oficio de la Simulación (The Art and Practical Application of Simulation) explains, "the aim of simulation is to help the decision maker understand the problem better, not to predict what will actually happen". In this work the authors offer a reference framework and a practical tool for carrying out this kind of simulation.
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Finance |
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Ten Methods, One Result: Valuing Companies by Cash Flow Discounting |
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| Pablo Fernández |
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| There are many different ways to value companies by cash flow discounting. But do they all yield the same results? This paper presents ten different approaches and proves that they all provide the same value under the same assumptions. The only difference is that three - the APV and the two business risk-adjusted cash flows methods - are simpler to use.
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Corporate Governance |
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Mediterranean Management? |
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| Josep Maria Rosanas |
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| Can there be such a thing as Mediterranean management? Isn't management itself an Anglo-Saxon invention, in which Mediterraneans will always be runners-up? To try to answer this question, Professor Josep Maria Rosanas of IESE evokes the so-called "culture of effectiveness", which he maintains is in fact an Italian invention, thus making it abundantly clear that the Mediterranean region has its own special character that makes it different from the Anglo-Saxon world.
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Corporate Social Responsibility |
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Sustainability: License to Grow |
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| Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Pablo Sánchez |
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| Looking to the future, companies cannot afford to ignore the impact on humanity of problems such as population growth, the widening gap between rich and poor, global warming, ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, air and water pollution, etc. It is vital that they make sustainable development an integral part of their governance, strategy and operations. However, making the three pillars of sustainable development "economic, social, and environmental sustainability" a part of corporate strategy poses a tough challenge. Research Assistant Pablo Sánchez and Lecturer Miguel Á. Rodríguez of IESE present the case of Siemens, which sets out to implement the principles of sustainable business in order to obtain the desired "license to grow".
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