Managing for performance: corporate responsibility and internal stakeholders

Businesses today face more than just commercial and competitive pressures. Recent decades have seen an increasing emphasis on corporate responsibility and ethical, socially responsible corporate behaviour. Research suggests a positive link between responsible corporate behaviour and financial performance. Concurrently, the emergence of stakeholder theory has focused attention on businesses and their relationships with important groups and institutions. Arguably, maintaining good stakeholder relationships is fundamentally sound management and can result in enhanced corporate reputation. Much of the extant literature on these issues, however, has centred on conceptual issues, large corporations, external stakeholders and/or North American case studies. Where internal stakeholders have been considered, the discussion has often been limited to working conditions, pay and benefits, and related matters. This paper broadens the research to date by focusing on internal stakeholders in small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK. It reports the findings of a study designed to assess the perceived impact of selected attributes of responsible corporate practice, as they pertain to internal stakeholders, beyond the basic issues of working conditions and rewards.