Ethics and social responsibility

Keynote speech by CB Bhattacharya, Dean of International Relations, E.ON Chair in Corporate Responsibility, ESMT European School of Management and Technology EBEN Annual Conference (European Business Ethics Network) Berlin, June 13th, 2014

In this new video, CB Bhattacharya, E.ON Chair in Corporate Responsibility, talks about his recent research. He examines the question: “When companies do good things for the environment or for society, does it actually influence the consumer’s intention to buy their products rather than a competitor‘s product?”

CB Bhattacharya gives an interview on the Union Budget for 2012, which was presented by the Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The interview appeared live on the Times of India's TV station Times Now.

A webinar on corporate responsibility with CB Bhattacharya.

We develop a model relating self-control, risk preferences and conflict identification to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas. We subject our model to data from an experimental public goods game and a risk experiment, and we measure conflict identification and self-control. As predicted, we find a robust association between self-control and higher levels of cooperation, and the association is weaker for more risk-averse individuals. Free riders differ from other contributor types only in their tendency not to have identified a self-control conflict in the first place. Our model accounts for the data at least as well as do other models.

The most widely used indicator to measure the degree of innovation of an industry is each individual company's actual expenses on research and development (R&D), aggregated across the whole industrial sector. With the ESMT Innovation Index 2010 – Electricity Supply Industry, we suggest expanding the notion of innovation beyond R&D indicators to achievements in productivity and sustainability. We test the methodology of the innovation index with a set of 15 large European electricity utilities and find that innovation activities have substantially increased over the last four years. A German and a French utility, RWE and EDF, lead the ranking within our sample.

In this video ESMT Dean of International Relations and E.ON Chair in Corporate Responsibility shares the motivation behind the ESMT Sustainable Business Roundtable. Participants from member companies express the value of the roundtable exchange within their organizations.

CB Bhattacharya is the E.ON Chair Professor in Corporate Responsibility at ESMT European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, Germany. On September 1, 2010 the president appointed him the Associate Dean of International Relations and on April 1, 2011, Dean of International Relations. Prof. Bhattacharya received his PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1984. Before joining ESMT in 2009, he was the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing at the School of Management at Boston University. Before joining Boston University, he was on the faculty at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University. Prior to his PhD, CB worked for three years as a Product Manager in Reckitt Benckiser plc. His expertise is in the area of business strategy innovation aimed at increasing both business and social value, specifically how companies can use underleveraged "intangible assets" such as corporate identity and reputation, membership and brand communities, and corporate social responsibility to strengthen stakeholder relationships.

We model self-control conflict as a stochastic struggle of an agent against a visceral influence, which impels the agent to act sub-optimally. The agent holds costly pre-commitment technology to avoid the conflict altogether and may decide whether to procure pre-commitment or to confront the visceral influence. We examine naïve expectations for the strength of the visceral influence; underestimating the visceral influence may lead the agent to exaggerate the expected utility of resisting temptation, and so mistakenly forego pre-commitment. Our analysis reveals conditions under which higher willpower – and lower visceral influence – reduces welfare. We further demonstrate that lowering risk aversion could reduce welfare. The aforementioned results call into question certain policy measures aimed at helping people improve their own behavior.

In this special ESMTcast episode of "90 seconds with...", Mr. Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman, Microsoft Europe, attends the 4rd ESMT Annual Forum in Berlin. He shares here his views on the future of capitalism, and the need to bring back the care to today's marketplace; he adds that future businesses focusing on education and unlocking human potential will succeed going forward, noting that to be the best in the World, you must be the best for the World.

Today we had the opportunity to talk to CB Bhattacharya, E.ON Chair Professor in Corporate Responsibility, at the ESMT European School of Management and Technology. He is responsible for the ESMT Sustainable Business Roundtable (SBRT). The forum took place in Berlin today. The ideas behind the SBRT is to establish a partnership between business and academia. CB Bhattacharya is talking about the progress of green industries, the phenomenon of greenwashing and the important role of social media in the process.

In this video ESMT Dean of International Relations and E.ON Chair in Corporate Responsibility shares the motivation behind the ESMT Sustainable Business Roundtable. Participants from member companies express the value of the roundtable exchange within their organizations.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an asset that companies can leverage to improve relationships with both customers and employees. This paper extends prior research by examining when and how CSR improves an employee's relationship with customers. More specifically, we develop a model linking CSR activity to one of marketing's most central constructs - the customer orientation of frontline employees. Drawing from social identity theory, the model predicts that the effect of CSR activity on customer orientation is mediated by the dual identities of frontline employees: identification with customers and identification with the company. Moreover, the model predicts that distinct aspects of CSR are related to each of these identities; the extent to which an employee senses that customers share his or her "demand" for CSR contributes to identification with customers, while the perceived efficacy of CSR activities and the employee's participation in CSR contribute to organizational identification. A field study of 534 customer-contact employees from multiple companies in the hospitality and retail industries provides empirical support for the model.

Winning market share in foreign markets. Aligning a global workforce. Competing with strong local players. Those are key objectives for companies as they fight for growth and success. But what does it take to go global in the reputation economy? How can you create a strong emotional connection with consumers, regulators, opinion leaders on the other side of the world? The conference theme of this year invites both practitioners and thought-leaders to join us in presentations and discussions on how organizations can better leverage multi-stakeholder relationships around the globe to drive better business outcomes.

Best-selling author Jeremy Rifkin held the first ESMT Open Lecture of this year on Friday, February 12. To an audience of over 150 guests, he presented his vision of a new era, in which the desires, interests, and standpoints of others will be respected. The event was moderated by Quentin Peel, Financial Times.

At the third event in the Climate Lunch series, ESMT welcomed representatives from industry, politics and conservation organizations to discuss energy efficiency in buildings. First Christoph Burger, faculty member, ESMT; Regine Günther, head of climate protection and energy policy, WWF, and Dr. Kurt-Christian Scheel, head of climate and sustainable development, BDI, gave introductory speeches covering the varying points of view on the topic.

This research builds on the complementary corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures in strategy and marketing to provide insight into the efficacy of CSR as a challenger's competitive weapon against a market leader. Through an investigation of a real world CSR initiative, we show that the challenger can reap superior business returns among consumers who had participated in its CSR initiative, relative to those who were merely aware of the initiative. Specifically, participant consumers demonstrate the desired attitudinal and behavioral changes in favor of the challenger, regardless of their affective trust in the leader, whereas aware consumers' reactions become less favorable as their affective trust in the leader increases. Furthermore, participation, unlike mere awareness, transforms the nature of the consumer-challenger relationship from a transactional one to a communal, trust-based one.

A special ESMT Annual Forum 2010 episode of Learning for Leading with Erik Brandsma, Vice President Corporate Responsibility, E.ON AG.

René Obermann encourages policy makers to adopt long term views; designing next generation policies over short-term election pledges. While in the corporate sector, he emphasizes that ecological, economical, and social barometers create a triple bottom line that determines successful corporate responsibility. He is also enthusiastic about Deutsche Telekom's experiences with ESMT executive education programs.

On June 16-17, 2010, ESMT welcomed more than 300 guests and prominent thought leaders from international business, politics, and academia to its 3rd Annual Forum. The interdisciplinary platform inspired high-level debate and rich discussion; the three pillars for sustainable organizational and economic prosperity - people, planet, and profit - represent the triple bottom line challenging today's leaders.

Am 13. April 2010 fand in Berlin die Veranstaltung «ESMT Climate Lunch: Der Weg zur «Low Carbon Economy» statt. Die Podiumsdiskussion bildete den Auftakt einer Reihe von Climate-Lunchs, die die BDI-Klimainitiative in Kooperation mit dem WWF und der ESMT veranstalten wird. Auf dem Podium diskutierten Dr. Carsten Rolle (BDI), Dr. Hans-Peter Boehm (Siemens AG), Christoph Burger (ESMT), Regine Günther (WWF) und Dr. Bernd-Michael Zinow (EnBW).

"Kamingespäch" of CCCD. "Putting the social back into corporate responsibility"

In this special ESMTcast episode of "90 seconds with...", Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited, stands behind is belief in 'compassionate capitalism', naming fairness, transparency, and accountability as the three pillars of measurement he stands by. He advocates a universal set of values that CEO's and leaders from all over the globe should uphold, and that business schools should focus more on teaching ethics and long term perspectives.

CB Bhattacharya discusses what successful companies understand about enabling customer relationship management and driving customer loyalty.

CB Bhattacharya explains how to make consumer social responsibility (CSR) effective. He also discusses, using brief real-life case studies as an illustration, why CSR, to work at all, needs to work for all stakeholders