Abstract

This book explores the opportunities and problems that corporate business managers and leaders of what the authors call corporate "constituencies" will confront over the next ten years as they seek their respective overlapping and conflicting goals. The authors define constituencies as internal groups like employees and external groups like shareholders, suppliers, and customers. But they also include new constituencies like consumerists, conservationists, racial and ethnic groups, the handicapped, social activists, and others who are affected by, and in turn affect, the corporation. The book begins by describing the origins of the new constituencies and their history to the present. It goes on to discuss how managers have responded to these new groups and explores managers' values, arguing that they profess a free market philosophy but lobby for governmental restraints to protect their markets. Finally, the authors detail the ways in which managers can come to a better understanding of their social responsibilities, and suggest a new style of responsiveness--of managers to constituencies and constituencies to managers--that should result in cooperative solutions to ethical problems.