著者

高岡 伸行 デ ゾイサ アヌラ

出版者

日本経営倫理学会

雑誌

日本経営倫理学会誌 (ISSN:13436627)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.24, pp.73-86, 2017 (Released:2018-04-11)

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This paper provides a framework to examine the impact of design of Benefit Corporation (BC) on sustainability management. The BC is a new form of legal business entity formed in US to pursue social benefit or responsibility while undertaking responsibility to return profits to shareholders. With the activities of B Lab, a nonprofit organization with capacity of 501-c-3 in the US, Certified BCs are now being established all over the world. Although BC is designed for business corporations with all the traditional characteristics, it possesses a unique characteristic of empowering corporations to undertake corporate social responsibilities while suppressing the traditional corporate objective of maximizing shareholder profit. The main question that needs to be answered is how the management can achieve corporate sustainability while absorbing the costs of CSR activities and suppressing the shareholder pressure on profit maximization. The comparative research framework and the results presented in the paper attempt to provide explanations on the underlined issues. In building this framework, this paper takes into account the conceptual relationship between the design of BC system, the sustainability management and CSR.