A Stakeholder Learning Perspective on Corporate Environmental Management: Implications for Theory, Practice and Education

Abstract:     
Organisational learning is emerging as one of the major factors influencing organisational survival and competitiveness at the end of the 20th century. This paper argues that solely focusing on the organisation is not enough if the company wants to progress towards more advanced stages of environmental management behavior. The companies stakeholders have to be identified and assessed in a systematic manner regarding their importance to the companies environmental situation. The company and the stakeholders then need to engage in a two-way dialogue that can lead to the changed values and assumptions necessary for changes in environmental management behavior. The paper presents a tool for this purpose - the SPOT analysis and discusses the implications of this view for theory, practice and education.

Keywords: organizational learning, stakeholders, stakeholder assessment, stakeholder dialogue

JEL Classification: M14, Q20, Q32

Accepted Paper Series