Download Corporate Legitimacy in a Risk Society

Corporate Legitimacy in a Risk Society
• Three Models of Corporate Legitimacy (legitimacy is a
generalized percepction or assumption that actions of an entity are desirable,
proper)
– Classical (Freidman)
– Stakeholder
– Political Corporation
• rejects primacy of profit-making function of organization.
Stakeholder + demanding that corps. Adopt a clear set of moral
and ethical values, which relate to the public, both locally and
globally, and which guide corporate actions irrespective of
whether it is explicitly required by law, or demanded by the
public.
Risk Society
• Theory of risk society (Beck) emphasizes the fundamental
failure of industrial society in controlling the growing
environmental threats..which are products of its success.
• In this society science is not perceived as a credible source
of reassurance and safety. Science has become too
specialized and reductionist. No “Big Picture”.
• Shell emphasized painstaking detailed analysis
(reductionist) “case-by-case”
• reductionist rationality vs. common-sense rationality
(public)
• It is argued that Brent Spar marked a shift from the
dominance of techno-scientific rationality to broader and
morally based common-sense rationality with questioning
of representative democracy and the authority of science.