Managing Corporate Impacts; Co‐creating Value Jennifer Griffin Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 2016, ISBN: 9781316484944.

• Date: 01 February 2017
• Author: John F. Mahon
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1634

BOOK REVIEW

MANAGING CORPORATE IMPACTS;

CO‐CREATING VALUE

By Jennifer Griffin

CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge UK, 2016,ISBN: 9781316484944˙

The book is in the series, Business, Value Creation, and Society, edited

by R. Edward Freeman, University of Virginia, Jeremy Moon and Mette

Morsing, Copenhagen Business School.

1|MANAGING CORPORATE IMPACTS:

CO‐CREATING VALUE

Professor Griffin has taken on an enormously complex, multi‐faceted

challenge in this new work that seeks to expand our knowledge and

views on how corporations can, in her terms, “co‐create”value.

1

The

book is rich with examples drawn from around the globe. To be clear,

I found this work provocative and hope that it does engender what

Dr. Griffin suggested—“sparking new conversations (p. 24),”of which

this is one.

The work begins with an introductory chapter focusing on relation-

ships and introduces the theme of the book, observing that

“Co‐creating value seems like a simple concept, work with stakeholders,

make a net positive difference (later the term net positive impact is uti-

lized) for them and you.…(p. 1).”The author expands on this notion on

p. 4, noting that “…we explore two questions about stakeholder

engagement, who (emphasis in the original) shares in the value‐creation

process…. And in the process of creating value how (emphasis in the

original) are benefits and risks borne through multiplier effects.”

The notion of a net positive difference or net positive impact is an

intriguing one and I wished the author had spent more time on devel-

oping the meaning here more clearly. The term “net positive”suggests

some sort of accounting or measurement of both the positive and neg-

ative impacts and assumes that they can be determined. I do not think

that the author meant a utilitarian approach here—but I am uncertain

as to how the measurement of value will take place, who will make that

measurement, and what criteria will be used to draw a conclusion. For

example, if a corporation engages in an action that yields a moderate

positive impact for itself, a major positive impact for an external

stakeholder, two minor negative impacts, and the total destruction of

value for a small stakeholder—does that add up to a “net positive”

impact?

The book has numerous examples contained therein, but the pro-

cess by which a corporation achieves involvement of all relevant stake-

holders remains unclear to me, as does the precise definition of “value.”

As an example, consider the following: A corporation has a choice to

make in terms of creating jobs, and it cannot do both. One option is

to create 1,000 new jobs in an economically depressed area of the

United States with moderate wages. The other alternative is to create

5,000 new jobs with locally appropriate wages (high for the area but

low by U.S. standards) in Ghana. How are the “net‐positive”impacts

to be determined, and as suggested earlier, who determines the

impacts (the weights thereof) and what specific criteria are to be used

to ultimately determine where the net positive impact lies?

The example of BP and the Deepwater Horizon spill raises

further concerns when the issue of multiplier effects are considered

(see p. 15 ff. and Chapter 6). The author provides a host of

stakeholders who were affected: local tourism, shrimp, and fishing

business that were directly impacted. But also communities further

down the coast who claimed tourism was damaged (indirectly

impacted). If we are to pursue “net positive impacts,”where is the line

drawn with regard to consideration of stakeholders? That is, a corpora-

tion attempting to achieve a net positive impact with stakeholders

must at some point limit or contain the number of stakeholders to be

considered or weigh their importance and impact in some way.

2

The

short example on new jobs noted above is a rather simple but complex

example in practice of this challenge (how many multiplier effects in

both the United States and Ghana do we include?).

In fairness, the author does pursue this further in the unfolding

analysis. Chapter 2 introduces four mindsets on financial impacts

(Chapter 2) drawing on the long history of evaluation of corporate

actions and performance based on financials. These mindsets are

“investment, win‐win, parade of horribles, and pernicious CSR

(p. 34ff).”The figure on p. 38 is of particular interest, and I will leave

it to the reader to draw their own conclusions and observations.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 explore employee and product impacts, informa-

tion sharing impacts and combining impacts, net impacts, and spillover

1

In the spirit of full transparency, I must note that I served on Professor Griffin’s

Doctoral Dissertation Committee and have been a co‐author on published work

with her.

2

See, for example, Mahon, J. F. and Wartick, S. L., 2012. “Corporate Social

Performance Profiling: Using Multiple Stakeholder Perceptions to Assess a

Corporate Reputation,”Journal of Public Affairs,12 (1): 12–28 which suggests

that stakeholders use different criteria to assess reputation and that firms pursue

different actions with regard to different stakeholders over time. The point is

that all stakeholders equal in terms of value impacts and assessment of and

contribution to the value assessment of the corporation over time?

DOI 10.1002/pa.1634

J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1634.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1634

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of2