Natural Corporate Management: From the Big Bang to Wall Street. By William C. Frederick, Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield, UK: 2012, 272 pages. Paperback: $32.95.

• Author: Anthony F. Buono
• Date: 01 March 2015
• Published date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12052

Book Review

Natural Corporate Management: From the Big Bang to Wall

Street. By William C. Frederick, Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield,

UK: 2012, 272 pages. Paperback: $32.95.

Bill Frederick is an environmental force in and of himself.

Currently a Professor Emeritus at the University of Pitts-

burgh, he has played a significant role in the development

and evolution of what many refer to as the social issues in

management field, providing us with insightful analyses of the

growth and evolution of corporate social responsibility, changing

perspectives on business ethics, and the ramifications for how we

think about and teach business, organization, and management.

In an earlier volume—Corporation Be Good!—Frederick took the

reader through a thoughtful, highly personal journey of the evo-

lution of corporate social responsibility and changes in how we

conceptualize the role of business in the larger society.1In Natural

Corporate Management, he goes even further in this exploration—

much further—as he takes the reader from the Big Bang creation

of the universe to the functioning of the modern day

corporation—in roughly 250 pages!

The essential theme of the book, which cannot be neatly profiled

as a book about business ethics, responsibility, sustainability, or

management practice per se, is that business and nature are so

deeply intertwined that unless corporate leaders fully understand

and respond to this linkage, they will continue to limit their

success. As Frederick underscores, this business–nature connec-

tion goes well beyond concerns about climate change and environ-

mental disruptions, noting that nature’s activities have always had

positive (e.g., energy resources) and negative (e.g., flooding, tsuna-

mis, earthquakes) impacts on business activities, while all busi-

ness activities are also dependent on natural forces that set the

Reviewer Anthony F. Buono is Professor of Management and Sociology at Bentley University,

Department of Management, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, Massachusetts 02452.

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Business and Society Review 120:1 161–165

© 2015 Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.,

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