Avoiding criticism does not benefit Danish role model companies

Scandinavian companies leave American companies standing in the use of CSR. But now the Danish competitive advantage is threatened in a misunderstood attempt to imitate American business methods, with which companies try to avoid criticism and focus on profit. According to an American CSR guru and a Danish researcher, the Danish and Scandinavian will to make way for criticism has in fact strengthened the companies. And that is because this criticism has been transformed in to good CSR.

Robert Strand, Assistant Professor in management and sustainability from the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management at CBS, explains:
– I am an American, and I want to say to the Danes that they have to stop trying to do like the Americans. I feel that I get far more credibility than I deserve in the corporate sector - just because I am an American, and I fear that this also is the case for American business methods.

Robert Strand and R. Edward Freeman, American Professor and CSR guru within strategic management  have recently written the research article ”Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in Scandinavia”. The aim of this model is to create value beyond the direct profit.

Robert Strand, sees sustainability and CSR as overlapping concepts, and that the stakeholders are inextricably linked to them.

For more information, please contact Robert Strand or journalist Ea Ørum
 

Conference in June
In June, the CBS Sustainability Platform has organised a conference on “Sustainability in a Scandinavian Context”. Professor R. Edward Freeman from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, Noma co-founder Claus Meyer and Marianne Barner, Senior Sustainability Advisor from IKEA are some of the keynote speakers.

Read more about the conference "Sustainability in a Scandinavian Context”