Title: Designing organisational structures for corporate responsible innovation

Authors: Bianca Nieuwkamp

Addresses: School of Management and Governance, University of Twente, The Netherlands

Abstract: Many companies nowadays are faced with the additional goals of innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Attached to these goals they have to take into account the interests of new types of stakeholders. On the basis of a social systems perspective – a combination of the Viable System Model and sociotechnical system theory – a theoretical framework is developed that may contribute to analysing and developing innovation (high involvement innovation) and CSR (high involvement responsibility) in organisations. This framework can be further translated into a practical tool for organisations. The essence of this tool is that interactions with stakeholders (dialogue, cooperation) are analysed and designed in conjunction with the structure of the organisation. In this paper, the basic steps towards the creation of such a tool are outlined.

Keywords: organisational structure; CSR; corporate social responsibility; innovation; stakeholder engagement; social systems theory; viable system model; sociotechnical systems theory.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISD.2010.034554

International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 2010 Vol.5 No.1, pp.4 - 19

Published online: 07 Aug 2010 *

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