Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 15, 2004

Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting

Integrating and Unifying Competing and Complementary Frameworks
The Search for a Common Core in the Business and Society Field

In the field of business and society, several complementary frameworks appear to be in competition for supremacy. Although debatable, the prime contenders appear to include: (1) corporate social responsibility; (2) business ethics; (3) stakeholder management; (4) sustainability; and (5) corporate citizenship. Despite the prevalence of the five frameworks, difficulties remain in understanding what each construct really means, or should mean, and how each might relate to the other. To address the confusion, we propose three core concepts (i.e., value, balance, and accountability) that might be used to better integrate the five frameworks and potentially provide the basis for further theoretical development of the business and society field.