Sustainability Webinar | Sustainability, Stakeholder Governance and New Theories of the Firm

The sustainability webinar "Sustainability, Stakeholder Governance and New Theories of Enterprise" was an excellent opportunity to compare different perspectives on stakeholder theory and particularly worker involvement across social science. The webinar, chaired by Dr. Ermanno Tortia, took place on 6 June 2022 at 3:00pm CEST.

Worker ownership was presented first by David Ellerman, who introduced the new ESOP-Coop model aimed at supporting the transition of healthy investor-owned companies to worker cooperatives.

This perspective intersected with the presentation by Silvia Sacchetti, who addressed the idea of viability and self-actualization as a criterion for assessing the potential of organizations to produce economic and social value, instead of the orthodox concept of competitiveness.

Finally, Vladislav Valentinov presented an innovative version of the stakeholder approach to business theory, in which the emergence of multi-stakeholder governance is studied within the framework of social systems theory and complexity. All contributions provided important insights into how stakeholder engagement, management and governance can improve corporate social sustainability. The speakers were followed by a Q+A session moderated by the chair.