Social Strategy & Corporate Structure

This new work by Neil W. Chamberlain will be of great importance to the business community -- and to all those charged with defining the role large corporations play in the affairs of society.

Social Strategy and Corporate Structure is an objective, indepth examination of the organizational requirements of a social role for large-scale business. The role Neil Chamberlain presents is one of heroic dimensions: the political choice of goals, the strategic allocation of resources, and the tactical operations of the mechanisms of production.

While there has been much discussion of corporate social responsibility, few have investigated the ways its structure will have to change if the corporation is to pursue a strategy that is both economic and social. This timely book integrates a large number of issues involving corporate activities and governance that go directly to the heart of this problem.

In step-by-step detail, Chamberlain analyzes the organizational imperatives of this new age of social responsibility: the composition and functions of boards of directors and the relation of their duties to a broad system of national planning; the internal social audit; changes in the characteristics of corporate social planning; and proposals for restructuring ultimate corporate authority, either through public or outside directors. In addition, he examines the potential relevance of federal chartering of corporations, and the effects of international economic interdependence on the development of a new corporate social strategy.

This book is not a detailed blueprint for change. Rather, it presents a thorough, systematic study of available courses of action for improvement, based on the principle that conventional notions of corporate independence will have to be modified for any social strategy to work. And while not everyone will agree with Neil Chamberlain, few can afford to ignore his provocative insights into what corporations must do to function effectively in a changed social environment.

Neil W. Chamberlain is the Armand G. Erpf Professor (now Emeritus) of the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He has also held the chair in management economics in the Department of Economics at Yale University. His professional interests began with industrial relations and labor economics and have subsequently extended to the economies of the firm and corporate planning, national planning, and most recently social values and corporate social responsibility, as reflected in the titles of some of his twenty-two books: The Union Challenge to Management Control, The Labor Sector, The Firm: Micro-Economic Planning and Action, Private and Public Planning. Enterprise and Environment. The Place of Business in America’s Future: A Study in Social Values. The Limits of Corporate Responsibility, and Remaking American Values: Challenge to a Business Society.

He is a past president of the Industrial Relations Research Association and was director of the Program in Economic Development and Administration of the Ford Foundation from 1957 to 1960. He has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Review, the editorial council of Management International, and the board of trustees of the Columbia Journal of World Business.