Answer to Question 1
One of the most powerful arguments for including ethics and social responsibility in the strategic planning process is the evidence of a link between social responsibility, stakeholders, and marketing performance. An ethical climate calls for organizational members to incorporate the interests of all stakeholders, including customers, in their decisions and actions. Hence, employees working in an ethical climate will make an extra effort to better understand the demands and concerns of customers. One study found that ethical climate is associated with employee commitment to quality and intrafirm trust. Employee commitment to the firm, customer loyalty, and profitability have also been linked to increased social responsibility. These findings emphasize the role of an ethical climate in building a strong competitive position.
The degree to which a firm understands and addresses stakeholder demands can be referred to as a stakeholder orientation. This orientation contains three sets of activities: (1 ) the organization-wide generation of data about stakeholder groups and assessment of the firm's effects on these groups, (2 ) the distribution of this information throughout the firm, and (3 ) the organization's responsiveness as a whole to this intelligence.
A stakeholder orientation can be viewed as a continuum in that firms are likely to adopt the concept to varying degrees. To gauge a given firm's stakeholder orientation, it is necessary to evaluate the extent to which the firm adopts behaviors that typify both the generation and dissemination of stakeholder intelligence and responsiveness to it. A given organization may generate and disseminate more intelligence about certain stakeholder communities than about others and, as a result, may respond to that intelligence differently.
Answer to Question 2
E