Benefit corporation no seido sekkei shisou to sono sustainability management eno eikyou

This paper provides a framework to examine the impact of design of Benefit

Corporation (BC) on sustainability management. The BC is a new form of legal business

entity formed in US to pursue social benefit or responsibility while undertaking

responsibility to return profits to shareholders. With the activities of B Lab, a nonprofit

organization with capacity of 501-c-3 in the US, Certified BCs are now being

established all over the world. Although BC is designed for business corporations with

all the traditional characteristics, it possesses a unique characteristic of empowering

corporations to undertake corporate social responsibilities while suppressing the

traditional corporate objective of maximizing shareholder profit. The main question

that needs to be answered is how the management can achieve corporate sustainability

while absorbing the costs of CSR activities and suppressing the shareholder pressure

on profit maximization. The comparative research framework and the results presented

in the paper attempt to provide explanations on the underlined issues. In building

this framework, this paper takes into account the conceptual relationship between the

design of BC system, the sustainability management and CSR.