EASY-ECO Budapest Conference

Thematic outline

Stakeholders are increasingly empowered, engaged and have an impact on social expectations, new market tendencies and consumers preferences. New stakeholder activism influences corporate affairs and the traditional pyramid of corporate authority is often replaced by a sphere of cross-scrutiny and corporate transparency demanded by external stakeholders. Stakeholders are influential forces in partnerships between corporations, governments and NGOs.

The relevance of stakeholders’ influence is shaping also the evaluation agenda. Sustainable development has become a prime example of multi-stakeholder strategies. Evaluating local, national and supranational programs of sustainability is a task in which the impact of stakeholders is a key variable. Yet we have rather limited knowledge of how to measure the impact of various stakeholders on sustainability projects, not to speak about their impact on corporate strategies, competitiveness and corporate responsibilities. A particularly challenging task is to evaluate the impact of stakeholders on business sustainability. The primary focus of the Budapest conference is to contribute to this relatively less-researched field of sustainability evaluation.

Invitation for contributions

We encourage

• researchers from all disciplines (including young researchers),
• professionals from related fields of work,
• commissioning agents, and
• evaluation users and other stakeholders

to submit abstracts for presentations at the EASY-ECO Budapest Conference 2009 that touch on stakeholder management perspectives or CSR perspectives in the context of sustainability evaluation as outlined above until 15 May 2009 31 May 2009 (extended deadline!). More specific topics are outlined below. Please indicate in your abstract explicitly which topic you want to address with your contribution.

Key topics

The thematic outline given above can be specified with the following key topics. Submissions can address one or more of the key topics in general terms or in the context of a case study.

• Stakeholder theories: How do latest developments influence evaluation practice?
• Multi-stakeholder strategies and competitiveness: Challenges for evaluation
• Corporate stakeholders: CSR and accountability of corporate boards and management – evaluating changes in corporate governance
• Labour stakeholders: Assessing employee satisfaction, the impact of legislative changes, international agreements and voluntary codes of conducts (such as the Global Compact)
• Consumer stakeholders: Evaluating the impact of consumer satisfaction and changes in consumer preferences: Responsible and ethical companies, green products and fair trade
• Community and NGO stakeholders: Assessing their impact on corporate practices
• Researchers as stakeholders: Developments in evaluation methodologies

Submission of abstracts and timeline

Participants who wish to present a paper, poster or case should send their abstracts by 15 May 2009 31 May 2009 (extended deadline!) to Katalin Hárskuti (harskutik@ceubusiness.org) and a copy to Peter Hardi (hardip@ceubusiness.org).

Please clearly indicate which of the key topics outlined is being addressed by your contribution. For easier file handling, please send your abstracts as text files (.doc, .pdf, .rtf) with the file name “your last name_abstract_Budapest.doc”.

Abstracts should not exceed 500 words.

The organizers will inform you about the acceptance of your abstract by 30 June 2009. This is also the date until which we will inform those applying for an EU grant about the award of the grants.

Full papers (max. 6.000-8.000 words) should be submitted until 31 August 2009.

Types of contributions

Papers – Are you a researcher or practitioner and want to present interesting findings linked to the topics above? We look for contributions facilitating the exchange of research results, methodological trends, and practical experience. Presenters of papers will be expected to give a presentation of about 20 minutes followed by a short discussion.Please send your abstract by 15 May 2009 31 May 2009 (extended deadline!).
Accepted abstracts and full papers will be published among the online proceedings on the EASY-ECO website. Best papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume published by Edward Elgar.

Posters – Conference participants may submit a poster for display at a dedicated space at the conference venue. The posters will be introduced in a poster session. If you would like to submit a poster dealing with a topic relevant for the conference, please provide a poster abstract by 15 May 2009 31 May 2009 (extended deadline!). The abstract will be published among the online proceedings on the EASY-ECO website.

Case studies – Interesting examples of SD evaluations are welcome to be presented as a paper if the case has a strong link to CSR or stakeholder involvement issues and topics of interest outlined here (case studies without this linkage are welcome as poster presentations).

Case studies for EASY-ECO Trainings – Furthermore, we are looking for evaluation projects which can be used as case studies, lectured by one of the members of the evaluation team in one of the upcoming EASY-ECO training courses on SD evaluation. If you are an experienced evaluator and interested in lecturing such a case study to young researchers and present your case at the conference, please have a look at the dedicated call for cases and get in contact with michal.sedlacko@wu-wien.ac.at.

This EASY-ECO Series Event is sponsored by: