THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF MANAGERIAL STEWARDSHIP BEHAVIOUR FOR ACHIEVING CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP

Corporate citizenship is defined as the establishment and management of company’s influence on the society in a way that benefits for the company and society are realized at the same time. De facto corporate citizenship represents responsibility for social action and action in the local community, which reflects on the reputation and business results in a long-term time perspective, thus providing an additional impetus for further activities. The fundamental postulate of stewardship theory is that managers always act in such a way to maximize the interests of a company and contemporary business environment is forcing management towards ethically responsible, innovative, but profitable businesses. Therefore, the strategic role of managerial stewardship behaviour is hypothesised as support for the realization of corporate citizenship. It is assumed that achieving a win-win situation for all stakeholders and aligning the interests of organization and society will be somewhat difficult in organizations where there is incongruity in stewardship behaviour between top management and lower level management, what is confirmed by the structural equation modelling in empirical research on large Croatian companies.