Connecting the Micro to the Macro: An Exploration of Micro-Behaviors of Individuals Who Drive CSR Initiatives at the Macro-Level.

Latha Poonamallee,Simy Joy

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02417

Abstract

Grounded on a case study on the formation of an inter-corporate CSR initiative in which four corporations from Chennai, India collaborate, this paper explores the micro-behaviors that individual actors engage in to create CSR solutions later adopted at the macro-organizational level. Based on the findings, the paper (1) identifies five categories of micro-behaviors, namely increasing stakeholder salience by turning attention to the ethical and social responsibilities to specific stakeholder groups, emerging as a self-appointed CSR champion by assuming personal responsibility for action, creating CSR initiative prototypes by leveraging personal skills, garnering support by leveraging personal networks and amassing operational resources by organizational resources; (2) explicates the characteristics of individual approach to CSR that makes it different from, but complementary to organizational approach to CSR.

Highlights

The role of individual managers, executives, and owners in CSR and sustainability initiatives has recently begun to receive greater scholarly attention (Hemingway, 2005; Lee, 2008; Aguinis and Glavas, 2012; Ones et al, 2018)
Individual actors often act as self-appointed change agents (Walley and Stubbs, 1999; Walley, 2000) unafraid to abandon the commercial rhetoric and take the first steps down toward truly socially responsible actions on their organization’s behalf acting as “corporate entrepreneurs” (Hemingway, 2005) making small experiments to bring about a fairer world (Longsdon and Wood, 2002)
We present an analysis of case events and individual actions that led to the creation of an inter-organizational CSR initiative in India targeted at underprivileged urban youth, and identify and describe the microactions of individual managers and executives that eventually surface as CSR initiatives of their organizations

Summary

Introduction

The role of individual managers, executives, and owners in CSR and sustainability initiatives has recently begun to receive greater scholarly attention (Hemingway, 2005; Lee, 2008; Aguinis and Glavas, 2012; Ones et al, 2018). It is increasingly clear to both scholars and practitioners that behaviors at the individual level impact and shape a wide and complex range of macro level outcomes (Hemingway and Maclagan, 2004; Porter and Kramer, 2011; Amit and Zott, 2012; Littlewood, 2014; Ones et al, 2018). An important area of inquiry is how individual actions contribute to organizational level CSR actions and outcomes (Bhattacharya et al, 2009). Research on the links between individual actions at the micro level and organizational CSR at the macro level, is still an emerging area (Griffin and Prakash, 2014; Ghobadian et al, 2015). Few exceptions exist (Ones et al, 2018), most research explores and explains the effects of CSR on employees (Brammer et al, 2015; West et al, 2015) and not as often about how individual actions may shape organizational CSR priorities and processes

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Conclusion