Corporate Social Responsibility in Buyer-Supplier Relationships: Is it Beneficial for Top-Tier Suppliers to Market their Capability to Ensure a Responsible Supply Chain?

Thomas Leppelt,Evi Hartmann,Kai Foerstl

doi:10.1007/bf03342746

Abstract

AbstractThis study assesses how top-tier suppliers market their capabilities to ensure a responsible upstream supply chain to their downstream buyers, and how the marketing of corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related supply management practices affects the reputation of top-tier suppliers in business-to-business (B2B) markets. In a cross-functional multiple-case study involving marketing, purchasing, and sustainability executives of five supplier organizations in Central Europe, we explored four distinct approaches for marketing superior CSR management abilities in B2B markets that potentially foster long-term comparative advantages: (1) Fact-based communication of measurable CSR capabilities, (2) targeting of indirect customers and influencers, (3) marketing through education, and (4) marketing of CSR as a service. Moreover, our inductive results provide evidence that the effective marketing of CSR capabilities enhances a supplier’s reputation only if it sends consistent signals to the market. Therefore, a close integration of marketing and purchasing is crucial for achieving signaling consistency. Building on an established framework of purchasing-marketing integration in the particular context of CSR we developed a crossfunctional theory on the link between marketing, supply chain alignment and reputation, which is expressed in four sets of testable research propositions.

Highlights

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research increasingly focuses on the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related business practices and corporate reputation (e.g., Husted and De Jesus Salazar 2006; Janney and Gove 2011; McWilliams, Siegel, and Wright 2006)
While the practices for managing CSR in the upstream supply chain have been widely discussed in the extant purchasing and supply management literature (e.g., Pagell and Wu 2009; Paulraj 2011), the questions of (1) how top-tier suppliers use supply chain-oriented CSR management capabilities for marketing purposes and (2) how in particular top-tier suppliers manage the cross-functional integration of the purchasing and the marketing function, remain rather unexplored in extant supply chain management (SCM) and marketing literature
This study aims at exploring distinct concepts for marketing CSR-related SCM capabilities in a B2B context, as research is still ambiguous on whether supply chain-oriented CSR capabilities can be considered an order winner (Hill 1985) or an order qualifier – that is, a necessary condition to compete in the business market

Summary

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research increasingly focuses on the link between CSR-related business practices and corporate reputation (e.g., Husted and De Jesus Salazar 2006; Janney and Gove 2011; McWilliams, Siegel, and Wright 2006) In this context, scholars argued that social or environmental misconduct is not necessarily detrimental to an organization, as long as the firm does not purposely cause misconduct and promptly rectifies the wrongdoing (Campbell 2007). A positive reputation towards CSR in this context can equip top-tier suppliers with a competitive advantage in their respective customer markets (McWilliams, Siegel, and Wright 2006) It enhances the probability of winning additional business in the case that potential buyers, who are not yet customers of the supplier, are looking for alternatives with a CSR-ensuring capability. We develop theoretical propositions related to the link between CSR-related business practices and reputation based on the assumptions of signaling theory (Cornelissen, Haslam, and Balmer 2007; Rao 1994)

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