Abstract
This paper explores high-risk industries to understand how institutional stakeholders drive corporate social responsibility understanding and practices. The high-risk industries in Ghana were investigated to understand how their managers’ corporate social responsibility understanding and practices have been influenced by their institutional stakeholders. A qualitative study using multiple-embedded case study approach was adopted. Thirty (30) managers were sampled, contacted and interviewed. Data was analysed using qualitative content analysis. From the findings, institutional stakeholders largely influence managers’ understanding and corporate social responsibility practices. Another finding indicates that the high-risk industries and their managers define corporate social responsibility as meeting the expectations of their internal and external institutional stakeholders. Employees and shareholders are the key institutional stakeholders regarding corporate social responsibility in the high-risk industries. Core among the corporate social responsibility practices in the high-risk industries are profitmaking and environmentalism. Going forward, this paper argues that managers’ corporate social responsibility understanding and practices should rather be informed by industry strategy and not largely by institutional stakeholders’ demands.
Highlights
This paper explores the high-risk industries to understand how institutional stakeholders influence managers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) understanding and practices
Following Miles and Huberman (1994), content analysis technique was used to analyse the interviews so as to identify patterns in the data. This was necessary to infer from the interviews what CSR meant to the managers, and to identify current CSR practices as influenced by institutional stakeholders of the high-risk industries
This paper reveals that managers of the high-risk industries define corporate social responsibility as meeting their internal and external institutional stakeholder expectations
Summary
This paper explores the high-risk industries to understand how institutional stakeholders influence managers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) understanding and practices. According to Okun, Lentz, Schulte and Stayner (2001), the oil and gas, forestry, aviation, construction, nuclear power, shipping and manufacturing industries are some of the well-known high-risk industries. These industries are high-risk because their operations can threaten the health and safety of people, communities, environment and the society (Reason, 1997). High-risk industries provide enough reason to be investigated in order to provide insights into how their CSR knowledge influences CSR practices given their industry-institutional contexts. As acknowledged by Pedersen (2010), how managers’ perceive and understand CSR determines the nature of CSR practices and performance in industries
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