Special Issue on Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability: An Introduction

Abstract

This special issue includes a selection of articles presented at the Fourth World Business Ethics Forum (WBEF) held on December 16–18, 2012, hosted by the School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University. The School has been placing major emphasis on whole-person business education, with a vision of inspiring business practice, creating values for stakeholders, and enhancing social and economic growth and development. The WBEF was cofounded by the Hong Kong Baptist University (School of Business) and University of Macau (Faculty of Business Administration) in 2006. Held on a biennial basis, it serves as a platform for scholars and the business community to explore new insights in relevant areas of business ethics. The theme of the Fourth WBEF is ‘‘Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability.’’ The main objective is to develop research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and provide implications to corporations for their sustainable development. The forum is a timely event for academics and practitioners as the contemporary business world is facing increasing challenges including economic, environmental, social, and ethical issues. Entrepreneurs are experiencing an evolution of mindset. CSR is not just a strategy of risk management in response to corporate scandals or pressures from stakeholders. It is also a practice with foresight for sustainable success and ultimate benefits. The Forum received a total of 91 papers submitted by authors from different institutions worldwide. 59 papers were selected and presented in 15 concurrent sessions. Over 150 academics and practitioners from 16 countries and regions participated in the Forum. For this Special Issue, we selected 9 best papers to represent the work of the Forum, being clustered in four topics of CSR and sustainability integration, including the conceptualization, its development and normativity, factors influencing CSR, and impacts of CSR. Three papers extended our understanding on the concept of CSR by bringing new thoughts. First, Francois Maon and Adam Lindgreen argue that the cultural aspect of CSR is one dimension being neglected in our understanding. They introduce the notion of corporate cultural responsibility (CCR), which reflects cultural impacts of corporations through value systems. The second and third papers, written by Scott J. Vitell and Catherine Janssen and Joelle Vanhamme, respectively, call for attention on consumer social responsibility (CnSR), which emphasizing the role of the consumer in CSR. Vitell indicates that engagement of the consumer is important for the development of CSR. He examines the proposition and discusses the difference between consumer ethics and consumer social responsibility. Catherine Janssen and Joelle Vanhamme go a step further by their research to look at the relationship between CSR and consumer engagement. Realizing a gap between consumers’ purchase intentions and their actual purchase decisions, Catherine Janssen and Joelle Vanhamme argue that this is a puzzling paradox because CSR has only a minor impact on consumers’ actual purchase decisions. Employing theoretical lenses, the authors propose an integrative framework to understand the CSR-consumer paradox. & Stephen Y. L. Cheung scheung@ied.edu.hk