Sustainability through sensemaking: Human resource professionals’ engagement and enactment of corporate social responsibility

Abstract

There is no shortage of normative models describing how human resource management (HRM) should integrate with corporate social responsibility (CSR), however actual evidence of this engagement is rare. So what prompts human resource (HR) professionals to engage with a CSR agenda? Using a sensemaking lens this study addresses this question by examining how HR professionals employed in organizations with a publicly espoused CSR mandate make sense of this agenda and glean understanding about the meaning-creation processes surrounding enactment. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with HR professionals employed in New Zealand and Australian organizations. Findings show that HR professionals draw on CSR-related organizational and social cues to make sense of integration, with their professional identity influencing approaches to operationalization. Evidence is also found to suggest levels and modes of CSR engagement are shaped by situational cues as well as the personal characteristics of HR professionals themselves.