The internal contest for CSR: Individual micro-politics and strategic action fields

Abstract

CSR research has tended to overlook the complexity of different managers’ values, interests, ideologies and identities within organisations, which compete for the organisation’s stance on CSR. In this paper, we draw upon the theory of strategic action fields, which melds insights from institutional and social movement theories, to present a political model of the internal contest for CSR. Based on interviews with 26 middle-upper managers, we theorise that CSR is formed internally by an overt contest for CSR between incumbent-abdicators and challenger-activists, and covert actions by challenger-activists that navigate the ongoing reproduction of organisational processes. The interpretation of events and choice of strategic actions by incumbent-abdicators and challenger-activists is influenced by the structural conditions of political opportunity and praxis transformation, and the personal conditions of moral shock and managerial biography. As such our model frames CSR as a manifestation of a dynamic, political contest between the key actors of the organisation.