Abstract
Organizational ratings exude anxiety and allure, but relatively little is known about how managers balance resisting and mobilizing ratings. We explore this duality with a qualitative study on managerial responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings. Based on interviews focused on CSR ratings with managers of 60 companies, we induce four responses to ratings: grumbling, contestation, cherry-picking and microstatactivism. We further show how managers combine resistance and mobilization in two ambivalent engagement modes. Our analysis contributes to the literature by developing a more nuanced theory of corporate responses to organizational ratings, which demonstrates the importance of ambivalence in managing institutional pressure.
Highlights
Organizational ratings exude anxiety and allure, but relatively little is known about how managers balance resisting and mobilizing ratings
Through a qualitative analysis of interviews held with managers who interface with corporate social responsibility (CSR) rating agencies, we induced four distinct types of responses – grumbling, contesting, cherry-picking and microstatactivism – that combine the mobilization of and resistance to ratings
The findings offer a number of insights for the analysis of corporate responses to ratings and for studying ambivalent responses to institutional pressures, which we discuss before specifying the limitations and managerial implications of our study
Summary
Organizational ratings exude anxiety and allure, but relatively little is known about how managers balance resisting and mobilizing ratings. We explored the extent to which respondents and company characteristics identified in Table 1 were contingent for corporate responses to CSR ratings.
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