Variability in Corporate Responsibility as Culturally and Structurally Embedded Agency

Abstract

This paper aims to enhance future theorisations of variability in corporate responsibility (CR) by conceptualising the interplay between distinct yet interrelated constructs of culture, structure and agency as firms and their stakeholders contest CR. It integrates the morphogenetic approach, the institutional logics perspective and the strategic action fields (SAF) theory. The morphogenetic approach helps to develop critical realist meta- theoretical assumptions about an explicit ontic and temporal separation between culture, structure and agency as constituents of CR. The institutional logics perspective helps to operationalise CR as culturally embedded agency as the ‘categories-actions-beliefs’ coherences within a firm-level institutional logic informed by societal-level institutional logics. The SAF theory helps to operationalise CR as structurally embedded agency as organised around the ‘resources-rules-social skills’ interplays of a firm and its stakeholders in roles of an incumbent, challengers or governance units. This paper contributes to the institutional analysis of CR, advancing the evolving critical realist approach to it and offering an alternative view of an organisational field of CR; to the institutional logics perspective and the SAF theory, proposing how institutional logics constitute power structures that carry the force thereof; and to the morphogenetic approach, improving its operationalisation and adding a theoretical depth of social interactions.