CSR Commitments Research Articles

Corporate Social Responsibility in The Disinformation Age

Following a long period in which pressures to adopt CSR practices came largely from the left, the current communication environment has become far more divisive with the rise of illiberal political pressures from the right. These conflicting pressures arise from irreconcilable communication logics that threaten the future of CSR. This paper examines how these disruptive communication logics reflect the changing roles of disinformation in CSR communication, highlighting two overlapping eras: (1) the history of some companies using disinformation strategically to avoid or misrepresent CSR commitments; and (2) the more recent addition of what we term systemic disinformation generated by politicians, think tanks, and irresponsible competitors. These disinformation spheres challenge liberal democratic values and amplify attacks on CSR values. We discuss the dilemmas for companies seeking to adopt more responsible business practices and explore the implications of CSR communication becoming increasingly linked to larger societal conflicts over the nature of democracy.

The Impact of CSR on Supply Chain Management in Enterprises

Corporate social responsibility (csr) adoption is gaining increasing prominence as a strategic imperative for enterprises seeking to drive transparency, collaboration, and sustainability through their supply chains due to its perceived importance. This paper undertakes a qualitative analysis of peer-reviewed academic literature and industry reports to examine the linkages between measurable csr policies. This helps in deducing means for supply managers to control ethical sourcing, supplier codes of conduct, and social audits and resultant performance improvements across interconnected supply chain entities due to followership of acceptable socially conscious activities. Henceforth, the analysis provides a valid view that integrative csr priorities propagate positive transformations. The transformation refers to improved vendor relationships, logistics, and distribution networks. Those are achieved through enhancing climate resilience, reducing risks, and enabling cost efficiencies. The csr actions, however, need to be structured by mechanisms around supplier capability building, compliance enforcement, and monitoring systems, which are uncovered as vital framing elements allowing csr commitments. However, equitable integration frameworks across entities with varying maturity levels require additional investigation.

Corporate social irresponsibility, hostile organisations and global resource extraction

AbstractCorporate social responsibility (CSR) is a fundamentally normative construction. It speaks to what social responsibility should look like, who it should apply to, and how it should be demonstrated. By contrast, the analytic position of the corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) discourse is evidence‐based, and objects to the notion that companies can claim to be responsible while at the same time act irresponsibly. This paper supports a clear separation between (i) the critique of company performance within the dominant discursive construct of CSR and (ii) CSI as an evidence‐based approach to reading and documenting corporate performance. A conceptually distinct CSI discourse removes the need for researchers to disprove CSR rhetoric before engaging with responsibility problems. Rather than organising studies around CSR claims and commitments, we suggest that researchers of global resource extraction put their energies towards capturing the form and function of ‘organised irresponsibility’ in locations where mining takes place.

Facilitating Sustainable FDI for Sustainable Development in a WTO Investment Facilitation Framework: Four Concrete Proposals

Foreign direct investment (‘FDI’) can be an important vehicle for development. However, in recent years, the focus has not just been on development generally, but sustainable development specifically. Thus, this article focuses on how countries can increase levels of FDI geared toward projects likely to contribute as much as possible to countries’ sustainable development—in other words, how countries can increase flows of sustainable FDI. To that end, and in light of the World Trade Organization’s ongoing Structured Discussions on Investment Facilitation for Development, this article first discusses the notion of ‘sustainable FDI’ and then outlines four issues and related concrete proposals whose implementation through an investment facilitation framework for development would help to ensure that commercially viable FDI makes a besteffort contribution to sustainable development: (1) How can governments encourage sustainable FDI? (2) How can governments promote corporate social responsibility (‘CSR’)? (3) How can one create the special category of ‘Recognized Sustainable Investor’ to incentivize international investors to implement their CSR commitments and engage in sustainable FDI? (4) What role can home countries play in facilitating outward FDI flows, especially the flow of sustainable FDI? Looking at the question of a multilateral framework from the perspective of its objective— namely ‘for development’—is particularly important as this objective should guide the negotiations of such a framework. sustainable FDI, sustainable development, WTO investment facilitation discussions, corporate social responsibility, home country policies, recognized sustainable investor

Implementing CSR Commitments

Companies often announce their corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) mission statements and commitments with great public fanfare, pledging to proactively contribute to improving social conditions and protecting the environment. While putting the company’s brand and reputation on the line in this way is important, the reality is that CSR cannot and will not be effective unless and until it is tightly integrated into every aspect of organizational operations including products and services, governance systems and practices, culture, marketing and other external communications, training, recruiting and relationships with business partners. Once the CSR commitments are finalized and published, attention needs to turn to the actual implementation of those commitments, which includes the day-to-day decisions, processes, practices and activities that are required in order for the company to adhere to its commitments and effectively carry out its overall CSR strategy. A company that fails to implement its CSR commitments will find itself losing employees, customers and business partners and will see its standing in the marketplace and community plummet.

COVID‐19 and Global Governance

Abstract The COVID-19 epidemic has sent economic and social shockwaves reverberating across the globe, and has shaken governance institutions at every level and across a range of issues, from trade to health and climate change An important question is whether COVID will accelerate, slow, or perhaps reverse some key trends in global governance Most prominently, the global and multilateral governance regimes that developed post-World War II were already weakening and fragmenting before COVID (Acharya, 2016) In a closely related phenomenon, cosmopolitan liberalism, as a set of institutions and ideologies committed to a democratic open society, human rights, and multiculturalism, has also retreated in the face of rising populism and authoritarianism in recent years (Norris and Inglehart, 2019) COVID could also affect a third important trend, the decline of state regulation and the rise of private, voluntary, and disclosure-based governance (Levy, Brown, and de Jong, 2010) The impact of COVID on these trends suggests some fruitful new directions for scholars of global governance and organizations

MNE Approaches to CSR in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Multi-Theoretic Study

This study provides a comparative test of three distinct theories of MNE behavior in host nations using data on the CSR activities of foreign and domestic firms in the sub-Saharan nation of Ghana. Studying the philanthropic spending and expressed CSR commitments of MNEs and domestic firms in SSA provides a direct comparison between a locally normative form of CSR (philanthropy) with one that is normative in the global context (expressed social commitments). Compared to domestic firms, MNEs express more social commitments but invest significantly less on philanthropy. Results also show a significant positive interaction between foreignness and visibility in predicting expressed social commitments, but not philanthropic spending. Taken together, these results show that TNF theory provides the clearest insight into MNEs’ CSR engagement in sub-Saharan Africa.

Developing a Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy

Companies should begin the process of developing a corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) strategy by collecting and analyzing information to assess the potential role of social responsibility in the company’s business activities, benchmark their CSR profile against the efforts of competitors, learn more about the needs and expectations of their stakeholders, identify and prioritize their own unique set of CSR issues and actions and create a foundation for the leadership team to develop a CSR strategy. In order to be effective and impactful, CSR needs to integrated into the company’s short- and long-term strategies, a process that includes developing mission and strategy statements that incorporate sustainability and CSR commitments that are supported by policies, procedures, targets, performance measures, stakeholder engaging, training, organizational culture and reporting. Ironically, while research has confirmed that a fundamental indication of leadership in corporate sustainability is having a sustainability strategy that articulated a practical sustainability vision and ambition that laid the foundation for new business practices, significantly less than all companies have such a strategy and even fewer have invested time and effort in developing an adequate business case. Many companies limit their sustainability strategy to a near-term plan for achieving incremental environmental or social improvements or complying with relevant existing regulations and/or simply focus on pieces of the puzzle such as supply chain and customer segments. Delaying development of a CSR strategy, or failing to create one at all, will likely put a company at a competitive disadvantage in the future, and directors and executives need to prioritize the launch and completion of a CSR strategy development process that include building internal support through education and engagement, SWOT analysis through a sustainability lens, benchmarking against competitors and recognized voluntary CSR instruments, prioritization, business case development and implementation.

Stakeholder Management in Designing CSR Activities: The Case of Bank Islam

CSR commitments should be viewed from a broad Islamic perspective of reducingpoverty rate, and enhancing quality of Muslims’ lives. The purpose of this study wasto determine how Bank Islam manages its stakeholders, and their issues, in designingCSR activities through the three level of maslahah. A group of CSR players at the bankhas been interviewed together with on-field observations as well as documentationreviews to gain insights into the process of managing stakeholders. The findingsindicated that the bank acknowledges the importance of managing stakeholders, andtheir issues, through the engagement of various CSR activities. In designing CSRactivities, the process of identifying the stakeholders and their issues may need to becarefully examined to improve the impact of the activities on the recipients. This studyoffers a new insight to the body of knowledge of CSR from the Islamic perspectives ofstakeholder management.

CSR commitments, perceptions of hypocrisy, and recovery

This paper examines perceived hypocrisy when a failure is aligned with prior social performance. It is hypothesized that commitment to a CSR domain creates greater performance expectations thus exacerbating the effects when an aligned failure occurs. Study 1 demonstrates that failure alignment and severity increase perceived hypocrisy which negatively impacts customer evaluations of trust, repurchase intent, and brand attitude. Study 2 evaluates two response strategies of apology and compensation vs. no response. An apology significantly reduced perceptions of hypocrisy only when the failure was unaligned with prior CSR. Compensation significantly reduced hypocrisy in both the unaligned and aligned conditions.

Developing CSR Commitments

The first step in bringing a corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) strategy to life is the development and formal adoption of CSR commitments, which are the policies or instruments of a company that indicate what it intends to do to address its social and environmental impacts. CSR commitments ensure that the company’s organizational culture is consistent with CSR values; help align and integrate the company’s business strategy, objectives and goals; provide guidance to employees about how they should conduct themselves, which is particularly important for companies whose employees are widely dispersed in locations all around the world; and communicate the company’s approach to addressing its societal and environmental impacts to business partners, suppliers, communities, governments, the general public and others. Commitments also provide a basis that senior management and stakeholders can use to benchmark and assess the company’s CSR performance.

Sectoral Corporate Social Responsibility Commitments

Certain sectors face particular challenges when it comes to corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) due to the specific nature of the operational activities and the locations of those activities since local governments often are unwilling and/or unable to exercise legal and regulatory responsibility for the environmental and social impacts of the activities. The response to these challenges, often driven by criticisms from a wide range of stakeholders, has been sectoral CSR commitments, which often take the form of a framework of principles with respect to environmental and social issues and emerge from collective CSR initiatives among companies and other stakeholders (e.g., trade unions) involved in particular business sectors and/or with a common interest in a specific social or environmental responsibility issue. Sectoral frameworks usually include targets for compliance with minimum social standards and fundamental environmental protection measures taking into account sector-specific criteria and requirements as decisions are being made.

Advancing Sustainable Development by Facilitating Sustainable FDI, Promoting CSR, Designating Recognized Sustainable Investors, and Giving Home Countries a Role

Foreign direct investment (“FDI”) can be an important vehicle for development. However, in recent years, the focus has not just been on development generally, but sustainable development specifically. Thus, this article focuses on how countries can increase levels of FDI geared toward projects likely to contribute as much as possible to their sustainable development—in other words, how countries can increase flows of sustainable FDI. To that end, and in light of the WTO’s ongoing negotiations on a multilateral framework for Investment Facilitation for Development, this article first discusses the notion of “sustainable FDI” and then outlines four issues and related concrete proposals whose implementation through an investment facilitation framework for development would help to ensure that commercially viable FDI makes a best-effort contribution to sustainable development: (1) How can governments encourage sustainable FDI? (2) How could governments promote corporate social responsibility (“CSR”)? (3) How could one create the special category of “Recognized Sustainable Investor” to incentivize international investors to implement their CSR commitments and engage in sustainable FDI? (4) What role can home countries play in facilitating outward FDI flows, especially the flow of sustainable FDI? Looking at the question of a multilateral framework from the perspective of its objective—namely “for development”—is particularly important as this objective should guide the negotiations of such a framework.

Extractive industries and local sustainable development in Zambia: The case of corporate social responsibility of selected metal mines

This research sought in-depth understanding of extractives' corporate social responsibility [CSR] in North-Western Zambia and its impact on local sustainable development. It relied on case study approach to understand processes and outcomes of CSR investments by sampled mines. The study relied on both primary, secondary, qualitative and quantitative sources of data to triangulate perspectives. The case study explored four dimensions of CSR: how decisions and prioritisation of CSR were made; level of stakeholders’ engagement and participation; appropriateness and viability of performance monitoring and accountability systems of sampled mines on CSR commitments; and outcomes [benefits and costs] to host communities from CSR; and factors underlying associated outcomes.Overall, three common themes emerged, differentiated by adopted CSR model, mine ownership, alignment to national, local development priorities and depth of stakeholders’ engagement. Firstly, dominant narrative by extractives was enthusiastic about CSR and its positive impact on sub-national development. The second viewpoint, predominantly by Local Authority, civil society and community-oriented perspective was sceptical about effects of CSR, mining and reiterated strong concerns about negative impacts. Third perspective was mainly reformist by government entities, dominant political parties and development partners, who deemed optimisation of benefits from extractives as sub-optimal.

Financial volatility and public scrutiny as institutional determinants of financial industry firms' CSR

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between the global financial crisis and Corporate Social Responsibility reporting of financial services firms. We challenge the view in existing studies that firms, when faced with economic hardship, tend to jettison CSR commitments. Instead, and building on insights regarding the institutional determinants of CSR, we argue that firms are constrained in their ability to abandon CSR by the extent to which they are subject to intense public scrutiny by regulators and the news media. We test this argument in the context of the European sovereign debt crisis drawing on a unique dataset of 170 firms in 15 different countries over a six-year period. Controlling for a battery of alternative explanations and comparing financial service providers to firms operating in other economic sectors, we find considerable evidence supporting our argument. Rather than abandoning CSR during times of economic hardship, financial industry firms ramp up their CSR commitments in order to manage their public image and foster public trust in light of intense public scrutiny.

The Risk Assessment for Sourcing Seafood (RASS): Empowering businesses to buy responsibly

The RASS web-based tool has been developed by the UK Sea Fish Industry Authority to inform UK seafood businesses and retailers about four environmental risks when sourcing wild-capture seafood; fish stock status, management efficacy, bycatch, and habitat impact. These risks are scored on a five-point scale (1 – very low, 5 – very high risk) against criteria outlined in this paper. RASS allows seafood buyers to identify products that align with their corporate social responsibility commitments (CSR), but unlike other ‘fish lists’, it does not say “buy” or “avoid”. In other words, RASS is informative rather than prescriptive, and puts decision-making back into businesses’ hands. The RASS website has been designed for a range of different users, and in addition to risk scores, risk summaries, outlooks, and further evidence are also provided, all of which are freely accessible. The creation of new fishery profiles (and future developments) in RASS is guided through feedback from a seafood industry steering group composed of technical managers and buyers. Ultimately, the RASS tool will improve seafood businesses’ capacity to navigate the complexities of fisheries science and management, and commercial realities, when carrying out their CSR commitments.

Building Sustainable Organizations in China

ABSTRACTAs China shifts its development model from focusing on economic growth at all costs to a model in which economic growth is balanced with solving pressing societal and environmental problems, there is an increasing need for management research on building sustainable organizations in China. This collection of papers focuses attention on the role of business in promoting sustainable economic development, highlighting a number of key processes including: the factors that foster transparency and CSR reporting, how stakeholders can influence corporations to abandon their CSR commitments, the benefits of environmental branding and labeling, and the antecedents and performance consequences of proactive environmental strategies. In this introductory essay we reflect on recent trends in sustainability research in China, and to encourage this important movement, provide recommendations for future research directions.

El gobierno corporativo y la responsabilidad social corporativa en el sector bancario: el papel del consejo de administración

This article presents a review of the studies on on boards of directors and corporate social responsibility practices in the banking industry. Several characteristics of bank boards, in particular independence and diversity, may impact their CSR commitments. By studying a sample of 159 banks in nine countries during the period 2004–2010, there is evidence that suggests that banks with more independent and diverse directors follow a path of socially responsible behaviour.

CSR - The Next Level

The term ‘CSR’ (Corporate social Responsibility) has grown over the years to append a prefix ‘strategic’ which indicates that companies today have a plan to balance business and social objectives, in turn laying the framework of a reputable organisation. It marks a transformation from being a good company to a great one. Over the last few years there has been a trend towards compartmentalizing CSR and turning it into a specialized activity. It is intrinsic to all parts of the business, and hence is reflected in the actions of a company, in all the aspects such as HR, corporate governance and management, etc. However, the manifestation of a company’s CSR activities and commitments could take myriad forms. Till this day, manifested itself in different forms ranging from corporate philanthropy, internal organisational and educational initiatives, social and environmental reporting, improving the quality of life of differently-abled people, environmental sustainability, talent sustainability, community investment, supporting causes or a combination of several of these. Some wide-spread examples include supporting a NGO by propagating their cause, programmes to support local communities and investment in clean technology.

Mission impossible?: Adopting a CSR-based business model for extractive industries in developing countries

Corporations in the extractive industries often state their commitment to “corporate social responsibility” principles, but their actual implementation of these principles, particularly in developing countries, is questionable. This contradiction between rhetoric and reality is attributable to the fact that these companies have not fully integrated CSR into their business models. This can been seen in assessments of projects' costs and benefits, project and technology selection, respect for community consent, and performance incentive structures. The Marlin gold mine in Guatemala provides a concrete example of these sharp contradictions between stated CSR commitments and actual performance.