Good Corporate Citizenship Research Articles

A new model for brand leadership and loyalty

Brand citizenship is a new, emerging model for marketing and brand development. Sitting at the intersection of brand leadership, loyalty and ethical business practices, it emphasises equally quality product and service delivery, fair value for pricing, and connecting people to larger communities and something more meaningful than themselves. Conveying the learning from Onesixtyfourth's multi-methodology CultureQ research, this paper details the attributes that define brand leadership, loyalty and good corporate citizenship. It demonstrates that a deep faithfulness comes to brands that integrate themselves into consumers’ routines, make daily life easer and more productive, help people achieve their goals and enrich everyday living. It further illustrates how brand citizenship acts as a unifying principle for marketing, communications, product development and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Introducing a 360-degree orientation for implementation that includes organisation, product, experience and service, along with examples, the paper ultimately demonstrates how brand citizenship creates a shared sense of responsibility between a corporation, its various stakeholders and consumers. In democratising CSR activities, brand citizenship strengthens reputation, enhances brand equity and increases the return on investment on CSR activities.

What Can Multi-Nationals Do When They Cannot Boycott? Principles for Good Corporate Citizenship in Authoritarian, Mineral Producing States

While companies have a greater ability to facilitate positive changes within a regime if there is a looming threat of boycott or divestment, what can companies that work in industries that cannot be conducted anywhere, such as mineral exploitation, do to facilitate positive change? Put a different way, in countries with mineral wealth and authoritarian governance, where there is not a credible threat of private industry led boycott or divestment, what principles will provide the best use of finite (and ever-shrinking) corporate social responsibility budgets for the MNCs that exploit said mineral resources?

How do entrenched boards reduce human rights violations? An empirical analysis

As part of corporate social responsibility, companies invest in activities that promote human rights or refrain from activities that violate human rights. Investments in human rights, however, usually do not yield immediate benefits. Rather, they are expected to improve the reputation of the firm over time as a good corporate citizen. As one of the most effective takeover defences, a staggered board insulates managers from the takeover market. Secured in their positions, managers are less likely to be myopic and are more likely to adopt policies that yield long-term benefits, such as investments in human rights. Consistent with this notion, our results show that firms with a staggered board exhibit much better human rights performance. We also show that our results are not likely driven by endogeneity.

Leveraging the IT competence of non-IS workers: social exchange and the good corporate citizen

Organizational IT competence is fundamental to achieving strategic value through technology investments. Importantly, as business users continually gain experience with enterprise systems and a new generation of tech-savvy workers enters the labour force, IT competence is increasingly distributed beyond the IS department. Despite its strategic potential however, IT competence residing within the functional areas of the firm is essentially untapped until it is volunteered by functional area knowledge workers. Addressing the changing landscape of IT competence across the enterprise, the current study examines factors that drive business professionals to volunteer their IT competences to the firm. This research introduces the concept of IT competence volunteering, which is conceptualized as a form of organizational citizenship behaviour that is not explicitly contracted by the firm and may not be directly rewarded. Guided by social exchange theory, a multi-foci model is introduced that positions IT competence as well as workplace exchange relationships as antecedents of IT competence volunteering intention. Overall, the study's results empirically demonstrate the important impacts that user-IS department exchange and perceived organizational support have on the business professional's intention to volunteer his/her IT competence to the firm.

How Do Entrenched Boards Reduce Human Rights Violations? An Empirical Analysis

As part of corporate social responsibility, companies invest in activities that promote human rights or refrain from activities that violate human rights. Investments in human rights, however, usually do not yield immediate benefits. Rather, they are expected to improve the reputation of the firm over time as a good corporate citizen. As one of the most effective takeover defenses, a staggered board insulates managers from the takeover market. Secured in their positions, managers are less likely to be myopic and are more likely to adopt policies that yield long-term benefits, such as investments in human rights. Consistent with this notion, our results show that firms with a staggered board exhibit much better human rights performance. We also show that our results are not likely driven by endogeneity.

Short-Termism of Institutional Investors and the Double Agency Problem

Short-Termism of Institutional Investors and the Double Agency Problem

Socially responsible investment: good corporate citizenship or hidden portfolio risk?

The legacy of the inherently subjective socially responsible investment (SRI) methodologies is that the gathering of basic data for assessing a company's environmental, social and governance (ESG) rating has been inconsistent, unreliable and, more crucially, almost entirely based upon corporate self-reporting. All of the existing ratings agencies – DJSI, CSI, FTSE4Good, etc –rely on information provided by the companies and corporations themselves, with little or no external verification of fact. The point is that ESG is still an emerging area, and has outpaced the existing sphere of legal knowledge. Amongst other things this has led to the wide perception of ESG ratings, and their vital analysis of a company's performance and risks, as little more than public relations tools. The importance of ESG ratings and corporate social responsibility compliance as an accurate quantitatively based calculation of company value and defined ESG risks has become widely accepted. Ranging from the effect on corporate reputation and brand equity valuation to the financial impact of sustainable development as drivers of industrial change, sustainability and ESG compliance are accepted as factors that drive equity returns in their own right. What is needed is a single global credible standard, with robust legal definition and supported by a genuinely unbiased rating system that is not only based upon reliable proof of claim but also generally accepted and applicable to practitioners and participants in the SRI industry.

Vested interests in addiction research and policy. Why do we not see the corporate interests of the alcohol industry as clearly as we see those of the tobacco industry?

To compare the current status of global alcohol corporations with tobacco in terms of their role in global governance and to document the process by which this difference has been achieved and the consequences for alcohol control policy. Participant observation in the global political arena, review of industry materials (submissions, publications, conference presentations, websites) and review of published literature formed the basis for the current analysis. Recent events in the global political arena have highlighted the difference in perception of the alcohol and tobacco industries which has allowed alcohol corporations to participate in the global governance arena in a way in which tobacco has not been able. The transnational producers of alcohol have waged a sophisticated and successful campaign during the past three decades, including sponsorship of intergovernmental events, funding of educational initiatives, research, publications and sponsoring sporting and cultural events. A key aspect has been the framing of arguments to undermine perceptions of the extent of alcohol-related harms to health by promoting ideas of a balance of benefits and harms. An emphasis on the heaviest drinkers has been used to promote the erroneous idea that 'moderate' drinkers experience no harm and a goal of alcohol policy should be to ensure they are unaffected by interventions. This leads to highly targeted interventions towards the heaviest drinkers rather than effective regulation of the alcohol market. A sophisticated campaign by global alcohol corporations has promoted them as good corporate citizens and framed arguments with a focus on drinkers rather than the supply of alcohol. This has contributed to acceptance in the global governance arena dealing with policy development and implementation to an extent which is very different from tobacco. This approach, which obscures the contribution supply and marketing make to alcohol-related harm, has also contributed to failure by governments to adopt effective supply-side policies.

Corporate Social Responsibility Practices of UAE Banks

ABSTRACTThe study aims at investigating corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of UAE banks. A modified questionnaire has been developed. The questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first part covers general information, namely the experience, position and educational level of the respondent. The second part consists of 18 questions about awareness of CSR, dimensions, the most important issues of CSR, instruments, stakeholders' engagement and co-operation, the community activities carried out by UAE banks, voluntary activities to mitigate climate change, practices, organizational responsibility for CSR, payback, public policy support for corporate social responsibility and the relationship with the The main results indicate that the UAE banks are aware of the concept of corporate social responsibility; they place more emphasis on compliance with mandatory social and environmental legislation and less on the non-mandatory legislation; the social specific issues are the most important ones; the banks collect information about/from stakeholders and consult stakeholders and participate in multi-stakeholder initiatives; the banks contribute positively in supporting community activities, for instance through donations and sponsorship; the banks are not heavily involved in problems of climate change; the banks ensure equal access to their banking services for all women, irrespective of their marital status, race, etc.; the banks meet the mandatory legislation requirements related to CSR; and finally, the majority of the respondents (90 percent) indicated that it is important for their banks to inform stakeholders about their corporate social responsibility activity.JEL: G2, G21KEYWORDS: Social Responsibility, UAE banks, UAE Islamic Banks, Direct and Indirect Aspects of CSRINTRODUCTIONCarroll (1991) defined corporate social responsibility (CSR) as organization's commitment to operate in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner while recognizing the interests of all its stakeholders. is also defined as Corporate initiative to assess and take responsibility for the company's effects on the environment and impact on social welfare. The term generally applies to company efforts that go beyond what may be required by regulators or environmental protection groups (investopedia). Wikipedia indicates that CSR is one of the newest management strategies where companies try to create a positive impact on society while doing business. It can be concluded that affects positively the success and sustainability of corporations. Geva (2008) describes the importance of as follows: Decades of debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) have resulted in a substantial body of literature offering a number of philosophies that despite real and relevant differences among their theoretical assumptions express consensus about the fundamental idea that business corporations have an obligation to work for social betterment.Working for social betterment means corporations are committed towards their society to achieve this goal. In other words, they are socially responsible in this regard. Geva provided a comprehensive review of three models of corporate social responsibility, namely pyramid, intersecting circles, and concentric circles as is shown in Figure 1. The models consist of four dimensions: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic. Geva also indicated that these four dimensions of social responsibility constitute total CSR: economic (make profit), legal (obey the law), ethical (be ethical), and philanthropic (be a good corporate citizen).The importance of is also reflected in the UN Global Compact which was launched in July 2000. The UN Global Compact asks companies to embrace, support and enact, within their realm of influence, a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labor standards, the environment and anti-corruption. …

Reinventing the Role of Consumer Research in Today's Open Innovation Ecosystem

Consumer research (CR) has played a key role in the food and beverage industry. Emerging from laboratory product-tests, it has evolved into a corporate testing service that measures the consumer reactions to products/concepts using a wide range of analyses/metrics. We propose that CR transform itself in light of accelerated knowledge expansion, mounting global, and local economic pressure on corporations and changing consumer needs. The transformation moves from its traditional testing into creating profoundly new knowledge of the product and understanding of the corporation's current and future customers. CR's tasks will involve: contributing/expanding science, applying open innovation principles, and driving consumer-centric innovation. We identify seven paradigm shifts that will change CR, namely: a different way of working—from testing to open sourcing; from good corporate citizen to change leader; open new product development (NPD) process; new management roles/cultures; universities and industry, new education curricula, and cooperation; from battle over control to sustainable sharing is winning model (SiW); and the central role of design. This integrative, innovative CR requires the implementation of three recommendations: start the change process now, fine-tune along the way; create a new marketing/CR department; and educate and professionalize. These recommendations provide the blueprint for jump-starting the process and call for immediate actions to deal with the severity of the crises facing the CR profession.

The role of public health in climate change and sustainability: is the UK public health community’s response adequate?

Climate change is the greatest public health disaster facing us today. Sucharita Yarlagadda, Premila Webster and Elizabeth Haworth from the University of Oxford suggest that only with firm and decisive action now can we hope to avert or mitigate an impending public health catastrophe1 While there is a scientific consensus that the global climate is changing, with increasing climate variability and extremes, rising temperatures and sea levels and increased frequency of natural disasters which impact on human health,2,3,4 against a backdrop of persistent world economic pressures, the role of the specialty of public health in responding to environmental and climate change is not clear and needs to be defined. Many governments, including those of the UK have committed to tackling climate change through adaptation and mitigation and carbon abatement measures. The Climate Change Act 2008 sets a legally binding target for reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions by at least 34% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050, using the 1990 baseline.5 The NHS has shown leadership in this area through the Good Corporate Citizenship model,6 the NHS carbon reduction strategy7 and the NHS Sustainable Development Unit's route map for sustainable health.8 These aim to, at least, meet government targets and demonstrate early success with a 10% reduction of the 2007 NHS carbon footprint by 2015. Since April 2010, a new mandatory emissions trading scheme has come into force, requiring increased efforts by NHS organizations to meet government carbon targets.9 Alongside this is growing evidence of substantial financial and health benefits of low carbon business models in response to climate change and sustainability.6,10 As recommended by the Lancet and University College London a new Public Health movement is needed.4 The time to act is now. However, there still seems to be a huge gap between knowledge/ evidence and coordinated public health action. To clarify the public health role, a UK-wide internet based survey of public health departments (service public health, academic public health and the health protection units) was conducted in April 2010. It sought to allow an assessment of climate change as a public health problem, identify actions and innovations already taken, and to promote a coordinated public health response. The preliminary results were presented at the 2010 Faculty of Public Health Conference. The response rate of 32% overall was disappointing, despite a reminder. Over 90% of this considerable UK public health workforce who responded agreed that climate change is an important health problem requiring public health action. Many respondents highlighted the need for a stronger NHS mandate and prioritisation, such as through the NHS operational framework. Most believed that further training and development is essential for effective action, but the urgency is sidelined by current restriction of financial resources to deal with this problem. Although the public health workforce believes that action is needed and there is a public health strategy11 and encouraging response by primary care trusts12 neither an overarching plan nor effective coordination exists. What is good for the planet is also good for health and policies and structural drivers to mitigate and adapt to climate change would have a large positive effect on population health, for example the health co-benefits of walking or cycling to work that both reduce emissions and improve health and wellbeing.13 Emergency plans must be improved, kept up to date and include an effective service response to unpredictable weather patterns because of climate associated disasters and problems. These include floods and related water contamination incidents, droughts, heat waves, food shortages, as well as the problem of emerging diseases such as arthropod-borne infections and other environmentally linked diseases such as skin cancers and cataracts due to reduction/loss of the ozone layer. …

Editorial: Australian Chemistry under the Spotlight

Editorial: Australian Chemistry under the Spotlight

Business Model Sustainability in Book Publishing

In an earlier paper (Tian and Martin in Publ Res Q 27(3):230–246, 2011) we identified ongoing developments in business models for book publishing consequent upon changes in such areas as those of organizational structure and culture, technology, publishing and the marketplace. However, it was already clear that book publishing, like every other industry would have to face up to the incipient challenges posed by the growing global phenomena of organizational sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Clearly this would require a response of a different order than before, not least in view of the greatly expanded range of potential factors involved. Our treatment of sustainability addresses two main themes: sustainability in the context of global concerns about resource depletion and destruction of the biosphere, and organizational sustainability in the at times adversarial relationship between profit seeking and good corporate citizenship. This paper begins with a look at some of the key terminology around sustainability in order to reinforce its relevance and applicability to the publishing industry. This necessarily limited treatment is confined to four key concepts namely: corporate sustainability, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance and corporate measurement and reporting. We then present some evidence for industry response to the principles and practical challenges of sustainability and relate these to implications for the design of appropriate business models. Finally we model the ongoing process of business model innovation for sustainability in book publishing.

Media governance and corporate social responsibility of media organizations: an international comparison

Media companies are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of their reputation. In order to legitimate themselves, they are starting to present themselves as ‘good corporate citizens’ by engaging in media governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. The communication of those activities is crucial for the building of reputation. However, to date, no comprehensive studies have been conducted to evaluate the communication of media governance and CSR activities of media organizations. This study aims to fill this gap and examined websites and reports of selected media organizations in Germany, Italy, France, Austria, and Switzerland. Results indicate that public service media organizations communicate proportionally more on media governance than private media organizations, which may be due to the fact that public service media organizations feel more accountable to the public as they have a public service obligation. Concerning the communication of their CSR activities, media organizations focus on society‐oriented measures.

Public relations functions: Perspective from a Japanese corporation

This paper examines public relations (PR) functions in a large Japanese corporation as well as the PR role in the management function. The corporation under study is Kao Corporation, which is one of the largest Japanese consumer and industrial goods manufacturers. Information was collected from interviewing a PR manager of Kao Corporation. Evidence suggests that Kao's PR department functions more or less like an advertising department. Press releases are placed in the media as paid advertisements. Kao's PR uses a third-party endorsement to establish a new product's credibility. The company has a participative corporate culture that allows the PR director to work closely with the top management. The idea of collaborative efforts between departments and the practice of being a socially responsible company suggest that Kao's PR department uses a combination of communication models and Japanese management styles to project a good corporate citizen image.

Unternehmen und beschäftigungspolitische Verantwortung – eine historisch-genetische Annäherung / Corporate Responsibility and Employment: An Historical-Genetic Approach

Zusammenfassung Wenn es zum Arbeitsplatzabbau oder zur Arbeitsplatzverlagerung bei Großunternehmen kommt, werden zumeist erbitterte Moraldebatten in der Öffentlichkeit geführt. Daher ist es das Ziel dieses Beitrages, das Verhältnis der verschiedenen Verantwortungsträger - Individuen, Unternehmen und /oder Staat - zueinander auszuloten. Es wird eine historisch-genetische Vorgehensweise gewählt, um die für die Debatte relevanten ethischen Kategorien aus dem historischen Kontext verständlich zu machen. Darauf aufbauend wird nach der Anschlussfähigkeit dieser Überlegungen an moderne wirtschaftsethische Ansätze gefragt. Es erweist sich, dass die Corporate-Responsible-und Corporate-Citizenship-Ansätze mit der hier entwickelten Position nicht kompatibel sind, da aus der Sicht eines methodischen und normativen Individualismus letztlich ungeklärt bleibt, warum und unter welchen Bedingungen ein aus privaten Interessen errichtetes Unternehmen zu einer „quasi öffentliche Institution“ oder einem Good Citizen werden sollte. Vielmehr kann die hier gewählte historisch-genetische Vorgehensweise den institutionenethischen Ansatz weiter fundieren, um die Verantwortlichkeiten der Verantwortungsträger angemessen zu bestimmen und abzugrenzen.

Should We Really Care if Our Employees are Happy or Satisfied?

Should We Really Care if Our Employees are Happy or Satisfied? It is almost counterintuitive to think that a company should not care about whether its employees are happy. But does all the time and energy that companies spend measuring employee satisfaction and engagement really lead to higher levels of productivity, customer service and employee retention. Companies in the hospitality industry have long stated that people are their most precious resource. Is this done so that employers can be good corporate citizens who improve working conditions for their employees and thus the quality of life for their employees? Or is it done to make a profit. One approach is a very positive and proactive attitude towards HR while the other attitude could be called skeptical or reactive. However if we are honest, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The Impact of Fulfilling Corporate Social Responsibility on Firm Performance — A Stakeholder‘s Approach

This study aimed to empirically explore how a firm's fulfilling corporate social responsibility (CSR) would impact on firm performance. For this research purpose, a CSR index (CSRI), based on the ideas of socially responsible investment (SRI) and corporate contributions to its stakeholders, was constructed to measure the degree that a firm fulfilled its CSR. The data were sampled from the publicly listed firms on Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) and from the database of Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ ) for the time period of 2004–2009. With the method of regression analysis, the findings revealed that fulfilling CSR had a significantly positive impact on firm performance. The implication suggested that a firm could serve as a good corporate citizen, while in the meantime showing an exceptional firm performance.

Strategic Sustainability of Investment and Business - Case of Commercial Bank Serbia

Today the market of sustainable investment is rapidly growing. Environment and ethic issues, corporate social responsibility, as well as sustainable development becoming more significant among the increasing number of institutional and private investors. This trend is emphasized by environmental legislation and policies, national, European and international. An increasing number of institutions are using sustainability aspects in their investment criteria.Corporations are increasingly expected by shareholders, business partners and all other stakeholders to improve competitive advantage by demonstrating economic progress while maintaining environmental care and responsibility. Corporate front-runners have realized the value of potential of meeting and sharing these expectations proactively and by creating innovative and sustainable solutions in their marketplace.This practice leads to a very difficult and new positioning of environmental issues. In combination with social and economic issues, environmental responsibility is becoming an intrinsic part of a corporate strategy toward sustainability. Environmental and social issues are transferred from a matter of risk an additional cost into opportunities and the creation of value for the company and it stakeholders. Sustainable investments are driven to enterprises, which are entering to new phase of production and management. Asset management companies and individuals are today specializing in the implementation of sustainability driven investment strategies for private and institutional investors. Nowadays market is characterized by growing interest for the issue of the sustainability. Concerns about some non-core issues become more and more relevant in creation of the business strategy. Some of the most important are: set of environmental issues, from the air pollution to problems of endangered species in Arctic; ethic standards which become rather formal then matters of the sense for the justice and fair practices. Those issues means created and caused mushrooming of the filed of corporate responsibility. Indeed, today responsibility of the company is not just increasing the value for the shareholders – modern companies in the most developed countries looks like coalitions of the different stakeholders which tries to maximize the goals of the broad set of participants. Sustainable development is the result of the shifting the focus or rather blurring the simple maximization of the profit in the long-run. Web sites of the corporation are rather about good corporate citizens and philanthropic actions then increasing the value of the owners, they are rather about third generation of the human rights then increasing the productivity or rather about endangered mammals then high profits. Those trends are followed by the governments' actions – from the legislative on environmental issues toward work of different agencies and offers of the political parties. In addition, it is not bounded by national states; it is in fact, regional and international issue. Many global institutions, which are not multinational companies deals with abovementioned issues. On the other side, issues of sustainability are more and more important in everyday calculations and projections. Net present value, on of the basic concepts is enhanced by using the effects of the investment on the community rather then effects on the company.The result of the prevailing tendencies of the growing importance of the social aspect of doing business is shifting of expectations. Shareholders and other relevant stakeholders expect managing of the companies focused on the improvement of comparative position on the global or national market by respecting the environment concerns of the global or national audience. Progress in the terms of the high yield had been changed for the yields for the shareholders, but with clear vision of the sustainability of accumulated wealth for the next generations. However, as well as all the bridging the gaps in human history, care for the environment and human capital is not result of the discovering the philanthropic elements in the boards of managers and or result of the high moral of investors – it is rather awareness that only by the respect of expectations of the customers company can survive and continue harvesting. Customers demands are combination of the good products & services with reasonable prices, with few layers of the environment, ethics and pathetic.

Influence of Corporate Citizenship on Employee Job Attitudes

The study is an investigation of the influence of an organization’s citizenship practices on its employees, in the Indian context. The major objective of the research is to explore and empirically investigate whether the perception of being a responsible company leads to increased employee commitment. Primary data for the study was collected through a web-based questionnaire survey of a cross-sectional sample of business executives working in the Indian service industry. The results of the regression analyses show that the employee perception of corporate citizenship has a positive and significant influence on an employee’s affective commitment and the relationship is mediated by organizational identification. Providing empirical support to the social identity theory, the study indicates that employees identify more with a company when they believe it to be a good corporate citizen and this identification translates into increased commitment. This study thus provides insights into the employee outcomes that organizations can hope to achieve from their citizenship investments.