Notion Of Corporate Social Responsibility Research Articles

Codes of Conduct as Private Legal Transplant: The Case of European Oil MNEs

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) represents a dynamic area that cuts across a multitude of disciplines and has increasingly attracted the of business schools, behavioural departments, legal scholars, non-governmental organisations and — of course — multinational enterprises (MNEs). Rather than disputing the goodness or badness of CSR, this paper combines the notion of CSR as a parallel regime of private governance with the widely known theory of legal transplant, in order to underline the role of Codes of Conduct as proxies of unilateral legal dissemination and homogenisation. By using as example the self-regulations produced by four European extractive MNEs (Eni S.pA., Total S.A., Repsol YPF and British Petroleum), the article analyses the mechanisms and spaces of circulation, along with the content of the Codes and the role that they play in disseminating EU law beyond its formal boundaries. Exposed to the legal and political relevance of MNEs, the reader is confronted with a global framework characterised by increased regime complexity, the continuous dedefinition of internal and external boundaries, inescapable paradoxes, deep inconsistencies and an unexpressed potential. In this light, the recognition of the existing theoretical weaknesses and of the underlying problematics represents a first and fundamental step towards the production of innovative and alternative legal scenarios.

The Icelandic Banking Crisis: A Reason to Rethink CSR?

In the fall of 2008, the three largest banks in Iceland collapsed, with severe and lasting consequences for the Icelandic economy. This article discusses the ‘Icelandic banking crisis’ in relation to the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It explores some conceptual arguments for the position that the Icelandic banking crisis illustrates the broad problem of the indeterminacy of the scope and content of the duties that CSR is supposed to address. In particular, it is suggested that the way the banks in question conceived of CSR, i.e. largely in terms of strategic philanthropy, was gravely inadequate. It concludes by proposing that the case of the Icelandic banking crisis gives us a reason to rethink CSR.

An Institution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Multi-National Corporations (MNCs): Form and Implications

This article investigates corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an institution within UK multi-national corporations (MNCs). In the context of the literature on the institutionalization of CSR and on critical CSR, it presents two main findings. First, it contributes to the CSR mainstream literature by confirming that CSR has not only become institutionalized in society but that a form of this institution is also present within MNCs. Secondly, it contributes to the critical CSR literature by suggesting that unlike broader notions of CSR shared between multiple stakeholders, MNCs practise a form of CSR that undermines the broader stakeholder concept. By increasingly focusing on strategic forms of CSR activity, MNCs are moving away from a societal understanding of CSR that focuses on redressing the impacts of their operations through stakeholder concerns, back to any activity that supports traditional business imperatives. The implications of this shift are considered using institutional theory to evaluate macro-institutional pressures for CSR activity and the agency of powerful incumbents in the contested field of CSR.

Corporate Social Responsibility and institutional theory: new perspectives on private governance

*Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a pervasive topic in the business literature, but has largely neglected the role of institutions. This introductory article to the Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review examines the potential contributions of institutional theory to understanding CSR as a mode of governance. This perspective suggests going beyond grounding CSR in the voluntary behaviour of companies, and understanding the larger historical and political determinants of whether and in what forms corporations take on social responsibilities. Historically, the prevailing notion of CSR emerged through the defeat of more institutionalized forms of social solidarity in liberal market economies. Meanwhile, CSR is more tightly linked to formal institutions of stakeholder participation or state intervention in other advanced economies. The tensions between business-driven and multi-stakeholder forms of CSR extend to the transnational level, where the form and meaning of CSR remain highly contested. CSR research and practice thus rest on a basic paradox between a liberal notion of voluntary engagement and a contrary implication of socially binding responsibilities. Institutional theory seems to be a promising avenue to explore how the boundaries between business and society are constructed in different ways, and improve our understanding of the effectiveness of CSR within the wider institutional field of economic governance.

Corporations and NGOs: When Accountability Leads to Co-optation

Interactions between corporations and nonprofits are on the rise, frequently driven by a corporate interest in establishing credentials for corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this article, we show how increasing demands for accountability directed at both businesses and NGOs can have the unintended effect of compromising the autonomy of nonprofits and fostering their co-optation. Greater scrutiny of NGO spending driven by self-appointed watchdogs of the nonprofit sector and a prevalence of strategic notions of CSR advanced by corporate actors weaken the ability of civil society actors to change the business practices of their partners in the commercial sector. To counter this trend, we argue that corporations should embrace a political notion of CSR and should actively encourage NGOs to strengthen “downward accountability” mechanisms, even if this creates more tensions in corporate–NGO partnerships. Rather than seeing NGOs as tools in a competition for a comparative advantage in the market place, corporations should actively support NGO independence and critical capacity.

Banging on open doors? Stakeholder dialogue and the challenge of business engagement for UK NGOs

In recent years, increased pressure from civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has heightened the need for companies to engage with their critics. As the notion of corporate social responsibility has come to the fore in the business world, there has been a rapid expansion in the commitment to stakeholder engagement and dialogue. The changing relationship between NGOs and businesses is examined by focusing upon the impact of stakeholder dialogue processes on these relationships in the United Kingdom. The use of new social movement theory in identifying NGOs as key ‘secondary’ stakeholders is highlighted. Further application of new social movement research can provide key insights into the pressures of institutionalisation that may face groups engaging in dialogue. Empirical data on stakeholder dialogue is utilised and comparisons are made with the experiences of European environmental movements during the 1980s and 1990s. The potential for institutionalisation that accompanies opportunities for engagement is considered, as are the mechanisms through which NGOs seek to contain this threat.

Value Creation Model through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a modern mechanism of accountability in the business world andcompetitive era. The notion of CSR is established on the reciprocal dependence between a organization andsociety, as well as the indicators that influence this relationship. Therefore, corporate social responsibility viadesign the elements of organization such as strategy, resource and process, business propositions, andstakeholder interactions create value for corporations and society and also can represent an excellence image inboth internal and external environment through enhancing accountability for society.

Managing corruption risks

ABSTRACT This article investigates the emerging engagement of private actors and specifically Western corporations in international anti-corruption, drawing on Foucauldian studies of governmentality. It explores this engagement as governing practices that have emanated quite independently from the inter-state system commonly understood to be at the core of the anti-corruption regime. It demonstrates how corporate anti-corruption ties in with a relatively new way of perceiving corruption. In this framing, anti-corruption comes out as risk management, which is latched on to notions of corporate social responsibility and business ethics. Moreover, the constitution of corruption risk relates to the rise of new actors and networks engaged in a wider business of anti-corruption, including commercial and hybrid actors that supply corporations with managerial instruments, benchmarks for best practice, rankings, and information and surveillance systems. This facilitates the enrollment of corporations into the anti-corruption cause while cultivating their competitiveness aspirations. The article offers a novel perspective on international anti-corruption and the position of business herein, and in a wider sense, it also contributes discussions about the role of private actors and their micro practices in global governance.

The role of corporate citizenship values in promoting corporate social performance: towards a conceptual model and a research agenda

Performance of corporations, under the stakeholder approach, is not measured in financial terms only; modern corporations have significant responsibilities beyond those to their shareholders. A value‐laden concept such as sustainable construction, which emerges from a multi‐stakeholder perspective, involves participation of the whole supply chain and incorporates the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Creating sustainable habitats has societal as well as economic implications. While the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry is promoting CSR as a business contribution to sustainable development, many have argued that corporate citizenship takes shape at the point of government failure in the facilitation of citizen’s rights. Recent research demonstrates varying degrees of corporate social performance (CSP) in different sectors and there are differing relationships between CSP and innovation in the real estate and construction sectors. A conceptual model linking corporate citizenship values (CCV) and CSP through corporate behaviour (BCORP) from a CSR and stakeholder theory perspective is developed. The proposed model presents avenues for future research and represents a significant first step towards modelling the important link between CCV and CSP.

CSR and the “undeserving”: a role for the state, civil society and business?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the conceptual lens of corporate social responsibility (CSR), business and civil society can be used to explore “less popular causes” (in this case, a community‐based public sector empirical study of initiatives with offenders) and, in particular, respond to the question used by Walzer “In which society can lives be best led?”Design/methodology/approachThis is a formative and summative evaluation study of a National Offender Management “community payback” offender scheme based in the UK using a mixed method, predominantly qualitative approach that integrates theory and practice.FindingsThe paper finds that citizenship actions of front‐line public sector employees, working in partnership with other agencies in the community, embody the essence of Walzer's notion of CSR and civil society by going beyond the call of duty to provide additional training and moral support for the community offenders.Originality/valueThe paper contributes towards an understanding of how CSR and civil society debates can inform wider aspects of public policy and business through its application to areas of society that are perceived to be “challenging” and “undeserving”.

Global Corporate Social Responsibility, Human Rights and Law: An Interactive Regulatory Perspective on the Voluntary-Mandatory Dichotomy

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often understood as an inherently voluntary corporate endeavour that inhabits the area stretching ‘beyond compliance’ with law. However, a growing number of writers and practitioners deem this understanding of CSR inaccurate and unproductive. In this article, the notion of CSR as ‘beyond compliance’ is questioned on logical, descriptive and normative grounds; once freed from its conceptual straitjacket, CSR research is encouraged to look more deeply into the mutual interaction between corporate voluntarism and law. When it comes to the regulation of CSR the key notion is that of discretion not voluntarism: regulating CSR is not about replacing voluntarism with hard law, but about guiding discretion through law in such a way that it neither overrides discretion nor leaves it untouched. For such purposes lawmakers employ various strategies to summon the regulatory potential of companies and their stakeholders. When it comes to CSR's impacts on law, effects are discernible at various stages, from law-making to law-specification to law-enforcement; responsible business practices contain benchmarks of due diligence and may enhance local capacities in host countries. Following illustrations and analysis of such interactions, CSR is characterised not merely as ‘self-regulation’ but as an emerging norm, resulting from a bottom-up process, that interacts with legal systems in both home and host countries. Furthermore this article identifies two legal baselines key to the business and human rights area: the ‘corporate baseline’, regarding the responsibility of a parent company for its affiliates' operations where human rights abuses take place, and the ‘governance baseline’, regarding the legal protections in the host country available to rightholders. In the context discussed herein, the fact that both of these baselines have barely been sketched renders the characterisation of CSR as a matter of ‘beyond compliance’ with law problematic. Instead CSR should be analysed for its role in the legal institutionalisation of the baseline. The specific context of respecting human rights in developing countries throughout the operation of large corporate networks such as multinational enterprises (MNEs) requires an attuned concept of CSR and an informed understanding of CSR's relation to law.

Enlightened Shareholder Value, Social Responsibility, and the Redefinition of Corporate Purpose Without Law

Enlightened shareholder value (ESV) is the idea that corporations should pursue shareholder wealth with a long-run orientation that seeks sustainable growth and profits based on responsible attention to the full range of relevant stakeholder interests. This approach to management contrasts with a short-term focus on current share price even when that objective entails immediate or longer-term negative effects on nonshareholders. The combination of a long-run, sustainable conception of value coupled with acknowledgement of the importance of stakeholder considerations for achievement of that goal resonates with notions of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this paper I consider whether market pressures might generate a version of ESV that could have the effect of shifting US transnational corporations away from narrowly focused shareholder primacy. The model I explore here is based on corporate risk management practices. Activities – such as labor and environmental policies – that reduce operating expenses in the short-term may present litigation and reputational risks because of the threat of public exposure, especially by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. The result may be significant litigation and settlements costs, as well as negative reputational effects in product, labor, and capital markets. Extra-legal pressures rather than new legal mandates could thereby redefine management responsibility and corporate purpose, and, because concerned private actors apply the pressure, public opinion about socially acceptable behavior drives management's rethinking of its role. The result may be a richer, more socially-oriented notion of the corporate objective, shaped by public opinion rather than legal intervention. Having presented this model, I then suggest that some caveats are in order. It is highly doubtful that private actors alone can generate the amount of information needed to hold transnational corporations fully accountable for their behavior. And, even when misdeeds are exposed and pressure brought to bear, it is not clear that corporations necessarily deal fully with the problems they have created. Public relations and reputational recovery may be the real objective. Finally, and most importantly, this approach to CSR is driven by bottom-line considerations. ESV is still about shareholder value after all, and this objective imposes a limit on how far corporations are likely to be willing to go. To the extent this is true, critics of transnational corporations should not expect that a commitment to shareholder value – even if enlightened – will necessarily generate the measure of socially responsible behavior that they believe to be appropriate. There may still be a role for law.

Environmental policy, government, and the market

Environmental policy is made in a context of both market failure and government failure. On the one hand, leaving environmental protection to the free market, relying on notions of corporate social responsibility and altruistic consumer and shareholder preferences, will not deliver optimal results. On the other hand, nationalizing the delivery of environmental protection is likely to fail because nation states rarely have the depth and quality of information required to instruct all the relevant agents to make appropriate decisions. Thus, as for many areas of policy, appropriate models of environmental intervention will lie between these two extremes. While it is impossible to specify general rules concerning the precise form of intervention, in part because the type of intervention depends upon value judgements, this paper sets out some of the considerations that are particular to environmental policy, and explores several principles for policy design, including information, coordination, and principal-agent problems, with a particular focus on the international context.

Working with Corporate Social Responsibility in Brazilian Companies: The Role of Managers’ Values in the Maintenance of CSR Cultures

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the duty of management to consider and respond to issues beyond the organization’s economic and legal requirements in line with social and environmental values. However, ‘management’ is constituted by real people responsible for routine decisions and formulation and implementation of policies. It can be said therefore that the ethical ideals and beliefs of these individuals – in particular their personal values – play an important role in their decisions. It is contended in this article that the personal values of managers may contribute to the creation and maintenance of ‘CSR cultures’ in their organizations; that is, organizational cultures focused on ensuring environmental and social sustainability. Based on an exploratory study carried out in Brazil in 2008, this article explores the perceptions of five CSR managers in relation to the influence of their personal values on their work. The first part discusses the notion of CSR within the context of Brazilian society, the second provides a brief literature review on the link between values and organizational cultures and the third explores the perceptions of the participating managers, identifying the main thematic patterns that emerged in the study.

Consumers’ responses to CSR activities: The linkage between increased awareness and purchase intention

The body of research showing the positive effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on consumer behavior has been growing steadily. However, previous studies have not characterized corporate behaviors in terms of their perception by consumers as significant CSR and researchers have paid little attention to consumers’ understanding of this notion of CSR. The present study explores the relationship between consumer awareness of CSR activities and their purchase intentions. This study employs a questionnaire survey involving Korean consumers. For the analysis, measurement scales for CSR activities and consumers’ purchase intention scales are respectively developed. From the results it is found that there is a significant positive relationship between these two parameters. This study finds out as CSR activities corporate social contribution and local community contribution affect consumers’ purchase intention while corporate environmental protection and contribution have no effects on consumers’ purchase intention.

Reframing the Mandatory Versus Voluntary Debate in Advancing Labor, Environmental and Human Rights Protection

The structure of this paper is as follows. First, I analyze what is meant by corporate social responsibility and the nature of the evils that proponents of corporate social responsibility seek to address. Second, I hypothesize the nature of the potential governance arrangements that can be constructed to deal with these concerns. I argue that those governance arrangements are global and that a refined understanding of the changing nature of the state in the contemporary world can help illustrate the precise way in which the notion of global governance should be conceived. To understand the precise configurations for these governance arrangements, I draw from the emerging field of global administrative law. In this context, I argue for a more balanced assessment of the relative contributions of state and non-state actors to the emerging institutional frameworks surrounding issues of corporate social responsibility. Based on this analysis, I suggest that the notion of corporate social responsibility as used in relation to efforts to curtail labor, environmental, and human rights abuses is no longer meaningful and is of little utility in developing a program of work designed to reduce the incidence of such conduct globally.

Towards a More Business-Oriented Definition of Corporate Social Responsibility: Discussing the Core Controversies of a Well-Established Concept

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been controversially discussed for over 50 years. Consequently, a wide variety of definitions and understandings of CSR have been developed throughout the decades. That has made it increasingly hard, or not to say impossible, to agree on a common perception of CSR. Concerning the various notions of CSR, four core controversies can be identified which revolve around certain elements of CSR: First of all, there is the underlying question if CSR is the business of business or if it is none of its business as Friedman has famously argued. Second, should CSR contain legal obligations or is it a purely voluntary concept and, thus, ethical in nature? Strongly connected to that is the third controversy on whether CSR should be self-serving or if it has to be purely altruistic. Finally, there is widespread disagreement on the scope of CSR. Does it have a local, community-oriented focus or should it address concerns of a wider geographical scope? These controversies are analyzed and discussed here with the aim of developing a definition of CSR that does not remain confined to the academic world.

Corporate social responsibility in china: an analysis of domestic and foreign retailers' sustainability dimensions

AbstractIn the past decade, a sizeable body of literature has built up on the concept and characteristics of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Western countries, where it has also been referred to as sustainability. More recently, attention has grown for CSR in emerging countries. Remarkably, China has hardly been studied so far. This paper aims to help fill this gap by considering, against this background, the CSR notion in China, through an exploration of a small sample of large retailers in China, both Chinese and non‐Chinese companies. The analysis of CSR/sustainability dimensions, as communicated by these large retailers in both the Chinese and the English language, shows substantial differences between the Chinese and international contexts. Interestingly, the largest divergence can be found for international retailers between their Chinese and corporate attention for CSR (so home versus host settings), most notably in the case of Carrefour, and to a lesser extent Wal‐Mart. In the Chinese context, there are differences between the Chinese and international retailers as well (so domestic versus foreign firms), with the former reporting more on economic dimensions, including philanthropy, and the latter more on product responsibility – contentious labour issues and the environment receive relatively limited attention in both groups in China. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for research and practice. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

A Three Country Comparative Analysis of Managerial CSR Perspectives: Insights From Lebanon, Syria and Jordan

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that has acquired a new resonance in the global economy. With the advent of globalization, managers in different contexts have been exposed to the notion of CSR and are being pressured to adopt CSR initiatives. Yet, in view of vastly differing national cultures and institutional realities, mixed orientations to CSR continue to be salient in different contexts, oscillating between the classical perspective which considers CSR as a burden on competitiveness and the modern perspective that views CSR as instrumental for business success. Capitalizing on the two-dimensional CSR model developed by Quazi and O’Brien (Journal of Business Ethics 25, 33–51, 2000), this article assesses managerial perspectives towards CSR in three neighboring Middle Eastern countries (Lebanon, Syria and Jordan) through an empirical study involving 333 managers. The findings lend support to the Quazi and O’Brien model (2000), suggesting some commonalities in CSR orientations as well as minor divergences. The findings are discussed and cross-cultural implications drawn accordingly.

Multi-Stakeholders Approach to Corporate Governance and Labor Law: A Note on Corporate Social Responsibility

Although workplace safety and health issues run comparatively low on list of economic and societal priorities that dominate new century, they remain a major concern for all those researchers - in fields of law, economics and theory of organization - who study labor regulations, access to employment or day-today management of corporate organization. The lifting of national barriers and, subsequently, of domestic protectionism, which, for better or for worse, regulated local markets, is one of many consequences of globalization. As a result, regulatory and disciplinary powers of respective national legal systems of major industrialized countries fall short within process of establishing minimal and uniform standards of protection in interest of a growing mass of employees. Competition, indeed, is now taking place on what is known as of rules. Increasingly, companies move their operations outside confines of their state of origin and re-locate in countries where less stringent rules bring down production costs, primarily through access to cheap labor, in that race to laxity which has been, for quite some time now, subject of a number of papers in Law & Economics. Well aware that globalization calls for policies that cannot remain confined to Europe, Commission and European Parliament have extended their scrutiny beyond specific issue of bilateral relationships between capital and labor. The bid is now to bolster Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), intended as a means to pursuing same objectives by a two-pronged approach. At present notion of Corporate Social Responsibility has narrowed down to a mere issue of corporate governance. What is at risk is crucial relation between politics and economy - or, between the market and regulations - and what is at stake is principle of primacy of politics, which has long since been recognized as cornerstone of modern democracy. Considering limited effects of State regulations, this principle may only be preserved by a careful balance between legal rules - flowing from different sources or from accords but, in any event, subject to enforcement by appropriate authority vested to that effect - and commitments unilaterally undertaken by enterprises on a strictly voluntary basis and typically expressed in codes of ethics of various contents and inspirations.