Political Corporate Social Responsibility Research Articles

Exploring the evolving motives underlying corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in developing countries: the case of “political CSR” reporting

PurposeThis paper seeks to investigate to what extent (and why) CSR reporting in developing countries reflect instrumental and/or “political CSR” motivations and the types of organisational legitimacy sought in these circumstances.Design/methodology/approachWe adopt a theoretical framework based on neo-institutional theory, “political CSR” framework and types of organisational legitimacy. This interpretive research is set in the Egyptian context post-2011 revolution. We first carry out a content analysis of web disclosures for 40 banks in 2013 and 2016 to ascertain the nature of CSR activities and any changes over time. Second, we draw on 21 interviews to tease out the implications of the change in societal expectations due to the revolution and to deepen our understanding of the organisational motivations underlying CSR reporting.FindingsFollowing the 2011 revolution, the banks’ CSR reporting practices have gradually shifted from a largely instrumental “business-case” perspective towards a more substantive recognition of a wider set of societal challenges consistent with a political CSR perspective. Overall, the maintaining/gaining of legitimacy is gradually bound to the communication of accounts about the multi-faceted socially valued consequences or structures performed by banks. Our interview data shows that participants reflected on the legitimation challenges brought by the revolution and the limits of transactional strategies involving traditional constituents, with a preference for pursuing consequential and structural forms of moral legitimacy.Research limitations/implicationsThis study demonstrates a constructive shift by businesses towards engaging with the new social rules in response to sociopolitical changes and the need to achieve moral legitimacy. Hence, policymakers and stakeholders could consider engaging with different economic sectors to foster more transparent, accountable, and impactful CSR practices.Originality/valueWe highlight the implications of Scherer and Palazzo’s political CSR approach for accountability and CSR reporting. CSR reporting in some developing countries has typically been seen as peripheral or a symbolic exercise primarily concerned with placating stakeholders and/or promoting shareholders’ interests. We suggest that researchers need to be instead attuned to the possibility of a blend of instrumental and normative motivations.

Political Connections and CSR Disclosures in Indonesia

This research seeks to provide evidence about how political connections, proxied by government ownership and the existence of politically connected board members, affect the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in Indonesian listed companies. This research uses the legitimacy theory as a basis for explaining management's motivation for disclosing its CSR. The sample consists of 131 firm-year observations from 38 non-financial public companies that published sustainability reports from 2013 to 2017. We measured the CSR disclosures using a disclosure checklist on the sustainability reports. We subsequently processed the data using a random effect (RE) linear regression. The result shows that CSR disclosures were greater in government-owned companies but lower in companies that have politically connected board members. The results support the legitimacy theory that the government intends to demonstrate legitimate national economic and political conditions by showing that government-owned companies are sustainable. However, CSR disclosures seem to have a substitutive relationship with the existence of politically connected board members, since those political connections may protect the company from public pressure and/or the risk of litigation, reducing the need for CSR disclosures. This research provides evidence that different types of political connections may have different impacts on corporate disclosures.

Navigating Between the Plots: A Narratological and Ethical Analysis of Business-Related Conspiracy Theories (BrCTs)

This paper introduces the concept of business-related conspiracy theories (BrCTs). Drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethics and undertaking a narratological and ethical analysis of 28 BrCTs found online, I emphasize that BrCTs are narratives with structures rooted in other latent macro- and meta-narratives, including centuries-old myths. In particular, I reconstruct the fictional world (diegesis) of BrCTs – one in which CSR and social contracts have failed – before identifying eight different types of actors as which people can morally situate themselves in their relationships with business. Finally, I elaborate on the actors’ performances and their use of external and legitimate forces to end the story. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential future research to help combat BrCTs, as well as a call for the critical study of political CSR.

How do perceived CPA and political CSR interact in their relationships with citizens’ trust in companies?

PurposeIn the context of an industrial complex where corporate political activity (CPA) and political corporate social responsibility (political CSR) are not related, this study aims to investigate the possible relationship between citizens’ perceptions of these two non-market strategies and residents’ trust in companies located in the industrial complex.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 740 citizens living near a petrochemical complex in Tarragona (Spain). The results were analysed using structural equation modelling.FindingsBased on institutional theory, the key findings of the study are that CPA and political CSR are differently related to citizens’ trust in companies. The results also verify that the negative relationship (between CPA and trust) outweighs the positive one (between political CSR and trust).Practical implicationsThe lack of fit between political CSR and CPA in the complex analysed suggests that firms are neglecting approaches shared by these non-market strategies, and thus wasting a huge opportunity to improve citizens’ trust in and acceptance of the complex firms. Moreover, the ethical dimension should always be present when these firms take on political responsibilities.Originality/valueTo date, CPA and political CSR have largely been dealt with separately in the literature. This study attempted to bridge this gap by examining a situation where there is no strategic relationship between CPA and political CSR to analyse, from the perspective of citizens’ perceptions, the relationship each strategy has with the important academic concept of citizens’ trust in companies.

Political connections and corporate social responsibility: Political incentives in China

AbstractTo explore the motivations underpinning corporate social responsibility (CSR) decisions in China, a country characterized by extensive government intervention, this paper investigates whether building a good relationship with the government is a political incentive that is driving firms to conduct CSR by examining the effects of political connections on the latter. Our results indicate that politically connected firms exhibit better CSR. However, the effect is considerably more significant for firms with existing political relationships. Additionally, findings show that the effect is more prominent in firms for which political connections are more valuable, namely, non‐state‐owned enterprises, small firms, and firms operating in less market‐oriented cities, indicating that CSR can serve as a differentiation strategy to compete against other bidders. Dividing CSR activities into economic, environmental and social aspects, we find that the social‐based activities are more likely to be driven by political motivations. By categorizing CSR and political connections, this paper not only expands the scope of political CSR and renders the generated results that have been mixed together more distinguishable, but also provides a more precise understanding of the fundamental drivers of CSR in China from the perspective of resource exchange.

Firm-level indicators of instrumental and political CSR processes – A multiple case study

Recent studies have been increasingly distinguishing between instrumental and political approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, few studies have explored the firm-level processes generating these types of CSR engagements. Using Basu and Palazzo’s (2008) proposition to model CSR as a process of sensemaking, we suggest that multinational enterprises use different processes in developing capabilities around instrumental and political CSR. Our qualitative multiple case–study analysis is based on data from 42 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 27 senior managers from British American Tobacco, Nestlé, and Hewlett Packard. Our findings from the three cases indicate that instrumental and political CSR are characterised by different sensemaking processes. We also find evidence for overlapping of processes between instrumental and political CSR.

S(t)imulating resistance: Corporate responses to the Trump presidency

This article contributes to the emergent field of corporate activism by exploring how corporate advertising voices, or is interpreted by the media as voicing, Trump resistance – that is, sympathy with anti-Trump protests and dismay at the politics of the White House incumbent. In so doing, we first situate corporate activism in relation to the more established fields of political corporate social responsibility and corporate social responsibility communication, focusing on discussions concerning the interplay between talk and action as well as the potential of talk to lead to action. On this basis, we propose a conceptual framework that posits talk and action as operating conjointly on the ontological plane of s(t)imulation, a conceptual conjunction of simulation and stimulation that is inspired by Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum. Empirically, we conduct a qualitative analysis of 20 examples of corporate advertising that has been reported as anti-Trump in the media. We find that the advertising in our sample is characterized by the following three main distinctions: (1) humorous references to Trump, (2) favourable and highly emotional appeals to social justice and (3) dystopian visions of society. We argue that a postmodern perspective on signs and representation may not only nuance our understanding of corporate activism, but also contribute to the conceptualization of the phenomenon by pushing the explanatory framework beyond the dialectic of talk and action.

Managing corporate-government relationships in a multi-cultural setting: How political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) as a response to legitimacy pressures affects firm reputation

As many multinationals set up subsidiaries in emerging markets, they face legitimacy pressures from the host countries. This pressure leads firms to engage in political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) activities. We distinguish two types of attributions of PCSR activities – public-serving and self-serving – and study how these two types of PCSR attributions affect firm reputation. Analyzing 463 PCSR activities by 104 firms in China between 2015 and 2017, we find that public-serving PCSR enhances firm reputation, while self-serving PCSR diminishes it. In addition, we document a negative interaction effect between the two attributions of PCSR. We also find that CEO participation attenuates the negative effect of self-serving PCSR whereas administrative distance accentuates the positive effect of public-serving PCSR. Our research contributes to the nascent literature on government relation networks and sheds light on how firms should manage their relationships with the host countries in a multi-cultural setting.

Political CSR at the Coalface – The Roles and Contradictions of Multinational Corporations in Developing Workplace Dialogue

AbstractWhile political CSR scholarship has focused on the role of dialogue between MNCs and civil society actors at the transnational level in creating global governance standards, we seek to understand how political CSR might play out at the ‘coalface’ where labour rights violations occur. We draw on insights from Industrial Democracy to examine how political CSR may be extended to enable democratic processes at the workplace level. Studying the introduction of workplace dialogue in Bangladesh apparel factories, we highlight how MNCs leverage their position as lead actors in the supply chain in three ways: as guarantors, capacity‐builders and enforcers of workplace dialogue. Our findings also show that dialogue reveals dialectical tensions emerging from the structured antagonism of the supply chain relationship. Our contribution focuses on understanding how MNCs may enable deliberative spaces in their supply chain, but also how this is likely to change the nature of pCSR.

Politically connected firms and corporate social responsibility implementation expenditure in sub‐Saharan Africa: Evidence from Ghana

AbstractWhile previous research has emphasized the role of stakeholder pressures, firm‐specific factors, as well as CEO characteristics as important drivers of corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation, our understanding of how political connections impact small and medium‐sized enterprises' (SMEs') CSR implementation expenditure is quite limited. In this study, we contribute to filling this gap by investigating the effects of political connections and CSR expenditure and explain the conditions that impact this relationship. Using data from 473 SMEs in Ghana, we find that political connections negatively influence CSR implementation expenditure. However, the negative effect is weakened when a firms' reputation and competitive CSR implementation pressures are high. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Forget political corporate social responsibility

We argue that political corporate social responsibility (PCSR), while hailed by many as a solution to societal problems not dealt with by government, reflects both a triumph of neoliberal corporate power and a harbinger of democracy’s demise. Drawing on the remarkably PCSR-like – declarations of BlackRock CEO and billionaire Larry Fink, we demonstrate how scholarly PCSR is suspiciously compatible with corporate deregulation and privatisation of the public sphere. Our article recommends scholars abandon PCSR when critically evaluating corporate domination and democratic alternatives to it in the neoliberal era.

John Rawls\u2019 Concept of the Reasonable: A Study of Stakeholder Action and Reaction Between British Petroleum and the Victims of the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

In his political philosophy, John Rawls has a normative notion of reasonable behaviour expected of citizens in a pluralist society. We interpret the various strands of this idea and introduce them to the discourse on stakeholder dialogue in order to address two shortcomings in the latter. The first shortcoming is an unnoticed, artificial separation of words from actions which neglects the communicative power of action. Second, in its proposed new role of the firm, the discourse of political CSR appeared to offer a promising synthesis of deliberation and action. However, the discourse has been criticized for its shortcoming in failing to provide a regulatory environment for corporation—stakeholder dialogue. Through our interpretation of Rawls’ notion of reasonableness in citizens, the article makes two important theoretical contributions to the debate on stakeholder dialogue. First, we transfer Rawls’ injunction in insisting that dialogues between business corporations and their weaker stakeholders must be understood as consisting of both verbal exchanges and actions. Second, we propose that the coercive power of government ought to provide a necessary context for stakeholder dialogue, and that by doing so, it can provide a way forward for the discourse of political CSR. We illustrate the usefulness of this contribution from Rawls in an analysis of BP’s behaviour towards thousands of victims following the Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010.

CSR ‘sustainability’ practices and firm performance in an emerging economy

In this paper we seek to understand the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) environmental and supplier sustainability practices on firm performance within the manufacturing industry in India. We also investigate the moderating effect of an important internal factor – plant capability – that is likely to affect sustainability practices of a firm. Employing the Global Manufacturing Research Group’s survey instrument, data was collected from manufacturing companies in India and then a structural equation modelling (SEM) was performed to arrive at the findings. A rigorous reliability and validity of the scales was ensured. The firms’ size, industry type and export percentage were taken as control variables for the study and the performance of the firms was assessed based on financial and marketing measures. The study determined that environmental sustainability had a direct impact on firm performance, whereas the impact of supplier sustainability on firm performance was found to be positively moderated by plant capability. The justification for the findings is based on the institutional context and pragmatic concerns linked to market logics that shape the strategic choices made by the companies. Thus, the paper ends by proposing that dominant CSR theories in developed western countries, such as political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) and corporate political activity (CPA), may not be best suited as theoretical lenses to understand CSR actions in an emerging economy. Alternatives to these can be provided by institutional and strategic perspectives to CSR, which may offer deeper insights in an emerging economy context.

Democracy, Legitimacy, and the Standing of the Corporation in Corporate Global Governance

Political CSR scholars have sought to apply the concept of deliberative democracy to the practice of global corporate engagement with stakeholders. Recently, much of this work has focused on the conditions under which the decisions made within multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI’s) should be considered democratically legitimate while relatively less attention has been paid to the practical benefits that such engagements can bring for their effectiveness when properly structured. The arguments in this essay support a shift in focus away from the former and towards the latter.

A Conceptual Analysis of Constructing a Corporate Partnership with Focus on the Linkage Between Sustainable Development Goals and Corporate Social Responsibility

연구목적: SDGs 성공여부는 효과적인 글로벌 파트너십에 달려있다. 특히 기업과의 파트너십은 재원조달, 전문지식과 기술 확보 측면에서 필수적이다. 본 논문은 SDGs와 CSR의 연계성을 중심으로 기업파트너십 구축 방안에 대해 개념적 차원에서 연구한다. 연구의 중요성: 기업파트너십의 중요성에도 불구하고 그에 대한 개념적, 이론적 연구는 많이 진행되고 있지 않은 상황이다. 특히, 신자유주의의 대안으로 제시된 SDGs가 과연 기업과 양립할 수 있는지, 양립할 수 있다면 SDGs가 기업에 어떻게 가치 창출의 기회를 주고 기업의 가치창출 행위가 어떻게 SDGs 성취에 기여할 수 있는지에 대한 연구 분석은 기업파트너십 연구를 위한 초석이다. 본 논고는 기업파트너십 구축 방안에 대한 하나의 개념적 접근 방법을 제시함으로서 앞으로 더 심층적인 기업파트너십 연구에 기여할 수 있다. 연구 방법론: 개념구조 분석 차원에서 SDGs와 CSR의 연계성을 TBL을 매개로 분석한다. 그리고 구성주의와 합리주의 차원에서 국제규범 준거 틀로서의 SDGs와 행위규범 및 동기로서의 CSR의 연계성을 모형화 한다. 또한, 효과적인 기업파트너십 구축 차원에서 본 모델이 작동되기 위한 조건으로 SDGs의 규범성과 기업의 CSR 동기를 분석해 본다. 연구결과: 기업 차원에서 전략적 CSR를 활용하여 SDGs를 기업의 가치사슬에 수용, 통합하여 이해관계자들과의 협력을 강화하면 공유가치를 창출하고 기업의 지속가능경영을 확보할 수 있다. 또한 정치적 CSR로 공공분야로 진출하면 SDGs 성취에 기여하고 기업시민권을 확립하는 기회가 된다. 하지만 장기적으로 기업파트너십의 핵심은 SDGs가 국제규범으로서 규제력을 갖고 기업의 행태와 가치를 변화시키는 것에 달려 있다. 결론 및 시사점: 효과적인 기업파트너십을 위해서는 SDGs가 국제규범으로서 규제력을 가지고 SDGs 목적에 맞게 기업으로 하여금 CSR을 이행토록 하는 것이 필요하다. 그러기 위해서는 강대국들의 확고한 지지, 국제사회와의 공명 그리고 글로벌 시민사회와의 단합된 공조를 통해 SDGs가 구속력 있는 독자적인 국제규범체제로 정착되어야한다.Purpose: Corporate partnership is critical to the successful SDGs implementation. This paper conceptually explores constructing corporate partnership with focus on the SDGs-CSR linkage. Originality: There have not been many conceptual and theoretical researches on corporate partnership. This paper examines how a company can contribute to the SDGs through its good CSR practices and tries to develop a conceptual model to show how an effective corporate partnership is enabled. By doing so, this paper would like to contribute to a theory-building with regard to it. Methodology: With a concept structure analysis, this paper links SDGs and CSR through TBL. From the perspectives of constructivism and rationalism, SDG as an international norm and CSR as a behavioral norm or motive are put into an operational framework. And the SDGs’ regulatory power and the firms’ motives for CSR are interlinked and analyzed to see whether the framework is workable for an effective corporate partnership. Result: Using strategic CSR, corporations can create shared value and secure sustainability by integrating SDGs into value chain. With political CSR, they can make contributions to SDGs and establish a corporate citizenship. However, in the long run, an effective corporate partnership requires SDGs’ regulatory power to change corporate values and behaviors. Conclusion and Implication: For an effective corporate partnership, SDGs could enforce implementing CSRs in accordance with it. This entails supports from the great powers, resonance with international community and cooperation with global civil society.

Dissent in Consensusland: An Agonistic Problematization of Multi-stakeholder Governance

Multi-stakeholder initiatives involve actors from several spheres of society (market, civil society and state) in collaborative arrangements to reach objectives typically related to sustainable development. In political CSR literature, these arrangements have been framed as improvements to transnational governance and as being somehow democratic. We draw on Mouffe’s works on agonistic pluralism to problematize the notion that consensus-led multi-stakeholder initiatives bring more democratic control on corporate power. We examine two initiatives which address two very different issue areas: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (The Accord). We map the different kinds of adversarial relations involved in connection with the issues meant to be governed by the two initiatives, and find those adversarial relations to take six main shapes, affecting the initiatives in different ways: (1) competing regulatory initiatives; (2) pressure-response relations within multi-stakeholder initiatives; (3) pressure-response relations between NGOs and states through multi-stakeholder initiatives; (4) collaboration and competition between multi-stakeholder initiatives and states; (5) pressure-response relations between civil society actors and multi-stakeholder initiatives; and (6) counter-hegemonic movements against multi-stakeholder initiatives as hegemonic projects. We conclude that multi-stakeholder initiatives cannot be democratic by themselves, and we argue that business and society researchers should not look at democracy or politics only internally to these initiatives, but rather study how issue areas are regulated through interactions between a variety of actors—both within and without the multi-stakeholder initiatives—who get to have a legitimate voice in this regulation.

Addressing Governance Gaps in Global Value Chains: Introducing a Systematic Typology

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) dominate the governance of global value chains (GVCs), such that according to the concept of political corporate social responsibility (PCSR), they are responsible to address governance gaps throughout the chains, even at the level of their independent suppliers. In practice, MNEs often struggle to cope with the complexity of these governance gaps, and PCSR does not provide a clear definition nor offer guidance for how to analyze and address them. By adopting the notion of governance mechanisms from GVC literature, this study proposes a more nuanced view, in which governance gaps result from inactive, ineffective, or inequitable governance mechanisms adopted by relevant actors, rather than a complete absence of governance. MNEs, through their governance mechanisms, commonly create governance gaps. This study distinguishes different types of governance mechanisms to create a typology of governance gaps, such that it contributes to the literature on PCSR by offering a more refined understanding of governance gaps, along with a means to identify mechanisms to address them. Furthermore, it contributes to the literature on GVCs by defining governance-related terms and adding an ethical perspective on MNEs’ global business conduct. To illustrate the typology, this article presents the case of low wages (below a living wage) for workers in the textile industry and efforts by H&M to deal with this governance gap.

Conceptualizing data‐deliberation: The starry sky beetle, environmental system risk, and Habermasian CSR in the digital age

Building on an illustrative case of a systemic environmental threat and its multi‐stakeholder response, this paper draws attention to the changing political impacts of corporations in the digital age. Political Corporate Social Responsibility (PCSR) theory suggests an expanded sense of politics and corporations, including impacts that may range from voluntary initiatives to overcome governance gaps, to avoiding state regulation via corporate political activity. Considering digitalization as a stimulus, we explore potential responsibilities of corporations toward public goods in contexts with functioning governments. We show that digitalization—in the form of transparency, surveillance, and data‐sharing—offers corporations’ scope for deliberative public participation. The starry sky beetle infestation endangering public and private goods is thereby used to illustrate the possibility of expanding the political role of corporations in the digital sphere. We offer a contribution by conceptualizing data‐deliberation as a Habermasian variation of PCSR, defined as the (a) voluntary disclosure of corporate data and its transparent, open sharing with the public sector (b) along with the cooperation with governmental institutions on data analytics methods for examining large‐scale datasets (c) thereby complying with existing national and international regulations on data protection, in particular with respect to privacy and personal data.

Political CSR initiatives as levers of marginalisation: the disconnect between representatives and the so-called represented in the mining industry

PurposeThe transformative potential of CSR is a far-reaching question. It has been analysed through the lens of the inclusion of stakeholders concerned by social and environmental issues in political CSR fora such as multi-stakeholder initiatives or, on the contrary, their exclusion from these processes. This paper aims to highlight the transformation or status quo produced by political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) initiatives, the extent of transformation being a function of the degree of inclusiveness, or conversely of exclusion, of these initiatives. From a promise of inclusion to the inability of corporate-society fora to act on the actual levers of marginalisation, PCSR scholars have developed contrasted views on these initiatives.Design/methodology/approachThis led us to elaborate a hypothesis that such initiatives intrinsically act as levers in the recurring marginalisation of directly affected stakeholders. Drawing on an empirical study of the CSR discourses of mining industry stakeholders – both corporations and civil society – involved in an informal multi-stakeholder initiative, this paper discusses the disconnect between its representatives and the needs of the directly affected stakeholders.FindingsTo explore this disconnect, the authors draw on the voices and causes framework developed by Boltanski et al. (1984), which provided us with a relational system involving victims, guilty parties, complainants and judges.Originality/valueAccordingly, the authors highlight a set of three interrelated marginalisation mechanisms (i.e. the capture of the role of the judge by PCSR initiatives, the side-lining of victims’ needs by complainants, the intertwining of the guilty party and the judge), which empirically support the lack-of-inclusiveness hypothesis.

An Agonistic Notion of Political CSR: Melding Activism and Deliberation

Flagging labor governance in far-flung supply networks has prompted greater scrutiny of instrumental CSR and calls for models that are tethered more closely to accountability, constraint, and oversight. Political CSR is an apt response, but this paper seeks to buttress its deliberative moorings by arguing that the agonist notion of ‘domesticated conflict’ provides a necessary foundation for substantive deliberation. Because deliberation is more viable and effective when coupled with some means of coercion, a concept of CSR solely premised on reciprocal corporate-stakeholder engagement is pre-mature; efforts should first be directed toward the antecedents of reciprocity and how it is to be achieved, and only then does deliberation become a reliably substantive exercise. The resulting account of agonistic CSR is generated through agonistic principles of realism, pro-action, contestation, and countervailence, and illustrated by the Bangladesh Accord.