Most research studying the corporate social performance –corporate financial performance link has utilized developed country samples. Also, this literature has generally focused on a wide variety of industries, ignoring the fact that certain sectors – such as controversial industries – have graver social and environmental issues. Hence, a gap exists in this tradition when it comes to emerging markets and controversial industries. This paper attempts to fill this void by providing preliminary evidence and insight on the matter. Based on an (...) exploration in six Latin American countries and five controversial industries, we find a negative bidirectional association between CSP and CFP. These results tend to contradict the mainstream conclusion of a positive bidirectional link, suggesting that institutional and market-level forces play a major role in shaping this relationship. (shrink)

This article explores the substitution and complementary effects between political and social strategies on firm performance in the context of an emerging market (EM). Using in‐depth, historical case‐study approach, the article investigates how companies integrate political and social resources in this market. Corporate performance includes traditional measures, such as accounting performance and nonfinancial measures like the ease of doing business. The study finds that social strategies are stronger enablers of firm long‐term performance than political strategies. The latter have a short‐term (...) impact on performance, but their success over time is limited. The main drawback of reliance on political resources in EMs is the lack of political stability, fragmented polity, and weak political coalitions. We identify rather limited evidence of firms using these two strategies as complements. Thus, we suggest that firms should employ both these strategies in the EM. (shrink)

To encourage corporations to contribute positively to the environment in which they operate, voluntary self-regulatory codes (SRC) have been enacted and refined over the past 15 years. Two of the most prominent are the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative. In this paper, we explore the impact of different stakeholders' pressures on the selection of strategic choices to join SRCs. Our results show that corporations react differently to different sets of stakeholder pressures and that the SRC selection (...) depends on the type and intensiveness of the stakeholder pressures as well as the resources at hand to respond to those pressures. Our contribution offers a more specific and finely variegated analysis of firmstakeholder interactions. (shrink)

The object of this article is to demonstrate how stakeholder theory can be enlarged and enhanced by two communications theories, media systems dependency and community infrastructure theory. The stakeholder perspective is often represented by a diagram in which a firm is centrally positioned, surrounded by stakeholders. However, relationships between stakeholders are given relatively little attention, the various groups theoretically encompassed by the term “community” remain relatively undefined, and other marginalized stakeholders often go unrecognized. MSD and CIT can enable us to (...) conceptualize the stakeholder model more clearly, to develop research projects that more adequately capture the dynamic quality of stakeholder relationships, to tailor management strategies to particular stakeholder characteristics, and to understand corporate social responsibility messages. As an example, stakeholder theory, combined with MSD and CIT, is applied to California’s cannabis/marijuana industry. (shrink)

Stakeholder engagement is central to organizations’ social impact. Engagement activities rely on mechanisms whose complexity increases for multinational corporations. This study explores the boundary conditions of our Western/Northern-based knowledge of stakeholder engagement mechanisms through the examination of such practices in multinational companies founded in Latin America. Based on previous studies on the identification of organizational stakeholders in the region, we aim to understand the specific engagement mechanisms MLs use. To this end, we analyze qualitatively 28 corporate sustainability reports by relevant (...) firms. Our findings show that the community includes silent stakeholders composed of subgroups not listed as organizational stakeholders but mentioned in the report as engaged by the company or a subsidiary. MLs in our sample use four main mechanisms to engage these subgroups: strong, visible commitments to local social organizations; continuous dialogue with members of the community; networks of volunteers to help perform the social activities of the companies; and creation of social infrastructure institutions. We end by detailing the theoretical implications for stakeholder engagement among emerging economies multinational companies and for MNCs in general. (shrink)

The stream on political corporate social responsibility argues that companies have recently assumed state-like roles to influence global governance. However, following emerging calls for greater contextualization of CSR, we trace the historic evolution of PCSR in the case of Colombia and argue that such political engagement by firms is not new. Looking beyond a linear chronological account, we reveal the sedimentation process behind PCSR by exploring the archetypical political roles businesses have taken on in providing public goods and acting as (...) regulators, and chart their transformation. Our findings allow us to make two main contributions. First, by unearthing different strata of business and society relations, we enrich the research on PCSR, highlighting its historical sedimentation dynamics. By integrating institutional and historical perspectives, we respond to calls for complementary accounts of one of the premises found in the literature that considers globalization as the starting point of PCSR. Second, our exploration of the past and present of PCSR in Colombia provides scholars and practitioners with an overview of the complex state and stakes of CSR in that country. We also discuss the implications of sedimentation for PCSR theory and future research directions. (shrink)