Although CSR scholarship has highlighted how tensions in CSR implementation are negotiated, little is known about its normative and moral dimension at a micro-level. Drawing upon the economies of worth framework, we explore how spirituality influences the negotiation of CSR tensions at an individual level, and what types of justification work they engage in when experiencing tensions. Our analysis of semi-structured interview data from individuals who described themselves as Buddhist and were in charge of CSR implementations for their organizations shows (...) that spirituality influences how they compromise among competing moral values by identifying two forms of justification work: compartmentalizing work and contextualizing work, which help spiritual practitioners minimize moral dissonance. (shrink)

Research on Grand Challenges often neglects capitalism as a major source of many social and ecological problems, and/or as a barrier to their solution. To find sustainable solutions through our research, we need to make explicit and problematize this systems-level cause of Grand Challenges instead of only looking for solutions at the organizational level.

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) between nonprofits and businesses are increasingly implemented in response to humanitarian crises. These partnerships are motivated by ideals of alignment as stakeholders strive to find the “sweet spot” between humanitarian and business interests. However, this article shows that the ideals of alignment differ from the actual practices of alignment in the CSPs, and sweet spots are not merely found but constructed in and through changing relations of power. Based on an ethnographic case study of partnerships between a (...) global humanitarian organization and five technology companies, the article deploys a theoretical lens from critical humanitarian studies to analyze how alignment in CSPs comes about in practice. This analysis demonstrates that in the construction of alignment, the companies’ interests become the priorities with which humanitarian organizations must align their and their beneficiaries’ needs. Consequently, while the discourse of sweet spots perpetuates an ideal of alignment where all partners benefit equally from the partnership, it legitimates power imbalances and asymmetrical alignment in practice. (shrink)

Within the burgeoning corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication literature, the question of the relationship between CSR practices and CSR communication (or between “walk” and “talk”) has been a central concern. Recently, we observe a growing interest in formative views on the relation between CSR communication and practices, that is, works which ascribe to communication a constitutive role in creating, maintaining, and transforming CSR practices. This article provides an overview of the heterogeneous landscape of formative views on CSR communication scholarship. More (...) specifically, we distinguish between three variants of such formative views: walking-to-talk, talking-to-walk, and t(w)alking. These three orientations differ primarily regarding the temporal dynamics that they ascribe to the relation between CSR communication and practices and regarding the object that is formed through communication. This new typology helps systematize the emerging field of research on CSR communication, and we use it as a compass to provide directions for future research in this area. (shrink)

Despite the proliferation of studies on corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is a lack of consensus and a cardinal methodological base for research on the quality of CSR communication. Over the decades, studies in this space have remained conflicting, unintegrated, and sometimes overlapping. Drawing on semiotics—a linguistic-based theoretical and analytical tool, our article explores an alternative perspective to evaluating the quality and reliability of sustainability reports. Our article advances CSR communication research by introducing a theoretical-cum-methodological perspective which provides unique insights (...) into how to evaluate the quality of CSR communication. Particularly, we illustrate the application of our proposed methodology on selected U.K. FTSE 100 companies. Our two-phased analysis employed the Greimas Canonical Narrative Schema and the Semiotic Square of Veridiction in drawing meanings from selected sustainability/csr reports. In addition, we present a distinctive CSR report quality model capable of guiding policy makers and firms in designing sustainability/csr reporting standards. (shrink)