We outline the drivers, main features, and conceptual underpinnings of the compliance paradigm. We then use a similar structure to investigate the drivers, main features, and conceptual underpinnings of the cooperative paradigm for working with CSR in global value chains. We argue that the measures proposed in the new cooperation paradigm are unlikely to alter power relationships in global value chains and bring about sustained improvements in workers’ conditions in developing country export industries. After that, we provide a critical appraisal (...) of the potential and limits of the cooperative paradigm, we summarize our findings, and we outline avenues for research: purchasing practices and labor standard noncompliance, CSR capacity building among local suppliers, and improved CSR monitoring by local resources in the developing world. (shrink)

Organizations that believe they should "give something back" to the society have embraced the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Although the theoretical underpinnings of CSR have been frequently debated, empirical studies often involve only limited aspects, implying that theory may not be congruent with actual practices and may impede understanding and further development of CSR. The authors investigate actual CSR practices related to five different stakeholder groups, develop an instrument to measure those CSR practices, and apply it to a (...) survey of 401 U.S. organizations. Four different clusters of organizations emerge, depending on the CSR practice focus. The distinctive features of each cluster relate to organizational demographics, perceived influence of stakeholders, managers' perceptions of the influence of CSR on performance, and organizational performance. (shrink)

This research investigates the interplay between leadership styles and institutional corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. A large-scale field survey of managers reveals that firms with greater transformational leadership are more likely to engage in institutional CSR practices, whereas transactional leadership is not associated with such practices. Furthermore, stakeholder-oriented marketing reinforces the positive link between transformational leadership and institutional CSR practices. Finally, transactional leadership enhances, whereas transformational leadership diminishes, the positive relationship between institutional CSR practices and organizational outcomes. This research highlights (...) the differential roles that transformational and transactional leadership styles play for a firm’s institutional CSR practices and has significant implications for theory and practice. (shrink)

Management of organizational tensions can facilitate the simultaneous advancement of economic, social, and environmental priorities. The approach is based on managers identifying and managing tensions between the three priorities, by employing one of the three strategic responses. Although recent work has provided a theoretical basis for such tension acknowledgment and management, there is a dearth of empirical studies. We interviewed 32 corporate sustainability managers across 25 forestry and wood-products organizations in Australia. Study participants were divided into two groups: those considered (...) effective at corporate sustainability and a status-quo group. Contrary to current theory, our findings showed that acknowledgment of organizational tensions was widespread in the Australian forestry and wood-products industry and not limited to those managers who are effective at managing corporate sustainability. What differed was the degree to which managers did something about the perceived tensions—with the effective group more consistently acting to manage and resolve paradoxical scenarios. Our findings suggest that existing theoretical constructs of tension management may not adequately capture the individual-level complexity involved with managing tensions in practice. (shrink)

Controversial industry sectors, such as alcohol, gambling, and tobacco, though long-established, suffer organizational legitimacy problems. The authors consider various strategies used to seek organizational legitimacy in the U.K. casino gambling market. The findings are based on a detailed, multistakeholder case study pertaining to a failed bid for a regional supercasino. They suggest four generic strategies for seeking organizational legitimacy in this highly complex context: construing, earning, bargaining, and capturing, as well as pathways that combine these strategies. The case analysis and (...) proposed bidimensional model of generic legitimacy-seeking strategies contribute to limited literature on organizational legitimacy in controversial industry sectors. In addition, beyond organizations active in controversial contexts, this study and its implications are useful for individuals and organizations supporting or opposing the organizational legitimacy of organizations in controversial industries. (shrink)

This article builds theory at the intersection of ecological sustainability and strategic management literature—specifically, in relation to dynamic capabilities literature. By combining industrial organization economics–based, resource-based, and dynamic capability–based views, it is possible to develop a better understanding of the strategies that businesses may follow, depending on their managers’ assumptions about ecological sustainability. To develop innovative strategies for ecological sustainability, the dynamic capabilities framework needs to be extended. In particular, the sensing–seizing–maintaining competitiveness framework should operate not only within the boundaries (...) of a business ecosystem but in relation to global biophysical ecosystems; in addition, two more dynamic capabilities should be added, namely, remapping and reaping. This framework can explicate core managerial beliefs about ecological sustainability. Finally, this approach offers opportunities for managers and academics to identify, categorize, and exploit business strategies for ecological sustainability. (shrink)

As part of their corporate social responsibility, many organizations practice cause-related marketing, in which organizations donate to a chosen cause with every consumer purchase. The extant literature has identified the importance of the fit between the organization and the nature of the cause in influencing corporate image, as well as the influence of a connection between the cause and consumer preferences on brand attitudes and brand choice. However, prior research has not addressed which cause composition most appeals to consumers or (...) the impact of cause choice on corporate image. A between-subjects field experiment in the Netherlands examines the influence of three core cause attributes—cause type, cause scope, and cause acuteness—on consumers’ perceptions of corporate image. Furthermore, this experiment examines the extent to which consumer identification with the cause mediates the influence of the cause attributes on corporate image. The findings indicate that identification with the cause leads to more positive evaluations of marketing campaigns for cause type and cause scope. Also, however, our results uncover a negative direct relationship between cause scope and corporate image. Cause acuteness is only marginally influential in corporate image perceptions. By proposing and testing a comprehensive model of the influence of cause attributes on corporate image in cause-related marketing, this article provides important implications and suggests avenues for further research. (shrink)

As part of their corporate social responsibility, many organizations practice cause-related marketing, in which organizations donate to a chosen cause with every consumer purchase. The extant literature has identified the importance of the fit between the organization and the nature of the cause in influencing corporate image, as well as the influence of a connection between the cause and consumer preferences on brand attitudes and brand choice. However, prior research has not addressed which cause composition most appeals to consumers or (...) the impact of cause choice on corporate image. A between-subjects field experiment in the Netherlands examines the influence of three core cause attributes—cause type, cause scope, and cause acuteness—on consumers’ perceptions of corporate image. Furthermore, this experiment examines the extent to which consumer identification with the cause mediates the influence of the cause attributes on corporate image. The findings indicate that identification with the cause leads to more positive evaluations of marketing campaigns for cause type and cause scope. Also, however, our results uncover a negative direct relationship between cause scope and corporate image. Cause acuteness is only marginally influential in corporate image perceptions. By proposing and testing a comprehensive model of the influence of cause attributes on corporate image in cause-related marketing, this article provides important implications and suggests avenues for further research. (shrink)

The notion of “responsible luxury” may appear as a contradiction in terms. This article investigates the influence of two defining characteristics of luxury products—scarcity and ephemerality—on consumers’ perception of the fit between luxury and corporate social responsibility (CSR), as well as how this perceived fit affects consumers’ attitudes toward luxury products. A field experiment reveals that ephemerality moderates the positive impact of scarcity on consumers’ perception of fit between luxury and CSR. When luxury products are enduring (e.g., jewelry), a scarce (...) product is perceived as more socially responsible than a more widely available one and provokes positive attitudes. However, this effect does not appear for ephemeral luxury products (e.g., clothing). The perceived fit between luxury and CSR mediates the combined effects of scarcity and ephemerality on consumers’ attitudes toward luxury products. This study provides valuable insights that luxury brand managers can use to design their CSR and marketing strategies. (shrink)

This research empirically investigated the CSR practices of 84 Botswana and Malawi organizations. The findings revealed that the extent and type of CSR practices in these countries did not significantly differ from that proposed by a U. S. model of CSR, nor did they significantly differ between Botswana and Malawi. There were, however, differences between the sampled organizations that clustered into a stakeholder perspective and traditional capitalist model groups. In the latter group, the board of directors, owners, and shareholders were (...) important stakeholders that appeared to be restricting extended stakeholder CSR activities in the Malawi and Botswana organizations. The sampled managers recognized the economic benefits of CSR practices and were not at odds with social objectives. (shrink)

As corporate social responsibility (CSR) grows increasingly well known and accepted worldwide, organizations attempt to make sense of their social strategies bridge the gap between their current situation and what their stakeholders expect of them. If social strategies represent a potential stepping stone to more sophisticated forms of CSR, then research must investigate the strategies that organizations have adopted. After defining a framework for classifying and analyzing organizations' social strategies, this article considers empirical evidence from 10 case studies in Colombia (...) to reveal how organizations might build on their social involvement to engage in more sophisticated CSR practices. The framework also suggests some different trajectories that organizations might follow. (shrink)

This comparative study explores 499 corporate social responsibility initiatives implemented by 178 corporations in five distinct, institutionally consistent European clusters. This study provides an empirically grounded response to calls to develop comprehensive, nuanced pictures of CSR in the composite European business environment. In so doing, the article stresses three distinct, non-exclusive approaches that characterize the embedding of CSR considerations in corporations’ strategies across Europe and the CSR challenges for corporations operating in different socio-political contexts. Furthermore, the study reaffirms the CSR (...) notion as a contextualized concept, shaped by socio-political drivers, and contributes by bridging macro-level, socio-political facets of CSR with its meso-level, organizational implications. (shrink)

As the functional capabilities of high-tech medical products converge, supplying organizations seek new opportunities to differentiate their offerings. Embracing product sustainability-related differentiators provides just such an opportunity. This study examines the challenge organizations face when attempting to understand how customers perceive environmental and social dimensions of sustainability by exploring and defining both dimensions on the basis of a review of extant literature and focus group research with a leading supplier of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning equipment. The study encompasses seven (...) hospitals and one private imaging center in the Netherlands and identifies five social aspects that cover 11 indicators. The authors conduct 22 customer perception interviews with key decision-making stakeholders involved in purchasing MRI scanning equipment. Respondents find environmental and social sustainability dimensions personally relevant but professionally secondary to cost, performance, and ability to use the equipment in their organizations' physical infrastructure. Finally, incorporating a product's environmental and social credentials within the marketing of MRI scanning equipment enhances the perception of the product offering in decisionmaking stakeholders' minds and provides a means of differentiation. (shrink)

This article provides a review of what we know, what we do not know, and what we need to know about the relationship between industrial clusters and corporate social responsibility in developing countries. In addition to the drivers of and barriers to the adoption of CSR initiatives, this study highlights key lessons learned from empirical studies of CSR initiatives that aimed to improve environmental management and work conditions and reduce poverty in local industrial districts. Academic work in this area remains (...) embryonic, lacking in empirical evidence about the effects of CSR interventions on the profitability on local enterprises, workers, and the environment. Nor do theoretical frameworks offer clear explanations of the institutionalization and effects of CSR in local industrial districts in the developing world. Other key limitations in this research stream include an excessive focus on export-oriented industrial clusters, the risk that CSR becomes a form of economic and cultural imperialism, and the potential for joint-action CSR initiatives in clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises to offer a new form of greenwashing. From this review, the authors develop a theoretical model to explain why CSR has not become institutionalized in many developing country clusters, which in turn suggests that the vast majority of industrial clusters in developing countries are likely to engage in socially irresponsible behavior. (shrink)

Building on a model of the biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers of luxury consumption, this article explores when and why luxury consumers consider ethics in their luxury consumption practices, to identify differences in their ethical and ethical luxury consumption. The variables proposed to explain these differences derive from biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers, namely, consumers’ (1) age, (2) ethicality, (3) human values, (4) motivations, and (5) assumptive world. A cluster analysis of a sample of 706 U.S. adult luxury consumers reveals (...) five segments of luxury consumers, each reflecting a specific persona, that engage in both ethical and ethical luxury consumption to varying extents. The five segments differ in the extent to which they exhibit features related to four discriminant functions (immorality, ego-orientation, and strain; altruistic-orientation; conservation, in control, and positivity; and youth and luxury savvy), which vary across the biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers. The findings thus indicate which segments of luxury consumers are most relevant for luxury firms pursuing a long-term sustainability agenda and suggest practical actions to reach those goals. (shrink)

Although a reasonable understanding of corporate social responsibility exists, one dimension remains largely ignored. That is, the cultural impacts of corporations, or the bearing, at various levels of their business models, activities, and outcomes on the value systems and enduring beliefs of affected people. We introduce the notion of corporate cultural responsibility. The way corporations address CCR concerns can be reflected according to three stances: cultural destructiveness, cultural carelessness, and cultural prowess. Taken sequentially, they reflect a growing comprehension and increasingly (...) active consideration of CCR concerns by corporations. In turn, we explicitly address issues related to the complex question of determining the cultural responsibilities of corporate actors; specify key CCR-related conceptualizations; and lay a foundation for discussions, debates, and research efforts centered on CCR concerns and rationales. (shrink)

This article contributes to literature on corporate social responsibility exhibited by industrial clusters in developing countries. The authors conceptualize and empirically investigate the role of donor-funded CSR initiatives aimed at promoting collective action by cluster-based small- and medium-sized enterprises. A case study of the Sialkot football-manufacturing cluster in Pakistan indicates that donor-funded support of CSR initiatives in industrial clusters in developing countries may be short-lived, due to the political economy of aid, the national context of CSR implementation, tensions within SME (...) networks, and negative perceptions of CSR by the cluster-based SMEs themselves. The findings and implications of this analysis can inform both research and policy making in this area. (shrink)

This article introduces an integrative framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) design and implementation. A review of CSR literature -in particular with regard to design and implementation models -provides the background to develop a multiple case study. The resulting integrative framework, based on this multiple case study and Lewin's change model, highlights four stages that span nine steps of the CSR design and implementation process. Finally, the study identifies critical success factors for the CSR process.

The Samenleving and Bedrijf (S&B) network of Dutch organizations seeks to embed corporate social responsibility (CSR) within business practices but faces challenges with regard to how to do so across various organizational practices, processes, and policies. The integration of CSR demands cultural change driven by senior management and other change agents, who push CSR principles throughout the organization. This study examines the change processes that S&B member organizations have initiated, with a particular focus on the role of high potentials—those persons (...) who have been selected for the fast track into senior management. Interviews with nine S&B organizations document their levels of CSR integration and implementation, the role of senior managers, and the effects of high potentials’ competencies on the realignment process. High potentials have the ability and opportunity to act as CSR change agents, but organizations’ expectations of their purposes as future senior managers prevented them from doing so. In the existing organizational cultures, leadership focused on economic success, and the CSR implementation process had just initiated. Therefore, a measure of CSR embeddedness might refer to the performance measurement and expectations of high potentials as potential CSR change agents. (shrink)

This conceptual article examines the relationship between marketing and sustainability through the dual lenses of anthropocentric and ecocentric epistemology. Using the current anthropocentric epistemology and its associated dominant social paradigm, corporate ecological sustainability in commercial practice and business school research and teaching is difficult to achieve. However, adopting an ecocentric epistemology enables the development of an alternative business and marketing approach that places equal importance on nature, the planet, and ecological sustainability as the source of human and other species’ well-being, (...) as well as the source of all products and services. This article examines ecocentric, transformational business, and marketing strategies epistemologically, conceptually and practically and thereby proposes six ecocentric, transformational, strategic marketing universal premises as part of a vision of and solution to current global un-sustainability. Finally, this article outlines several opportunities for management practice and further research. (shrink)

The management of cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) among government, business, and not-for-profit entities can be complex and difficult. This article considers the importance of organizational experience and learning for the successful development of CSSPs. By analyzing the Manchester Super Casino, this research emphasizes the significant benefits of prior experience with CSSPs that enable partners to learn and develop relationships, skills, and capabilities over time, which then have positive influences on future performance. The result is a refined learning model of the (...) CSSP process that includes key variables for CSSP success. As such, these findings provide a template for managing complex CSSPs from the perspective of the different partner organizations. (shrink)

Corruption is defined as private individuals or enterprises who misuse public resources for private power and/or political gains. They do so through abusing public officials whose behavior deviates from the formal government rules of conduct. Ethical behavior is defined as individuals or enterprises adhering to a non-corrupt work or business practice. A review of the academic literature is conducted drawing on perspectives from the political, economic, and anthropological sciences. Insights from a Danish research program are reported on. This program identifies (...) five different actions for dealing with corruption: (1) no action; (2) withdrawals from markets; (3) decentralized decision-making process; (4) establishment of an anti-corruption code; and (5) mutual commitment through integrity pact. The following aspects of ethical behavior should be regulated through an anti-corruption code: the company vis-à-vis political parties; gifts and entertainment expenses; political campaign contributions; and policy against small-scale corruption. Directions for future research are considered including the role of international organizations and multinational companies in fighting corruption and fostering ethical behavior; the role of countries and their governments; and the management systems. (shrink)