Discretionary corporate social responsibility: introducing the GREENER VENUE

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual comparative framework measuring the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the UK conference sector.

A self‐administered internet‐based survey was conducted to examine the implementation of ten environmental policy initiatives, expressed by the acronym “GREENER”, using a CSR response scale, expressed by the acronym “VENUE”.

The greatest proportion of UK venues can be classified as “Eager”, with a quarter of respondents being deemed as “Unmotivated” or in “Eternal denial” regarding their implementation of CSR. It was also found that both size of venue space and venue type have significant effects on the level of CSR implementation.

Environmental performance indicators are not the only components of CSR, there are others, including social, economic and ethical. Further research may expand the framework from a uni‐dimensional environmental framework to a multi‐dimensional framework, through the inclusion of some or all of these CSR components.

The GREENER VENUE framework contributes to two important areas hitherto overlooked in the CSR literature: first, it develops a framework with emphasis toward discretionary practices and illustrates the strength of this method through application to the sizeable and rapidly growing UK conference industry. Second, the framework exhibits conceptual and psychometric properties that enable its application to broad and diverse contexts. It is theoretically grounded but at the same time practical, easy to implement, easily understandable and highly relatable to organisational managers, frontline employees and many other key stakeholders of any industry.