Redefining Corporate Social Responsibility: Volume 13

This chapter argues that the revised ISO14001:2015 environmental standard for business constitutes a fundamental reframing of business engagement with environmental management. Drawing on the values framework of Shalom Schwartz, it is demonstrated how the revised standard represents a values shift-away from self-limiting approaches based on power, control and conformity. Instead, the revised standard frames environmental management into the language of achievement and openness where managers are encouraged to work together, make a difference, lead, inspire, engage and find innovative and creative solutions. Drawing on empirical research with small and medium enterprise managers, the significance of this values reframing is illustrated. Managers drawing on power and conformity to engage with environmental actions tended to focus on short-term actions that demonstrated quick financial payback or reputations wins. This is contrasted with managers drawing on achievement and self-direction values who took a longer term view to making a difference and working with others to find innovative solutions to complex problems. It is posited that this reframing represents a significant opportunity for business generally and for the environmental profession specifically to develop the skills and approaches required to tackle climate change and other sustainability related concerns.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has provoked considerable debate. Initial expressions of CSR can be traced back to the seventeenth century. However, the ideal of socially responsible business was most evident after the depression of the 1930s and the post-war period in the 1950s. CSR was, by then, mainly influenced by values of philanthropy and principles of the welfare state, and mostly centred on corporations’ charitable donations which provided social welfare for materially deprived families and individuals. In the 1980s, there was a marked shift to the neoliberal ideals of profit maximisation and free regulation in corporate activities and this fed through into CSR practices. We argue that these conflicting ideals of CSR create divergent discourses where corporations on the one hand proclaim a lack of self-interest and a duty of care towards host societies, and on the other hand legitimise corporation’s self-interested preoccupation with profit. Divergent care versus profit discourses influence how legislators, CSR experts, corporations and NGOs understand and practise CSR in host societies. In this chapter, we examine how welfare and neoliberal ideologies contribute to divergent discourses of duty of care and profit, and how these discourses influence corporations’ decision-making about their social responsibility. The chapter concludes by proposing alternative ways for rethinking political and economic relationships between communities and corporations, in order to move beyond the limits of the current discourses of duty of care and profit.

This chapter investigates how integrated reporting (IR) can contribute to a better corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation through diffusion and adoption of CSR practices and actually applying the CSR discourse. Based on innovation diffusion theory, we intend to analyse the diffusion and adoption of CSR on the grounds of IR. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that IR does indeed represent a mean of reducing the gaps between CSR discourse and its implementation. In order to select the most relevant papers in the area of CSR and IR, we applied the method of positive research. Therefore, the review of literature was made by analysing various theoretical and empirical studies. Setting the main coordinates for CSR and IR through theoretical background, we continue with an empirical analysis on 23 companies that voluntarily publish integrated reports. We intend to demonstrate that IR encourages a diffusion of CSR practices, as companies become more interested in their CSR behaviour.

This chapter theorizes the outrageous consumer response that may follow the communication of political corporate social responsibility (CSR). We consider two recent cases (Starbucks’s offer to hire refugees and Pepsi’s appropriation of protest movements in an ad) and how consumers-citizens reacted when these corporations communicated political issues. By drawing from psychoanalytic concepts, we illustrate how consumers’ outrage, expressed in angry social media comments, and in the creation and sharing of memes, is cathartic of unconscious repressed matter: the realization of their own powerless and the domination of corporations. We further note how these expressions of outrage may be understood to result from defense mechanisms such as denial, displacement, or more complex sublimation that help consumers maintain a position of passive domination by corporations. Like all psychoanalytic applications, our interpretation represents only a plausible metaphor that can explain the “irrational” behavior of consumers. Positivist traditions of CSR theorization may demand further causal studies to confirm the ideas we express. Our study is an original exploration of what underlies consumer responses to political CSR. These cases could inform academics and practitioners working in the business and society arena asking them to re-evaluate whether and how political CSR should be communicated, and the implications of the rapid diffusion of messages in social media that include mocking parody and offensive brand comments.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has now been clearly identified, categorised and theorised so that we can all be certain what is meant by the name and how it can be achieved. Indeed it is regularly practiced by all (or at least most) businesses and taught in business schools – so much so that it is largely unquestioned. This chapter looks at the development of CSR and its acceptance as a distinct discipline in its own right. In doing so it comes to the conclusion that CSR, as currently defined, has actually died and so needs to be rediscovered. The author argues the case that it is only by looking at current practice amongst businesses and the community that we can arrive at a realistic definition – which inevitably metamorphoses through time as culture and the economic environment change. Therefore what is currently identified as CSR is merely of historic interest. The implications of the argument are that research approaches need to change and so does the definition of CSR.

The aim of this chapter is to consider the socially responsible aspects generally hidden from researchers by considering examples in the fields of archaeology and restoration of cultural and historical places and objects. This chapter is written as a result of practical efforts taken by the first author in the field of restoration through laboratory research and represents findings from experience. The main finding of the research is that the reality of social responsibility has been lost in its defining and needs to be actually observed in practice. This chapter has been written according to research undertaken in Iran as a historical country. More general applications can be developed. The chapter uses the field of archaeology and restoration to take into consideration social responsibility and shows the more general implications of the approach taken. In doing so, it shows the relevance of social responsibility to all walks of life. This chapter is the result of years of practice in the field of restoration and sustainability, and the combined approach taken is unique.

Traditional artisans are the worst victims of globalisation and corporate entry into their local economy and hand-driven production processes. For their rehabilitation, protection, preservation and promotion of cultural heritage, embedded, inter alia, in the built environment, a suitable framework need to be crafted within the broad domain of mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) envisaged under The Indian Companies Act, 2013. Conceived in the above backdrop, the study attempts to situate traditional artisans as stakeholders worthy of development interventions under CSR. For want of studies and notable interventions in the above context, few small CSR cases are reviewed and a number of worthwhile areas of interventions are proposed in terms of a wish list, drawn from the socio, economic, educational, employment and cultural milieu of traditional artisans. It is found that they come under the discretionary category of stakeholders, who possess the attribute of legitimacy, but they have no power to influence the firms and no urgent claims. The study points to the necessity for establishing a National Artisans’ Rehabilitation and Development Fund, besides artisan-friendly sharpening of the schedule of CSR activities in the Indian context.

Diverse understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) abounds among scholars and practitioners in Nigeria. The purpose of this chapter is to reinvent CSR in Nigeria through a deeper understanding of the meaning and theories of this nebulous concept for better application in the industry. The qualitative research approach is adopted, relying on critical review of scholarly articles on CSR, website information of selected companies and institutional documents. It was found that there are diverse meanings of CSR in the reviewed literature, but the philanthropic initiatives and corporate donations for social issues are the common CSR practices in Nigeria. Besides, the eight dominant theories of CSR that find relevance for applications in the industry are shareholder/agency, stakeholder, legitimacy, instrumental, social contract, conflict, green and communication theories. The implication of the discourse is that better understanding and application of CSR theories would strengthen conceptual, theoretical and empirical research in the field of CSR. Besides, CSR theories are useful sources of information for practitioners for designing social responsibility policies and practices as well as for providing scholars with sound theoretical framework for academic research.

The aim of this study is to find out the managers’ perception of employment practices and human rights for Indonesian women employee. The research was conducted by using a quantitative and qualitative approach. Data collection was gathered through a questionnaire before performing the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests that compare the managers’ perception. The samples for the research were top-, middle-, and low-level managers in Indonesian companies. Three primary managers’ perceptions concerning human rights were found. They are requirement of a particular unit to handle discrimination complaint, guarantee of rights to associate and give opinions, and workforce. There are also three primary managers’ perceptions on employment practices. They are sexual harassment, time flexibility for breastfeeding, and training for counseling facilities and employee risk anticipation. The originality of this study is empirical exploration of multilevel managers’ perception of women employment practices and human rights in Indonesia.

The chapter focuses on the personal characteristics of top executives in companies involved in corporate financial crime as well as the introduction of human governance as one of the mechanisms in preventing corporate misbehaviour. This chapter discusses directors’ and top management teams’ personal characteristics – in the context of corporate governance – that may influence the occurrence of corporate financial crime. The study further proposes the human governance factor as a possible mechanism to improve corporate governance in preventing such misbehaviour. This chapter highlights the personal characteristics of top executives, which may become the indicators of corporate financial crime, as well as human governance, which is shown to be one of the most important mechanisms of corporate governance for corporate financial crime prevention.

The act of reporting illegal and unethical practices in the workplace has become an increasingly important issue for researchers and organizational management over the past several decades. This study tested a model of whistleblowing in which perceived organizational retaliation and upward communication satisfaction were hypothesized to act as predictors of types of whistleblowing intentions using a representative sample of employees working in Kirklareli, Turkey (n = 1,012). Structural equation modeling indicated that perceptions of upward communication satisfaction were positively associated to blowing the whistle to internal channels like immediate supervisor and upper management and negatively related to staying silent and external whistleblowing. In addition, perceived threat of retaliation from an organization was negatively related to blowing the whistle to internal channels and positively related to staying silent and external whistleblowing. The present study has contributed to our understanding of whistleblowing in a relatively new national context by clarifying its associations with perceived organizational retaliation and communication with management.