CSR in BRIC countries

Citation

Crotty, J. (2014), "CSR in BRIC countries", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/SRJ-11-2012-0143

CSR in BRIC countries

Article Type: CSR in BRIC countries From: Social Responsibility Journal, Volume 10, Issue 1

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a concept for business from within developed Western economies. Such economies are underpinned by functioning institutions, where compliance with regulation is assumed. CSR is therefore based on the assumption that firms will voluntarily engage in activity to address perceived responsibilities outside the firm’s legal and economic obligations.

Recently a number of scholars (Argandona and Hoivik, 2009; Devinney, 2009; Dobers, 2009; Dobers and Halme, 2009) have challenged the capacity of this traditional CSR approach to take account of the different economic and institutional arrangements found within developing, emerging and transition environments. In countries where institutions are weak, where property rights are applied inconsistently and the enforcement of law is arbitrary, CSR may get a very different "twist" (Dobers and Halme, 2009, p. 242).These and other scholars have therefore called for CSR research to be more contextualised. In addition, Western interpretations about what CSR is, and how it is enacted, need to be broadened and challenged, to take account of different stages of economic development. Without such contextualisation, understandings regarding the type, nature and robustness of the CSR being undertaken in non-western settings are likely to be misinterpreted, or lost.

To date CSR research in emerging and transitioning countries has tended to focus on multi-national companies "doing" CSR in emerging and/or developing contexts (Akpan, 2008; Amaeshi and Amao, 2009; Hamann, 2006; Mishra and Suar, 2010), rather than on the CSR activity of domestic firms (also see the 2009 special issue on "CSR in transitional economies" in this journal, Volume 5 Issue 1). To address this gap, this special edition offers a broader insight into the type, nature and scope of CSR within domestic firms within some of the world’s fastest growing yet still "developing" economies, often referred to as the BRIC countries.

The BRIC (Brazil, China, India and Russia) countries are respectively the 8th, 2nd, 11th and 12th largest economies in the world (World Bank, 2010). However, massive economic growth over the last 20 year has come at the expense of environmental degradation, institutional development and poor income distribution. India still has up to 60 per cent of its population living on less than 1$US per day (World Bank, 2010), Russia is ranked 154th out of 178 countries for corruption (Transparency International, 2010), while Brazil has some of the highest levels of income inequality in the world (World CIA Report, 2009). In addition, China has no functioning democracy, and Russia has taken radical steps to curtail freedom of the press and control civil society organisations since 2000 (Crotty, 2009).

The papers in this special section however indicate that in many cases western approaches to CSR still dominate how it is enacted within the BRIC countries. Barros et al., in their paper examining the Brazilian EXAME Sustainability Guide, indicate that successful sustainability is still measured in terms of financial reward, therefore limiting the scope of how CSR and sustainability are described in the Brazilian context. Hadfield-Hill presents evidence from the Indian banking sector that suggests western approaches to CSR do influence top executives, albeit on an ad hoc basis. Liu et al.’s, study of Chinese oil firms also indicates that CSR is strongly influenced by global export markets. Conversely, in her examination of CSR in the Indian tourist industry, Ferus-Comelo indicates that CSR is still limited to philanthropy and lacks sufficient influence from either civil society or the state. Finally, Bashtovaya finds that Russian firms concentrate on reporting local CSR benefits when compared to similar US companies that focus more on global impact. Thus despite the contribution made to the field in this special section, more work still needs to be done to uncover the nature and scope of CSR within the BRIC countries. This is particularly the case with regard the Russian Federation, which made up only 6 per cent of submissions for this special issue.

As Guest Editors of this special section in SRJ we would like to thank Professor David Crowther for allowing us the opportunity to put together this set of essays on CSR in BRIC countries, and for dedicating space in the journal for this. Our thanks also go to all those who generously gave their time to review the papers in this collection. And lastly, we would also like to thank all the contributors to this timely and highly relevant collection of papers.

Jo Crotty and Sarah Marie Hall
Jo Crotty is based at Salford Business School, University of Salford, Manchester, UK. Sarah Marie Hall is based at the School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

References

Akpan, W. (2008), "Corporate citizenship in Nigerian petroleum industry: a beneficiary perspective", Development Southern Africa, Vol. 25 No. 5, pp. 498–511

Amaeshi, K. and Amao, O.O. (2009), "Corporate social responsibility in transnational spaces: exploring influences of varieties of capitalism on expressions of corporate codes of conduct in Nigeria", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 86, pp. 225–239

Argandona, A. and Hoivik, H.v.W. (2009), "Corporate social responsibility: one size does not fit all. Collecting evidence from Europe", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 89, pp. 221–234

Crotty, J. (2009), "Making a difference: NGOs and civil society development in Russia", Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 61 No. 1, pp. 85–108

Devinney, T.M. (2009), "Is the socially responsible corporation a myth? The good, the bad and the ugly of corporate social responsibility", Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 44–56

Dobers, P. (2009), "Corporate social responsibility: management and methods", Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 185–191

Dobers, P. and Halme, M. (2009), "Corporate social responsibility and developing countries", Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 237–259

Hamann, R. (2006), "Can business make decisive contributions to development? Towards a research agenda on corporate citizenship and beyond", Development Southern Africa, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 175–195

Mishra, S. and Suar, D. (2010), "Does corporate social responsibility influence firm performance of Indian companies?", Journal of Business Ethics, online 11 February

Transparency International (2010), Transparency International, available at: http://http://transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010 (accessed 22 March 2011)

World Bank (2010), World Bank, available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY/countries (accessed 22 March 2011)

World CIA Report (2009), World CIA Report, available at: http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/br.html (accessed 22 March 2011)

Further Reading

IMF (2009), "Report for selected countries and subjects – World Economic Outlook Database", available at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo//02/weodata/index.aspx (accessed 11 October 2012)

About the Guest Editors

Jo Crotty is Professor of Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility at Salford Business School. Her research interests focus on CSR, sustainability and corporate greening in transition contexts with a focus on Russia and China. She has also published on state-business-society relations and democratisation in the former Soviet Union. Jo Crotty is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: mailto:j.crotty@salford.ac.uk

Sarah Marie Hall is a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Manchester. Her research interests revolve around ethics, sustainability and consumption; responsibility and governance; families and communities; and developing ethnographic research methods.