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From corporate towards 'shared' social responsibility?

Challenges in corporate social responsibility reporting and the promotion of good corporate citizenship through external assurance

In dit artikel worden de posities van verschillende actoren, die actief zijn op het gebied van maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen en assurance, geïdentificeerd en geanalyseerd. De nadruk wordt momenteel gelegd op vrijwillige activiteiten op het gebied van maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen en het rapporteren over deze activiteiten, ondanks dat een nieuwe richtlijn op Europees niveau bepaalde Nederlandse ondernemingen verplicht te rapporteren over maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen. Door het vrijwillige karakter van rapportages over maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen en het ontbreken van formele regelgeving is er een verhoogd risico dat bedrijven misbruik maken van mvo-rapportages voor bijvoorbeeld zakelijk of persoonlijk gewin. De verwachting is echter dat het belang en de kwaliteit van mvo-rapportages zal toenemen in de nabije toekomst om transparantie te verhogen binnen verschillende branches en sectoren. Hierdoor kunnen mvo-rapportages en de controle hierop ingezet worden om onethisch gedrag te verminderen en meer openheid van zaken te geven hoe ondernemingen te werk gaan.

Investigating the drivers of corporate social responsibility in the global tea supply chain: a case study of Eastern Produce Limited in Malawi

Using a case study of the tea producer Eastern Produce Malawi, this research investigates which factors which influence companies upstream in the global supply chains to adopt a corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda. Although external pressures, such as demands from Western consumers or international organizations and their related initiatives, may have shaped Eastern Produce Malawi's CSR agenda, strong internal organizational contingencies, including transformational leaders who recognize the significance of ethical issues and strong organizational values, led it to adopt this CSR agenda in practice. This study underscores the significance of using an integrative framework to explain various CSR drivers for companies. It concludes with managerial and public policy implications, as well as areas for further research.

CSR processes in governance systems and structures

When corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a sensemaking process is assessed from a corporate governance perspective, this implies that stakeholders do not only influence companies by promoting and enforcing regulations and other corporate guidelines. They also influence companies by promoting regulation on influence pathways, by demanding that companies develop formal mechanisms that allow companies and stakeholders to discuss and in some cases agree on changes to principles and policies. This perspective suggests that regulation is an outcome of power relations and is, as such, a reflection of certain mental models. As such, mental models reveal the political bias in corporate governance perspectives. For this reason, CSR research needs to be clear about the underlying assumptions about corporate governance, and corporate governance research needs to disclose which mental models of CSR influence the outcomes. Taking a governance perspective on the development of mental models of CSR helps to understand the interaction between CSR and processes of sensemaking at the institutional, organizational and individual levels.

Corporate Reputation of Companies on Twitter Seen from a Sustainability Perspective

Corporate reputation is becoming increasingly important for firms; social media platforms such as Twitter are used to convey their message. In this paper, corporate reputation will be assessed from a sustainability perspective. Using sentiment analysis, the top 100 brands of the Netherlands were scraped and analyzed. The companies were registered in the sustainable industry classification system (SICS) to perform the analysis on an industry level. A semantic search tool called Open Semantic Desktop Search was used to filter through the data to find keywords related to sustainability and corporate reputation. Findings show that companies that tweet more often about corporate reputation and sustainability receive overall a more positive sentiment from the public.

Managing corporate identity: an integrative framework of dimensions and determinants

Although there has been an enduring interest in corporate identity and image management, there is relatively little systematic empirical research on the topic. Large due to the diffuse interpretations, and dubious denotation that have characterized the subject of corporate identity so far, the authors present an integrative conceptual framework of dimensions and determinants of corporate identity management. This framework and its constructs specify the concept of corporate identity and can be used to a predictive basis to guide, frame and model empirical research