Zoekresultaten

From corporate towards ‘shared’ social responsibility?

This paper examines the changing understandingof corporate social responsibility (CSR) by looking atthree aspects: the growing public demands regardingcorporate behaviour, the role of government in“promoting” or “requesting” the socially responsiblecorporate behaviour, and the attempts of business todeal with changing demands.

Partnerships for corporate social responsability

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the extent to which partnerships with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are a necessity for successful efforts of businesses in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The main findings are based on an analysis of existing literature on NGO typologies and strategies for CSR and illustrated with examples from the Dutch National Research Program on CSR. Based on three different strategies towards CSR, the suggestion is that NGOs tend to become involved in partnerships with companies that have an interest in postponing concrete results, while partnerships with companies that have the potential for the biggest contribution to the ambitions of NGOs have the highest risk of diminishing NGO-legitimacy. 

Institutional antecedents of the corporate social responsibility narrative in the developing world context: implications for sustainable development

Efforts to understand the background to perceptions and manifestation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the developing world need to focus on establishing their link with the challenges of socio-economic governance and societal expectations and cultural traditions. This signifies a departure from a western centric understanding of CSR but also an over-focus on CSR as philanthropy. This study considers the Malawian tourism industry and finds that its colonial legacy, post-colonialism development thinking and the national education system explain the prevalence of a ‘CSR as philanthropy’ agenda. When these factors interact with challenges of socio-economic governance and societal expectations, however, the universality thesis that has often been associated with the theory and implementation CSR can be challenged. These findings therefore suggest a shift from the western centric CSR thinking to a CSR perspective that is strongly grounded in local values and norms and which meets the expectations of the global society. This indicates a way forward if CSR is to be adequately institutionalized in the developing world.

Corporate social responsibility in Malawi: antecedents, issues, practices and future directions.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Malawi is becoming a significant issue not only because of the complexity of the social, economic and political environment in which companies operate, but also because of the social and environmental impacts which business operations have on the wider Malawian society. In this chapter, it is shown that the CSR agenda currently pursued by companies in Malawi takes both the normative and instrumental forms, and is largely shaped by the political and socio-economical factors at national and global levels. The chapter is structured as follows: the first section addresses the historical development of CSR and perceptions various actors hold about the forms of responsibilities companies can assume in Malawi; a discussion of the various antecedents of CSR in Malawi. This is followed by an intermediate section which provides CSR themes and priority issues. The final two sections explore the different approaches companies pursue in the implementation of CSR agendas—but also examine the perceived barriers to CSR in Malawi. The chapter concludes by mapping out the future prospects of CSR in Malawi.

Corporate Communication and CSR; comparing Italian and Dutch energy companies on anti-greenwashing strategies.

Validity and compatibility of the SAM and KLD screening instruments

In this paper validity and compatibility of the SAM and KLD screening instruments are the central themes. A screening instrument can be called valid if it identifies performance that is important to society. A screening instrument is called compatible if these instruments can be used interchangeably. Validity The outcome of the content-analysis approach suggest that there is clearly not a perfect match between the SAM and KLD instruments and the CSAF, indicating that the SAM and KLD screening instruments taken the CSAF as the standard, cannot be called valid measures of corporate sustainability performance. However, as discussed earlier, assessing validity is not a binary phenomenon. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will not do. To make things more complicated, the validity of a measure also depends on the aggregation level under observation. It makes a big difference if validity is assessed at a high (i.e. Dimension) or low aggregation (i.e. Sustainability Item) level . At the highest level there is a perfect match with the CSAF, indicating that both screening instruments are valid measures of corporate sustainability performance. At the lowest level the situation is quite different. Here we see that overlap is relatively poor. Besides, the weight distributions of the SAM and KLD instruments and the CSAF are also largely dissimilar. When we break the validity discussion down to the Dimension level, we can see that overlap between the SAM and KLD instruments is also relatively poor, although the SAM instrument is slightly more attuned to the CSAF than the KLD instrument. This most notably applies to the Governance Dimension. The SAM instrument scores relatively poor on environmental issues. This is due to the fact that we analyzed the generic (i.e. non-industry specific) screening instrument. SAM typically addresses environmental issues in industry specific supplements. CompatibilityThe second question in this study concerns the compatibility of the SAM and KLD screening instruments. Or more accurately phrased: the extent to which these rating schemes are compatible. If we would consider compatibility assessment of screening instruments as a binary phenomenon, then we should conclude that the SAM and KLD instruments are not compatible.However, just like validity, assessing the compatibility of screening instruments is not a binary phenomenon. The extent to which the rating schemes of the two SRAs are compatible relates to the aggregation level. At the highest aggregation ( or Dimension) level the screening instruments are perfectly compatible. Both instruments cover governance, social, environmental and economic issues. At the lowest (or Sustainability Item) level the situation is quite different. At this level compatibility of both instruments is poor. Overlap is poor and the weight distributions are hardly correlated. Obviously both instruments are reflect different interpretations of corporate sustainability performance. Compatibility is highest for the Social Dimension. For the Governance, Environment and Economic Dimension compatibility is very poor. The overall conclusion should therefore be that that compatibility of the SAM and KLD screening instruments is (very) poor and that for this reason these instruments cannot