Approaching corporate social responsibility from beyond the confines of the business case

Citation

Burchell, J. and Cook, J. (2010), "Approaching corporate social responsibility from beyond the confines of the business case", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 30 No. 11/12. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijssp.2010.03130kaa.001

Approaching corporate social responsibility from beyond the confines of the business case

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Volume 30, Issue 11/12.

About the Guest Editors

Jon Burchell Senior Lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development at the University of Sheffield Management School. His research interests focus on corporate social responsibility, processes of stakeholder engagement and dialogue, and responsible management education. He is a member of the British Academy of Management Special Interest Group on CSR and is author of the Corporate Social Responsibility Reader (2008, Routledge).

Joanne CookLecturer in Organisations and Society in the Stirling Institute for Socio-Management, at the University of Stirling. Her research interests include; stakeholder dialogue on responsible business, corporate citizenship and the changing nature of business/civil society relations. Recent projects include “Corporation responsibility; action through dialogue learning and exchange” (ESRC). She also works in the field of gender, migration and citizenship, and recent research projects include, A8 migration in the Yorkshire region (Leeds City Council) and a comparative project on African migration and intergenerational relations (British Academy).

Introduction

The proliferation of debates surrounding global climate change, unsustainable growth, corporate scandals and the questioning of the morality of global capitalism – all suggest that the complex relationship between business, the state and civil society is undergoing change. Emerging concerns over the ethical and social responsibilities of corporations have resulted in the scrutinising of companies regarding their social and environmental impacts and the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate citizenship. As companies have responded to the challenge of this new ethical evaluation, we have seen a range of CSR initiatives and strategies emerging, incorporating social and environmental dimensions. Associated with these processes we have seen the emergence of a sizeable academic community developing both theoretical conceptualisation and empirical evaluation of these strategies.

This emerging research has provided us with significant insight into defining the notion of social responsibility within business (Davis, 1973; Jones, 1980; Carroll, 1991; McWilliams and Siegal, 2001), seeking to identify the correlation between responsible practice and business success (Waddock and Graves, 1997; Swanson, 1999; Cowe and Hopkins, Griffin, 2000; Vogel, 2005), reporting and monitoring the strategies pursued by business (Gray et al., 1997; Laufer, 2003; Owen and O'Dwyer, 2008), emphasising a transition towards stakeholder management principles (Freeman, 1984; Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Carroll and Buckholtz, 2000; Kaptein and Van Tulder, 2003), theorising the notion of corporations as citizens with associated rights and responsibilities (Andriof and McIntosh, 2001; Zadek, 2001; Matten and Crane, 2005), and critiquing CSR as an excuse for business as usual (Henderson, 2001; Palazzo and Richter, 2005; Banerjee, 2007; Hanlon, 2008).

Undoubtedly the work highlighted above has provided a major contribution in helping us to examine the core practices underlying the emergence of CSR. However, as we build upon this initial research base we should now be asking challenging questions about the appropriate direction of future research on CSR. In particular, should debates be unshackled in order to gain new insights into these processes of change? It is upon these issues that this special edition is focused. In seeking to highlight the potential for expanding the CSR research agenda, we suggest three key areas for consideration.

Is it time to move beyond the “business case”?

We contend that while the focus of CSR must, by definition, be about “corporate” responsibility, this does not dictate that research and debate must be framed and restricted within a business and management discourse. While companies will have to live up to, and comply with, these social and environmental responsibilities it does not necessarily follow that they should be the only ones defining what those responsibilities are, where the boundaries of these responsibilities lie and how they should be evaluated and judged. As Brooks, in this special edition highlights, an over-emphasis upon evaluating and justifying the business case suggests that we have become restricted by the straitjacket of economic rationality and the dominance of economic concerns over social values. Economic activity is no longer the adjunct to society but the centre-point. The consequence of this is that we are forced to restrict our discussions of CSR to a framework of “business case” logic which leaves little or no room to incorporate moral and ethical arguments that do not have a comfortable win-win scenario for business. If this is the framework within which we continue to devote our primary attention, then by necessity CSR will always come up short of its possible potential. Not all socially responsible decisions necessarily have a business benefit. Can all ethical issues be resolved through a win-win scenario? As both Nijhoff and Jeurissen and Parkes, Scully and Anson highlight in their articles, the prioritisation of the business case leads companies to favour the most profitable projects and strategies rather than those most needed by society. It is far easier to support a school or raise money for a “worthy” cause than it is to work with groups that are perceived as “less deserving”.

In the same manner in which the dominance of ecological modernisation has allowed businesses to argue for the ability to create sustainable development while continuing within a paradigm of economic growth despite finite resources (see for example Hajer, 1995; Dryzek, 1997). CSR is in danger of allowing companies to cherry pick responsibilities in line with business priorities (Burchell and Cook, 2008). Along with the win-wins there must inevitably be as many win-lose scenarios. It is surely within these cases and fields which we will find the challenging nature of CSR and its most transformative potential. Moving beyond the business case will allow researchers to push the limits of how far CSR is a values driven agenda rather than simply a new interpretation of covering over the cracks.

From stakeholder management to stakeholder voice and perspectives

Our second suggestion is that there appears to be a restrictive approach towards not only how we understand CSR but also from whose perspectives we seek to judge its role and impact. One of the primary driving forces within this field has been the engagement with stakeholder theory and the recognition that companies are responsible to a broad range of stakeholders extending far beyond the traditional remit of the shareholders (Freeman, 1984; Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Andriof et al., 2002). However, when looking at the research in this area, again it is dominated by analysis from a business focused perspective i.e. how companies identify their stakeholders and select which ones are relevant, how companies engage with their stakeholders and build relationships with them. This business-centric perspective is engrained within stakeholder management, mapping the process like a wagon wheel with the company at its heart and the stakeholders around the periphery (Kennedy, 2010).

What much of the work seems to be accepting, almost unquestioningly, is that CSR is a business led, business structured, and inevitably a business framed concept (Burchell and Cook, 2008). From these perspectives, when we seek to understand what CSR is or what it represents, we look at how businesses define and interpret it. Subsequently, to understand how stakeholders perceive and respond to notions of corporate responsibility we examine it through company stakeholder management and reporting strategies and processes.

Removing the business from the heart of the stakeholder picture inevitably opens up some exciting new avenues. We are witnessing a newly emerging collection of approaches whose primary focus lies within the perspectives and experiences of stakeholders and how they exert influence over the development of CSR and our theoretical conceptualisation of it. The papers in this collection that have adopted such a perspective have highlighted for example the manner in which CSR opens up new channels for activist tactics as in the piece by den Hond, de Bakker and de Haan. Adding to this, Corrado and Fallon explore stakeholding through the eyes of marginalised indigenous communities and the subsequent manipulation of the stakeholder ideal. In contrast, from within the firm Morgan and Burchell examine community volunteering from the perspective of the employees rather than the employer. This alternative lens reveals the emergence of new avenues for challenging and influencing business practice, while understanding that the resources to influence CSR remain tempered by the existence of deep rooted socio-cultural and economic inequalities. A fresh focus from outside of the realm of business can reveal the complex array of opportunities and constraints that characterise CSR and its potential outcomes.

Casting a wider lens should lead to an expansion of theoretical approaches to CSR

Approaches that situate CSR within the broader context of changing interactions between the state, business and civil society inevitably attract researchers for whom the examination of emerging relationships is core. Moreno, for example, connects the role of CSR within different countries to the traditional business, state, civil society relations embedded within different European welfare regimes. As his work highlights, CSR interacts with pre-existing welfare and governance regimes and therefore takes different forms in different locations. The issue of location and context is reflected in this special edition's attempt to pull together CSR research from an international collection of academics, writing from a range of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. Thus, the broader analyses of CSR, outlined above, emerges out of non-traditional management approaches integrating theories and frameworks from politics, sociology, psychology, social policy, etc. Indeed this emphasis on multidisciplinarity must be one of the more exciting aspects of working within the CSR field – if one of the more frustrating when seeking avenues for publication. A key part of this expansion involves an openness towards what we perceive to be within the bounds of CSR. Currently, there appears to be too much of a generalised acceptance that CSR is about business research and situated within management disciplines. In contrast, however, we would argue that the evolution and understanding of CSR has implications for many fields. Applications of social movement theory have helped to clarify the ways in which campaign groups have achieved stakeholder status (den Hond and de Bakker, 2007; King, 2008). Within the papers in the special edition, we have encouraged a diverse set of theoretical approaches to the CSR field. For example, Moreno examines CSR in relation to European welfare models, Brooks taps into the sociology of economic behaviour and the work of Weber, Polanyi and MacIntyre, among others, while Parkes, Scully and Anson approach CSR through the lens of Walzer and the concept of “the good society”.

Brief summary of papers

To reflect on the issues highlighted above the articles in this special edition are roughly organised into three groups.

The first two articles provide theoretical critiques taking as their starting points, a concern with the overly dominant position of “business case” arguments within CSR analysis. Simon Brooks provides a historical critique, arguing that the increasing concern with finding a direct correlation between responsible practice and business profit has restricted the influence of alternative perspectives on CSR-based within morality and ethics. He suggests that moving away from this “straitjacket” of economic rationality can highlight the stronger critical potential of CSR. Andre Nihoff and Ronald Jeurissen continue along a similar path, arguing that as the concept of CSR has become increasingly commodified its ability to be the framework for radical organisational change has significantly diminished. The article identified a “glass ceiling” imposed on CSR by the predominance of “business case” logic arguing that CSR is becoming much more about innovation, new markets and businesswise approaches forcing out the important focus upon responsible corporate practice. While this has helped to make CSR more palatable to the business world, they argue, it comes at the cost of driving out the intrinsic motivations for engaging in CSR.

The following three papers discuss research focused upon placing stakeholder experiences and interpretations of CSR at the heart of analysis. In these cases, the stakeholder groups under analysis are NGOs employees and local communities. Colin Morgan and Jon Burchell take the examination of CSR to the level of employee experiences within the firm through a focus upon employee sponsored volunteering (ESV). ESV is examined through the lens of organisational citizenship behaviour and organisational identity approaches, which the authors help to engender a far more integrated and complex understanding of the issues lying at the heart of ESV. The focus is therefore to advance understanding of the impact and experiences of ESV beyond the narrow organisational perspective and the positive “business case” rationale for engaging in such volunteering strategies. Frank Den Hond, Frank DeBakkar and Patricia de Haan focus upon the way in which activist tactics within NGOs have been reoriented in the light of the increasing debates over responsible business practice. To examine these processes the authors build upon literature on social movements, institutional change and inter-organisational conflict to explore a range of well-documented conflicts in the global sports and apparel industry. They examine how activist groups instigate institutional change within an organisational field. Importantly, the article demonstrates the value of examining stakeholder tactics at an industry level rather than at the firm level, in order to understand the sequential patterning of tactical choices in evoking institutional change.

The impact of CSR on local communities is considered by Gabriela Coronado and Wayne Fallen who explore the complexities of CSR in the context of the mining sector and indigenous communities in Australia. The article focuses its analysis of stakeholder dialogue upon two mining corporations; BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, with the core examination being centred around how these corporations respond to the interests of those aboriginal peoples who are directly affected by their mining operations. The authors take a critical approach to stakeholder theory moving it beyond its focus upon corporate interests to situating the civil society community at the heart of the analysis. In doing so the article examines some of the rhetoric of company CSR programmes, alongside the limited and often unequal effect these practices have upon the interests and lives of indigenous communities.

The final two papers in this special edition represent attempts to extend the parameters of CSR research into new and challenging territories, and to challenge our perceptions regarding where the concept of CSR has value. Luis Moreno connects the emergence of CSR with welfare capitalism and social citizenship. By contrasting an analysis of the worlds of welfare capitalism with a CSR typology of policy governance this article is able to elaborate on the idea that CSR, as an input to the contemporary welfare mix, may induce social policy development. In tackling this, the author approaches CSR from the academic fields of political economy, policy analysis and sociology. The fundamental contribution of this article to the collection is that it reflects on those “meeting points” and “encountering places” where the action of individuals, families, corporations, NGOs and public policies can optimise the advancement of social citizenship. The final article by Carole Parkes, Judy Scully and Susan Anson extends the conceptual lens of CSR to examine the ways in which CSR and civil society debates can inform wider aspects of public policy and business through its application to areas of society that are perceived as “challenging” and “undeserving”. In doing so it draws upon social theory developed by Walzer (1995) to explore the question “in which society can lives be best led?" The article examines how the citizenship actions of front line public sector employees, working in partnership with other agencies in the community, (including business) embodies the essence of Walzer's notion of CSR and civil society by going beyond the call of duty to provide additional training and moral support for the community offenders.

Concluding remarks

CSR both as a concept and as a research field, potentially, has much to offer our understanding of the changing relationships between business, the state and civil society. However, if we continue to focus our attention too narrowly we are in danger of restricting the ability of the field to offer significant critique and challenge to the notions of business as usual with a splash of responsibility on the side. Without this challenge of expanding our perspectives, CSR research could be in danger of falling into almost a simple dichotomous position. On the one hand, we have researched which focuses upon the impact of CSR on businesses and the role of CSR within the contemporary business climate. Case studies abound as do examinations of CSR reporting practices and engagement processes; all putting the company at the heart of the process and seeking to measure the potential positive impact of CSR activities on these organisations. On the other hand, we have the critics of CSR who see in the concept little of any real positive worth and, in many cases, identify it as nothing more than another example of business appropriation of the language of ethics and community while largely maintaining “business as usual”. CSR in this respect they argue, is only impacting at the margins, while being kept well away from core business strategy and activity.

In some ways it appears as if we have almost slipped into a situation in which those critics who argue that CSR offers nothing new or particularly challenging, and is largely reflecting business as usual are being proved right. However, they are being proved right not because CSR is inherently a weak and powerless concept but because the academic community seems happy to accept the relatively restrictive paradigm for CSR research which is business focused and “business case” driven. CSR by its very nature represents the notion of challenging business to do things differently. As academic researchers and educators the field of responsible management education and research offers the opportunity to challenge people to examine business through an alternative lens; a lens within which social and environmental targets have as much resonance as economic ones. However, we risk being stuck within a frame that prioritises the economic over the social and environmental, and that only recognises the social and environmental value if it subsequently has a knock-on effect to the economic.

The papers collected within this special edition represent just some of the areas and opportunities opened up by adopting an alternative lens; by recognising that CSR is not merely the realm of the management researcher and that CSR can be approached from a vast array of ideological and empirical perspectives. We hope that the articles contained herewith represent food for thought for those of us working within the field of CSR research and help to shape the directions in which we seek to develop future research

Jon Burchell and Joanne CookGuest Editors

Further reading

Hopkins, M. and Cowe, R. (2003), Corporate Social Responsibility-Is There a Business Case?, ACCA UK, Institute of Business Ethics, London.