Corporate Social Responsibility and Strategic Management

Abstract

The present essay focuses on one of today's core issues in management, namely, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Following in the wake of the three preceding book review essays that have appeared in this journal ( Guthey, 2005;Jackson, 2005;Watson, 2006), four recent books are collectively reviewed that address CSR and how it interrelates with, and poses important challenges to, the field of strategic management. The books have been written by leading experts in the field, are already making a significant publishing impact and will likely (and hopefully) exert considerable influence on both the scientific community and business practitioners.CSR is both a core and emerging issue in management, with a myriad of questions yet to be posed and countless questions still to be answered. Globalization processes of a more or less disruptive nature, the tremendous influence of the media, the agglomerated power of multinational corporations, the immense leverage applied by transnational

Social Alliance and Employee Voluntary Activities: A Resource-Based Perspective

“…Although private contributions remain a major source of revenue, NPOs are increasing their reliance on commercial income and corporate donations (Brammer and Millington 2004;Salamon 1997). This steady 'commercialization' of the sector is accompanied by a surge in CSR initiatives and a heightened desire among companies-motivated by increasingly strident and empowered stakeholders-to position themselves as good citizens (Galan 2006;Lockett et al 2006). While corporate donations have generally grown since the 1980s, the total corporate donations in cash still only amount to about 5% of all voluntary giving and are predicted to fall in the next few years (Tomkins 2009).…”

Responsible leadership? Development of CSR at danfoss, Denmark

“…In recent decades this responsibility has been enlarged so that value should not only be created for shareholders but rather for a wide variety of different stakeholders (Freeman, 1984;Jensen, 2001). This new and perhaps normative view and understanding of companies and their social responsibilities has created important challenges to the fi eld of leadership and strategic management (Galan, 2006). Fortunately, the understanding has also created numerous opportunities and extensively, fi rms have adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a new guiding principle.…”

Responsible Leadership and the Political Role of Global Business

“…'Corporate Social Responsibility' means that companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders (European Commission, 2012). The concept of CSR and its social and environmental sub-dimensions now feature regularly on the corporate agenda, regardless of the exact relation between CSR and shareholder-value orientation -be it an additional or restrictive one (Diermeier, 2006;Galan, 2006). As a result, these developments shape the corporate leaders' tasks, since now leaders have to mediate between complex, often contradictory environmental demands due to their exposure to a multitude of politically, economically or institutionally conflicting rationalities.…”