Corporate Social Responsibility in Europe and the U.S.: Insights from Businesses’ Self-presentations

Maignan, Isabelle; Ralston, David A.

doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8491028

Cited by 1,100 publications

(862 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Consequently, IND_VISIB takes the value 1 if an industry is classified as having high visibility due to high impact, and the value 0 otherwise. 8 Third, we control for the potential effect of institutional factors, as the relevance of institutional settings in relation to CSR disclosures is frequently stressed (e.g., Doh and Guay 2006;Maignan and Ralston 2002). Based on previous CSR disclosure research, we distinguish between an institutional setting with a stakeholder versus shareholder orientation (see Holder-Webb et al 2008;Simnett et al 2009;Smith et al 2005) as well as the US versus non-US countries (Aguilera et al 2006;Buhr and Freedman 2001;Cormier and Magnan 1999;Holder-Webb et al 2008).…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secondary Stakeholder Influence on CSR Disclosure: An Application of Stakeholder Salience Theory

2015

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The aim of this study is to analyse how secondary stakeholders influence managerial decision-making on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure. Based on stakeholder salience theory, we empirically investigate whether differences in environmental disclosure among companies are systematically related to differences in the level of power, urgency and legitimacy of the environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with which these companies are confronted. Using proprietary archival data for an international sample of 199 large companies, our results suggest that differences in environmental disclosures between companies are mainly associated with differences between their environmental stakeholders' legitimacy. The effects of power and urgency are of an indirect nature, as they are mediated by legitimacy. This study improves our understanding of CSR disclosure by demonstrating that, next to the welldocumented effect of company characteristics, stakeholder characteristics are also important. Besides, it provides scarce empirical evidence that not only primary stakeholders, but also secondary stakeholders are influential with regards to management decision-making. And more specifically, it offers insight into why some stakeholder groups are better able to influence disclosure decisions than other. The results also have important practical implications for managers of both environmental NGOs and large companies. For managers of environmental NGOs the results provide evidence of the most successful tactics for having their environmental information demands satisfied by companies. For company management the results provide insights into the most important stakeholder characteristics, on the basis of which they may develop strategies for proactively disclosing environmental information.

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Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secondary Stakeholder Influence on CSR Disclosure: An Application of Stakeholder Salience Theory

2015

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“…As such, it is useful for the understanding of cross-national differences in corporate practice (Aguilera and Jackson 2003), and there has been an increasing call for research that makes use of institutional theory to enhance understanding of CSR (Campbell 2007, Husted and Allen 2006, Maignan and Ralston 2002, Rodriguez et al 2006. Using institutional theory, four key factors critical to CSR in a given country are identified: 1) corporate ownership structures, 2) corporate governance, 3) openness of the economy to international investment, and 4) the role of civil society.…”

Section: Integrative Social Contracts Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Social Responsibility and Different Stages of Economic Development: Singapore, Turkey, and Ethiopia

Robertson

2009

J Bus Ethics

113

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The U.S. and U.K. models of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are relatively well defined. As the phenomenon of CSR establishes itself more globally, the question arises as to the nature of CSR in other countries. Is a universal model of CSR applicable across countries or is CSR specific to country context? This article uses integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) and four institutional factors -firm ownership structure, corporate governance, openness of the economy to international investment, and the role of civil society -to examine CSR in Singapore, Turkey, and Ethiopia. Field research results illustrate variation across the institutional factors and suggest that CSR is responsive to country differences. Research findings have implications for consideration of the tradeoff between global and local CSR priorities and practices. 2) corporate governance, 3) openness of the economy to international investment, and 4) the role of civil society. These institutional factors were chosen based on potential to affect the nature of CSR, with the expectation that country differences in these factors will lead to different characteristics of CSR.The following sections apply this conceptual framework to Singapore, Turkey, andEthiopia, ask what lessons can be learned from the CSR experiences of firms in these three countries, and conclude with implications for future research.4 Singapore, Turkey, and EthiopiaMethodology. Over the course of about a year I had the opportunity to spend approximately one week each in Singapore, Turkey, and Ethiopia (in that order) holding meetings and conducting interviews with academics, businesspeople, government leaders and members of NGOs. In both Turkey and Singapore I attended CSR conferences and spoke to fellow participants. My sample selection used a "snowball" technique to identify interviewees with one respondent leading me to another. My discussions followed an open-ended interview format with the basic structure of the interview contained in the Appendix. I took notes on these interviews and in some instances emailed respondents to collect more data. Where companies were named as exemplars of CSR, I gathered information on the companies' CSR initiatives from their websites.*************** Table 1 about here *************** These three countries were chosen because they presented opportunities for field research and because they are excellent examples of a well developed economy (Singapore), an economy that is rapidly growing (Turkey) and an underdeveloped economy (Ethiopia). Choosing such different countries allows for exploration of country differences in institutional factors and any resulting differences in CSR.Baseline Data. Turkey and Ethiopia are much larger countries than Singapore both in land mass and population (See Table 2). However, gross national income per person looks very different. Overall, the economic figures suggest that Singapore is vastly wealthier per capita and more developed than Turkey, and Turkey, in turn, is substantially more developed t...

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“…However, the extant literature argues that CSR requires certain conditions and institutional arrangements to function -i.e. strong government, market, and civil society Aguilera and Jackson, 2003;Gjolberg, 2009;Husted and Allen, 2006;Langlois and Schlegelmilch, 1990;Maignan and Ralston, 2002;Muller, 2006). In that regard, most comparative CSR analytical frameworks, in their accounts, often implicitly assume strong institutional contexts, which put "…pressures on companies to engage in such CSR initiatives" (Aguilera et al, 2007: 847/8), especially in developed market contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Social Responsibility in Challenging and Non-enabling Institutional Contexts: Do Institutional Voids matter?

2014

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Corporate Social Responsibility in Europe and the U.S.: Insights from Businesses’ Self-presentations

Cited by 1,100 publications

References 11 publications

Secondary Stakeholder Influence on CSR Disclosure: An Application of Stakeholder Salience Theory

Secondary Stakeholder Influence on CSR Disclosure: An Application of Stakeholder Salience Theory

Corporate Social Responsibility and Different Stages of Economic Development: Singapore, Turkey, and Ethiopia

Corporate Social Responsibility in Challenging and Non-enabling Institutional Contexts: Do Institutional Voids matter?

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