Gesellschaftliches Engagement von Unternehmen als Leitbegriff – die deutsche Variante von Corporate Citizenship

Exploring Corporate Community Engagement in Switzerland

“…Two studies in Germany tackled similar issues: Braun and Kukuk (2007) and Maass and Clemens (2002) gathered data among German firms pertaining to prevalence, nature, and fields of community engagement. Although study procedures and samples differed considerably, the authors strived to establish some degree of comparability by using the same questionnaire items.…”

“…RQ 2 was operationalized via two approaches: First, earlier studies (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Maass & Clemens, 2002; Rochlin et al, 2004) were mirrored that explored engagement motivation by prompting a variety of 11 possible reasons. The individual respondents judged whether the reasons applied to their firm.…”

“…Second, theoretical reflections of Windsor (2001, 2006) and Swanson (1995, 1999) suggest companies’ community engagement to be either idealistically or strategically motivated or both. Accordingly, previous empirical studies (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009; Googins et al, 2009; Hahn & Scheermesser, 2006; Maass & Clemens, 2002; van de Ven & Graafland, 2006) have found idealistic values, such as being a good employer and living up to one’s corporate social responsibility, to motivate companies’ community involvement activities as well as strategic considerations of benefits that are gained readily or over the course of time (e.g., expected reputational gains, increased employee morale).…”

“…. ].” Especially the assessment of (a) the importance of companies’ voluntary engagement in general, as well as (b) whether other firms pursue it and (c) its impact has been discussed as relevant information (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Maass & Clemens, 2002; Marquis, Glynn, & Davis, 2007; Orlitzky, Schmidt, & Rynes, 2003) and will be termed hereafter “environmental assessment.”…”

“…Although much has been said about the business case of companies’ voluntary community engagement, the big picture as to whether it pays in economic success remains unclear (Orlitzky et al, 2003). Evaluation efforts by individual firms are—despite the demand from scholars (Wood, 1991) to deal with the issue—still largely missing in practice (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Googins et al, 2009; Orlitzky et al, 2003; Rochlin et al, 2004). However, the volume of evaluation activities as part of firms’ environmental assessment is not known for Switzerland and was thus assessed in this study.…”