The social construction of global corporate citizenship: Sustainability reports of automotive corporations

What does global corporate citizenship mean? In the absence of formal definitions, a place where understandings of corporate citizenship can be found is corporate texts. From the perspectives of sociological institutional theory and strategic legitimacy theory, we utilized critical discourse analysis as a methodology to study the corporate sustainability reports of multinational automotive corporations. We observed isomorphic themes that constitute socially constructed expectations of global corporate citizenship regarding climate change. We also observed heterogeneity in how these themes are manifested. We examined the rhetorical features of these reports as ways that corporations strategically position themselves in the global marketplace.     

Building a global corporate social responsibility program via mergers and acquisitions: A managerial framework

While previous studies and management conventions often adopted a finance-centric view of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBM&A or CBA), we demonstrate that CBA can be an effective platform upon which to build a global corporate social responsibility (CSR) program and that CSR initiatives can be customized for different locales. These CSR-CBA interconnections and customizations respond to a range of stakeholder interests associated with both national and societal institutional factors. We develop a managerial framework for the CSR-CBA setting and illustrate the framework with an exemplar of international expansion through acquisitions combined with the international development and implementation of CSR.     

Antecedents and consequences of global responsiveness: An empirical examination of MNCs in the global sourcing context

As global responsiveness (GR) has been recognised as critical for global market advantage, we draw upon social capital theory and develop a theoretical model which clarifies the determinants and consequences of GR. Based upon a cross-national sample of 118 MNCs from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, we found that intra-firm structural and inter-firm relational social capital, as reflected in integrative mechanisms and joint problem solving respectively, are positively associated with GR. In addition, whilst negatively related to global sourcing barriers, GR has a positive effect on MNC performance. Our findings also indicate that GR plays an essential role by fully mediating the associations of information-based mechanisms, people-based mechanisms, and joint problem solving with global sourcing barriers and MNC performance.