Playing on Two Chessboards: Reputation Effects between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA)

It has recently been argued that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is ‘political’. It has been neglected however, that firms also operate politically in a traditional sense, in seeking to secure favourable political conditions for their businesses. We argue that there are potential synergies between CSR and corporate political activity (CPA) that are often overlooked by firms and that recognition of these synergies will stimulate firms to align their CSR and CPA. We develop a conceptual model that specifies how various configurations of a firm's CSR and CPA – alignment, misalignment, and non‐alignment – affect the firm's reputation beyond the separate reputation effects of CSR and CPA. This model has important implications for understanding how and why firms should pay attention to their CPA and CSR configurations, and thereby contributes to the broader issue of why firms should make sure that they are consistent in terms of responding to stakeholder concerns.     

Multi‐foci CSR perceptions,procedural justice and in‐role employee performance: the mediating role of commitment and pride

This study explores differential employee responses to perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) treatment of social and non‐social stakeholder foci of the community, customers, shareholders and environment along with first‐party employee justice perceptions. At a finance‐sector multinational, we test the mediating role of commitment and pride in accounting for the relationship between perceptions of stakeholder treatment and in‐role performance. We propose and pilot a new multi‐foci CSR measure and include this in a mediated model within a separate study. Socially responsible treatment of customers and the environment play a role in predicting performance; these foci are related to either pride or commitment. Community CSR, first‐party justice perceptions and commitment predict performance either directly or indirectly. Our research shows an absence of any positive employee response associated with CSR towards shareholders. The study uncovers new insights into our understanding of complexities in employee responses to CSR activities.     

Strategic stakeholder management,environmental corporate social responsibility engagement,and financial performance of stigmatized firms derived from Chinese special environmental policy

We draw upon the stigma literature and strategic stakeholder management model to develop a framework capable of explaining the link between environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) engagement and financial performance of stigmatized firms, taking stakeholder‐oriented governance and density of local stigmatized firms into consideration. Using a uniquely compiled dataset of Chinese firms specifically monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, we conducted propensity score matching analysis to estimate the impact of stigma on corporate financial performance and corporate environmental responsibility. The result shows that the financial performance of stigmatized firms is negatively affected by the stigma label, spurring them to engage in more ECSR than their peers to improve their legitimacy. Though ECSR engagement of stigmatized firms is found to be negatively associated with their financial performance in current study. Our results also confirm that (a) the financial performance of stigmatized firms is positively affected by two proxies for corporate stakeholder‐oriented governance (i.e., institutional ownership and corporate transparency) and negatively affected by the density of local stigmatized firms; (b) corporate stakeholder‐oriented governance compensates for the negative effect of ECSR engagement; (c) high intensity of local stigmatized firms provides focal firms with an opportunity to improve their financial performance through ECSR engagement; and (d) the positive effects of corporate stakeholder‐oriented governance are diminished by the density of local stigmatized firms.     

Opening up the firm: What explains participation and effort in voluntary carbon disclosure by global businesses? An analysis of internal firm factors and dynamics

A voluntary climate initiative that has emerged over the past two decades as an institutional arrangement for corporations around the globe to signal and demonstrate their proactive climate leadership is the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project). Unlike the extant literature that has emphasized stakeholder and regulatory pressures, this paper argues that voluntary carbon disclosure is both beneficial and costly for corporations with respect to the existence of supportive management structures, explicit CSR practices, and the existence of complementary assets. Moreover, there is variation between European firms and other global businesses because of Europe's distinctive national business systems framework in conjunction with global supply chain imperatives. Empirically, this study employs a novel discrete‐continuous modeling approach to distinguish between a corporation's decision to disclose and the linked but subsequent decision of how much to disclose climate change information. Results indicate that the main drivers of participation in voluntary carbon disclosure by the Global 500 firms is the existence of senior managers and executive‐level officers and the adoption of ESG principles by global businesses. Conditional on participation, European Union‐based and other global businesses that articulate a corporate vision for environmental sustainability, adopt ESG principles, and invest in complementary assets disclose climate change strategies and emissions at higher levels than companies without these internal firm capabilities. This study has implications for national climate policy and global climate change governance more generally, both of which increasingly focus on concrete climate solutions by corporations.     

Do Board's Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy and Orientation Influence Environmental Sustainability Disclosure? UK Evidence

The environmental implications of corporate economic activities have led to growing demands for firms and their boards to adopt sustainable strategies and to disseminate more useful information about their activities and impacts on environment. This paper investigates the impact of board's corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy and orientation on the quantity and quality of environmental sustainability disclosure in UK listed firms. We find that effective board CSR strategy and CSR‐oriented directors have a positive and significant impact on the quality of environmental sustainability disclosure, but not on the quantity. Our findings also suggest that the existence of a CSR committee and issuance of a stand‐alone CSR report are positively and significantly related to environmental sustainability disclosure. When we distinguish between firms with high and low environmental risk, we find that the board CSR/sustainability practices that affect the quantity (quality) of environmental sustainability disclosure appear to be driven more by highly (lowly) environmentally sensitive firms. These results suggest that the board CSR/sustainability practices play an important role in ensuring a firm's legitimacy and accountability towards stakeholders. Our findings shed new light on this under‐researched area and could be of interest to companies, policy‐makers and other stakeholders. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Components of CEO Transformational Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility*

abstract We use transformational leadership theory to explore the role of CEOs in determining the extent to which their firms engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR). We test this theory using data from 56 US and Canadian firms. CEO intellectual stimulation (but not CEO charismatic leadership) is found to be significantly associated with the propensity of the firm to engage in ‘strategic’ CSR, or those CSR activities that are most likely to be related to the firm's corporate and business‐level strategies. Thus, studies that ignore the role of leadership in CSR may yield imprecise conclusions regarding the antecedents and consequences of these activities. We also critique transformational leadership theory, in terms of its overemphasis on charismatic forms of leadership. This leads to a reconceptualization of transformational leadership, which emphasizes the intellectual stimulation component in the context of CSR.     

Adoption of cleaner technology for climate proactivity: a technology–firm–stakeholder framework

The adoption of cleaner technology (CT) has the potential to play an important role in tackling the impacts of business on climate change on business. It is therefore important to understand the factors motivating the adoption of CT in business. Using a technology–firm–stakeholder framework, this study proposes a perception‐based model for the adoption of CT for climate proactivity that is tested against data collected from 106 firms in India. Six factors are tested using a logistic regression and five are found to be significant in distinguishing adopter firms from non‐adopter firms. The results suggest that the perception‐based model using a technology–firm–stakeholder framework is a useful approach for examining factors affecting the adoption decision. While techno‐economic benefits are perceived to be higher by adopter firms than by non‐adopter firms, other benefits are not perceived differently by either adopter or non‐adopter firms. In addition, adopter firms perceive lower financial costs and higher technical capability than non‐adopter firms do. Also, adopter firms perceive higher regulatory pressure but lower stakeholder pressure than non‐adopter firms do. Implications of the findings and future research areas are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

CEOs' reputation,quality management and environmental innovation: The roles of stakeholder pressure and resource commitment

In this paper, we examine how and when chief executive officers' (CEOs') reputation enhances environmental innovation by considering quality management as a mediating mechanism of this relationship. In addition, we introduce stakeholder pressures (primary and secondary stakeholder pressures) as important contingencies of the relationship between CEOs' reputation and quality management. Moreover, we test the moderating role of resource commitment on the quality management‐environmental innovation relationship. We test our research model using data from a manufacturing industry sample of 217 firms from Ghana. We find that quality management mediates the relationship between reputation and environmental innovation. Moreover, the relationship between CEOs' reputation and quality management is amplified when levels of both primary and secondary stakeholder pressures are greater. Finally, our findings show that the effect of quality management on environmental innovation is enhanced when resource commitment is greater. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The Effect of Family Ownership on Different Dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from Large US Firms

Previous research has shown that family firms differ from non‐family firms with regard to aggregate measures of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We argue that CSR is a multidimensional concept that comprises several aspects, which range from employee relations to ecological concerns and product issues. Based on an organizational and family identity perspective, we argue that the effect of family ownership can differ across various CSR dimensions. Family firms can be responsible and irresponsible regarding CSR at the same time. We use a dataset of large US firms to test our hypotheses. Our Bayesian regressions show that family ownership is negatively associated with community‐related CSR performance and positively associated with diversity‐, employee‐, environment‐ and product‐related aspects of CSR. The largest positive effect of family ownership on CSR performance exists with regard to product‐related aspects of CSR. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

When Necessity Becomes a Virtue: The Effect of Product Market Competition on Corporate Social Responsibility

We test whether Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is driven by strategic considerations by empirically studying the link between competition and firms' social performance. We find that firms in more competitive industries have better social ratings. In particular, we show that (i) different market concentration proxies are negatively related to widely used CSR measures; (ii) that an increase in competition due to higher import penetration leads to superior CSR performance; (iii) that firms in more competitive environments have a superior environmental performance, measured by firm pollution levels; and (iv) that more product competition is associated to a larger within‐industry CSR variance. We interpret these results as evidence that CSR is strategically chosen.     

Reputation and Corporate Social Responsibility Aberrations,Trends, and Hypocrisy: Reactions to Firm Choices in the Stock Option Backdating Scandal

Drawing on strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and reputation theory, this paper examines the market reaction to firm disclosures of involvement in the US stock option backdating scandal. We examine how a firm's prior signals regarding ethical behaviour and values, as demonstrated through CSR initiatives, may both ameliorate and exacerbate market reactions. CSR initiatives may buffer a firm against general wrong‐doing but expose it to greater scrutiny and sanction for related wrong‐doing. Our results show that firms with enhanced overall reputations for CSR are partially buffered from scandal revelations. However, we find that when firms possess an enhanced reputation for CSR associated with corporate governance, violations pertaining specifically to governance are viewed as hypocritical and more harshly sanctioned. We also find lower and negative market reactions for firms that delay but self‐disclose their involvement in the scandal. The study extends the emergent, related literatures on strategic CSR and reputation management, and documents dynamics in the relationship between corporate social and financial performance.     

Toward a Theory of Activist-Driven Responsible Innovation: How Activists Pressure Firms to Adopt More Responsible Practices

Accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social responsibility (CSR), situated in the CSR domain, have recognized that activists mitigate information asymmetries between firms and consumers. However, depictions of activists as information disseminators do not explain how they perform their quintessential role – pressuring resistant firms to engage in responsible innovation that emphasizes the creation of socioenvironmental value. Drawing from social movement theory that identifies claims as the instrument of such pressure, we examine four activist organizations’ use of claims across six campaigns to drive firms to adopt more socially and environmentally responsible practices, a form of responsible innovation. Our core contribution is an empirically grounded theory of activist-driven responsible innovation (ARI) that proposes how activists use claims to drive firms to engage in responsible innovation, as well as how features of the two sides may shape this outcome. Our ARI theory primarily enriches accounts of stakeholder influence on corporate social responsibility in the CSR domain and, in doing so, secondarily enriches accounts of the influence of activists’ claims on firms in the social movement domain. These contributions also speak to the resolution of grand challenges, a core interest of the special issue.     

Adopting Proactive Environmental Strategy: The Influence of Stakeholders and Firm Size

abstract While smaller firms are less likely to undertake as many environmental practices as larger firms, extant literature suggests that smaller firms may be more responsive to stakeholder pressures. This paper contributes to the development of stakeholder theory by deriving a size moderated stakeholder model and applying it to a firm's adoption of proactive environmental practices. The empirical results show that smaller firms are more responsive to value‐chain, internal, and regulatory stakeholder pressures. These findings suggest that researchers evaluating organizations and the natural environment should be cautious about associating stakeholder pressures directly with firms' environmental strategies. Rather, the relationship between stakeholder pressures and environmental strategy tends to vary with size.     

What drives firms' commitment to fighting corruption? Evidence from the UK

The recent leak of the FinCEN files has highlighted the widespread presence of corruption in developing and developed economies, including the UK. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the factors that drive companies to implement measures for preventing corruption in developed countries using FTSE 350 nonfinancial firms. Specifically, the research examines the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments, board structure, and shareholding structure on adopting strategies, policies, and procedures aimed at countering corruption. Drawing upon agency, stakeholder, and legitimacy theories, our empirical evidence supports that CSR commitments and board independence positively influence firms' engagement in anticorruption measures. Conversely, institutional and managerial shareholdings are found to have a negative association with firms' efforts to combat corruption. In addition, the study shows that the effect of board characteristics became more pronounced following the enactment of the UK Bribery Act 2010, indicating risk-averse behavior. Various models, including cross-sectional and two-stage least squares (2SLS), are employed to analyze the data. Our findings have significant implications for understanding the complex relationship between CSR, corporate governance, and the ethical infrastructure of organizations. Ultimately, our results provide valuable insights for policymakers, companies, and other stakeholders in developing effective strategies, policies, and procedures to combat corruption activities.     

Stakeholder pressure for sustainability: Can ‘innovative capabilities’ explain the idiosyncratic response in the manufacturing firms?

This study explores role of innovative capabilities in determining a manufacturing firm's response to stakeholder pressure for adopting sustainable practices. Drawing on the theory of conservatism, we delineate that the firm's response is idiosyncratic and undergirded in the nature of its innovative capabilities. Our empirical investigation reveals that the response to the stakeholder pressure is mediated by the nature of the firm's innovative capabilities. Indian manufacturing firms are identified as unit of analysis for this study. The individual manufacturing facilities implement the environmental practices. The findings suggest that the manufacturing firm's exposure to exploitative/exploratory innovative capabilities triggers sustainable behaviours with ephemeral focus and enduring focus. Further, the exploratory/exploitative innovation is capable of explaining idiosyncratic behaviour for the firms' sustainability practices adoption. The findings delineate, with analysis, that unlike China, regulatory stakeholder pressures in India inhibit the adoption of sustainable practices with enduring focus in manufacturing firms.     

An Examination of Corporate Social Responsibility Implementation and Stakeholder Engagement: A Case Study in the Australian Mining Industry

This case study explores the experience of a company in a controversial industry sector and its efforts to act in a socially responsible manner when establishing a presence in a regional market. We examine the management of stakeholder relationships and communication, and identify the challenges associated with implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Our findings highlight the importance of ongoing and broad stakeholder identification, prioritization and management. This case study demonstrates the key role of commitment from senior management and front‐line employees and the importance of a CSR champion. Commitment must be demonstrated at a local level to facilitate community engagement, feedback and monitoring. Finally, the findings highlight the externality of stakeholder networks and their non‐centric relationship with the company. Thus, a company is not the centre of the stakeholder network; the network has a life of its own, regardless of a company's involvement or non‐involvement. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Explicit and implicit corporate social responsibility: Differences in the approach to stakeholder engagement activities of U.S. and Japanese companies

This study uses the theoretical frameworks of institutional theory and comparative capitalism to demonstrate how cross‐cultural differences in national institutional frameworks are related to differences in the meaning and the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, as a result, how they create different incentives and opportunities for companies to engage in stakeholder management activities. More specifically, we draw upon the framework of “explicit” and “implicit” CSRs to investigate whether and how stakeholder management practices and programs differ between the United States and Japan. We first develop and validate a Stakeholder Engagement Activities (SEAs) scale, designed assess differences in the approach (explicit or implicit) that companies use to address a variety of common SEAs. Then we analyze data and present the results of surveys collected from 227 companies in the United States and Japan. We find that although the SEAs of American companies are characterized by strong “explicit CSR,” in contrast, the SEAs of Japanese companies exhibit strong “implicit CSR.” In the discussion that follows, we attribute these distinctions in the SEAs to differences in the configuration of political, economic, and market mechanisms in each country. The findings of this study contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the differences in prevailing CSR practices of American and Japanese companies than noted by previous researchers. From a practitioner's perspective, the findings of this study reveal that despite the global nature of CSR, stakeholder management practices are both interpreted and operationalized differently due to differences in national institutional frameworks.     

Modelling Corporate Stakeholder Orientation: Does the Relationship Between Stakeholder Background Characteristics and Corporate Social Performance Matter?

Though corporate stakeholder orientation is connected with corporate social performance practices, there is a dearth of knowledge on the theorized assertion that background characteristics influence stakeholders’ salience and attitude towards social performance practices of firms. The aim of this paper is to measure and examine this hypothesis. To test this claim, this research uses the Surat Resource Region in Queensland, Australia, as the case study. Based on the bivariate test, age, gender, occupation type and educational status have varying statistically significant effects on stakeholders’ attitude towards corporate social practices. The multinomial logistic findings showed that only education retained a net effect on a stakeholder's attitude to participation in corporate social practices, where those with a higher level of education are 1.388 times more likely to perceive stakeholder engagement practices as relevant, 2.864 times more likely for social impact assessment practices and 1.430 times more likely for practices aimed at rights of indigenous communities. Findings imply the need for awareness programs to be incorporated into corporate social practices, which can help promote the success of stakeholder‐oriented policies. The paper further makes suggestions that have both business strategy and policy planning implications. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Analysing emission intensive firms as regulatory stakeholders: a role for adaptable business strategy

Climate change regulations pose significant challenges to firms that produce large volumes of carbon emissions. Accordingly, firms in the trade‐exposed emission intensive industries are critical regulatory stakeholders. Following the Australian Government's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2007, the proposed installation of an emission trading scheme is one of several business concerns as the government seeks to implement climate change policies and regulations. In this study, we inve stigate some of the major concerns that confront emission intensive businesses, and ask what the critical issues are for firms as a consequence of climate change policy implementation and what this means for their strategies. The study uses a concept mapping and analysis technique to reveal that future emission trading systems and business performance impacts resulting from emission reduction initiatives represent serious strategic concerns to stakeholder firms. Adaptable business strategies offer a potential solution to these perceived concerns and problems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Do chief information officers matter for sustainable development? Impact of their regulatory focus on green information technology strategies and corporate performance

This study proposes and empirically tests a model delineating the relationships among a chief information officer's (CIO's) dominant regulatory focus, the corporate practice of green information technology (IT) strategies and corporate performance. It also examines the moderating role of regulatory stakeholder influence (RSI) in this model. Findings based on sampled firms operating in China have provided support for all the hypotheses. Specifically, they highlight that CIOs with a dominant promotion focus are more prone to practice green IT strategies than those with a dominant prevention focus. Moreover, RSI is found to positively moderate the impact of dominant regulatory focus on the practice of green IT strategies. This strategic practice is also found to enhance corporate performance. Last, the empirical findings reveal that a CIO's dominant promotion focus exerts a direct and positive influence on corporate performance, which suggests that this focus also serves as a direct driver for corporate performance. In sum, these findings not only enrich the extant literature on environmental management and information systems, but also provide useful insights into fine-tuning firms' CIO selection criteria and policy makers' regulatory measures to advance corporate sustainability.