Value orientations and consumer expectations of Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper explores how personal and situational factors impact consumer expectations of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Consumer expectations are known to motivate marketers to incorporate social considerations into their marketing practices and to communicate about those actions. A study was conducted in order to examine the effect of values and issue involvement on consumer CSR expectations, categorised as economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic. The study's findings demonstrated that consumers generally have high expectations of CSR, especially in the legal and ethical‐philanthropic domains. Expectations for the ethical‐philanthropic dimension of CSR are higher amongst consumers holding high self‐transcendent values and practicing high involvement. The main implications of the study are the potential for positioning companies as socially responsible and incorporating CSR in strategic marketing and communications decisions.     

Measuring Corporate Citizenship in Two Countries: The Case of the United States and France

Based on an extensive review of the literature and field surveys, the paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of corporate citizenship meaningful in two countries: the United States and France. A survey of 210 American and 120 French managers provides support for the proposed definition of corporate citizenship as a construct including the four correlated factors of economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary citizenship. The managerial implications of the research and directions for future research are discussed.     

Changing the Odds: A Study of Corporate Social Principles and Practices in Addressing Problem Gambling

This paper documents a quantitative study into socially responsible principles and practices adopted in registered clubs in New South Wales Australia to manage one of their social impacts – problem gambling. The survey utilised an adapted version of Aupperle's (1982) corporate social responsibility instrument to measure the priority given to economic, legal, ethical and discretionary principles in club machine gambling operations. The survey also assessed support for certain management practices in responsible gambling. The results indicate that the participating club managers prioritise economic, legal, ethical and discretionary principles respectively, and that these are statistically related to practices they have implemented and support in responsible gambling. The managers most favoured secondary harm minimisation practices, followed by reactive primary intervention. Less favoured were proactive primary intervention and discretionary practices. These principles and practices contrast markedly with those advocated by key stakeholder groups, as expressed in semi-structured interviews and submissions to the NSW Gaming Inquiry. Non-industry stakeholders favoured a more balanced set of principles and a more holistic set of management practices in responsible gambling. The results also provide validation of Aupperle's (1982) instrument when applied to corporate management of a single social impact and for Carroll's (1979, 1991) construct of corporate social responsibility.     

Tone at the Top: An Ethics Code for Directors?

Recent corporate scandals have focused the attention of a broad set of constituencies on reforming corporate governance. Boards of directors play a leading role in corporate governance and any significant reforms must encompass their role. To date, most reform proposals have targeted the legal, rather than the ethical obligations of directors. Legal reforms without proper attention to ethical obligations will likely prove ineffectual. The ethical role of directors is critical. Directors have overall responsibility for the ethics and compliance programs of the corporation. The tone at the top that they set by example and action is central to the overall ethical environment of their firms. This role is reinforced by their legal responsibilities to provide oversight of the financial performance of the firm. Underlying this analysis is the critical assumption that ethical behavior, especially on the part of corporate leaders, leads to the best long-term interests of the corporation. We describe key components of a framework for a code of ethics for corporate boards and individual directors. The proposed code framework is based on six universal core ethical values: (1) honesty; (2) integrity; (3) loyalty; (4) responsibility; (5) fairness; and (6) citizenship. The paper concludes by suggesting critical issues that need to be dealt with in firm-based codes of ethics for directors.     

Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility Among Indonesian College Students

Ethical consumption studies in developed countries suggest consumers are becoming more ethically minded, as manifested in the shift toward purchasing ethical products. However, little is known about ethical consumption in developing countries, which is problematic because these countries host the greatest share of the world’s youth population. In this study, the authors examine the perceptions and motivations of Indonesian college student consumers toward corporate social responsibility (CSR). The authors find that despite the country-based differences, Indonesian college students express perceptions of CSR similar to those of consumers in developed countries. Furthermore, female consumers have stronger intentions to support ethical products than their male counterparts.     

How ethical and political identifications drive adaptive behavior in the digital piracy context

Today, digital piracy remains a growing challenge for both legislators and businesses operating in the entertainment industry. This study explores when and why consumers make trade-offs between illegal and legal streaming services. By drawing on protection motivation theory, we find that consumers' threat and coping appraisals increase their adaptive behavior, i.e., lower intention to consume illegal and higher intention to consume legal streaming services. We also show that the strength of consumers' inherent ethical (relativism) and political (economic liberalism) identities conditions adaptive behavior through social identity theory. We find that low relativism strengthens the adaptive behavior through threat appraisal, while economic liberalism strengthens the adaptive behavior through coping appraisal. Our robustness checks show that these results hold when the model accounts for the level of consumers' digital piracy attitudes. We used a scenario-based approach to test our hypotheses and surveyed 244 consumers who use streaming services. Our study contributes to the literature by showing that consumers' adaptive behavior envisioned through protection motivation theory can be weakened or strengthened by their ethical and political identities.     

Chinese Consumers’ Perception of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The findings of this article increase our understanding of corporate social responsibility from the consumers’ perspective in a Chinese setting. Based on primary data collected via a self-administered survey in Shanghai and Hong Kong and results of similar studies conducted in Europe and the United States, we provide evidence to show that Chinese consumers are more supportive of CSR. We also show that Carroll’s pyramid of responsibilities can be applied in China. We evaluated the importance placed by Chinese consumers on the four responsibilities of firms – economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic – and find that economic responsibilities are most important while philanthropic responsibilities are of least importance. The nature of these differences is important for firms intending to use corporate social responsibility for strategic purposes.     

The influence of religious commitment on consumer perceptions of closed-on-Sunday policies: an exploratory study of Chick-fil-A in the southern United States

Many businesses operate long hours that often include nights and weekends to accommodate consumers. However, a few businesses maintain a closed-on-Sunday policy and do so while still operating successfully although closed-on-Sunday policies mean forgoing potential sales hours. As most Christian faiths consider the Sabbath as a day of rest, an oft-used rationalization for the success of businesses maintaining this policy is that they must be supported by consumers with strong religious beliefs, who appreciate the message sent by the company and as a result perceive the company favorably. The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether consumers' religious commitment influences their ethical judgment of a company's closed-on-Sunday policy and to determine whether this ethical judgment impacts a company's corporate or brand image and consumer loyalty intentions. The results suggest that consumers with higher levels of intra-personal religious commitment are more likely to hold favorable ethical judgments of closed-on-Sunday corporate policies. In addition, favorable ethical judgments of closed-on-Sunday corporate policies are likely to positively influence corporate image. A more positive corporate image ultimately results in higher consumer loyalty intentions.     

Towards Enforceable Bans on Illicit Businesses: From Moral Relativism to Human Rights

Many scholars and activists favor banning illicit businesses, especially given that such businesses constitute a large part of the global economy. But these businesses are commonly operated as if they are subject only to the ethical norms their management chooses to recognize, and as a result they sometimes harm innocent people. This can happen in part because there are no effective legal constraints on illicit businesses, and in part because it seems theoretically impossible to dispose definitively of arguments that support moral relativism. Progress is being made, however, towards a “second best” arrangement consisting of widespread institutional agreements regarding ethical norms. This development might eventually enable us to transcend moral relativism in some respects. Indeed, although some business ethicists who examine illicit business practices accept moral relativism, others attempt to surmount it. The latters’ endeavor, I show, is cross-cultural in nature in that it involves businesses that are deemed illicit in at least one but not every culture. I then recall some traditional solutions and their limits: ideological teachings are culture-specific, hence both temporally and spatially limited; legal constraints, though potentially helpful, are too diverse hence often narrow in reach. Especially problematic are defense industry businesses, which are inherently transcultural and, though uniquely harmful, are not effectively banned in any culture. Harm to quality of life (QoL) can, however, be measured. So I recommend institutional support for international human rights tied to QoL data as a workable way to counter moral relativism regarding illicit businesses.     

Shopping orientations as antecedents to channel choice in the French grocery multichannel landscape

This paper investigates the influence of consumer shopping orientations on grocery channel attractiveness and choice. It extends the concept of shopping orientation (utilitarian and hedonic) to account for emerging motivations among French consumers: shopping in line with sustainable and ethical values. In doing so, it helps profile segments of consumers who choose to shop through new online channels (Drive through) and newly deployed store formats (city stores). A sample of 300 French customers, responsible for shopping in the household, was surveyed. Hypotheses were tested through Latent Class Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling with categorical outcomes. Our findings indicate that consumers shopping orientations influence the way consumers will combine the different channels and store formats for grocery purchase. In particular, our results highlight the importance of responsible retail practices and ethical assortments in consumers' choice of online formats whilst local product orientation influences the choice of city stores and market places.     

Ethics and Law: Guiding the Invisible Hand to Correct Corporate Social Responsibility Externalities

Tokenistic short-term economic success is not good indicia of long-term success. Sustainable business success requires sustained existence in a corporation’s political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental contexts. Far beyond the traditional economic focus, consumers, governments and public interest groups alike increasingly expect the business sector to take on more social and environmental responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the model in which economic, social and environmental responsibilities are fulfilled simultaneously. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence that demonstrates genuine widespread adoption of CSR in practice, and its underlying reasons. Though research in CSR has been rapidly growing, its commercial reality and implications need to be further improved if it is to inspire corporations to voluntarily adopt CSR. In the literature, Carroll’s four-dimensional (economic, legal, ethical and discretionary) CSR framework offers a theoretical basis for developing an empirically based model to explain why and how profit-motivated managers take up CSR voluntarily. Our study has developed a structural equation model to identify the key factors and their interactions that influence economically motivated managers to take on voluntary CSR, and validate Carroll’s four-dimensional construct. The results support Carroll’s four-dimensional CSR framework, with the exception of the link pertaining to the relationship between economic and discretionary/voluntary responsibility. This characterises the economic reality that financial market-driven economic responsibility does not automatically translate into social responsibility. Nevertheless, the empirical results demonstrate that corporations can be led to engage in more voluntary CSR activities to achieve social good when appropriate legal and ethical controls are in place.     

Small Business–Nonprofit Collaboration: Locally Owned Businesses Want to Take Their Relationships With Community-Based NPOs to the Next Level

This two-part, mixed-methods study explored how and why small businesses engage in both philanthropic and transactional partnerships with community-based nonprofits (NPOs), and what business owners expect from their nonprofit partners. Findings from focus groups and a survey indicate that U.S. small businesses (a) are interested in a higher representation on nonprofit boards; (b) are more likely to support NPOs that focus on the local community’s needs; and (c) seek long-term, committed partnerships with NPOs to jointly address communal issues rather than one-time contributions or sponsorships. The study adds to the literature on nonprofit–business collaboration by applying the concepts of integrative (Austin, 2000) and communal (Cho & Kelly, 2014) relationships in the context of locally owned businesses and community-based NPOs rather than more commonly studied large corporations and national/international nonprofits. These findings also offer practical recommendations for the leadership of community nonprofits interested in enhancing their relationships with small businesses.     

Ethics and Lobbying: The Case of Real Estate Brokerage

Members of licensed occupations benefit from legal standards that limit entry into their professions. Is it ethical for these professionals to give political support to these standards? I examined the case of real estate brokers and found that their educational requirements raise average commissions by one quarter of a percentage point, costing consumers $5.4 billion per year without improving the quality of brokerage services. The case raises interesting ethical issues which are difficult to resolve.     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Corporate Social Responsibility Orientation: Hong Kong vs. United States Students

This study examined the orientation toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) of 165 U.S. and 157 HongKong business students. Although respondents from both countries viewed CSR as a construct in much the same way, many differences were found in the types of responsibilities considered most important. Specifically, Hong Kong students gave economic responsibilities more weight and non economic responsibilities less weight than did U.S. students.     

‘Excesses of Responsibility? – Reconsidering Company Liability’

Several areas of expanding corporate responsibilities are evident from current practices. This article penetrates one such field, economic compensation through litigation, and discusses the possibility and desirability of reversing the trend. In court, companies are fined increasing amounts for an ever wider range of faults, or they settle out of court under this legal threat. This is not a local American problem, but European companies are increasingly involved because of globalization. The development in Europe is also driven by the same factors as in America – the mechanics of litigation and conventional ethics. The greed of plaintiffs and lawyers can mobilize the perceived virtue of sympathizing with a victim. Therefore it seems likely that a precondition for tort reform is an ethical reevaluation. Is it desirable and politically possible to make the individual more responsible for his own fate?     

Corporate Social Responsibility in the 21st Century: A View from the World's Most Successful Firms

This investigation is motivated by the lack of scholarship examining the content of what firms are communicating to various stakeholders about their commitment to socially responsible behaviors. To address this query, a qualitative study of the legal, ethical and moral statements available on the websites of Forbes Magazine's top 50 U.S. and top 50 multinational firms of non-U.S. origin were analyzed within the context of stakeholder theory. The results are presented thematically, and the close provides implications for social responsibility among managers of global organizations as well as researchers interested in business ethics.     

Ethical Consumerism: A View From the Food Industry in Morocco

Both consumers and firms are now more concerned about ethics as a way to make business transactions a win–win deal. As consumers ensure profitability to businesses, they expect fair practices and honest behaviors toward society. The study reported here attempts to investigate Moroccans’ perceptions and attitudes toward ethical consumerism of food. Consumers’ willingness to buy those products and their motives for such purchases as well as factors preventing ethical purchases is investigated. Besides price, which drives most their decision to buy a food or not, Moroccans are driven by ethical claims such as “healthy,” “no fat,” “pasteurized,” etc. It was shown that consumers trust information on the labels of products besides information provided by consumer authorities. In relation to ethical aspects, Moroccans are mostly concerned about the environment and religion. Older men with high income are shown to be a good target for the ethical food market.     

The Study of the Relations among Ethical Considerations, Family Management and Organizational Performance in Corporate Governance

Corporate governance is increasingly becoming an issue of global concern, not least because we are more and more living in a corporate world that transcends international boundaries. The main purpose and motivation of this study is to determine how the international community should motivate businesses in fostering exemplary corporate governance, therefore eliminating obstacles to ethically exemplary behavior. The empirical approach utilized here has been applied to 161 businesses, both listed and over-the-counter (OTC) companies, with the results indicating that ethical considerations, corporate governance and organizational performance are inextricably linked and, to an extent, demonstrably proportional. This study also indicates a major finding that family management is a significant mediating variable of the ethical considerations of corporate governance and organizational performance. Finally, this study has developed an operational model of ethical considerations of corporate governance as a consultancy aid for businesses that wish to implement and/or boost their performance in respect to corporate governance.     

Social Marketing and Privately Held Companies: The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities on Romanian Consumers

The notion of corporate social responsibility has evolved into a fairly complex concept that can influence the very world we live in. Today's society is interested not only in companies' financial results but also in the way they conduct their businesses. Corporations everywhere try to respond to new environmental challenges by actively engaging in the life of the community and by developing relationships based on mutual trust with consumers. This article introduces the corporate social responsibility domain by underlining the importance of this concept to the later development of a company. The article denounces the results of research conducted on Romanian consumers regarding corporate social responsibility campaigns undergone by firms in Romania. Its purpose is to bring insight into Romanian consumers' perceptions of recent social campaigns, reviewing the extent to which these consumers are willing to become involved in society's well-being. The survey conducted here attempts to provide answers to issues that concern the companies' involvement type, their purview, the reasons for participating in society's welfare, as well as the social campaigns' most common action areas. The results gathered show that corporate social responsibility is not only a promotion method, but a method that implies the effective involvement in the life of the community and in its subsequent issues, therefore representing a real means of support for the economic development of the community in question. In conclusion, companies must put their social conscience into use when dealing with their clients and stakeholders, by offering solutions to environmental concerns, resource management, mutual aid, and welfare rising from corporate support.     

Finding the fit: Why compliance and ethics programs should seek to match individual and corporate values

Job seekers would like guidance on how to find a job with a firm whose values reinforce their own, a place that would be a good personal fit. At the same time, because of legal compliance requirements, it is crucial that employers find employees that fit the company’s value system so that the company can maintain an effective ethics and compliance program. This article looks at the legal, regulatory structure in both the U.S. and E.U. with an emphasis on reflexive corporate governance. It also reports the findings of a survey of E.U. and U.S. executives with a reputation for nurturing ethical business culture to discover what virtues and factors are most important and, thus, something a job seeker might look for in finding a strong, ethical company. Finally, the article raises the cognitive issues of the importance for job seekers to examine their own psychological biases so they are evaluating a position based on what really fits their values.