Corporate, Social, Ethical and Environmental Reporting should ideally discharge the accountability of an organisation to its stakeholders. Voluntary reporting has been characterised by a dearth of neutral and objective information such that the advocates of SEER recommend that it be made compulsory. Their underlying rationale is that legally specified disclosure requirements and enforcement mechanisms will enhance the quality of such reporting. This paper sets out to explore how realistic this scenario actually is, in view of the conflicting interpretations in the (...) literature on this subject. To that end, a survey of the reporting patterns of 78 of the largest Spanish companies between 2001 and 2003 examines the extent of their compliance with the ICAC-2002 standard, which obliged them to make environmental disclosures in their financial statements. The results suggest that progressive and improved regulation could increase the volume and quality of SEER disclosures. They also suggest, however, that persistent non-compliance means that the problems associated with voluntary disclosure still exist. Finally, through an impression management perspective, the study reveals, the diverse strategies, ranging from dismissal to concealment, that are employed by companies to avoid transparency. As regulation improves and enforcement expectations rise, it becomes more difficult to dismiss compulsory reporting norms. As a result, some firms engage in more complex concealment strategies to attain corporate legitimacy, depriving stakeholders of regulatory information. The latter point serves to reconcile apparently contradictory explanations in the literature as to whether legitimacy theory might explain partial compliance with SEER regulation. (shrink)

Using survey responses from 400 fashion companies in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, we examine the diversity of strategic responses to institutional pressures for corporate social responsibility within the Nordic fashion industry. We also develop and test a new model of strategic responses to institutional pressures that encompasses both resistance and opportunity-seeking behaviour. Our results suggest that it is inconsistent pressures within, rather than between, stakeholder groups that shape strategic responses to CSR pressures and that increasing pressures stimulates opportunity-seeking (...) at the expense of compliance. (shrink)

Corporate sustainability can be defined as organizations’ commitment to profitability, environment, and social well-being. This study uses a transactional culture analysis of CS reporting practices to explain why some Indian organizations conform to voluntary CS reporting guidelines and others do not. The literature contains two different perspectives on culture, defined broadly as a set of values that guide people’s behavior at a given time. Most past studies typically use national culture to explain differences in CS practices across nations. This concept (...) embeds corporate cultures within the larger national culture, neglecting intranation diversity. Conversely, according to the transactional culture approach used in this study, cultures are plural and independent of geoethnic boundaries, and emerge through social transactions. TCA encourages multilevel explorations of complex social phenomena. Since CS reporting preferences are the outcome of ongoing transactions among organizational stakeholders across different levels, TCA is more appropriate for this study. Since this application requires an understanding of social accountability, the authors use Mary Douglas’s Cultural Framework, a transactional framework of social accountability. A qualitative exploration of six Indian organizations using DCF reveals different dominant forms of social accountability in these organizations: either alone or as paired hybrids. Consequently, each organization prioritizes different stakeholders and reacts differently to voluntary CS reporting guidelines. Identifying the dominant form or forms of social accountability in their organizations and understanding their underlying reasons for resisting voluntary CS guidelines enables managers to secure better collaboration for their CS initiatives. (shrink)

In the management and business ethics literatures, stakeholder engagement has been demonstrated to lead to more ethical management practices. However, there may be limits on the extent to which stakeholder engagement can, as currently conceptualized, resolve some of the more difficult ethical challenges faced by managers. In this paper we argue that stakeholder engagement, when seen as a way of reducing five types of knowledge problems—risk, ambiguity, complexity, equivocality, and a priori irreducible uncertainty—can aid managers in resolving such ethical challenges. (...) Using a practical illustration of the ethical challenges surrounding the development and application of genetic modification technologies, we demonstrate how stakeholder engagement enables managers to better address these knowledge problems, thereby to manage more ethically. In this way, we suggest that stakeholder engagement has an even more crucial role to play in business ethics research and practice. (shrink)

This study reviews and synthesizes the contemporary business literature that focuses on the role of corporate social responsibility to enhance firm value. The main objective of this review is to proffer a precise understanding of what has already been investigated and the findings of those investigations regarding the value-enhancing capabilities of CSR for public firms. In addition, this review identifies gaps in the existing literature, evaluates inconsistent findings, discusses possible data sources for empirical researchers, and provides direction for exploring other (...) promising avenues in future studies. The thrust of the CSR literature largely acknowledges the value-enhancing capabilities of firms’ social and environmental activities. However, the predominance of inconsistent theoretical grounds in major CSR-benefits-related areas suggests that there is ample room for future research to contribute to the extant literature. Anecdotal evidence, the prevalence of theoretical arguments, and the availability of large cross-sectional firm-level data suggest that future research will enrich the literature by investigating the real insights behind several unanswered questions, by establishing implicit understandings regarding recognized findings, and by developing new theories in this emerging field. (shrink)

This study examines the association between corporate social responsibility and management forecast accuracy. Using data from 1995 to 2009, we find that firms provide more accurate earnings forecasts in the face of CSR activities. We also find that the positive association between CSR and management forecast accuracy is only present for the post-regulation period of 2001–2009, after the introduction of disclosure regulations intended to mitigate managers’ opportunistic behavior. These findings are consistent with the notion that managers strive to improve the (...) quality of financial disclosure following superior CSR performance in the recent period. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to develop and demonstrate a new ethical model for crisis communication. This article examined the crisis communication practices as well as literature and found essential elements—what, how, and when—for ethical and effective crisis communication. Based on these three variables, a new three‐part model, the TTR Test, was proposed, utilizing three principles: Transparency (what), Two‐way symmetrical communication (how), and Right time (when). To investigate how the test can be applied to the real world, this article (...) examined BP's crisis communication during the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. (shrink)

Transparency is a quality of corporate social responsibility communication that enhances the relationship between the investors and the company. The objective of this paper is to analyze if the transparency of the sustainability reports is affected by the relationship of companies in different industries with their stakeholders. If this were the case, it would indicate that the pressure of significant stakeholders determines the required level of transparency of the reports. We find that the pressure of some groups of stakeholders improves (...) the quality of transparency of the reports. We extend previous research by studying the effect of stakeholder group pressure on transparency when reporting sustainability. Our results show that transparency is affected by ownership, along with size and global region. (shrink)

In spite of accruing concerted scholarly and managerial interest since the 1950s in corporate social responsibility (CSR), its implementation is still a growing topic as most of it remains academically unexplored. As CSR continues to establish a stronger foothold in organizational strategies, understanding its implementation is needed for both academia and industry. In an attempt to respond to this need, we carry out a systematic review of 122 empirical studies on CSR implementation to provide a status quo of the literature (...) and inform future scholars. We develop a research agenda in the form of an integrated framework of CSR implementation that pronounces its multi-dimensional and multi-level nature and provides a snapshot of the current literature status of CSR implementation. Future research avenues relating to multi-level studies, theoretically supported research models, developing economy settings, and more are recommended. Practitioners can also benefit through utilizing the holistic framework to attain a bird’s eye view and proactively formulate and implement CSR strategies that can be facilitated by collaborations with CSR scholars and experts. (shrink)

Banking scandals, accounting fraud, product recalls, and environmental disasters, their associated reputational effects as well as company response strategies have been well reported in the literature. Reported crises and scandals typically involve one focal company for example BP and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident. As business practices change and company supply chains become more complex and interlinked, there is a greater risk of collective crises where multiple companies are associated with the same scandal. We argue that companies are likely to (...) behave differently in a group setting compared to when faced with a crisis individually. Using an inductive approach, we examine the case of the Rana Plaza building collapse. We find that organizations with a history of similar crises adopt defensive strategies and communicate much later compared to organizations which adopt accommodative strategies. Contrary to the individual case, in a collective crisis accommodative strategies result in more negative reputational damage and a higher burden of responsibility. We propose that the relationship between crisis response strategy and organization reputation is moderated by the crisis setting. We extend the logic of crisis management and corporate reputation to incorporate the case of a collective crisis. (shrink)

In the face of ubiquitous information communication technology, the presence of blogs, personal websites, and public message boards give the illusion of uncensored criticism and discussion of the ethical implications of business activities. However, little attention has been paid to the limitations on free speech posed by the control of access to the Internet by private entities, enabling them to censor content that is deemed critical of corporate or public policy. The premise of this research is that transparency alone will (...) not achieve the desired results if ICT is used in a one way system, controlled by the provider of information. Stakeholders must have an avenue using the same technology to respond to and interact with the information. We propose a model that imposes on corporations a public trust, requiring these gatekeepers of communication technology to preserve individual rights to criticism and review. (shrink)

The role of uncertainty within an organization’s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature, but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed. From the perspective of ecological economics, the salience of ecology-induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties. These pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment. We derive six areas of (...) ecology-induced uncertainties and propose ecology-driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management. We combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints. (shrink)

This article leverages insights from the body of Adam Smith’s work, including two lesser-known manuscripts—the Theory of Moral Sentiments and Lectures in Jurisprudence —to help answer the question as to how companies should morally prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and stakeholder claims. Smith makes philosophical distinctions between justice and beneficence and perfect and imperfect rights, and we leverage those distinctions to speak to contemporary CSR and stakeholder management theories. We address the often-neglected question as to how far a company (...) should be expected to go in pursuit of CSR initiatives and we offer a fresh perspective as to the role of business in relation to stakeholders and to society as a whole. Smith’s moral insights help us to propose a practical framework of legitimacy in stakeholder claims that can help managers select appropriate and responsible CSR activities. (shrink)

We conceptualise CSR communication as a process of reciprocal influence between organisations and their audiences. We use an illustrative case study in the form of a conflict between firms and a powerful stakeholder which is played out in a series of 20 press releases over a 2-month period to develop a framework of analysis based on insights from linguistics. It focuses on three aspects of dialogism, namely (i) turn-taking (co-operating in a conversation by responding to the other party), (ii) inter-party (...) moves (the nature and type of interaction characterising a turn, i.e. denial, apology or excuse) and (iii) intertextuality (the intensity and quality of verbal interaction between the parties). We address the question: What is the nature and type of verbal interactions between the parties? First we examine (a) whether the parties verbally interact and then (b) whether the parties listen to each other. We find evidence of dialogism suggesting that CSR communication is an interactive process which has to be understood as a function of the power relations between a firm and a specific stakeholder. Also, we find evidence of intertextuality in press releases by six firms which engage in verbal interaction with the stakeholder. We interpret this as linguistic evidence of isomorphic processes relating to CSR practices resulting from the pressure exerted by a powerful stakeholder. The lack of response by ten firms that fail to issue press releases suggests a strategy of ‘watch-and-wait’ with respect to the outcome of the conflict. (shrink)