Although corporate social responsibility practice increasingly addresses gender issues, and gender and CSR scholarship is expanding, feminist theory is rarely explicitly referenced or discussed in the CSR literature. We contend that this omission is a key limitation of the field. We argue that CSR theorization and research on gender can be improved through more explicit and systematic reference to feminist theories, and particularly those from feminist organization studies. Addressing this gap, we review developments in feminist organization theory, mapping their relevance (...) to CSR. With reference to six major theoretical perspectives in CSR scholarship, we note feminist research relating to each. Drawing upon FOS theory and CSR theory, we then develop an integrated theoretical framework for the analysis of gender issues in CSR. Our framework enables us to identify research strengths in the gender and CSR literature, as well as gaps therein, to open new conversations and to posit future research directions for this emerging area of scholarship. Our paper illustrates how a better grounding of CSR in feminist theory can contribute to CSR research more broadly. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in determining what impact having women in management positions may have on corporate social responsibility initiatives. Various authors suggest that gender equality practices should be factored into the broader framework of CSR. This paper examines how the presence of women on corporate boards, in top and middle management and as heads of CSR departments, influences gender equality practices in the field of CSR. Using information collected from companies that have signed up to Women's Empowerment Principles in (...) Spain, we show that the presence of women in the aforesaid posts has a positive impact on CSR activities with gender equality objectives. We thus supplement the justice, business and moral arguments with further arguments in support of the incorporation of women into not only corporate boards but all management positions. Finally, we provide a view of how gender equality can be included in the broader framework of CSR. (shrink)

We analyze investors’ perception and long-term effects of board gender diversity on firms’ stock market performance in an international setting. Our results, controlling for the endogenous nature of board compositions, indicate that female board representation neither improves nor reduces firms’ long-term stock performance. Hence, we argue that it is imperative to go beyond the conventional thinking in terms of the business case for gender diversity and broaden the perspective also to incorporate societal and ethical aspects in the strive to board (...) gender equality. Even more so, as our results show that it does not entail reduced shareholder value, which the literature on mandatory gender quotas commonly seems to suggest. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Programs aimed at increasing women’s entrepreneurship are a rapidly proliferating class of CSR initiatives across the globe with participation by many of the world’s largest corporations. The gendered nature of this phenomenon suggests that feminist approaches to CSR may offer a particularly salient mode of their analysis. In this article, I argue that insights from feminist economics regarding the historically prevalent—but narrow and gendered—definition of work, which artificially separates production from reproduction, provide fruitful tools for theory building when conceptualizing gender (...) through the lens of CSR. I demonstrate that the gendered separation of production and reproduction is typicallytaken as givenin entrepreneurship, and that mainstream CSR research has not sufficiently challenged this perspective. I present a conceptual framework of what is to be gained by examining the CSR, entrepreneurship, and feminist economics literatures in combination, and demonstrate how researchers might use this framework for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to critically examine a set of assumptions that pervades human resource management and HR practices. I shall argue that they experience a remarkable ethics deficit, explain why this is so, and explore how the UN Global Compact labor principles may help taking ethics seriously in HRM. This paper contributes to the understanding and critical examination of the undisclosed beliefs underlying theory and practice in human resource management and to the examination of how the UN Global (...) Compact’s ideal of “decent work” may offer some promising avenues for the development of ethics in HRM. (shrink)