Working Paper: Political? Stakeholder Perceptions of the Role of the Firm (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
In the chocolate industry, companies have been implementing Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) practices as a communication strategy due to the public's critique of the industry's impact on their surroundings. Being criticized for deforestation, the usage of pesticides, as well as involvement with child labour and modern slavery has led to more pressure on chocolate companies to discuss their CSR practices with their customers, to show the change in the industry. This thesis has explored this topic by looking further into how different chocolate companies address their Corporate Social Responsibilities practices through their online presence on their websites and Instagram profiles. The companies chosen for this research are Tony' Chocolonely and Divine Chocolate, whom both could be considered frontrunners when it comes to their involvement with CSR due to the reasons for their founding. Tony's Chocolonely was founded to specifically bring a chocolate brand on the market that will lead by example when it comes to CSR, and Divine Chocolate was founded by Ghanaian farmers who aspired equal payment. The online corporate social reporting of these companies was analyzed through a qualitative content analysis, in which the data were categorized and then further analyzed acritical discourse analysis to give more contextual results and help explain the communication employed by chocolate companies. These results were put into perspective with a cross-national comparison between the UK and US Instagram profiles of both companies. This research showed how the companies mainly address their involvement in the voluntariness, social and environmental dimensions of CSR. The environmental dimension was mainly addressed by the companies through the categories of being organic and offering plant-based products. These categories correspond with main challenges for the chocolate industry; deforestation, pollution and the production of animal-based ingredients. The social dimension mainly addressed equal pay, modern slavery and child labour, which are also the main challenges of the industry being critiqued in the media. From this could be concluded that the companies try to educate their audience on how their CSR practices contribute to solving industry problems. Impressive crossnational results were that the UK profiles tended to focus more on the environmental dimension, while the US profiles tented to focus on the social dimension. The US profiles also made the posts more personal, by portraying employees from all across their supply chain and introducing them by their names. From this, it could be concluded that the CSR values for countries may differ since the UK profiles showed more interest in the environmental dimension of CSR while the US profiles focused more on the social dimension. In terms of future research, the findings triggered the discussion of topics that have not been addressed online; it could be interesting to gain the perspective of the company on why they have chosen to address the social and environmental dimension of CSR most extensively. Last, scholars could delve into the rhetorical strategies that chocolate manufacturers could apply in their online presence and test what would be the most effective way to use CSR as a selling point.
Organising CSR for Gender Equality: Institutional Work in the Cocoa Value Chain
This thesis addresses the burgeoning practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes and policies that aim to promote gender equality in global value chains. It first presents a conceptual framework for studying gender change within CSR, conceptualising gender as an institution alongside the theory of institutional work. An embedded case study provides rich empirical data from 3 partnered organisations: a UK chocolate company, a UK NGO, and a Ghanaian cocoa supplier as well as 48 cocoa farmers. Drawing on data spanning 20 years, the study interrogates how gender is translated into ‘engendered’ CSR, and how understandings and experiences of gender may be altered by such practices. Actors across the three organisations engage in institutional work in an attempt to disrupt the institution of gender. Work includes ‘valorising’ the role of women in the value chain, and ‘legitimising’ this value through a business case. The case illustrates that whilst engendered CSR programmes are successful in securing some women positions of power, they do little to challenge pervasive inequality. Concurrently, actors engage in resistance to institutional work, effectively hindering change. Yet resistance is also productive through ‘questioning work’, leading into another cycle of change. These findings contribute to our knowledge on how organisational actors may disrupt or maintain institutions by describing the processes of institutional work, its unintended consequences and by highlighting the subjective nature of institutional success and failure. Furthermore, by drawing on Feminist Foucauldian notions of productive power, it is posited that the institutional work required for such ‘big-tent’ institutional change, such as gender, necessitates a closer look at the level of individuals’ sense of self, power and knowledge. Thus we are reminded that CSR, and the actors performing it, are bound up in much larger systems of power relations that are observable right down to individual thought.
Stakeholder interactions and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
Purpose-This paper critically explores the interactions of key stakeholders and their impact upon CSR practices in the Zambian copper mining sector. Design/methodology/approach-This case study of the Zambian copper mining sector utilises an overall political economy framework, focusing on power asymmetries between the state and MNCs. Within this context, we draw on both stakeholder salience theory and legitimacy theory in order to explore the interactions of key stakeholders and their impact upon CSR practices. Findings-We find power asymmetries between the state and MNCs existing according to a number of different dimensions which are exacerbated by a number of factors including divisions within the government itself as a key stakeholder. However, despite the existence of stark power asymmetries, we find that in the Zambian context, there are some possibilities for agency on the part of civil society, and so that legitimacy theory has some (albeit limited) explanatory potential. Originality/value-The paper contributes to the literature on CSR in developing countries by exploring these issues in a critical case, that of the Zambian copper mining sector on which the economy is so heavily dependent.
2017
Decoupled CSR in crisis communication: A Latin-American perspective Purpose This paper seeks to analyze the communication process carried out by companies in response to environmental incidents in Latin America, by considering decoupling (the mismatch between appearance and reality) and legitimacy related issues. Design/methodology/approach This research is based on two methods. Firstly, we adopt a case study analysis of a major environmental incident involving a North American-based mineral coal production company in Colombia. Second, a content analysis of several public sources (e.g. media sources, press releases and sustainability reports) was performed in order to allow for the linking of theory and practice. Findings This study found that in an attempt to defend its legitimacy, the company used decoupling in its CSR communication as both an attempt to suppress crisis (hiding) and as a crisis response strategy. Contrary to the expected negative outcome, this decoupling strategy held limited implications for legitimacy. Research limitations/implications The outcome of the study shows an important link between legitimacy and CSR communications in has limitations for generalization. Originality/value This paper represents an atypical case that enhances existing theoretical approaches-the perceived notion that decoupling mostly has limitations for legitimacy is strongly questioned in this research. This outcome reflects the potential impact that the geographical context may have on the company's crisis communication strategy and ultimately its legitimacy.
Contemporary discourses around corporate social responsibility and their influence on business and society relations, 2022
The thesis provides a framework of six key CSR discourses that emerged between 2000 and 2020. (1) A ‘post colonialist discourse’, which understands that CSR seeks to legitimize corporate power and that corporations should define and benefit from the CSR actions. (2) A ‘political ecology discourse’ that posits CSR should aim to respect and avoid actions that could interfere or harm local livelihoods, worldviews, and the culture of local communities. Thus, local communities should define and benefit from the CSR action. (3) A ‘discourse around the policy effects of social movements’, whose main proposition is that policy and institutions are key to rule CSR and business behaviour. For this discourse, social movements and citizens, especially those thinking about development models paths, should define and benefit from CSR. (4) Another discourse is proposing the ‘quantitative measurement of CSR programs’, because this can prove that CSR has positive results for communities and companies. Thus, CSR managers should define what is the CSR action about. (5) The ‘green economy’ discourse, which proposes that the aim of CSR is to transform business models to create carbon neutral companies. Then, multilateral organizations should define the CSR action. (6) And the “environmental, social and governance-ESG- discourse’, which aims to offer low risk investment opportunities, meaning that investors and data vendors should define the content of CSR and that investors should be the main actor receiving benefits from the CSR actions.
Positioning stakeholder theory within the debate on corporate social responsibility
Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies, 2007
Companies engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) mainly because they can reap some kind of benefits from such engagement. It is thus necessary to have a CSR notion which is able to address this important feature. The differing views regarding the role of business in society are often presented as being placed within the stakeholdershareholder debate. This article tries to show that a useful notion of CSR should be based on a stakeholder view and should be capable of addressing both its normative and instrumental aspects. Companies are seen as having an obligation to consider society's long-run needs and wants, which implies that they engage in activities that promote benefits for society and minimize the negative effects of their actions, so long as the company is not prejudiced by engaging in such activities.
This paper is a theoretical contribution to CSR. In the first part, we present the main theoretical propositions for a better politicization of firms, and discuss the gaps between CSR and Corporate Citizenship conceptions and effective political participation of corporations. We distinguish two main positions that analyse these concepts: theories that recognize only individuals as citizenship holders and theories that recognize complex organizations as holders of a specific citizenship. We argue that a dialectical approach and a political dialogue between actors, is a relevant methodology to integrate smoothly the new regulative agents. In the second part, we define what could be a genuine Political CSR able to face up to the 21 st century issues, like uncertainty, pluralism or the legitimacy crisis. As an application, we define a Political CSR model, which relies on a dialectical processual methodology. A novelty of this contribution is to bring out the "instituting ability of corporations" beyond "instituted corporations", in the way C. Castoriadis brought out the “instituting society” beyond the “instituted society”. Another originality of our methodology consists in integrating an endogenous ontological questioning about the involved actors, like corporations. We also discuss the main expected outcomes of this type of model.