Toward an Integrative Theory of Business and Society: A Research Strategy for Corporate Social Performance

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane L. Swanson
Author(s):  
Duane Windsor

This article explains the three related conceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR), and corporate citizenship. The three conceptions involve different approaches for answering the overarching question of the appropriate relationship between “business and society”. The article lays out the basics of the three conceptions; and contrasts economic, ethical, and strategic perspectives on these three conceptions. The article connects the three conceptions to corporate social performance (CSP), corporate governance, and stakeholder theory. The author provides the reader with a guide to the extant literature in a way that will facilitate further exploration into key issues. The author proposes some recommendations and solutions for addressing key problems in the field; and suggests future research directions. The article emphasizes key contributions to the development of the field. Work of important authors such as A. B. Carroll, Milton Friedman, Michael E. Porter, and Donna J. Wood among others receives attention.


Author(s):  
Diane L. Swanson

This article addresses top managers as drivers for corporate social responsibility (CSR). It summarizes the responsibility roles implied by or assigned to managers in selected models of corporate social performance. Given this backdrop for business and society research, it focuses on the importance of moral leadership in directing the formal and informal organization toward socially responsible goals. In other words, the emphasis is on the focal role of top executive managers in driving social responsibility. This focus is not meant to convey that middle or lower managers are irrelevant to CSR. It is simply that their decision-making discretion is largely circumscribed by top managers, which is why middle and lower managers often face uncomfortable moral dilemmas when their values are incompatible with those established at a higher level of command. Finally, this article points to some contextual factors that impact socially responsible leadership in terms of external and internal controls.


Author(s):  
Marc Orlitzky

The community of Business and Society scholars has been investigating the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance over thirty years. The typical conclusion, based on narrative reviews of this literature, is that the empirical evidence is too mixed to allow for any firm. In these reviews, poor measures and weak theory construction are often mentioned as causes of this apparent variability in findings. The assumption that this research stream is inconclusive has persisted until after the turn of the millennium. So, what may be required at this point is a critical examination of the evidence that seems to have motivated these conclusions. This article argues that certain types of literature reviews should be treated with caution. It proposes an alternative and uses this more rigorous methodology of literature reviews in order to assess the cumulative evidence on the core constructs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastiano Cupertino ◽  
Costanza Consolandi ◽  
Alessandro Vercelli

In recent years, the global financial and economic crisis are rewriting the relationship between business and society, focusing, among other things, on the role of the process of financialization, not only in the economy as a whole but also within non-financial companies. Shareholder value maximization, together with the commoditization of business, has led to a general short-term approach at the expense of capital accumulation and core business activity, to the detriment of not only firms’ competitiveness and productivity but also of human capital, strategic innovation, business ethics, and long-term growth. Within this framework, this study investigates the role of corporate sustainability, analyzing the nexus between financialization, accumulation of real capital, and corporate social performance, an issue that has been neglected so far. Using a sample of US manufacturing firms from 2002 to 2017, we found that, while financialization was negatively correlated with corporate real investment, the environmental and social firm performance positively impacted corporate capital accumulation. Our results support the belief that a focus on environmental, social, and governance standards, fostering real investments, may enhance a firm’s long-term growth with a positive effect on its long-term value.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-44
Author(s):  
Doocheol Moon ◽  
Seungwha Chung ◽  
Hyunjung Choi

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett A. Stone

The first iteration of a nonstatic special-purpose taxonomy of corporate social performance concepts is developed from a mailed, self-administered survey completed by managers of U.S. socially responsible mutual funds. The study combines the traditionally disparate research areas of Corporate Social Performance and Socially Responsible Investing. As a partial update of Rockness and Williams (1988), a descriptive account is presented of what mutual fund managers regard as the social issues that constitute corporate social performance. The resulting taxonomy represents an empirically derived framework useful in considering social accounting in general and accounting standard setting in particular.


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