Corporate Volunteering

This chapter provides a clearer and more balanced understanding of both the benefits and limitations of corporate volunteering, along with possible directions for future research. First, background is provided through an outlining of definitional issues, some statistics on the growing influence of corporate volunteering, and the nature and evolution of current corporate volunteering offerings. Corporate volunteering’s historical association with broader, societal critiques of the role of business in society is also discussed. Second, the strong influence of business case discourse on the focus of academic research is reviewed, along with the subsequent normative assumption that corporate volunteering is overwhelmingly “good” and should be promoted more widely. Third, the literature is critiqued for its unexamined problems, unheard voices, and unquestioned social and political agendas. The chapter concludes by suggesting avenues for future research that will address these gaps.

Responsible Business and Individual Differences

Corporate social responsibility is increasingly regarded as an important performance domain for organizations. Critical to implementing responsible organizational policies and initiatives, however, are the behaviors by individual employees at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. This chapter reviews the nature, structure, and dispositional antecedents of individual-level responsible business behaviors contributing to organizational CSR efforts. It focuses on two domains of employee responsible—externally directed citizenship behaviors (OCB-X) and employee green behaviors. Their divergent conceptualizations, measures, and dispositional antecedents are reviewed. Four major limitations pervade the literatures on OCB-X and employee green behaviors, and consequently hinder progress on understanding the individual-level (micro) foundations of CSR. Suggestions and directions for future research are offered to improve scholarship, understanding, and applications involving these constructs.

The Psychology of CSR

This chapter is about the psychological processes through which individuals evaluate and respond to an organization’s CSR practices. To advance scholarly research and evidence-based practice, directions are outlined for future inquiry informed by an integrated review of findings across three independent streams of “micro-CSR” research conducted among employees, job seekers, and consumers. In a section on CSR evaluations, it is described how individuals cognitively process information to form CSR perceptions and CSR appraisals, and the types of CSR initiatives and evaluative-constructs studied among each stakeholder group are summarized. In the next section, research is reviewed on responses to CSR, and recent findings about psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions are organized within three categories of care-based, self-protective, and relational-status (C-S-R) considerations. In a last section, research is described on stakeholders’ CSR awareness, the non-trivial implications that follow from evidence of low CSR awareness among all three stakeholder groups, and suggestions for future research.

When CSR Backfires

There is now a well-established literature showing that stakeholders often respond positively to organizations’ environmental and social initiatives, or corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. However, much less attention has been dedicated to determining whether and why people might also respond negatively to CSR, and the circumstances in which this is more likely to occur. For example, rampant “greenwashing” may mean that even well-intentioned and genuine CSR actions and communications are met with suspicion because this widespread misrepresentation has created a justifiably wary public. This chapter highlights research to date that suggests we should be concerned with the potential for stakeholders to respond negatively to CSR practices and communications. It concludes by offering directions for future research and important questions regarding when and why CSR may elicit unintended negative reactions from stakeholders—or “CSR backfire effects.”

Corporate Social Responsibility and Meaningful Work

This chapter distinguishes four facets of CSR and explains how they influence employees’ experience of meaningful work. Specifically, it is described how stakeholders’ CSR expectations help employees understand which aspects of their work are of value to others; how CSR assessments provide feedback to employees about whether they are meeting stakeholders’ expectations; how CSR attributions affect employees’ experience of kinship at work; and how organizations’ CSR responses provide opportunities for employees to experience personal agency in addressing socio-environmental concerns. Boundary conditions on these effects are discussed, including (1) employees’ agreement with stakeholder expectations, (2) their sense of control over socio-environmental outcomes; and the degree to which employees (3) identify with groups to which stakeholders attribute social (ir)responsibility and (4) perceive personal growth opportunities through CSR involvement. These insights contribute to understanding CSR as a context that influences employees’ experience of work.

Social Movements and Corporate Social Responsibility

Over the decades, social movements have been central to the emergence and spread of a worldwide corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement. While CSR was once a marginal concern, social movements were effective in bringing CSR issues to the forefront of international business concern, resulting in the institutionalization of many social and environmental principles. This chapter examines five dimensions of the social movements–CSR relationship. First, it outlines the wider sociological and global context in which social movements have risen in response to the growing power of businesses. Second, it highlights notable CSR issue areas in which social movements have been particularly effective. Third, it discusses the various insider and outsider strategies that social movements have employed to impact the CSR movement. Fourth, it enumerates the challenges that social movements face in CSR. Lastly, the chapter discusses some promising areas of future research for scholars interested in the social movements–CSR relationship.

Mightier than the Sword

This chapter examines how, as activist organizations pressure firms to act in more socially responsible ways, the activists influence managers’ perceptions of their firms’ existing practices. We conduct two studies to explain how, using rhetoric, activists attempt to convince managers that their firms’ practices constitute inappropriate behaviors. The first study discerns the types and functions of the rhetorical strategies used by activists, and the second study discerns the sequence, interplay, and implications of these strategies when used during activists’ campaigns in industries. Our findings indicate that activists enact three rhetorical strategies through an intricate process, the essence of which involves using managers’ own cognitive structures to problematize their firms’ practices. Overall, by specifying activists’ methods for facilitating managerial perception change, we enrich interdisciplinary research on activism in industries.

A Researcher’s Guide to Business and Society Archival Datasets

Given the tremendous growth in empirical inquiries into Business and Society (BAS) phenomenon, the use of archival datasets in BAS research is pervasive. A sizeable portion of this research involves measurement of BAS constructs using data. The purpose of this chapter is to review the more commonly used datasets in BAS research. The intent is to provide researchers with sufficient information to choose the most appropriate database for their projects. We review key methodological issues such as measurement error, validity, and reliability affecting most archival datasets. We then provide overviews of some of the most effective and commonly used databases in BAS research plus citations to several articles that have used them. In our review, we address coverage, areas of inquiry, size of the database, and other relevant factors. Finally, we tabulate the database we reviewed including our assessment of their strengths and weaknesses.

Stakeholder Management

Scholars and practitioners have acknowledged the practical relevance of stakeholder theory as it has been applied to management. This chapter provides a brief foundation for understanding the basic principles of stakeholder management and some of its best known tools, including the development of an enterprise strategy, identification and prioritization of stakeholders, and measurement of the value firms create with and for stakeholders. Then insights are shared about implementation of stakeholder management based on interviews with high-level executives from a variety of well-known companies. It was found that stakeholder principles have been applied in a variety of ways and under various labels. The chapter ends with a list of eight important questions to advance research on stakeholder management.

Profit-with-Purpose Corporations

Companies are increasingly expected to provide innovative solutions to social and environmental challenges as part of their business activity. But do they have the leeway to do so? Since 2010, new legal forms have appeared in several countries, which show that the legal conditions to protect CSR initiatives are not always met. By defining social or environmental “purposes” in their charters, these new “profit-with-purpose corporations” (PPCs) commit the corporation toward purposes that are not primarily driven by a profit-maximization perspective, even if they do not exclude profit. This chapter reviews these forms, analyses their motivations, and proposes a model of PPCs. It discusses the theoretical scope of PPCs as a new legal design framework designed to support CSR initiatives, and opens avenues for new lines of research.