Call for Papers
Special Issue of Business & Society
Corporate Responsibility: Initiatives and Mechanisms
Guest Editors:
Jennifer J. Griffin, The George Washington University
Aseem Prakash, University of Washington, Seattle
(for the PDF version of this announcement,
http://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/b&s.pdf)
This special issue of Business & Society seeks to examine the following
question: How do institutions and actors internal to the firm as well as
external to the firm (at the sector, national, regional, and global levels)
influence choices regarding corporate responsibility (CR) mechanisms and
CR initiatives? We invite papers from all social science disciplines
(business,
economics, political science, sociology, and public policy) that
explore these issues in the national, regional, comparative, or global
contexts.We welcome all methodological approaches.
CR has emerged as an important source of innovation as well as a constraint
on modern competitiveness. Deemed by some an altruistic given a-
way beyond the economic interests of the firm (McWilliams & Siegel,
2001) CR is also considered a tangible investment toward “operating in
tune with the way the world works” (Gates, 2008)—effective management
reflecting investment commitments to what the organization values (Carroll,
1999; Graves & Waddock, 1994; Griffin, 2008).
CR, at a minimum, can be viewed as a cluster of a firm’s policies, programs,
and outcomes that are beyond the requirements of extant law. These
CR initiatives may include paying wages beyond the legal minimum, healthcare
benefits if not provided by the state, retirement funds, philanthropic
donations, community investments, pollution abatement technologies as
well as products and services that surpass regulatory requirements. In
different sectors, contexts, and geographies the bundle of initiatives and
beneficiaries of a firm’s CR initiatives differs.
Arguably, only those beyond-compliance policies that explicitly seek to
serve a broader social purpose should be classified as CR. A multinational
corporation might find it economical to replicate the same technology across
facilities, although the baseline legal standards may differ across
jurisdictions. Hence, a technology barely meeting legal requirements in one
jurisdiction might be considered beyond compliance elsewhere. Would this be
2 Business & Society classified as CR, although the intent of the
corporation was to attain economies of scale in facility management? While
it is important to know the actual (as opposed to declared) motivations
behind an action, empirically, this is very difficult. Hence, we treat all
beyond-compliance actions, irrespective of their motivations, as CR.
If one views CR initiatives as expressions of corporate strategy, identity,
power, or dependency on specific actors and institutions, the managerial
challenge becomes understanding why and how a corporation seeks to pursue
CR. Organizations can choose from a menu of CR initiatives that focus
on different issue areas or differentially benefit stakeholder groups. Given
that resources devoted to CR are finite, how does a corporation decide
which ones to pursue? These initiatives might be directed at internal
actors,
external stakeholders residing in the community where the corporation has
a facility, investors, governments, consumers, suppliers, or citizens that
are
not directly impacted by the firm’s value creation processes.
For analytical simplicity we classify various CR initiatives in the
following
categories.
CR Initiatives
Functional
Human resources. These initiatives are directed toward raising the economic,
social, and political opportunities for employees, contract workers,
and potential employees in the workplace. They could seek to enhance
employee voice, improve employee benefits, wages, working conditions,
and so on. They could focus on a specific subset of employees or specific
issues such as women representation, diversity, stigma, and ethnic or
linguistic capabilities. Often directed toward internal stakeholders,
workplace/ labor CR initiatives often appeal to pools of potential employees
and broader actors via the media affecting corporate reputation.
Marketing. A key activity here is encompassing new product features,
for example, the introduction of seat belts by Volvo or the introduction of
hybrid cars by Toyota. Consumer-oriented CR encompasses product and
process innovations (e.g., less carbon, water, energy content) as well as
promotion, advertising, and distribution strategies. Green marketing,
passthrough philanthropy for consumers, improved product functionality
(e.g.,
miniaturization), and new products (carbon offsets, etc.) are often the
earliest evidence of consumer-oriented CR.
Supply chain. These initiatives are directed at securing the acquisition or
accumulation of needed inputs. Needed inputs include access to capital,
raw materials, and technology. Supply chain CR initiatives may focus on
monitoring and enforcing codes of conduct; carbon, water, or energy
footprints
from the extended enterprise; and developing supplier innovations or
securing sustainable supplies (e.g., minimizing packaging, reforestation).
This includes securing permits to operate (e.g., mine site licenses, fishing
permits), socially responsible funding, human rights/labor/workplace issues
within the supply chain or access to nonrenewable resources.
Cross-Functional/Corporate
Development. These initiatives are directed at building social capital,
creating infrastructure and capabilities in communities to build commerce,
stabilize households, and improve public health, education, or general
welfare.
These may be directed at the local community or at the underprivileged
sections of the society that may not be directly affected by the
corporation.
The objectives are threefold: first, to enhance the human capital; second,
to
improve the physical infrastructure for the underprivileged to leverage
their
human capital; and third, to enhance the social capital of a given
community.
Initiatives can range from providing tangible, bricks, and mortar resources
for community events such as hospitals and schools to a transferring of
skills
and expertise (e.g., fundraising, project coordination, access to capital,
grant writing) for enhancing community infrastructure.
Environment. These initiatives seek to generate positive environmental
externalities or reduce the production of negative environmental
externalities
associated with producing the organization’s goods and services These
activities can be directed at specific actors (e.g., community groups
impacted
by contaminated water streams) or institutions (e.g., investors,
regulators).
Corporate governance. These initiatives seek to improve corporate governance
and voluntarily create new rules regulating the generation and/or
the disbursement of the residual or profit. These activities could seek to
provide for investor protection, new financial disclosure requirements,
limits of executive compensation, and so on.
CR Mechanisms
CR initiatives can be pursued via a variety of mechanisms. Once decided
what to do, how does the corporation decide how to do? How does it
match initiatives with mechanisms? We identify four types of mechanisms.
Unilateral Acts
Corporations donate resources (cash, materials, employee time, etc.)
to various CR initiatives. Some of these unilateral acts might be episodic
whereas others might be regular investments by a corporation. A corporation
may sponsor periodic community activities such as an annual parade,
fireworks, or an employee volunteerism day. Alternatively, unilateral
corporate
investments might be directed to improving product quality, process
enhancements (e.g., less carbon, water), reporting and verifying CR
initiatives, or securing ethical suppliers in a timely manner. Actors and
institutions may be located in far-flung locales, especially when the
corporation is seeking to respond to an episodic event such as a natural
calamity.
Foundations
These are sponsored by the corporation, individuals, or governmental
agencies. The objective is to create a long-term institutional system to
support developmental, environmental, public health, or other activities in
the
local community or in developing countries. Though these are also unilateral
acts of giving, by establishing a foundation, the corporation
institutionalizes
its commitment to pursuing CR policies and physically locates its CR
initiatives outside the corporation. Furthermore, these foundations tend to
be managed by professionals who are typically recruited from the nonprofit
community. The Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation are two prominent
examples of this genre of CR mechanisms.
Partnerships
Corporations (as opposed to their foundations) can enter into partnerships
with governments and/or NGOs, which includes different types of
relationships,
including bilateral or trilateral compacts. These tend to be contractually
based relationships focused on achieving a specific objective (e.g.,
access to capital, roads built, numbers of people trained) enabling actors,
institutions, and the organization to team up and coordinate skills and
expertise in specific areas. The objectives can range from strengthening
local communities as well as furthering economic development abroad. For
example, a corporation may team up with local agriculture cooperatives
and local governments to provide fertilizers, set priced seeds, and
education
on sustainable farming while guaranteeing a specific price for if quantity
and quality demands are met.
Voluntary Programs
These pertain to collective, rule-based endeavors that a group of
corporations
agree to join (Prakash & Potoski, 2006). These systems can be
established or managed by an industry association (Responsible Care, Fair
Trade, the Equator Principles, and the Extractive Industry Transparency
Initiative), NGOs (Forest Stewardship Council), or even governments
(Energy Star). Voluntary programs typically seek to encourage corporations
to adopt beyond-compliance policies that lead to production of positive
externalities or the reduction of the negative externalities associated with
its production, distribution, or marketing processes. As opposed to
supporting
philanthropic and charitable objectives, these programs tend to be
established with regulatory requirements as the baseline.
The specific types of CR initiatives and the mechanism by which they
are pursued tend to vary across countries (in a given sector) or across
sectors
within a given country. We suggest that the “demand for” as well as the
“supply” of CR is significantly conditioned by the institutional and
stakeholder environment in which firms operate. As institutional theory,
resource dependence theory, and the variety of capitalism literatures
suggest, regulatory and governance styles are influenced by the
institutional and sectors contexts in which firms operate. Some questions
papers might explore are as follows:
• How do the variations in the institutional context affect the ways
business
pursues CR?
• If different institutions, actors, and stakeholder sets favor or disfavor
specific types of CRs, how do corporations balance competing demands?
• How do business–government and business–NGO relations influence the
demands for CR and, consequently, shape the emergence and design of CR?
• Why do firms favor unilateral supply of CR as opposed to joining
collective
CR codes?
• Do the firm’s institutional and stakeholder contexts encourage it to
invest
in specific areas such as environmental issues or community outreach, but
not others?
• How does the organizational structure influence the choices of CR
mechanisms
and initiatives?
• Under what conditions do preferences of key managers bear upon the
decisions regarding CR initiatives and mechanisms?
• How do multinational corporations handle the pressures from globalization
and localization regarding CR initiatives and mechanisms? Under
what conditions and in what ways does the parent company grant substantial
autonomy to its subsidiaries in this regard?
Submission Instructions
The format of the papers must follow Business & Society contribution
guidelines. Business & Society uses the American Psychological Association
citation and reference system (please see any recent copy of the journal for
a sample; visit
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsProdManSub.nav?prodId=
Journal200878).
Papers should include a 100- to 150-word abstract followed by 3 to 5
keywords. The paper itself should contain no indications of authorship. A
title page containing full author contact information should be sent as a
separate document to the coeditors.
Tentative Dates and Timetable
Target Dates
June 1, 2010
Paper to be submitted electronically to the following coeditors:
Jennifer J. Griffin (e-mail:
jgriffin@gwu.edu)
Aseem Prakash (e-mail:
aseem@u.washington.edu)
September 1, 2010
Authors invited to revise and resubmit papers
November 30, 2010
Revised papers are due
April 30, 2011
Delivery of full set of papers and guest editors’ introductory paper
********************************************
Aseem Prakash
Professor
Department of Political Science
39 Gowen Hall, Box 353530
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3530
206-543-2399
206-685-2146 (fax)
aseem@u.washington.edu
http://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/