Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World

This book examines the rise and spread of corporate social responsibility across the globe and its impact on corporate reputation and behaviour.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui (Edited by), Alwyn Lim (Edited by)

9781107098596, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 April 2015

512 pages, 28 b/w illus. 29 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.3 cm, 0.88 kg

'This important book is a product of the outstanding vision of Kiyoteru Tsutsui and Alwyn Lim, who have pulled together scholarship that fills a noticeable void in the burgeoning field of corporate social responsibility studies. Specifically, these authors situate the drivers of corporate social responsibility in a global multi-level, political, economic and cultural system, rather than within corporations themselves. This novel perspective allows researchers and practitioners alike to move beyond debates about the organizational-level factors that make firms more or less likely to enact corporate social responsibility practices and policies, to conceive of the pressures firms face from the broader, global system. As such, the original and compelling contributions in this volume promise to stimulate exciting debate and new research streams, which will move the field of corporate social responsibility studies in new and exciting directions. This book is a must read.' Sarah A. Soule, Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Why do corporations increasingly engage in good deeds that do not immediately help their bottom line, and what are the consequences of these activities? This volume examines these questions by drawing on historical documents, interviews, qualitative case comparison, fieldwork, multiple regression, time-series analysis and multidimensional scaling, among others. Informed by neoinstitutionalism and political economy approaches, the authors examine how global and local dimensions of contemporary corporate social responsibility (CSR) intersect with each other. Their rigorous empirical analyses produce insights into the historical roots of suspicions concerning cross-societal economic actors, why and how global CSR frameworks evolved into current forms, how conceptions of CSR vary across societies, what motivates corporations to participate in CSR frameworks, what impacts such participation might have on corporate reputation and actual practices, whether CSR activities shield corporations from targeting by boycott campaigns or invite more criticism, and what alternative responses corporations might have to buying into CSR principles.

1. The social regulation of the economy in the global context Alwyn Lim and Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Part I. Legitimation and Contestation in Global Corporate Social Responsibility: 2. Legitimating the transnational corporation in a stateless world society John W. Meyer, Shawn M. Pope and Andrew Isaacson
3. Corporate social responsibility and the evolving standards regime: regulatory and political dynamics Peter Utting
4. Explaining the rise of national corporate social responsibility: the role of global frameworks, world culture and corporate interests Daniel Kinderman
Part II. Social Construction and Field Formation in Global Corporate Social Responsibility: 5. Corporations, conflict minerals and corporate social responsibility Virginia Haufler
6. The institutionalization of supply chain corporate social responsibility: field formation in comparative context Jennifer Bair and Florence Palpacuer
7. Sustainability discourse and capitalist variety: a comparative institutional analysis Klaus Weber and Sara B. Soderstrom
Part III. Corporations' Reaction to Global Corporate Social Responsibility Pressures: 8. Why firms participate in the global corporate social responsibility initiatives, 2000–2010 Shawn M. Pope
9. Why do companies join the United Nations Global Compact? The case of Japanese signatories Satoshi Miura and Kaoru Kurusu
10. Global corporate resistance to public pressures: corporate stakeholder mobilization in the United States, Norway, Germany and France Edward T. Walker
Part IV. The Impact of Global Corporate Social Responsibility Pressures on Corporate Social Responsibility Outcomes: 11. Is greenness in the eye of the beholder? Corporate social responsibility frameworks and the environmental performance of US firms Ion Bogdan Vasi
12. The mobility of industries and the limits of corporate social responsibility: labor codes of conduct in Indonesian factories Tim Bartley and Doug Kincaid
13. Good firms, good targets: the relationship among corporate social responsibility, reputation, and activist targeting Brayden G. King and Mary-Hunter McDonnell
14. Conclusion. Corporate social responsibility as social regulation Aseem Prakash.

Subject Areas: Business ethics & social responsibility [KJG], Political economy [KCP], Sociology [JHB]