Abstract: Prior research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) engagement is primarily focused on comprehensive CSR actions, rather than parsing out the strategic planning aspect of CSR from actual CSR activities. Despite this perspective of CSR as a global construct, we believe that external stakeholders and employees, as internal stakeholders, are crucial in explaining how CSR engagement may contribute to firm performance. We separate CSR engagement into public CSR-related vision and CSR actions in order to examine how each aspect of CSR affects performance at both employee and firm levels. Further, we investigate these relationships using strategic communication (firm level) and employee pride (employee level) as mediators. Our model integrates theories of strategic vision and CSR to argue that strategic CSR vision and matching CSR actions are crucial to both external and internal stakeholders.

Abstract: Do economic, environmental, and social issues affect firm response to different types of stakeholders? Although there has been considerable interest in stakeholder management in the academic literature, the relationship between corporate sustainability and stakeholder influence remains relatively unexplored. Based on a new classification of a firm’s degree of sustainable proactive behavior, I propose and validate that the variations between firms in the perceived importance of different stakeholder groups are positively associated with differences in a firm’s commitment to corporate sustainability. The inclusion of organizational and regulatory characteristics may reinforce this association. Using original survey data obtained for nearly 400 privately and publicly owned firms operating in Europe and the United States, I find support for my hypothesis.

Abstract: In this paper we rely on survey data from one global management consulting firm to show that employees are willing to make significant financial sacrifices for the opportunity to participate in a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We find that women, younger individuals and those without a business education are more likely to be recruited into the firm by CSR activities. However, these demographic characteristics are only weak predictors of actual participation, when participation requires a financial sacrifice. Instead we find that the stated preference of employees to participate in CSR and accept a salary reduction is explained by their expectation to derive personal meaning as well as career benefits while the former trumps the latter in terms of revealed preferences, actual participation.

Abstract: The paper investigates the relationship between the internal representation of competing logics and the variation in corporate social responsiveness (i.e. donation). By adopting an institutional logic perspective, we find that firms with higher proportions of directors embedded in the Confucian logic will donate more, due to the Confucian values of caring for the greater community. However, firms with higher proportions of directors embedded in the Communist logic will donate less, as disaster relief efforts are often regarded as the government’s responsibility. We explore this in the context of earthquake donations from Chinese publicly listed firms in 2008. This study contributes to the literature on institutional complexity and enriches our understanding of corporate social responsiveness in the context of emerging economies.