Research on the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has revealed the critical role of CSR departments vis-à-vis functional departments. While both CSR and functional departments influence CSR implementation, the question of how they work together remains underexamined. We address this question by mobilizing and merging two complementary yet separate perspectives on CSR implementation: “coordination” and “enactment.” Building on a comparative case study involving seven large Swiss financial institutions that have established CSR departments and implemented CSR to varying extents, we inductively derive six courses of actions conducing to CSR implementation, involving both coordination and enactment. We distinguish between four courses of actions in the CSR departments (centralizing, coalescing, orchestrating, and consulting) and two courses of actions in the functional departments (decentralizing and tailoring). As our data suggest that coordination and enactment work in tandem, we capture these insights in a model of CSR implementation as coordinated enactment. Our research contributes to the literature by explaining how CSR departments and functional departments enact and simultaneously coordinate CSR at a particular implementation stage, thus illuminating how and why the variance in CSR implementation occurs.
Risi, D., & Wickert, C., & Ramus, T. (2022). Coordinated enactment: How organizational departments work together to implement CSR. Business & Society, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00076503221110213.
Integrated reporting has widely been promoted as the next evolutionary step in corporate disclosure, which would soon replace traditional reporting practices. Embedded in a zeitgeist that favors sustainability, this outlook would suggest high integrated reporting adoption rates among reporting organizations. Our analysis of integrated reporting in Germany from 2008 to 2019 shows, however, that organizations approached integrated reporting with a wait-and-see mentality. This approach cannot be described adequately by the existing conceptualizations of (partial) practice adoption. We therefore develop the notion of wait-and-see-ism, defined as the deliberate and potentially long-lasting postponement of a decision to adopt a practice while its further development is monitored silently. We see limited, though continuous, efforts to prepare for the prospect of adopting the practice of integrated reporting quickly at a later stage. Wait-and-see-ism expands on prior work on partial adoption by emphasizing its temporal dimension. This adds an important yet undertheorized option that organizations can employ to respond to ambiguous institutional demands, thus explaining the stalling of promising management practices.
In their recent essay, Gond and Moser (2019) have proposed that micro-CSR research has the potential to “matter” and transform business practices as it engages closely with how individuals in companies work with and experience corporate social responsibility (CSR). But can micro-CSR research in its current form realize this transformative potential and serve social justice? Adopting an intellectual activist position, we argue that the transformative potential of micro-CSR is severely limited by its predominant focus on CSR as defined, presented, and promoted by companies themselves, thereby serving to sustain the hegemony of the business case for CSR, promoting narrow interests and maintaining managerial control over corporate responsibilities. We propose that micro-CSR researchers broaden the scope of their research to cultivate the potential of alternative ideas, voices, and activities found in organizational life. In so doing we lay out a research agenda that embraces employee activism, listens to alternative voices, and unfolds confrontational, subversive, and covert activities. In the hope of inspiring other micro-CSR researchers to explore these unconventional paths, we also offer suggestions as to how we can pursue them through empirical research.
Girschik, V., Svystunova, L., Lysova, E. I. (2022). Transforming corporate social responsibilities: Toward an intellectual activist research agenda for micro-CSR research. Human relations, 75(1) 3 –32.
https://journals-sagepub-com.vu-nl.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1177/0018726720970275
This paper proposes a theory-based process model for the generation, articulation, sharing and application of managerial heuristics, from their origin as unspoken insight, to proverbialization, to formal or informal sharing, and to their adoption as optional guidelines or policy. A conceptual paper is built using systematic and non-systematic review of literature. This paper employs a three-step approach to propose a process model for the emergence of managerial heuristics. Step one uses a systematic review of empirical studies on heuristics in order to map extant research on four key criteria and to obtain, by flicking through this sample in a moving-pictures style, the static stages of the process; step two adapts a knowledge management framework to yield the dynamic aspect; step three assembles these findings into a graphical process model and uses insights from literature to enrich its description and to synthesize four propositions. The paper provides insights into how heuristics originate from experienced managers confronted with negative situations and are firstly expressed as an inequality with a threshold. Further articulation is done by proverbialization, refining and adapting. Sharing is done either in an informal way, through socialization, or in a formal way, through regular meetings. Soft adoption as guidelines is based on expert authority, while hard adoption as policy is based on hierarchical authority or on collective authority.
This essay starts from the premise that human judgment is intrinsically linked with learning and adaptation in complex socio-technological environments. Under the illusory veneer of retaining control over algorithmic reckoning, we are concerned that algorithmic reckoning may substitute human judgment in decision-making and thereby change morality in fundamental, perhaps irreversible, ways. We offer an ontological critique of artificially intelligent algorithms to show what is going on ‘under their hood’, especially in cases when human morality is already co-constituted with algorithmic reckoning. We offer a twofold call for (in)action. We offer a call for inaction as far as the substitution of judgment for reckoning through our teaching in business schools and beyond is concerned. We offer a re-invigorated call for action, in particular to teach more pragmatist judgment in our curricula across subjects to foster social life (rather than stifle it through algorithmic reckoning).
The macro-framing literature presents something of a theoretical conundrum. While an inherently dynamic concept, most work has treated frames as static. In addition to leaving our theories of framing underspecified, this also has implications for how we go about understanding and resolving our major societal problems, including flows of displaced people, the setting for this paper. We also lack insight into the ways in which media organizations, some of the most important arbiters of understanding in our society, shape the framing process. We address these points by investigating the ways in which the photograph of Alan Kurdi lying dead on a beach in Turkey radically transformed the framing of the European migration crisis by UK newspapers. In so doing, we develop theory about two important aspects of framing change. First, in showing how macro-frames are more malleable than often perceived, we develop the concept of an emotional array that we show is central to understanding how frame composition changes over time. Second, we expose the distinct mechanisms by which framing change takes place in media organizations characterized by different ideologies.
