Business and Society

There is an impressive history associated with the evolution of the concept and definition of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this article, the author traces the evolution of the CSR construct beginning in the 1950s, which marks the modern era of CSR. Definitions expanded during the 1960s and proliferated during the 1970s. In the 1980s, there were fewer new definitions, more empirical research, and alternative themes began to mature. These alternative themes included corporate social performance (CSP), stakeholder theory, and business ethics theory. In the 1990s, CSR continues to serve as a core construct but yields to or is transformed into alternative thematic frameworks.

Social responsibilities of businesses and their managers have been discussed since the 1950s. Yet no consensus about progress has been achieved in the corporate social responsibility/corporate social performance literature. In this article, we seek to analyze three views on this literature. One view is that development occurred from conceptual vagueness, through clarification of central constructs and their relationships, to the testing of theory—a process supported by increased sophistication in research methods. In contrast, other authors claim that hardly any progress is to be expected because of the inherently normative character of the literature. A final view is that progress in the literature on the social responsibilities of business is obscured or even hampered by the continuing introduction of newconstructs. This article explores which of these three views better describes the evolution of the literature during a period of 30 years and suggests implications for further research.

The article assesses the achievements and limitations of the private regulation of global corporate conduct. Private regulation occurs through voluntary, private, nonstate industry and cross-industry codes that address labor practices, environmental performance, and human rights policies. The author argues that while private regulation has resulted in some substantive improvements in corporate behavior, it cannot be regarded as a substitute for the more effective exercise of state authority at both the national and international levels. Ultimately, private regulation must be integrated with and reinforced by more effective state-based and enforced regulatory policies at both the national and international levels.

This perspectives article seeks to comment and reflect on my 1999 BAS article titled “Corporate Social Responsibility: Evolution of a Definitional Construct,” and subsequent writings addressing these same topics. First, perspectives on the 1950-1999 period are offered. Second, reflections on the 2000-2020 period are presented. Finally, thoughts about the future and the new normal for CSR are set forth. Hopefully, the observations presented will stimulate further thinking on this important concept. And, it will be interesting to all of us to see where the dust settles when the pandemic ends and organizations have had a chance to re-imagine or reset their missions, goals, and processes with respect to CSR.

Inconsistent results in prior work that link environmental strategy to competitive advantage may be due to the empirical difficulties of marrying the theoretical connection between a firm’s resource base and its environmental strategy. The authors contribute to the field by developing a measure that is congruent with the natural resource—based view, a dominant paradigm in this line of work. This article content analyses company reports and secondary data to develop a measure of environmental strategy grounded in the natural resource—based view. They identify six environmental capabilities that form components of a reliable, multidimensional construct of proactive environmental strategy. They also identify a measure of reactive compliance strategy. They verify reliability of their new measure through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, establish convergent and discriminant validity via a multitrait, multimethod matrix and demonstrate superior predictive validity of their measure compared to two others commonly used in the literature. In the conclusion, they discuss implications for research and practice.

This article describes the development of a new theory and measure of ethical work climate. Three studies are conducted to construct the Ethical Climate Index (ECI) and measure the ethical work climate dimensions of collective moral sensitivity (12 items), collective moral judgment (10 items), collective moral motivation (8 items), and collective moral character (6 items). Results of the third study indicate that the ECI is a reliable instrument and support the convergent and discriminant validity of each. Furthermore, results support the predictive validity of the ECI with respect to ethical and unethical behaviors.

This article focuses on the company-stakeholder relationship between a large pulp and paper company and a small monastery and nature retreat center. The literature on stakeholder management and organizational legitimacy provides a theoretical foundation. The analysis demonstrates how organizational power and legitimacy can influence stakeholder legitimacy. The authors illustrate the ways that a company can manage the legitimacy of stakeholders through the use of political language and symbolic activity. The results contribute to a better understanding of stakeholder identification, salience, and the different contexts of legitimacy in the company-stakeholder relationship. Implications for stakeholder research and practice are also discussed.

Although natural resource scarcity is a pressing issue for many organizations, it has received little attention in management research. Drawing on resource dependence theory, this article theorizes how organizations manage uncertainty from their dependence on scarce natural resources. For this end, it explains how socio-ecological processes involving anthropogenic impacts on ecosystem services cause this form of uncertainty. It then proposes that organizations develop wide-ranging responses to such uncertainty, depending on their predominant institutional logics, from protecting and restoring ecosystems that provision critical natural resources to further developing those ecosystems for optimal resource yields at the risk of degrading them. The article adds to the limited existing research on the unique challenges of managing natural resource scarcity and extends resource dependence theory by accounting for socio-ecological dynamics that create uncertainty regarding natural resources.

This study develops a scale to measure consumer sensitivity to corporate social performance (CSCSP) using the factor analysis procedure to generate a valid and reliable 11-item scale. Results from a U.S. sample of M.B.A. students suggest that women are more sensitive to CSP than men and that Democrats are more sensitive to CSP than Republicans. Future research can use this scale to measure the correlation between attitudes toward CSP and actual behavior.

Religion is a significant social force on organizational practice yet has been relatively underexamined in organization theory. In this article, I assert that the institutional logics perspective is especially conducive to examine the macrolevel role of religion for organizations. The notion of the religious logic offers conceptual means to explain the significance of religion, its interrelationship with other institutional orders, and embeddedness into and impact across interinstitutional systems. I argue for intrainstitutional logic plurality and show that specifically the intrareligious logic plurality has been rather disregarded with a relative focus on Christianity and a geographical focus on “the West.” Next, I propose the concept of interinstitutional logic prevalence and show that the religious logic in particular may act as a metalogic due to its potential for uniqueness, ultimacy, and ubiquity. Through illustrations from Islamic Finance and Entrepreneurship, I exemplify implications of logic plurality and prevalence for organizations and societies.