CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and global branding have generally been considered separate areas of study within the broader strategy area. Firms and their brands have identities that encompass a range of characteristics that are marketed to consumers. In many cases firms invest significant sums in developing brand personalities. While firms consider a range of product-related brand “features” such as quality, styling, etc. they must also consider the degree to which they incorporate CSR, which is increasingly becoming a core component of a brand (Werther and Chandler, 2005). Like all brand characteristics, firms need to understand what it means to be socially responsible. CSR is a broad concept that covers a range of environmental, social, and ethical responsibilities, and there have been numerous definitions in the literature over the years. Carroll (1999, p. 286) suggests that social responsibility covers “the conduct of a business so that it is economically profitable, law-abiding, ethical and socially supportive.” This means that firms should consider a range of domains or activities, which Carroll classifies as economic, legal, ethical and voluntary or philanthropic. Thus, firms must carefully consider how they interact with a diverse range of stakeholders, all of which may have different social interests. Today's global firms interact with each set of responsibilities at multiple levels, covering a range of organisational activities and operating in a multitude of business environments (Valor, 2007).

Being socially responsible is of course, important in itself, but firms must also make a conscious decision about the degree to which they then leverage their CSR activities, thus translating doing good into strategic benefit. In this way firms move to a situation where they synergistically “use organisational core competencies and resources to address key stakeholders interests and to achieve both organisational and social benefits (McAlister and Ferrell, 2002, p. 690).” Therefore, CSR becomes a strategic branding tool, but only when communicated with stakeholders (Morsing, 2006).

Taking a strategic view of CSR within global organisations means that these organisations must consider three types of complexity - issue, organisational and communication - that must be explored and understood when firms consider CSR related branding strategies. While researchers have discussed the domains of CSR, approaches to becoming more responsible, or the leveraging of these activities, the connections between these three areas have not been investigated to date.

Understanding the three areas of complexity is of course, not simple, as each of the three areas is itself complex. The objective of this paper is to explore each of the types of complexity and associated sub-issues within each. The paper provides a broad overview of the three aspects of complexity for managerial guidance and as a suggested agenda for future research.

Literature Search

There is general agreement that organisations' impact on society is important and should be managed in such a way that negative consequences are minimised (Werther and Chandler, 2005). While doing the right thing is important for its own sake and is therefore valuable to organisations (Sacconi, 2006), especially for global organisations (Valor, 2005), and ...