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Journal of Business Ethics

Erschienen in:

01.10.2012

Stakeholder Pressures as Determinants of CSR Strategic Choice: Why do Firms Choose Symbolic Versus Substantive Self-Regulatory Codes of Conduct?

verfasst von: Luis A. Perez-Batres, Jonathan P. Doh, Van V. Miller, Michael J. Pisani

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics | Ausgabe 2/2012

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Abstract

To encourage corporations to contribute positively to the environment in which they operate, voluntary self-regulatory codes (SRC) have been enacted and refined over the past 15 years. Two of the most prominent are the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative. In this paper, we explore the impact of different stakeholders’ pressures on the selection of strategic choices to join SRCs. Our results show that corporations react differently to different sets of stakeholder pressures and that the SRC selection depends on the type and intensiveness of the stakeholder pressures as well as the resources at hand to respond to those pressures. Our contribution offers a more specific and finely variegated analysis of firm-stakeholder interactions.

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Berchicci and King (2007) use the term self-regulatory institutions or SRI to identify voluntary codes of conduct regarding social or environmental practices. The SRI nomenclature, however, also refers to “socially responsible investment.” Therefore, we favor the abbreviations SRC/SRCs over that of SRI to avoid confusion.

Their use of the words “Environment” or “Environmental” imply external pressures and have no relationship to SD or sustainability.

A search good is that for which its quality can be observed (e.g., an orange).

A credence good is that for which the “true” value cannot be evaluated even after consumption (e.g., higher education).

They use the different acronym EMS (not SRI/SRC), which stands for Environmental Management System.

Perez-Batres et al. (2012) show there is such an effect for large public international firms but not for large public local firms operating in Mexico.

See Kell 2005; Vormedal 2005; Cetindamar and Husoy 2007; and specially Runhaar and Lafferty 2009 for an explanation on the UNGC.

See the GRI website at https://www.globalreporting.org/reporting/latest-guidelines/g3-guidelines/Pages/default.aspx.

We did not include the Human Rights category due to its lack of variability.

The study by Pérez-Batres et al. (2012) in turn constructed this ranking by following Gamper-Rabindran (2006) and Mani and Wheeler (1999) insights.

Within the KLD research literature, the ratings are treated and referred to interchangeably as a proxy for Corporate Social Performance or stakeholder pressures. In this study, we conceptualize them as stakeholder pressures.

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Titel: Stakeholder Pressures as Determinants of CSR Strategic Choice: Why do Firms Choose Symbolic Versus Substantive Self-Regulatory Codes of Conduct?
verfasst von: Luis A. Perez-Batres
Jonathan P. Doh
Van V. Miller
Michael J. Pisani
Publikationsdatum: 01.10.2012
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Ethics / Ausgabe 2/2012
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1419-y

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