Theory and Literature

This chapter focuses on review of the theory and literature with a view to provide theoretical framework for defining the concept of socially responsible restructuring, and to develop the methodology for examining the relationship between socially responsible restructuring and firm’s performance.

The literature review is organized around and related directly to the research questions. I look at issues of theory, methodology in the fields of CSR, enterprise restructuring, corporate governance and socially responsible restructuring. It is done by a guiding concept – stakeholder theory. The stakeholder theory is a core concept in this study, because gaining a better understanding of the firm’s performance and social responsibility has been accounting for and managing the interests or “stakes” of key players inside and outside of the organization. Difference in and conflict among various stakeholders can have a dramatic effect on the ability of any organization to perform efficiently and in socially responsible way (Becker and Potter 2002). The stakeholder theory is applied to evaluate corporate social performance in restructuring by analyzing corporation’s relationships with its stakeholders. The concepts of CSR, and corporate governance and restructuring are also developed and defined against stakeholder theory.