Browsing by Subject "corporate social responsibility"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Do Stakeholders Connect Corporate Social Responsibility to Firm Performance? Testing Stakeholder Influence Capacity Theory
    (2019-09) Poggioli, Nicholas
    This dissertation tests stakeholder influence capacity theory predicting corporate social responsibility affects firm performance by first influencing the behavior of a firm's stakeholders. In a series of chapters, the dissertation reviews research at the intersection of corporate social responsibility and stakeholder management, uses causal inference research designs to test for a direct effect of responsibility on performance, tests whether stakeholder influence capacity mediates the responsibility-performance relationship as predicted by stakeholder influence capacity theory, and tests whether stakeholder influence capacity is stakeholder-specific rather than a single firm capability applicable to all stakeholders. The findings are the following. First, they support the responsibility literature's lack of consensus about a main effect of responsibility on performance. Second, there is mixed evidence for whether stakeholder influence capacity mediates the effect of responsibility on performance, with some models showing partial mediation, some full mediation, and others no mediation. Third, stakeholder-specific mediation tests provide some evidence that stakeholder influence capacity varies by stakeholder group, with no evidence for customer stakeholders, some evidence for employee stakeholders, and strong evidence for environment stakeholders. These findings suggest the responsibility performance literature's lack of consensus around an effect of responsibility on performance could be due to lack of attention to the specific mechanism that connects corporate responsibility actions to performance. Lack of attention to mechanisms was identified at least two decades ago, but only now are scholars beginning to specify and test mechanisms. Stakeholder influence capacity theory advances responsibility research by proposing a stakeholder influence capacity mechanism connecting responsibility to performance. This dissertation is one of the first empirical tests of stakeholder influence capacity theory's mediation hypothesis. Prior work tested stakeholder influence capacity as a moderation hypothesis; the authors of that study explicitly note that the theory is a mediation theory while their empirical test is moderation. This dissertation using mediation analysis more directly tests the theory and finds suggestive evidence that the theory needs further development to account for stakeholder heterogeneity. The primary contributions of this dissertation are advancing the ongoing integration of corporate social responsibility and stakeholder management research, empirically testing stakeholder influence capacity, and advancing stakeholder influence capacity theory by showing the need for further theoretical development accounting for stakeholder-specific influence capacity. The final chapter charts future research directions needed to further develop the theory and understand whether and how firms' corporate social responsibility actions influence stakeholders and, ultimately, the firm's economic performance.
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    The Effect of Punishing "Over-Contributors" on Overall Welfare: Some Experimental Evidence
    (2015-07) Biesanz, Zachary
    A public goods environment was constructed to simulate a dilemma in which corporate managers choose between acts of corporate social responsibility and acts of profitability. An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of a penalty for contributing above a specific level. The penalty has significant effects, encouraging free riding and suppressing contributions at all levels, even though most contributions would not have triggered the penalty.
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    The EKOCENTER: A Case Study in Coca-Cola, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Bluewashing
    (2015-05) Hamilton, Joy
    In 2013 The Coca-Cola Company announced their latest corporate social responsibility (CSR) project: the EKOCENTER. Envisioned for communities lacking access to safe drinking water, the EKOCENTER kiosks contain vaccine storage, wireless communication technology, clean drinking water, and Coca-Cola products under the premise of "social enterprise."� In light of the global water crisis, a textual and visual analysis of the CSR press release materials produced by The Coca-Cola Company in addition to media coverage highlights the ways in which Coca-Cola utilizes public concern about the environment and public health in order to safeguard their position as the world's largest beverage distributer. The EKOCENTER's discourse exemplifies "bluewashing"� rhetoric that contests negative perceptions of Coca-Cola. Furthermore, the EKOCENTER discourse glosses over the contradiction between Coca-Cola's reliance on water access for their business model and Earth's limited fresh water supply. The EKOCENTER embodies a precarious deferment of water stewardship and governance to transnational corporations.
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    Essays on the Role of Stakeholders in Firms’ Learning and Strategic Response to Failures
    (2018-12) Say, Gui Deng
    This dissertation examines how firms strategically respond to failures and the role of stakeholders in these responses. I propose that learning from stakeholder cues results in substantive behavioral changes which not only exceed stakeholders’ immediate expectations but also enable firms to avoid failures. Such failure-learning is contingent on whether failures are experienced directly or indirectly, and the degree of stakeholder involvement. Through two essays, I explore these ideas in novel and increasingly prevalent failure settings. In the first essay, I show that even without active direction by regulators, firms experiencing technological failures in the form of data breaches go beyond mandatory disclosure and strategically renew themselves through divestitures and top management turnover. Drawing on the failure-learning and strategic renewal literatures, I argue that technological failures occur possibly due to dysfunctional organizational and technical routines which stricken firms interpret broadly as problems of organizing. I test my hypotheses on unrelated subsidiary divestitures and Chief Technology Officer turnover undertaken by 6269 U.S. publicly traded firms of which 149 firms experienced data breaches during the period 2005- 2016. I find that firms’ size and diversification increase their vulnerability to failures. While firms respond through divestitures and management turnover, only divestitures reduce the recurrence of failures. Firms’ responses are also independent of regulatory stringency. In the second essay, I invoke resource dependence and institutional arguments and examine how social divestments, which represent a breakdown (failure) in the relationship between a prominent institutional investor and a targeted firm, affect the social responsibility behaviors of the remaining portfolio firms. I argue that social divestments signal the potential for resource withdrawal and delegitimization. Accordingly, remaining portfolio firms incorporate their vicarious learning by improving their ESG practices. I test my hypotheses within the context of social divestments by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and changes in the ESG ratings of its U.S.-based portfolio firms over the period 1998-2011. I find that while larger equity holdings representing greater resource leverage enhances the positive effect of divestment of peers, complementary voice-based activism that exerts institutional pressures on portfolio firms is more effective in combination with the divestment tactic.
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    The Social Construction of CSR: A Relational View on The Role of CSR Consultants in South Korea
    (2019-08) Jang, Soebin
    While the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has attracted wide attention from scholars and practitioners, little research has been conducted on the specific processes and mechanisms under which CSR is socially constructed and institutionalized. Existing research that links CSR and institutional theory has mainly focused on macro-institutional determinants and cross-national variations in CSR adoption and practice. Further, while increasing research has explored the processes and mechanisms by which actors, practices and strategies socially construct and institutionalize CSR, research has given lack of attention to the role of CSR consultants in socially constructing CSR; in particular, no related studies to date have been conducted in South Korea. This dissertation study aims to explore how CSR consultants contribute to the social construction and institutionalization of CSR in the context of South Korea. By adopting Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a theoretical lens, this study explores: (a) what factors influence the adoption of CSR in Korea; (b) what factors influence the CSR consulting industry and practices in Korea; and, (c) how CSR consultants perceive their role in socially constructing CSR. The study findings provide important implications for the scholarship and practice in the fields of CSR, human resource development (HRD) and organization development (OD), and contribute to the growing literature on applications of the institutional theory in HRD research.