Search results

This paper aims to examine the multiplicity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards, explaining its nature, dynamics and implications for multinational enterprises (MNEs) and international business (IB), especially in the context of CSR and global value chain (GVC) governance.

This paper leverages insights from the literature in political science, policy, regulation, governance and IB; from the own earlier work; and from an inventory of CSR standards across a range of sectors and products.

This analysis’ more nuanced approach to CSR standard multiplicity helps distinguish the different categories of standards; uncovers the existence of different types of standard multiplicity; and highlights complex trends in their evolution over time, discussing implications for the various firms targeted by, or involved in, these initiatives, and for CSR and GVC governance research.

This paper opens many avenues for future research on CSR multiplicity and its consequences; on lead firms governing GVCs from an IB perspective; and on institutional and market complexity.

By providing overviews and classifications, this paper helps clarify CSR standards as “new regulators” and “instruments” for actors in business, society and government.

This paper contributes by filling gaps in different existing literatures concerning standard multiplicity. It also specifically adds a new perspective to the IB literature, which thus far has not fully incorporated the complexity and dynamics of CSR standard multiplicity in examining GVCs and MNE strategy and policy.

Amidst burgeoning attention for global value chains (GVCs) in international business (IB), this paper aims to identify a clear “missing link” in this literature and discusses implications for research and corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy-making and implementation.

The paper combines an overview of relevant literature from different (sub)disciplinary fields, with insights from practitioner and expert interviews and secondary data.

Because IB GVC research stems from a focus on lead firms and their producing suppliers, it lacks attention for intermediary actors that may significantly impact the organization of production in general, and firms’ CSR commitments in particular. Import intermediaries are often “hidden” in GVCs. This paper indicates the emergence of GVC parallelism with “frontstage” chains managed by lead firms and increasingly exposed to public scrutiny following calls for transparency and CSR, and “backstage” ones in which buyers and intermediaries operate more opaquely.

This study points at salient yet little known practices and actors that influence the organization of production and the implementation of CSR policies in various ways, and therefore offers ground for reflection on the design of proper supply chain and CSR policies.

This study exposes a hitherto neglected category of actors in GVCs and broader IB research and discusses implications, relevance and areas for further investigation. An illustrative example explicates the importance of carefully considering this “missing link”. The study emphasizes the need for further study into ways in which both lead firms and intermediaries deal with contradicting demands of implementing CSR policies and offering competitive prices with short lead times.

While publications on the regional nature of multinational enterprises have sparked a lively debate about the nature and measurement of regionalization and (semi)globalization, and performance implications are starting to be addressed, the broader societal and sustainability dimensions have received limited attention. Likewise, international business research on these issues has generally not considered regionalization and its consequences. This paper extends insights from the regionalization literature and broadens the debate by exploring aspects that arise when societal and sustainability implications are taken into account as well. It outlines several areas for further research, addressing geographic scope, organizational levels, and upstream/downstream and country/industry/issue peculiarities

In evaluating Alan Rugman's work on MNE environmental strategies, the subject of this chapter, it is too tempting not to start with a 2×2 matrix. Fig. 1 is meant to roughly indicate four different types of work that might characterise an academic's research portfolio. Obviously, all the well-known caveats of such a scheme apply, and perhaps more than usual. However, the main purpose is, by way of introduction, to situate Alan's output on environmental issues and the MNE, compared and related to other topics. While the horizontal axis of Fig. 1 refers to a regular division into theoretical and empirical work, the vertical axis differentiates main foci of research from other, more sideline, areas. Applied to Alan Rugman's research portfolio, the latter category characterises his work on environmental strategies of MNEs best, particularly quadrant 2, although some of it (generally more exploratory work) can be placed in quadrant 4 as well.

The domestic institutional context has emerged as a key determinant of firms' environmental disclosure, but studies have hardly addressed the extent to which exposure to foreign institutional contexts plays a role in the occurrence and contents of non‐financial disclosure, which are crucial aspects for understanding multinationals' accountability. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between internationalization (both degree and spread) and environmental disclosure.

It is hypothesized that both home and host country institutional pressures affect the relationship between internationalization and environmental disclosure, and that these effects are more prominent in environmentally‐sensitive sectors. The proposed relationships are tested using data from the Fortune Global 250.

Results show a significantly negative relationship between the degree of internationalization and environmental disclosure, which is only partly mitigated by environmental governance and institutional quality in home and host countries. The relationship is only positive for firms in high‐sensitivity sectors from high‐standard countries. Findings are particularly strong for the degree of internationalization; and non‐significant for dispersion/spread.

This article moves beyond the predominant focus on country‐of‐origin effects by adding exposure to foreign institutional contexts, for which it develops a new indicator. It renews attention to non‐financial disclosure, a topic underexposed in the IB literature. Viewed from a broader IB perspective, this article provides an empirical illustration of the effect of home and host institutions on firm strategy, and of the use of different metrics to assess internationalization with divergent results for degree versus spread, as well as for sales versus assets, pointing to areas for further research.

The strategic management of corporate sustainability tends to be approached from one theoretical perspective in academic research and publications in mainstream journals simultaneously. In corporate practice, however, a sustainability issue has different dimensions that cannot be captured if only one such lens is taken. The purpose of this article is to develop a more integrated perspective, embedded in a stakeholder view.

This paper uses climate change as an example to illustrate how institutional, resource‐based, supply chain and stakeholder views are all important to characterize and understand corporate strategic responses to one issue. This is subsequently linked to the climate strategies and related capabilities of companies, reckoning with societal and competitive contexts.

What a corporate climate strategy looks like depends on the type of stakeholders that a company manages more proactively, which is in turn determined by the extent to which these stakeholders control critical resources.

While empirical literature usually adopts a particular theoretical perspective, this article has attempted to develop a more integrative approach on corporate responses to climate change.

This chapter examines the green face of the world’s one hundred largest firms from developed economies by linking degrees of internationalization to (pro)activity on environmental reporting. A bargaining approach, emphasizing intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, is applied to understand why the most international firms show the greenest face. Bargaining relations within the home country appear to be most important. Country characteristics explored include size, openness and the nature of business-society relationships.

This paper aims to explore how multinational corporations (MNCs) may operate in the context of a so‐called emergent institution which is not yet settled and taken for granted, thus helping to shape a new form of governance with considerable private involvement. The case used to illustrate emergent institutions involves market mechanisms for climate change, particularly emissions trading. This instrument is a crucial component of the Kyoto Protocol, which has started to be implemented, but is still surrounded by uncertainty and diversity across countries/regions.

Information from MNCs' responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project is used to shed light on their bargaining and nonbargaining activities and how these seem to relate to their overall strategy and location.

Both with regard to nonbargaining and bargaining strategies MNCs' prevailing view seems that they have to deal with distinctive national patterns, adopting a multidomestic, frequently home‐country‐focused approach. Their responses vary according to the national situation, with the level of activity in emissions trading frequently shaped by local management. Yet, the type of corporate structures created by some MNCs indicates that they take into account that EU‐ETS may form the onset for a more global emissions trading scheme.

Since market mechanisms for climate change are just unfolding, follow‐up studies into larger numbers of firms would be worthwhile to unravel the dynamics. The aspects identified in this paper can be used as starting point for such analyses.

The information and corporate considerations regarding market mechanisms for climate change can be helpful for both managers and policymakers in designing future approaches and reflecting upon the limitations and opportunities for MNC involvement in global governance.

The paper explores how MNCs may help shape an emergent institution, considering the fact that they face the dualility of managing a global context and multiple local contexts.

Most studies on consumers and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have focused on Western contexts. Consequently, good insight is lacking into non-Western markets where consumers may respond differently. China is a case in point, despite the popularity of the CSR concept and high societal expectations of firms. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Chinese consumers perceive the underlying components of CSR found in Western countries; whether their CSR expectations differ for local Chinese compared to foreign firms; and whether results differ across regions within China.

A country-wide study was done using a questionnaire to collect data in seven distinctive regional markets across China.

Findings show that the originally Western CSR construct seems generalizable to China, but consumers across all regions perceive two rather than four components: one combining economic and legal responsibilities (labelled “required CSR”) and another combining ethical and philanthropic responsibilities (“expected CSR”). Consumers expect local Chinese firms to take more responsibility than foreign firms, particularly for required CSR.

This study focused on consumer perceptions, not on actual buying behaviour, which is a potential area for further research. Follow-up investigation to see whether the findings regarding the CSR concept also hold in other emerging and developing countries would be worthwhile. This also applies to an extension of the different expectations vis-à-vis foreign and local firms.

The study gives more insight into notions of standardization and adaptation with regard to CSR, considering China compared to other countries and China’s different internal markets. This is relevant for international marketers confronted with (potential) investments and activities in China, inbound or outbound, or in need of a comparative global perspective.

While the findings show some context-specificity for CSR in and across China, they also confirm the relevance of the originally Western CSR components to an emerging-market setting. These insights may be helpful for those interested in furthering CSR across countries, and locally as well as globally.

This study responds to calls for an improved understanding of the context-specificity of the originally Western CSR construct and of the extent to which it may be generalizable to non-Western settings such as China. The authors used a sample covering all regions of China and discovered two important dimensions. The results may be helpful to guide the debate on the plethora of CSR conceptualizations into a more focused direction, with clear relevance for the marketing field.

The debate about global integration (standardisation) versus responsiveness (adaptation) has recently been supplemented with perspectives that emphasise regionalisation. And while the discussion has also been extended from manufacturing to services, there are specific sectors and emergent topics that have not yet received much attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore how accounting firms (The Big Four) and particularly their sustainability services fit in the globalisation/regionalisation/localisation spectrum, and appear to standardise or adapt in key countries in various regions around the world.

Examined are the Big Four accounting firms in general, and their sustainability services in 15 countries in five regions and globally, as presented on their respective web sites.

While overall the Big Four are somewhere between globalisation and bi‐regionalisation, the traditional independent member firm structure appears to prevail in service offerings, as sustainability services do not exhibit standardisation and there are hardly signs of regionalisation/globalisation. This seems to result from special characteristics of services, such as inseparability of production and consumption, and local requirements regarding sustainability.

This exploratory study can be a starting point for further in‐depth analyses into sustainability and/or services sector(s), and the way in which they figure in current realities of international business.

The paper gives insight into the variety of sustainability services around the world, as well as the way in which the accounting firms have dealt with global issues that also have local dimensions.

The paper sheds light on a topic in a sector so far unexplored in the globalisation/regionalisation debate, bringing new dimensions and perspectives to it.