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The purpose of this chapter is to provide a practical review of topical developments in corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective within Pakistani business environment.

To investigate the concept of CSR in Pakistan, this chapter primarily draws on secondary sources including extant literature on CSR, government reports, publications of international agencies, industry reports, companies’ CSR/sustainability reports, and newspaper articles.

The findings of this research reveal that the concept of CSR is relatively underdeveloped in Pakistan. There is a general perception among business practitioners in Pakistan that CSR relates to altruism or philanthropic activities. However, only few large local companies and multinational enterprises hold a well-defined CSR policy. Small and medium enterprises limit their CSR engagement to comply with codes of conduct set by foreign buyers.

The discussion in this chapter is based on the secondary data, therefore the empirical research is needed to validate the findings of this study. Further, this chapter presents a generic reflection about how CSR is practiced and perceived in Pakistani business environment. Thus, industry-specific research would illustrate a much clearer picture on how different sectors in Pakistan are promoting CSR principles.

The findings of this research would help businesses and policy makers to recognize the current state of CSR progress and potential CSR challenges in Pakistan. These findings may assist the government, private sector, and civil society to devise future CSR agenda in Pakistan.

The authors contend that this is one of the few studies in Pakistani context which attempts to provide a comprehensive overview of CSR-related developments in Pakistan.

This study seeks to explore the importance of CSR for SMEs in Malaysia and uncover the perception of Malaysian SMEs on CSR.

This research is based on qualitative data derived from semi-structured interviews with ten Malaysian SMEs. The interviews were conducted with the managing directors, managers or owners of the small companies.

The study examined the understanding of Malaysian SME owners on CSR and elaborated their perceptions about CSR terminology, the nature of CSR activities, motivation for engaging in CSR and promotion of CSR. Overall, despite good feedback on CSR practices among the SMEs, it is clear that there is still confusion about the real meaning of CSR concepts, which suggests that some of the respondents have narrow views of CSR.

Due to the nature of this study, it is difficult for the findings to be generalized. This study serves only as an exploratory study for other researchers to take up these issues. Future study can further extend the sample and use quantitative methods for better generalization.

This study could be one of the most important stepping stones towards in-depth understanding of Malaysian SMEs’ CSR attitude and behaviour. Understanding the SME’s CSR perception would be a useful platform for further action to be taken in promoting social responsibility among SMEs.

Corporate managers must find a way to communicate their CSR activities to stakeholders without creating a boomerang effect where the CSR messages create resentment of instead of support for the corporation. One alternative is to use social media channels because they are low cost and can use a soft sell approach, thereby reducing the likelihood of a boomerang effect. However, using social media messaging about CSR challenges managers to attract followers to those social media channels. This chapter explores the use of gamification, the use of gaming features in the CSR messaging, to present CSR messages. The case study of Kraft’s “Two-Minute Drill” is used to illustrate how gamification can be used to promote social media-based CSR messaging.

A case study method is used to illuminate how Kraft used gamification to increase the audience for its anti-hunger CSR efforts. Kraft used the “Two-Minute Drill” game to attract people to their effort to fight hunger.

The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” seemed to overcome the CSR promotional communication concerns of tone and cost. The dominant message and theme is feeding the hungry. The tone on the Facebook page and the game itself is subtle in relation to the Kraft brand because Kraft appears in the background through its logo, name, and the names of prominent Kraft products. The stakeholders are treated as the drivers of the CSR effort because the individuals playing the game are what create the donations from Kraft. Donations could even be personalized. None of the comments posted to the Kraft Fight Hunger Facebook page questioned the expense of the project. Overall the comments were very favorable suggesting there was no boomerang effect from the game.

The study offers only one case study of gamification in CSR communication. More cases are necessary to draw stronger conclusions about the utility of gamification for CSR communication presented via social media. Moreover, more direct measures are needed to assess how stakeholders feel about CSR messages using gamifications and if the strategy can consistently prevent a boomerang effect.

The implications from the case study are that gamification can be an effective way to attract stakeholders to social media-based CSR messages and to generate positive reactions to the CSR messaging.

This chapter is one of the first detailed explorations of gamification as a means to avoid the dangers of the CSR promotional communication dilemma (stakeholders wanting CSR information but reacting negatively to the promotion of CSR activities).

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often characterized as a voluntary approach, but CSR policy is on the rise: Governments have started to promote CSR by raising awareness, launching partnerships and platforms, providing financial incentives and requiring environmental and social reporting (Albareda, Lozano, & Tamyko, 2007; Gond, Kang, & Moon, 2011; Steurer, 2010; Steurer, Martinuzzi, & Margula, 2012). This chapter describes how the German government facilitates CSR, that is it analyses the main instruments at the national level and takes a look at the motivation of the German government.

Based on the framework of CSR policy developed by Steurer, Margula, and Berger (2008) and Steurer (2010), the chapter examines CSR initiatives in five areas: informational or endorsing instruments, partnering instruments, hybrid instruments, financial or economic instruments and soft legal instruments. The analysis rests on a documentary review of various sources referencing German CSR initiatives.

German CSR policy comprises all sorts of instruments, whereas hybrid instruments play an important role: the Strategy for Sustainable Development, the National CSR Forum and National Action Plan on CSR as well as the National Action Plan for Business and Human Rights.

This chapter contributes to the rising literature on public policies on CSR by discussing the manifold measures that the German government has developed to support CSR.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)¹ has become such an important and popular concept along with the rise of the importance of sustainable development (SD) in the world. Nowadays, CSR is focused on goals such as poverty reduction and SD. It has become clear to the business world that SD is no longer only the concern of governments and related non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and that they should also immediately start becoming concerned about the sustainability of resources and human development along with their financial sustainability. In this sense, establishment of multi-stakeholder dialogues and partnerships among all these actors has also become extremely important.

One can always blame that the pandemic has again revealed the weaknesses of our international governance. One can also blame governments for not being able to more quickly draw lessons from the Covid-19 crisis. Nevertheless, despite very different and uncoordinated agendas from various stakeholders involved across the world, we see a first convergence around corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental social and governance (ESG) agendas in the context of increasing climate change and ecological transition global awareness.

Even if their interests are very different by design, global stakeholders share at least the fact that our planet has now reached its limits in terms of resources and their exploitation. Even if some consider that humanity, not to say Humanism, is slow to happen on the global scale, we see the early stages of stronger corporate responsibility of all stakeholders, including and starting with the business sector. Corporate business has positively moved from a ‘greenwashing’ attitude at the end of twentieth century and beginning of the new one, to a more integrated and risks-related corporate responsibility awareness that now appears to be a must have.

Purpose – In the recent redefinition of the European Commission's corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, attention is brought to CSR as a motor for innovation. However, literature in the area remains scarce. This chapter describes and discusses innovation as a consequence of a firm's CSR activities.

Methodology/approach – The empirical part of the chapter is based on the content analysis of 58 annual reports issued by the companies listed on the Swedish large-cap stock exchange. Their statements on CSR were coded to grasp the meanings of CSR, what areas they focus on, and types of innovation.

Findings – The study indicates that CSR innovation mostly focuses on environmental aspects. Companies that are less regulated by law in their operations tend to become more creative in their CSR approaches. CSR policy complements rather than enhances CSR innovation. CSR orientation is path-dependent on competences and position in the supply chain, and puts focus on incremental innovation. For product innovation, CSR may either appear as CSR in product (CSR-influenced material choices) or CSR in use.

Research limitations/implications – The data comprises established Swedish firms, however acting on international markets.

Social implications – Innovation and CSR are two important pillars for societal development. Finding motors that foster innovation, while increasing CSR awareness and using CSR as the driver for innovation, are important challenges for the future.

Originality/value of chapter – The study contributes to previous research through linking CSR orientation to innovation, describing types of innovation, and connecting their combined foci to different industry sectors.

This paper explores how legacies of past logics spawn variation in the institutional landscapes of different geographic regions in China. Of particular interest is how this variation influences the ways that actors interpret and respond to broader societal and world society pressures. Employing a cross-level comparative research design, we examine the enduring legacies of previous state logics, which have given rise to distinctive material and symbolic resource environments in different regional communities across China. To the extent that institutional contexts direct the attention of actors toward particular environmental stimuli and provide the symbolic and material resources to respond, a better understanding of how contexts differ provides more accurate causal explanations of the variability of organizational behavior. We explore this phenomenon in the context of recent government-mandated corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in China. Our examination of public and private CSR initiatives, along with the CSR activities of a sample of 714 listed Chinese companies, suggests that legacies from past state logics become embedded in local institutional infrastructures and shape how abstract, multifaceted CSR initiatives are interpreted and implemented.

The current study examines the role of social media for designing effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategy for modern business organisation to engage their stakeholders.

A structured survey questionnaire is used to collect data from multiple stakeholders through social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. The data is collected from employees, customers and investors of different companies in Pakistan. The data is analysed to examine the perceptions of different stakeholders towards effectiveness of social media for CSR communication.

The results indicate that the majority of respondents think that social media is very important platform to communicate CSR activities. Overall, respondents believe that social media is a trustworthy tool to communicate CSR activities and engage stakeholders. Customers believe that communication of CSR activities through social media influence their buying behaviour positively. We found strong intentions among employees to work for socially responsible corporations who are successful in communicating their CSR initiatives to their employees through social media.

The study collected data from Pakistan only, a larger sample from different countries can provide more interesting results. The study didn’t used sophisticated statistical tests; the future studies can develop a rigorous theoretical model explaining how use of social media as communication strategy can influence the behaviour of diverse stakeholders.

Since social media is becoming an effective communication platform, corporations should pay more focus on using social media. The corporations should encourage stakeholders’ views related to CSR communication on social media and carefully address their suspicions in order to engage them.

There is sparse research in literature that examine the use of social media to engage organisational stakeholders. The current study provides a direction to future researchers to explore this area and explain the use of social media as CSR communication strategy in better way.

The International Ergonomics Association (IEA)'s definition of HF/E includes the following:Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance … Organizational ergonomics is concerned with the optimization of sociotechnical systems, including their organizational structures, policies, and processes. (IEA Council, 2000)