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This paper aims to highlight the links among standardization, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and critical management. It also aims at understanding the implication of the normalization process for CSR but also questions the nature of this concept.

To determine the interest in standardization, we forecasted the trend in issuing ISO certificates based on autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and Holt statistical models. Then a critical approach is used to understand the nature of CSR.

The paper focuses on a critical approach and challenge the definition of CSR through the lenses of standardization. It shows that the notion of CSR is polysemic and highlights the limits of standardization process.

The research is only based on ISO standards, not other kind of standardization process.

The paper questions the notion of CSR and shows the different elements that this notion covers.

The paper questions the role of standardization and its impact on CSR adopting a critical view.

The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of an integrative approach to CSR.

The paper is based on the qualimetrics intervention-research methodology. It is an exploratory research project.

The intervention-research case study shows an example where an integrative approach to CSR was made possible.

The paper only presents an example of a company. Future research should show how the method that has been experimented to integrate CSR might be implemented.

The paper might help company actors debate and propose an innovative approach to CSR.

The paper provides scientific methods to better negotiate the creation of norms and standards in the field of CSR, enabling to move one step further as regards ISO 26000.

It shows some of the conditions required to bridge the gap between CSR and financial standards.

The objective of this paper is to address the question whether and how firms can follow a standard management process to cope with emerging corporate social responsibility (CSR) challenges? Both researchers and practitioners have paid increasing attention to the question because of the rapidly evolving CSR expectations of stakeholders and the limited diffusion of CSR standardization. The question was addressed by developing a theoretical framework to explain how dynamic capabilities can contribute to effective CSR management.

Based on 64 world-leading companies’ contemporary CSR reports, we carried out a large-scale content analysis to identify and examine the common organizational processes involved in CSR management and the dynamic capabilities underpinning those management processes.

Drawing on the dynamic capabilities perspective, we demonstrate how the deployment of three dynamic capabilities for CSR management, namely, scanning, sensing and reconfiguration capabilities can help firms to meet emerging CSR requirements by following a set of common management processes. The findings demonstrate that what is more important in CSR standardization is the identification and development of the underlying dynamic capabilities and the related organizational processes and routines, rather than the detailed operational activities.

Our study is an early attempt to examine the fundamental organizational capabilities and processes involved in CSR management from the dynamic capabilities perspective. Our research findings contribute to CSR standardization literature by providing a new theoretical perspective to better understand the capabilities enabling common CSR management processes.

Global warming is a process that takes place 11,500 years after the end of the last Ice Age. The main identified reason is the increased emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Since the nineteenth century, GHG evolution has recorded a quantum leap from the previous linear development. Human is the main factor behind this evolution, through industrialization and the exponential increase of population. Based on these, the chapter’s primary goal was to highlight an original method of predicting the future evolution of GHG emissions in the domains of Energy (including Transportation), Industry Processes and Product Use, Agriculture, and Waste Management. The novelty of the research consisted of testing several variants of functions (power, exponential, inverse trigonometric) to identify, from a group of variants. This optimal function would generate those predictions, which are closest to the real values. The causes that create GHG emissions in each of the four domains were the foundation for the analysis. This chapter focuses on two main subjects: first, the identification of a smooth function to predict the evolution of GHG emissions, and second, the function’s use to estimate the projections of GHG emissions in the coming years for the four domains: Energy (including Transportation), Industry Processes and Product Use, Agriculture, and Waste Management. An observation was that the weights of these four domains remain relatively the same despite the reductions in the total GHG emissions.

Introduction and Purpose: Sustainable development is a concept that plays an essential part in the business and industry of the twenty-first century. At present, the authors observe a wide range of models to analyse and implement sustainable development measures, which use various methodologies to address sustainability goals and monitor and assess implementation progress-wise. These models are based on a systemic vision and the complexity of the interconnected component elements. This chapter presents two fundamental concepts (systemic and related) through a comparison made between two sustainability assessment systems, the first one focussing on evaluating the sustainable development goals (SDG) implementation, and the second one focussing on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria assessment.

Methodology: Then, using cluster analysis, the authors grouped European Union (EU) member states from a sustainability assessment point of view.

Findings: Results show a congruent and complementary evolution of EU member states that use both sustainability assessment systems. As an outcome of this research, the authors suggest integrating the two sustainability assessment systems to better understand the phenomenon and the evolutionary trends in the field of sustainability.

Significance and Originality of Findings: Using the comparative approach and the cluster analysis method, this chapter showed that the two systems are consistent and offer compatible and complementary views, which led at necessity of integration of the two visions into a unitary systemic concept consisting of inputs (ESG scores) and outputs (SDG index).

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the convergence of the social reporting guidelines available in Italy.

The research is based on a documentary analysis of four selected social reporting guidelines provided by Italian institutions or translated in Italian.

The results of the analysis point out that it is possible to identify an isomorphic convergence among the guidelines, though differences remain relevant and express peculiar institutional expectations on the behaviours of different typologies of organizations.

The study is limited to Italian social reporting guidelines; however, it provides a methodology which could be applied in different contexts.

This study identifies the leading and primary issues in social reporting practices across different sectorial and methodological schemes.

The convergence of social reporting guidelines has a twofold implication: on one hand, social accountability is plastic issue, adaptable to different organization sectors and typologies; on the other, a common codification and commodification of social accountability is emerging.

The article proposes a cross-sectorial analysis of social reporting methodologies, to identify analogies, differences and trends of institutionalization and standardization of this process.

The aim of this paper is to identify difficulties and tension fields encountered in a Social Accountability (SA) 8000 certification process. The paper is based on a case study within a multinational small–medium enterprise (SME) during the implementation of a SA8000 standard.

In the framework of the case study, we adopt a cognitivist approach and use cognitive maps to describe and analyze the corporate social responsibility (CSR) representations of the main actors of the certification process: the owner-manager of the SME and the certification manager. We collected additional information on the case company through document analysis, additional interviews, validation interviews, confrontation interviews and follow-up interviews after one year.

The analysis of cognitive maps revealed tension fields and difficulties linked to the different representations of social responsibility between the social accountability standard SA8000 and the owner-manager strategic vision. It also underlines the sensemaking role of the certification manager in the certification process.

Limitations of the research are the explorative character of an illustrative case study and the limits of the construction of cognitive maps. The cognitive perspective brings new insights into the certification process and into the interaction between middle and top management.

Implementing a CSR standard necessitates a cognitive change of individual representationsto integrate CSR standardized criteria in the complex, idiosyncratic and systemic representations of the main actors.

The case study shows clearly the tensions existing between the CSR representation based on a social standard and the CSR representation of SME owner-managers.

Cognitive mapping has been often used to analyze and to discuss strategic vision of SME owner-managers, but rarely in the field of CSR. The confrontation of two maps and the complementary analysis of the case study context bring additional perspectives on implementation difficulties.

This paper aims to open a dialogue between academic accounts of the subprime crisis and The Life of Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare.

Andre Orlean’s analysis of the crisis published in 2009 is closely examined to trace the ways in which it echoes this seventeenth-century play on issues of debt, gift, trust and belief.

Shakespeare’s play provides an astonishingly relevant description that can account for and provide a new reading of most of Orlean’s (2009) detailed and in-depth academic analysis.

Following the chronology of a literary piece, this article opens a dialogue with the academic literature to allow for gaining a particular perspective, namely, beyond specific elements, the underlying dynamics of the subprime crisis are sadly classic in terms of trust and beliefs. As we will see, Shakespeare had already seen everything […].