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Purpose – The purpose of this research is to identify the CSR dynamics through a social capital lens in a developing country's context.

Approach – The research design underpinning this study is qualitative. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with SMEs owner-managers.

Findings – Adopting a pragmatic stance, the research highlighted the significant role of the social capital concept in enabling or hindering SMEs’ engagement in the CSR discourse in the Egyptian context.

Implications/limitations – A holistic understanding of the subject has been achieved by examining core issues at different levels. It is recommended that micro-individual (SME owner/manager), meso-organisational (SME context and industry), and macro-environmental (socio-economic and cultural environment) dynamics be explored by employing suitable research methods grounded in research paradigms that allow for qualitative exploration.

Practical implications – By giving prominence to SMEs as the research focus, the significance of these enterprises for sustainable development is highlighted at the policy level by developing tools and mechanisms that deal with effective implementation of CSR programmes in that sector.

Social implications – An in-depth understanding of the CSR practices of SMEs as embedded in their operational management will help policy makers in promoting sustainable practices by integrating social and environmental activities in the day-to-day operations of SMEs.

Originality/value – The chapter makes a contribution to academic theory in the area of CSR in SMEs by examining the phenomenon through a social capital lens using a multi-layered approach from a developing country's perspective.

This chapter explores the strategic responsiveness of commodity multinationals operating in developing countries to the uncertainties raised by the emergent European Union (EU) sustainability regulation. The study applies deductive theory triangulation to derive five response propositions, subsequently contrasted with inductive insights from an exploratory single-case study. The research involves in-depth interviews with a mix of senior and middle management and numerous external stakeholders. Empirical findings are discussed through storytelling and retrospective sensemaking and cross-checked against corporate documents, archive material, and online articles for added validation. This chapter concludes that an authentic commitment to corporate social responsibility and creating shared value can enhance the multinational enterprise (MNE)’s resilience and responsiveness to regulatory uncertainty, especially when combined with early signal scanning and real options reasoning. Through varied, first-hand insights, the case study demonstrates the role of reputation, core values, and ethical leadership in support of effective stakeholder engagement capabilities and the MNE’s ability to develop viable collaborative solutions to uncertainties implied by evolving sustainability regulation and stakeholder expectations. Taking an evolutionary view, this chapter introduces a process perspective on sustainability transition, relevant to firms seeking a shift in focus from mere compliance toward strategic responsiveness founded on adaptability and renewal.

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been gaining support for the role it plays in employee outcomes, such as organizational identification (OID), the view of CSR from a social identity perspective is underdeveloped. This conceptual chapter explores the role of social identity processes grounded in organizational justice to develop a model of CSR attributions and the moderating role these attributions play in organizational member outcomes. CSR is understood as the relational processes happening with stakeholders, and these relationships engage specific organizational identity orientations. The social identity process flows from there, resulting in CSR attributions including strategic, relational, and virtuous. Using social identity, organizational identity, and organizational justice, this chapter makes two specific contributions: a CSR attribution typology grounded in organizational justice and the moderating impact of these attributions between activated justice dimensions and resulting organizational member outcomes.

Based on a single and innovative case study (Siggelkow, 2007; Yin, 2014), this research aims to identify the main issues of non-financial reporting. They are related to:

the complexity of the corporate social responsibility (Alcouffe, Berland, Dreveton, & Essid, 2010; Ancori, 2008; Antheaume, 2007; Brichard, 1996; Buritt, 2004; Chan, 2005; Gray & Bebbington, 2001; Herborn, 2005; Savall & Zardet, 2013; Vatn, 2009);

the legislator’s and stakeholders’ expectations (Ancori, 2005; Batifoulier, 2001; Caillaud & Tirole, 2007; Lewis, 1969); and

the company’s expectations (Argyris & Schön, 1978; Chiapello & Gilbert, 2013; David 1998; Grimand, 2012; Moisdon, 1997; Senge, 1992; Wood, 1991).

Symmetrically, it reveals possible pitfalls. Through the study of the way the Rémy Cointreau Group developed its reporting tool, the authors analyze how a company can take the opportunity of a legal obligation to deploy a strategy of non-financial reporting that comes to support and structure a responsible approach. Of course, these results are only replicable under certain conditions related to this singular case.

The chapter explores how different theoretical traditions address the gaps between talk (symbolic communication practices) and actions (substantive performance) in organisations. The chapter details the main theoretical approaches in greenwashing research, namely legitimacy theory, attribution theory, institutional theory, signaling theory, impression management approaches and constructivist approaches. Among these latter, Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) challenges the dominant view in literature and suggests abandoning the traditional dichotomy of talk versus action. The different approaches to studying greenwashing are presented along with main questions and research methods used in each field and sub-field of study. For each theoretical approach the main research trends and novel research questions are proposed. Researchers, doctoral and post-graduate students may appreciate this as standalone contribution to guide their future studies in this area, by designing their research avenues based on the best practices in the field.

Both the theory and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are foundational to the field of Business & Society (B&S). However, efforts to define and operationalize this construct have been undermined by definitional discord arising from the disparate sense-making assumptions and methods of competing North American and European research traditions. Scholars wedded to the North American research tradition have striven mightily to uncover “objective” evidence in support of the instrumental proposition that IF corporate executives were to invest more resources to enhance social and environmental performance, THEN the firm’s burnished brand image, reputation, and perceived legitimacy would elevate the firm’s long-term financial performance as well. However, the inconclusive statistical record has failed to move many corporate decision makers beyond the minimal social and environmental investments needed to create the impression of compliance with societal expectations. The proliferation of corporate scandals and the pattern of settling legal disputes without admitting guilt are also troubling. The muted impact of B&S research based on proving the instrumental proposition has prompted a new generation of European B&S scholars to explore the sense-making potential of the European research tradition, which seeks meaning and normative validity within a pluralist crucible of community discourse. This contested communicative space is filled with paradoxical tensions and contending stakeholder voices and narratives. With respect to CSR, this discursive sense-making process is animated by an aspiration toward constructing shared meanings that can guide a search for more collaborative approaches to addressing systemic challenges via stakeholder engagement and experiments in multisector collaborative problem-solving. Rather than try to scientifically “prove” a fact-based pre-existing condition, this approach embraces “an emergent and mediated form of strategic ambiguity” to keep open the possibility of “fulfilling often conflicting instrumental and social/ethical imperatives at the same time” (Guthey & Morsing, 2014, p. 556). This discourse-based search for shared meanings in support of a convergence of economic, social, and environmental values frames CSR as an aspirational cocreative process rather than as a pyramid of normative assertions loosely grounded on a search for validation in efforts to find correlations (or causation) within an assortment of “objective” facts. The discursive approach to constructing CSR also highlights the relevance of the emergence of institutional innovations that enable network interactions to address shared systemic problems. Ultimately, CSR may be expressed as a form of network governance seeking to assure the sustainable outcome of system health and vitality across micro-, meso-, and meta-levels of thought and action.

To review and understand the importance of a well-known movement among universities in Hispanic America called “university social responsibility” (USR). USR places responsible and sustainable practices in the bottom line of everyday university management processes (e.g., campus operations, teaching, research, and community outreach).

Through a selection of relevant literature in USR, the concept, origins, importance, and implementation of USR practices are discussed in three sections (corporate social responsibility, the importance of USR, and planning, developing, and evaluating USR).

Results indicate the relevance of the practice of USR in Hispanic America because it points out specific impacts and core areas that other definitions (e.g., CSR) have not considered. Practical cases from different Hispanic universities are shown as examples of the practice of USR.

This chapter does not present a complete list of all authors that have studied USR. However, it fulfills to introduce, review, and grasp the practice of USR.

It serves as a guide to all members of the university community (e.g., administrators, professors, students, researchers, and local communities) to understand the role of universities in achieving sustainable development.

USR is an emergent approach that promotes responsible everyday management. This chapter is a starting point for new reflections, theories, and discussions regarding USR around the world. It also engages in further studies regarding USR in other developing regions like Africa, Asia, or Eastern Europe.

This chapter points out that the use of a wide range of theoretical paradigms in marketing research requires researchers to use a broad range of methodologies. As an aid in doing so, the chapter argues for the use of case study research (CSR), defines CSR, and describes several CSR theories and methods that are useful for describing, explaining, and forecasting processes occurring in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. The discussion includes summaries of six B2B case studies spanning more than 60 years of research. This chapter advocates embracing the view that learning and reporting objective realities of B2B processes is possible using CSR methods. CSR methods in the chapter include using multiple interviews (2 + ) separately of multiple persons participating in B2B processes, direct research and participant observation, decision systems analysis, degrees-of-freedom analysis, ethnographic-decision-tree-modeling, content analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA.com). The discussion advocates rejecting the dominant logic of attempting to describe and explain B2B processes by arms-length fixed-point surveys that usually involve responses from one executive per firm with no data-matching of firms in specific B2B relationships – such surveys lack details and accuracy necessary for understanding, describing, and forecasting B2B processes.

How does distance influence the type of corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation strategy the subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise (MNE) adopt? In this chapter, I argue that the relationship between distance and CSR relies on the subsidiaries’ relative need for internal versus external legitimacy. I propose that, on average, subsidiaries that are more distant from the MNE’s home country pay more attention to the demands of their local stakeholders compared to those of their headquarters because they want to acquire local legitimacy. I propose that this local prioritization will broaden the set of practices that distant subsidiaries implement on a certain CSR issue as they try to satisfy a larger set of stakeholders but reduce the extent to which they implement each of them. Furthermore, I expect that dependence on the parent MNE should limit the effect of distance on local prioritization, and therefore reduce the overall negative relationship between distance and CSR implementation level and focus. And finally, in case of high local stakeholders’ consensus, the overall negative relationship between distance and CSR implementation level and focus should again be assuaged. Thus, by looking at the subsidiaries’ simultaneous need for internal and external legitimacy and introducing the moderating effects of dependence on the parent and consensus among local stakeholders, this chapter nurtures the current discussions on the impact of distance on CSR implementation in MNEs.