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This study aims to examine the effects of external corporate social irresponsibility on organisational workplace deviant behaviours through the mediation of moral outrage (MO) among non-managerial employees.

The primary quantitative data was collected from a sample of 328 non-managerial employees working in banking, refinery, petroleum and power distribution companies in Pakistan. Partial least square-structural equation modelling was used to estimate the modelled relationships.

Results confirmed that external corporate social irresponsibility has a positive effect on organisational workplace deviant behaviours. MO mediated relationships between external corporate social irresponsibility and organisational workplace deviant behaviours positively.

Theoretically, the findings indicate that moral values are also close to the hearts of non-managerial employees, as external corporate social irresponsibility has proved to be one of the significant predictors of organisational deviance.

This study provides a new, substantial pathway for the executive management of organisations and evidence that eliminating social irresponsibility is equally important as pursuing sustainability initiatives for addressing workplace deviant behaviour.

The originality of this study is twofold. Firstly, it has confirmed the impact of external corporate social irresponsibility on employees’ deviant behaviours targeted at the organisation. Secondly, it has extended the scope of expectancy violation theory into the field of human resource management.

Purpose – This chapter engages critically with the ideas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) in order to examine their utility for the purposes of realizing more socially just and environmentally sustainable social and economic practices.

Methodology/approach – The chapter develops Marx's understanding of the twin pressures of class struggle and inter-capitalist competition in setting the limits of agency for corporate actors. It is thus theoretical and discursive in nature.

Findings – The findings of the chapter suggest that the scope for corporate agency in relation to responsibility/irresponsibility is severely limited by inter-capitalist competition and capitalist social relations. It therefore argues that those interested in social justice and environmental sustainability should focus on these structural pressures rather than theorizing corporate agency.

Social implications – The research suggests that the focus of academic and government attention should be on resolving the contradictions and exploitative social relations inherent in capitalism. Without this emphasis activism, corporate agency and government action will not eradicate the types of problem that advocates of CSR/CSI are concerned about.

Originality/value of paper – The value of the paper is that it contests and engages critically with the utility of the notion of CSR and the emergent concept of CSI. It asks proponents of these concepts to think seriously about the structural pressures and constraints within which business and policy makers act.

In weaker institutions, lack of corporate social responsibility (CSR) constituencies causes organizations to naturally incline toward corporate socially irresponsible actions. Grounded in the institutional theory, this paper aims to explore the nature of corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) in the weaker institution and its effect on legitimacy and reputation. The presence of corporate ability moderates the impact of CSIR on legitimacy and reputation.

A list of manager’s contact information was generated from an online database. In total, 1,500 employees in 560 Pakistani organizations received the self-reported survey. In total, 203 managers working in 110 Pakistani organizations responded with the completed questionnaire that provided empirical support to the hypotheses.

Institutional drivers were positively significant to CSIR and negatively associated with the manager’s CSR attitudes. CSIR was negatively significant to legitimacy and reputation. Group differences between high and low corporate ability indicated that corporate ability played a vital role between CSIR and reputation.

These results have important implications for leaders, business-to-business and human resource (HR) managers in weaker institutions highlighting that organization’s supply chain partners consider adopting CSR practices. This can help the organization avoid undesirable and detrimental impact on its legitimacy and reputation, which are linked to irresponsible behaviors. HR managers should build CSR cognition in employees to bring effective change in the organization.

Lack of investigation into corporate ability and CSIR has raised questions about the organization’s efforts in the weaker institution that are sensitive to institutionalized corruption. This research adds to the literature by exploring how the organizations develop legitimacy and reputation while still acting irresponsibly in a weaker institution, presenting a paradox.

This study investigates the moderating role of complaint handling between ideological incompatibility, symbolic incongruity, negative past experience and corporate social irresponsibility on brand hate.

The study employs the Duplex Hate theory which assumes that hate is the manifestation of multiple factors. A survey-based self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 smartphone users at Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan.

The findings suggest that ideological incompatibility, symbolic incongruity, negative past experience and corporate social irresponsibility contributes to brand hate. The complaint handling (moderator) weakens the effects of ideological incompatibility and symbolic incongruity on brand hate.

The research provides insights into the cancel culture and clarifies how brand hate can be controlled.

Empirical study on the antecedents of brand hate remains insufficient. The current study contributes to the brand hate literature by providing an understanding of the phenomenon of brand hate and by empirically examining the different antecedents responsible for causing the behavior. The study has also provided an additional determinant of brand hate, which is corporate social irresponsibility. The role of moderators for controlling brand hate is greatly ignored in the existing literature. The current work also extends previous studies by investigating a moderating factor for reducing brand hate, which is complaint handling.

Purpose – This chapter introduces this volume's topics, purpose and key themes.

Methodology/approach – This chapter reviews literature and chapters and offers conceptual development.

Findings – The difficulties of CSR in theory and practice are mainly due to its incomplete conceptualisation because its inseparable counterpart CSI has been eventually neglected or ignored in the CSR theorising process. The CSI concept is as equally important as CSR. CSI offers a theoretical platform to avoid the vagueness, ambiguity, arbitrariness and mysticism of CSR. CSI deserves to be a serious subject of inquiry and demands more scholarly attention.

Practical/social implications – With the aid of the CSI concept, CSR becomes more realistic and effective, as it is now more focused, practical and operational. While CSI is clear-cut, CSR is clearly meant, at the very least, to do well by undoing CSI. It is easier to promote CSR by addressing CSI first. The concept of CSI may allow everyone, including business practitioners, to concentrate on resolving the most important and urgent issues of public concern. It also encourages people to address the root causes of CSI problems in a systematic way. Doing so undoubtedly expands and enriches the understanding of CSR.

Originality/value of chapter – The concept of CSI has been less developed in academic circles. While the contributors of this volume have made significant contributions to the understanding of CSI, this chapter adds fresh reasoning and explanations to the development of the CSI subject.

This study aims to examine the extended effects of corporate (ir)responsibilities in supply chains. More specifically, the authors compare the impact of social and environmental initiatives and failures in the reputational capital of supply chain partners. The authors investigate how (and if) companies’ decisions to prioritize different sustainability dimensions in their supplier selection processes (i.e. sustainability trade-offs) affect consumers’ perception of corporate image, corporate credibility-expertise, attitude towards the firm and word-of-mouth.

The authors conducted three behavioural vignette-based experiments with 562 participants from the USA, relying on analysis of variance and t-tests analyses.

Results show that consumers perceive social irresponsibility cases as more severe than environmental ones in suppliers’ operations, penalizing buyers’ corporate image, corporate credibility-expertise and word-of-mouth. Corporate image, attitude towards the firm and word-of-mouth also have significant differences between social and environmental trade-offs. Statistically significant differences were also found between scenarios that portrayed the discovery of an irresponsible action and ones that reinforced the previous irresponsible practice in companies’ suppliers.

When types of irresponsibility practices are presented, the discovery of child labour and modern slavery conditions in suppliers damage how consumers perceive the company on corporate image and their attitude towards the organization and how they will spread word-of-mouth, reinforcing the importance of considering sustainability issues when making supplier selection decisions.

The study contributes to the understanding of how companies are perceived by their consumers regarding irresponsible practices and their impact on firms’ supplier selection decisions. Furthermore, data suggests that consumers might hierarchize sustainability dimensions, perceiving social irresponsibility cases as more severe than environmental irresponsibility ones.

Drawing on expectancy violation theory, this study aims to assess the impact of corporate environmental irresponsibility (CEI) on workplace deviant behaviors (WDB) of Generation Z and Millennials through the mediation of moral outrage.

The data were collected from 328 nonmanagerial employees working in the refinery, petroleum and power distribution companies who have been convicted for committing environmental irresponsibility by a court of law. Multigroup analysis (MGA) was used to estimate the hypothesized relationships.

Results revealed that CEI affects WDBs positively. Moreover, the MGA results demonstrated that the deviant behavior of Generation Z in response to environmental irresponsibility is higher than of the Millennials.

Theoretically, the findings implicate that harming the environment will cost organizational performance through deviant behaviors.

This study provides a new lens for the executive management that eliminating social irresponsibility is more important than incurring sustainability initiatives, especially from the new generation’s perspective.

The originality of this study is that it confirmed the impact of CEI on employees’ deviant behaviors; and extended the scope of expectancy violation theory to the field of human resources.

Purpose – This chapter examines how irresponsible corporate activities (environmental pollution, human rights abuses, tax evasion, corruption and contract scandals) of some multinational oil companies in the Niger Delta influence stakeholders’ perception of their image/reputation in Nigeria.

Methodology – The objective of this chapter is accomplished through the review of literature on the activities of multinational oil corporations in the Niger Delta, supported by qualitative interviews and analysis of archival materials.

Findings – Three important findings emerged from this study. First, the participants were fully aware of the irresponsible behaviours of oil corporations in the Niger Delta, and some oil corporations were involved in these illicit acts. Second, the analysis of archival materials supports the participants' views with reference to the identities of the corporations involved in these criminal acts. Third, the absence of a strong corporate governance system in Nigeria makes it possible for the officials of oil corporations to tactically circumvent the law by involving in a maze of sophisticated corrupt acts.

Research/practical implications – The implication for the academics and practitioners is evident when a corporation implements corporate social responsibility dutifully; it generates positive impact on its corporate reputation rating. Conversely, when a corporation engages in irresponsible corporate misbehaviours, it attracts negative consequences on its reputation.

Originality – The originality of this chapter lies in the fact that it is the first empirical study to examine the impact of corporate social irresponsibility on the image/reputation of multinational oil corporations in Nigeria.

Purpose – Despite a long-standing interest in the responsibility of organisations, transgressions do occur. This raises questions about how these occur when there is so much focus on the legitimacy of organisations in being responsible. In this chapter, we draw on metaphors of communication as transmission and meaning making to consider the communicative approaches to CSR.

Methodology/approach – This chapter is a conceptual chapter drawing on literature review and cases to illustrate insights.

Findings – We suggest that while transmission models focus on highlighting responsibility, it is within the meaning making approaches that opportunities for responsibility and irresponsibility emerge as organisations and society negotiate the boundaries of organisational behaviours.

Implications – We suggest implications for how the meaning and criteria of ethical corporate behaviour are constructed.

Originality and value – CSR has not been studied extensively through a communication lens. An extensive literature review of various communication approaches to CSR that forms the foundation of this chapter offers important insights into how responsibility and irresponsibility are constituted through communicative efforts of organisations.

This paper aims to put forward a definition of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) which is relevant to the study of complex organizations and in particular, the multinational enterprise (MNE). This paper then offers a framework as a foundation to discuss the institutional complexity of CSI to aid international business (IB) scholars, practitioners and policymakers achieve a clearer understanding of the mechanisms that may penalize and subsequently deter MNE irresponsibility.

In presenting the approaches taken by social regulation researchers and IB policy scholars to understand MNE irresponsibility, this paper proposes a definition of CSI and explicates the various mechanisms associated with deterring MNEs from behaving irresponsibly.

Therefore, how can MNEs be deterred from behaving irresponsibly? To further the research agenda concerning CSI in IB, far less common are a definition of CSI relevant to the complex IB context; and a framework that explicates both the legal and social components of CSI, particularly as they unfold in a complex, diverse and often divergent institutional landscape. Overcoming these two primary obstacles is important because when complexities associated with CSI emerge, researchers need to be able to ascertain and expound upon what they are observing so that comparisons can be made and more MNE CSI research can be accrued over time.

To help the development of future research, we offered a more precise definition of CSI, one which is more relevant to the study of the MNE and the complex contemporary IB environment. By embracing complexities, this paper also outlines an institutional complexity approach, one which highlights both the role of formal and informal regulatory institutions. Though IB has traditionally focused on the role of formal regulation, there is much more to be unearthed by exploring the additional and concurrent influence of social regulatory institutions.

There is a high level of heterogeneity in the motivations and modes used by MNEs to enter international markets, which likely influence efforts made by these firms to adapt to different types of formal and social institutional pressures. When firms invest significantly in a market, they have a greater economic dependence in that market and institutions have a greater opportunity to exert pressures. For instance, foreign direct investment requires a higher level of (longer-term) commitment, transfer of capital, exchange of expertise and learning, meaning that firms depend much more on local authorities to perform in the market and accomplish their goals.

Enabled by new technologies and, particularly, social media platforms, stakeholders can now engage in organized forms of regulatory activities, as is evident in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, black lives matter and gender equality social activist movements. Through prominent collective actions, the impacts of globally organized social movements may be increasingly non-location bound, placing MNE managers at the heart of new challenges and opportunities to engage with global stakeholders. Infomediaries such as the press, have always been of historical importance, due to their role in shaping stakeholder expectations and opinions of the firm and thus, the reputation and legitimacy of that firm.

This study enriches the understanding of what CSI is, why we are likely to observe it in practice and how it affects MNEs. This paper offers a definition of CSI that is sufficiently nuanced to capture the complexity of the contemporary IB environment, as well as a framework that, this paper proposes, presents a clearer understanding of the institutional mechanisms that may deter MNEs from behaving irresponsibly. By encouraging scholars to examine the institutional complexity of MNE CSI, the paper hopes to contribute toward building a bridge which connects the IB policy and social regulation research streams.