Unfortunately, Ambiguities Still Abound in How We Conceptualize Corporate Social Responsibility

The idea of embedded versus peripheral corporate social responsibility (CSR) proposed by Aguinis and Glavas (2013) appears to be very intuitive and functional. After all, who can on face deny the argument that CSR will have the maximum positive outcomes when it is not just an add-on but is thoroughly integrated into the strategies, routines, and operations of the business? However, on closer inspection, there appear to be several problems with the embedded–peripheral dichotomy. Three major ambiguities of the embedded–peripheral dichotomy are focused on in this commentary. The first lies in the potential for significant ambiguity in whether a company falls in one category or the other based on how the totality of the organization's operations and functions are categorized. A company can have CSR built into their operations and strategies for part of their business (embedded) while have them not be built into their operations for different aspects of the operations or product strategies. The second ambiguity area is how CSR actions get defined as peripheral or embedded that does fit well with the actual importance level of the action to the organization. We look at an organization example (TOM Shoes) where peripheral CSR actions have significant impact on organizational success.