IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/corsem/v17y2010i2p70-80.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corporate response to CSO criticism: decoupling the corporate responsibility discourse from business practice

Author

Listed:
  • Jenny Ählström

Abstract

The general objective of this paper is to further research on the interaction between civil society organizations (CSOs) and corporations. The aim is to analyze how corporations are responding to demands to enlarge the responsibility sphere. A case is presented in which CSOs are putting pressure on the garment retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) to be responsible for safeguarding workers' rights in the outsourced production of H&M garments. The conclusion of the paper, derived from analyzing the empirical context using discourse theory, is that: (1) CSOs represent a challenging discourse (responsible business) attempting to change the dominant corporate discourse (profitable business); (2) If the challenging discourse is threatening the legitimacy of the corporation, a responsible business discourse is created; and (3) Responding to the demands of the CSOs is done to keep the business practice intact, hence practice is decoupled from the responsible business discourse. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Ählström, 2010. "Corporate response to CSO criticism: decoupling the corporate responsibility discourse from business practice," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(2), pages 70-80, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:17:y:2010:i:2:p:70-80
    DOI: 10.1002/csr.232
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.232
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/csr.232?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Shafer, 2006. "Social Paradigms and Attitudes Toward Environmental Accountability," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 121-147, May.
    2. Kolk, Ans & van Tulder, Rob, 2002. "The Effectiveness of Self-regulation:: Corporate Codes of Conduct and Child Labour," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 260-271, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thorey S Thorisdottir & Lara Johannsdottir, 2020. "Corporate Social Responsibility Influencing Sustainability within the Fashion Industry. A Systematic Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-64, November.
    2. Oscar Rikhotso & Thabiso John Morodi & Daniel Masilu Masekameni, 2022. "The Extent of Occupational Health Hazard Impact on Workers: Documentary Evidence from National Occupational Disease Statistics and Selected South African Companies’ Voluntary Corporate Social Responsi," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-25, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schiff, Daniel S. & Biddle, Justin & Borenstein, Jason & Laas, Kelly, 2019. "What’s Next for AI Ethics, Policy, and Governance? A Global Overview," SocArXiv 8jaz4_v1, Center for Open Science.
    2. Eyun-Jung Ki & Soo-Yeon Kim, 2010. "Ethics Statements of Public Relations Firms: What Do They Say?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 91(2), pages 223-236, January.
    3. Olivier Boiral & Mario Cayer & Charles Baron, 2009. "The Action Logics of Environmental Leadership: A Developmental Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 85(4), pages 479-499, April.
    4. Baskaran, Venkatesan & Nachiappan, Subramanian & Rahman, Shams, 2012. "Indian textile suppliers' sustainability evaluation using the grey approach," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 647-658.
    5. Katinka Cranenburgh & Daniel Arenas, 2014. "Strategic and Moral Dilemmas of Corporate Philanthropy in Developing Countries: Heineken in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 523-536, July.
    6. Joseph McKinney & Tisha Emerson & Mitchell Neubert, 2010. "The Effects of Ethical Codes on Ethical Perceptions of Actions Toward Stakeholders," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 97(4), pages 505-516, December.
    7. Rachel Wolfgramm & Sian Flynn-Coleman & Denise Conroy, 2015. "Dynamic Interactions of Agency in Leadership (DIAL): An Integrative Framework for Analysing Agency in Sustainability Leadership," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(4), pages 649-662, February.
    8. Drusilla K. Brown & Alan V. Deardorff & Robert M. Stern, 2009. "The Effects of Multinational Production on Wages and Working Conditions in Developing Countries," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Globalization And International Trade Policies, chapter 17, pages 623-687, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Di Luan & Hongjun Cao & Tongkun Qu, 2023. "How Does Corporate Green Innovation Strategy Translate into Green Innovation Performance Based on Chain Mediation?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-20, August.
    10. Vercher, Corinne & Palpacuer, Florence & Petit, Sandra Charreire, 2011. "Codes de conduite et systèmes d’alerte éthique : La RSE au sein des chaînes globales de valeur," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 9.
    11. Bos, J.W.B. & Contreras, M.G. & Kleimeier, S., 2016. "Self-regulation in collaborative environments : the case of the equator principles in banking," Research Memorandum 007, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    12. Kolk, Ans & van Tulder, Rob, 2006. "Poverty alleviation as business strategy? Evaluating commitments of frontrunner Multinational Corporations," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 789-801, May.
    13. Michael Maloni & Michael Brown, 2006. "Corporate Social Responsibility in the Supply Chain: An Application in the Food Industry," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 68(1), pages 35-52, September.
    14. Roger Strange, 2011. "The outsourcing of primary activities: theoretical analysis and propositions," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 15(2), pages 249-269, May.
    15. Frenkel, Stephen. & Mamic, Ivanka. & Greene, Laura, 2016. "Global supply chains in the food industry : insights from the Asia- Pacific region," ILO Working Papers 994901863402676, International Labour Organization.
    16. Caiming Wang & Jian Li, 2020. "The Evaluation and Promotion Path of Green Innovation Performance in Chinese Pollution-Intensive Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-22, May.
    17. Stefan Tengblad & Claes Ohlsson, 2010. "The Framing of Corporate Social Responsibility and the Globalization of National Business Systems: A Longitudinal Case Study," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 653-669, June.
    18. Sébastien Mena & Daniel Waeger, 2014. "Activism for Corporate Responsibility: Conceptualizing Private Regulation Opportunity Structures," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(7), pages 1091-1117, November.
    19. Schiff, Daniel & Biddle, Justin & Borenstein, Jason & Laas, Kelly, 2019. "What’s Next for AI Ethics, Policy, and Governance? A Global Overview," SocArXiv 8jaz4, Center for Open Science.
    20. Soo-Haeng Cho & Xin Fang & Sridhar Tayur & Ying Xu, 2019. "Combating Child Labor: Incentives and Information Disclosure in Global Supply Chains," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 692-711, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:17:y:2010:i:2:p:70-80. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1535-3966 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.