Solutions or Legitimations? How the Conceptualization of Organizational Identity Shapes the Social Relevance of CSR Initiatives in Two Japanese Corporations

There is a huge discrepancy in the degree of social relevance of the CSR activities of Japanese corporations. Some corporations in Japan are remarkable in that their CSR initiatives are almost indistinguishable from their regular business activities—some even reject the concept of CSR outright, yet actively pursue the development of business models explicitly aimed at providing systematic, long-term and transformative solutions to current or potential social issues. By contrast however, some corporations are equally remarkable in the opposite sense in that their CSR initiatives lack strategic integration, are short-term, transactional and sporadic in nature. This difference is largely based upon a discrepancy in the capability of corporations to identify social issues and formulate a CSR agenda relevant to both the needs of society and their own needs as a business. This paper will argue that this ability in turn is largely a function of the manner by which a corporation conceptualizes and articulates its values and wider social role. Some corporations conceptualize and articulate their values and social roles in a manner which is highly conducive to the planning and implementation of socially relevant CSR initiatives. This paper has three objectives, to: 1. Develop a framework to facilitate the analysis of the processes whereby organizational identity shapes the identification of social issues within firms, 2. Apply this framework in a comparative study of two Japanese firms operating in the same market and industry that display remarkably different levels of strategic CSR, and 3. Identify the practices (organizational structures and processes) that promote the formulation of socially informed business strategies.