United States of America: A Snapshot of US' Practices

Organizations increasingly are embracing the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this study CSR refers to actions that further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law (McWilliams et al., 2006). Specifically, CSR consists of economic citizenship, legal citizenship, ethical citizenship, and discretionary citizenship (Maignan, 1997; Maignan and Fer-rell, 2001; Maignan et al., 1999). Despite the fact that CSR is popular, with its theoretical underpinnings having been the topic of frequent discussions, empirical studies often involve only limited aspects. This state of affair implies that theory may not be congruent with actual practices, which again may impede our understanding and further development of CSR. We examine actual CSR practices that relate to five different stakeholder groups; subsequently, we develop an instrument to measure those CSR practices and apply it to a survey of 401 U.S. organizations. We identify four different clusters of organizations, depending on the CSR practice focus. The distinctive features of each cluster relate to organizational demographics, perceived influence of stakeholders, managers' perceptions of the influence of CSR on performance, and organizational performance.