'The effects of national business systems on European multinational enterprises' CSR adoption

Abstract

In this thesis we replicated the study of Marano & Kostova (2016) on the level of CSR adoption by multinational enterprises. The original study solely focussed on U.S. MNEs. The focus of this thesis has been on the generalizability of these findings on European MNEs. In our study we looked at institutional complexity within the MNEs European and U.S. transnational field and the effects of this complexity on the level of CSR adoption. In our study we focussed on 467 European MNEs from 17 countries and a transnational field of 25 European countries and the U.S.. Our study showed that the findings of Marano & Kostova largely do not hold for European MNEs. The overall strength of CSR institutional forces was the only variable that was found to be of influence on the level of CSR adoption by European MNEs. Exposure to more stringent CSR requirements in host countries (compared to the home requirements) did not significantly affect CSR adoption nor did FDI-intensity.