Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility Through Social Issue Selling: A Relational Endeavour A study exploring the issue buyer’s perception of relational efforts by issue sellers to create a mutual understanding of CSR and how this affects CSR implementation

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2022-07-06

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en

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Within an organisation, issue selling involves “the process by which individuals affect others' attention and understanding of the events, development, and trends that have implications for organisational performance” (Dutton et al., 2001, p. 716). This revolves around two parties: issue sellers and issue buyers. The social issue looked at in this research is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This study aims to fill the research gap on social issue selling as a relational endeavour, particularly, by looking at the issue buyer and their perception of the relational efforts by issue sellers to create a mutual understanding of the CSR issue and how this affects the issue buyer’s CSR implementation. In collecting qualitative data, the study found five relational efforts (trust, communication, collaboration, empathy, inclusion) and one additional factor (awareness) that play an important role in either aiding or negatively influencing the creation of a mutual understanding of the CSR issue and smoothening, speeding up or hindering the CSR implementation. This study provides issue sellers with a guideline to realise how mutual understanding is created between issue buyers and sellers is key to improving CSR implementation and, ultimately, tackling societal challenges.

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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen

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