Corporate Social Responsibility: One term, different approaches
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2016-08-19
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en
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Abstract
This thesis investigates the cross-national variation in governmental approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is most known for being a concept that focuses on the voluntary social responsible behavior of business actors and therefore government involvement seems counterintuitive. For theoretical as well as empirical reasons this thesis shows that it is interesting to investigate governmental CSR approaches. The field of studies that focuses on explaining the mechanisms behind governmental CSR approaches is still developing and this thesis contributes to this field of study by bringing together parts of the existing literature concerning the mechanisms behind governmental CSR, and approximate a theoretical model out of it combining three dimensions of CSR policies: geographical orientation, policy justification and emphasis on multilateral CSR initiatives. The theoretical model of this thesis is mainly informed by the ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach and is built upon domestic institutional context, industry structure and country size. The model is empirically tested on the country cases of Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. Corroborative evidence was found for the mechanisms that relate these independent variables to the dimension of geographical orientation, while partial evidence was found for the proposed mechanisms on the dimension emphasis on multilateral frameworks and little corroborative evidence for the dimension of policy justification.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen