ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates multinational companies (MNC) headquartering effect empirically. It briefly reviews the international corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature using Prahalad and Doz’s integration-responsiveness framework and Bartlett and Ghoshal’s typology of international business approaches as a starting-point. The chapter explains the headquartering effect in international CSR. It focuses on the implications of the headquartering effect for corporate practice and policy-makers as well as limitations stemming from the empirical analysis. The existence of a headquartering effect has profound implications for development-oriented CSR. MNCs should integrate their CSR activities globally in order to make the provision of CSR cost-effective and to adequately respond to global social problems; at the same time, they should be locally responsive to their various stakeholder groups in the particular contexts they operate in. The transnational approach aims to take advantage of both high local responsiveness and global integration. Pressures for local responsiveness arise from national differences in customer needs, distribution channels or host government demands.
