A Corporate Social Responsibility Decision Framework for Managers and Stakeholders

The purpose of this chapter is to help managers and stakeholders evaluate specific corporate social responsibility (CSR) decisions through using a heuristic framework integrating neutral CSR principles with managerial consideration of the preferences of salient stakeholders who may have conflicting views and interests. A salient stakeholder has influence or moral claim on the decision. There are two difficulties affecting CSR decisions. First, there is no broad consensus about CSR as corporate strategy. CSR is a contested concept among academics and business executives. ¹ The contest is partly conceptual and theoretical, and partly ideological and political. One reason for a long-lived debate concerning CSR is that there are advocates for strong CSR (including environmental sustainability), ² zero CSR (or nonresponsibility), ³ and lying between those two opposing poles of a theory continuum strategic CSR perspectives (including strategic philanthropy). ⁴ Theoretical debate can make it difficult for managers and stakeholders to get to the substance of specific decisions. A second difficulty is that CSR is a broad rubric including business ethics, corporate citizenship, corporate philanthropy, environmental sustainability, legal compliance, stakeholder management and sustainable development. ⁵ Academics, executives, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and governments use different specific elements of this broad rubric in constructing CSR arguments. Even within strong CSR and strategic CSR conceptions, there is disagreement on specific choices.