ABSTRACT
In International Business (IB), context determines relative success. What is considered appropriate Societal Interface Management in one country is often deemed inappropriate in another country. Different countries represent different institutional contexts for CSR strategies-their so-called ‘CSR regime’. CSR regimes reflect the national societal ‘selection environment’ in which corporate strategies develop and are judged as successful or not. Corporate philanthropy, for instance, can be lauded as an excellent expression of the voluntary social engagement of companies in one country while it can be considered obligatory on religious grounds in another, and in yet another country it can be regarded with great suspicion or dismissed as ‘window dressing’. The very definition of what constitutes an adequate measure of firm performance (profits, market capitalization, return on investment, profits before or after taxes) differs across national accounting systems and cultures. The success of internationalization strategies criti-cally depends on understanding these differences. Appropriate international issues management takes the relevant societal context into account (Chapters 9 and 10) and appropriate interna-tional stakeholder management takes heed of society as a whole (Getz, 2004).
