Mohammad Mosaddek Hussain :
Nowadays the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been widely used in terms of some social responsibility for the well-being of the societies as well as communities those are the beneficiaries of its programmes as a whole.
Actually, CSR is recognized as a response to institutional pressures. Yet, to date few studies have linked the role of political freedom and information technology in determining firm CSR activities in the organizations for their own interest. In our country, many organizations have been introduced CSR for the well-being of the employees and other people through various welfare programmes.
Due to globalization it helps increase the capacity of the public to generate and change institutional norms, thereby leading to greater levels of firm social activity. Followed by a study, it examined across the 47 nations and ultimately, the results support the notion that public discretion, defined as participatory government, leads to an increase in firm-level CSR. Additionally, information technology is shown to positively moderate this effect. But more research is necessary to examine the real situation of CSR in different countries how it affects the society
Over the last three decades, the impact and process of globalization has led to a greater focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) throughout the world, which has become a phenomenon with important consequences for the global economy as Campbell, 2007; Luo & Bhattacharya, 2006; Matten & Moon, 2008 revealed in their studies. Further the CSR encompasses a range of growing relationship between business and society, and it is believed that CSR incorporates a organizations voluntary commitment for social improvement through activities that are ethical and socially desirable in the eyes of stakeholders-such corporate policies and practices go above and beyond legal requirements. This is consistent with the conceptualization by Carroll (1991) and Matten and Moon (2008) who manifest that CSR fundamentally involves social imperatives and consequences of voluntary policies and practices that reflect business responsibility in the society as well.
In the event of current business environment CSR is gaining more importance in the global economy more than ever before and organization and enterprises are now expected to account for both financial and social performance that reflects their overall behavior in the eyes of global stakeholders throughout the globe. As CSR is intertwined with social, cultural, political and institutional norms (Luo & Bhattacharya, 2006), it becomes particularly difficult to initiate CSR activities that are consistent with both local and international expectations of conduct. A key reason for such difficulty is that countries vary in terms of their culture, system, environment, norms and institutional practices.. Institutions that set and maintain such norms play an important role in developing and shaping CSR opportunities because they are much more than background conditions that can formulate as it struggles to formulate and implement strategy. Various research recognize that there is a huge variance among countries with regard to factors such as public discretion in terms of political freedom, presence of social media, social norms, among others. On the other hand, literature is yet to focus its attention on how these factors influence CSR performance. Prior research has mostly focused on examining the relationship between CSR and firm financial performance in the context of U.S. or the U.S. based firms. Further, in the light of mixed results, the debate has mostly centered on whether this relationship yields positive, negative or equivocal results.
In reality, research has made important gains, we build upon and extend the preceding literature through two primary contributions. 1) It was revealed that numerous calls made by the scholars such as Matten and Moon (2008, p. 419) who state that future research should seek better “understanding of what CSR consists of, its specific institutional underpinnings, and the national contexts in which corporations operate and whose perceptions of appropriate social responsibilities they seek to live up to”. We not only identify antecedents of CSR from diverse sources but also highlight conditions that motivate CSR in diverse national domains as Chapple & Moon, 2005 among others; Royle, 2005; Visser, et al., 2005 highlighted this. 2) the use of more general measures of information technology reveals when exploring the effects of exposure and communication on firm social activities.
Besides, the previous studies have made significant progress in developing our understanding of how organization policy relates to the institutionalization of CSR activities. Scholars need to acknowledge the fundamental changes in how a population receives, consumes and shares information for meeting their needs. The derivatives of information technology are fast becoming a prominent source of information diffusal; both complementing (Althaus & Tewksbury, 2000) and in some cases, replacing traditional media outlets (Kaye & Johnson, 2003). Therefore, it may be argued that variables in CSR research is a useful but incomplete predictor of firm behavior. Because the world is becoming increasingly global and countries vary in the levels of public discretion (e.g., freedom of expression and voice) and digital enablement, it is somewhat surprising that research is yet to focus on the role of these factors in motivating CSR across world .
In continuous research, it’s findings show a strong relationship between public discretion and firm CSR with information technology use moderating the effect. Actually, experts and researchers contribute to the literature both theoretically and empirically because multi-level modeling have rarely been applied to the CSR contexts.
Responsibility to be used to integrate Environmental, Social, and Governance practices into their business model, beyond mandatory legal requirements. This is consistent with most of the scholarly definitions of CSR that consider CSR as a composite, multidimensional construct capturing a business organization’s configuration of principles of social, environmental and governance-related responsibility, processes of responsiveness in these areas, and policies, programs, and observable outcomes as they relate to the firm’s relationships with diverse stakeholders according to opinions of many researches. In keeping with the precedent established by authors such as Waddock and Graves (1997) and Cheng et al. (2011), we assign equal weights to each of the social, environmental and governance-related responsibility areas of performance.
Nowadays, the global corporations are engaged in multiple reciprocal relationships with various entities, such as communities, governments, suppliers, consumers etc. as defined by Donaldson & Dunfee, in 2002. Experts and scholars have reached to a conclusion that an organization is accountable not only to its owners, but also to a variety of stakeholder groups like the consumers and beneficiaries as well. In reality, it is difficult to include all the groups that could have different notions in business management and strategy; broader definitions of stakeholders recognize that loosely-connected groups can also be affected by an organization’s operations and include those as secondary stakeholders-as such, communities, the government, and other external actors are recognized as secondary stakeholders. Scholars have presented a range of definitions with narrower definitions including just those who “have a vested interest in the corporation in the form of capital” (Clarkson, 1995) whereas extremely broad definitions encompassing a fairness-based approach includes even non-human entities such as the natural environment (Phillips & Reichart, 2000).
We see in this current business situation stakeholders can put pressure on the organization to initiate socially responsible behavior based on their power, legitimacy and the urgency of the issue. They interact with organizations mostly for instrumentality, identity and ideology as they pursue specific interests, act upon their ideological positions and strengthen their identity. In the case of conflict between business and society or unexpected events, their power cannot be underestimated.
Actually different stakeholders are legitimate holders of particular stakes in a nation’s business and political environment. As Vogel once manifested that when there is ‘governance without government’ or ‘private politics’, secondary stakeholders play an important role in civil societies.
On the other hand, sometimes social movements can hurt the interest of an organization. Often, they have motivation to pursue a systematic approach to public affairs and publish regular annual reports including health, safety, and environment issues of the organization for grasping the social activities. Also, this practice may followed in many countries and the number of voluntary organizations, community organizations and NGOs are increased at a rapid pace.
Some think that CSR as part of political management and a process of social benefit but in somes it faces challenge in political situation . Besides, corporate political strategies are designed to align the external environment with the internal capabilities of the organization. In this connection ,Oliver and Holzinger (2008, p. 497) posit them as “dynamic processes by which a firm influences or complies with their political environment for purposes of generating future value for the firm or protecting the current value of the firm from future loss or erosion.” Firms plan and enact such strategic actions by forming relationships with stake seekers in order to maximize economic returns within the governmental and political environments as described by Bonardi, (2005); Getz, (1997); Hillman & Keim, (1995) and ; Shaffer, (1995).
Corporate social responsibility can be the source of filling some expectations of the people and community through launching various welfare programmes also. By this way, the organizations and firms are actively involved to manage this program under the purview of corporate administration. So trained and experienced employees are a dire need to implement the programme by the organizations as a whole. Due importance should be given to this aspect of corporate management responsibility (CMR)
