Purpose: The study examines the social and environmental responsibility indicators disclosed by three International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) corporate mining members in their social and environmental reporting (SER) from 2006 to 2014. To achieve this aim, the author limits the data two years before (i.e. from 2006 to 2007) and six years after (i.e. from 2009 to 2014) the implementation of the Sustainable Development Framework in the mining sector in 2008. Design/methodology/approach: Using the techniques of content analysis and interpretive textual analysis, this study examines 27 social and environmental responsibility reports published between 2006 and 2014 by three ICMM corporate mining members. The study develops a disclosure index based on the earlier work of Hackston and Milne (1996), together with other disclosure items suggested in the extant literature and considered appropriate for this work. The disclosure index for this study comprised six disclosure categories (“employee”, “environment”, “community involvement”, “energy”, “governance” and “general”). In each of the six disclosure categories, only 10 disclosure items were chosen and that results in 60 disclosure items. Findings: A total of 830 out of a maximum of 1,620 social and environmental responsibility indicators, representing 51% (168 employees, 151 environmental, 145 community involvement, 128 energy, 127 governance and 111 general) were identified and examined in company SER. The study showed that the sample companies relied on multiple strategies for managing pragmatic legitimacy and moral legitimacy via disclosures. Such practices raise questions regarding company-specific disclosure policies and their possible links to the quality/quantity of their disclosures. The findings suggest that managers of mining companies may opt for “cherry-picking” and/or capitalise on events for reporting purposes as well as refocus on company-specific issues of priority in their disclosures. While such practices may appear appropriate and/or timely to meet stakeholders’ needs and interests, they may work against the development of comprehensive reports due to the multiple strategies adopted to manage pragmatic and moral legitimacy. Research limitations/implications: A limitation of this research is that the author relied on self-reported corporate disclosures, as opposed to verifying the activities associated with the claims by the sample mining companies. Practical implications: The findings from this research will help future social and environmental accounting researchers to operationalise Suchman’s typology of legitimacy in other contexts. Social implications: With growing large-scale mining activity, potential social and environmental footprints are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Powerful and legitimacy-conferring stakeholders are likely to disapprove such mining activity and reconsider their support, which may threaten the survival of the mining company and also create a legitimacy threat for the whole mining industry. Originality/value: This study innovates by focusing on Suchman’s (1995) typology of legitimacy framework to interpret SER in an industry characterised by potential social and environmental footprints – the mining industry. © 2023, Gideon Jojo Amos.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how and what drives corporate social responsibility (CSR) in host communities of mining companies in developing countries.

Design/methodology/approach

To address this knowledge gap, this paper used Ghana as a test case and conducted 24 in-depth interviews with participants drawn from mining host communities.

Findings

The paper discovered that while CSR is broadly understood and encompasses six thematic categories in the mining host communities, there are emphases on philanthropic and environmental responsibilities. Contrary to the evidence found in other studies, this paper discovered that CSR rhetoric plays a more positive/significant role than so far explored in CSR research, as it incentivizes the host communities to push for the fulfilment of their CSR expectations and/or CSR initiatives proposed by mining companies.

Research limitations/implications

Quantitative studies are needed to strengthen the findings from the present paper.

Practical implications

Because developing countries share similar socio-economic and geo-political realities, the findings of this paper may be applicable not only for CSR advocates, but also for policy-makers in developing countries.

Originality/value

The paper provides new inputs from a developing country perspective to the current debate about the CSR performance of the extractive industry. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose – The objective of this study is to provide insights into the role of leadership in promoting creativity and innovation at the level of the firm, and how these may translate into improving firms’ own context of competitiveness in their respective markets through CSR initiatives.

Method/approach – This paper employs literature study, which is descriptive in nature, to explore the relationships between leadership, creativity/innovation, and CSR. We sought to describe the relationships between the three concepts: leadership, creativity/innovation, and CSR, as practically as possible. In employing exploratory research strategy, we draw insights from extant literature, drawn from the management sciences to describe leadership, creativity/innovation and CSR in organizations. In doing so, we explore, by arguing, how leadership can stimulate creativity/innovation in employees and how firm-level innovation-directed activities can connect to CSR activities.

Findings - The model suggests that leaders can stimulate employees’ creativity/innovative behaviour and this in turn may influence the rate at which innovation manifest in the products and processes of the organization. These, in turn, may be closely related to the CSR initiatives that the organization pursues. The study has argued that for creativity/innovation to be embedded in the organization’s product and processes, leadership of organization remains a key factor in terms of either enabling or inhibiting individual employees’ innovative behaviour. Leadership of organizations and individual employees’ innovative behaviour appear to influence the nature of CSR initiatives that is undertaken and may contribute in defining organization’s own competitiveness. Organization’s CSR initiatives can connect with efforts at improving its own competitiveness through, leadership of organization and stakeholder partnerships.

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The overall purpose of this thesis is to explore why and how institutional distance and contextual differences influence MNCs’ CSR-related behavior in African developing-countries. In order to achieve the purpose stated above, the thesis seeks to answer the overarching research question: How do institutional distance and contextual differences influence MNCs’ CSR-related behavior in African developing countries? To answer the research question this thesis employed an interpretive methodological approach in order to increase my understanding of the CSR phenomenon in a specific contextual environment characterized by different institutional distance through different theoretical and empirical perspectives (Guba and Lincoln, 1994; Lincoln and Guba, 2000). The thesis consists of two qualitative case studies, a systematic literature review, a conceptual paper focused on analyzing distance and MNC foreign subsidiaries’ CSR-related behaviour, and a longitudinal content analysis of annual CSR reports.

The thesis found that the most prevalent CSR themes addressed in journal articles focused on developing-countries have been social issues, followed by environmental issues as a distant second, with ethics-related issues receiving the least attention. The findings further indicate that CSR rhetoric plays a more positive and significant role than so far explored in CSR research, as it incentivises the host-communities to push for the fulfilment of their CSR expectations or CSR initiatives proposed by the mining companies. Soft’ regulations to which members of industry associations voluntarily adhere mitigate the absence of enforcement of more stringent hard regulations by the state for companies. In doing business in distant or different institutional contexts, institutional duality of MNC subsidiaries renders business activities complex and even conflicting when it comes to seeking internal and external legitimacy. This finding and the proposed model extend Hillman and Wan’s (2005) argument of the existence of ‘institutional duality’ of MNC subsidiaries. The 60-item disclosure index is in itself a contribution to research as it provides a measure of ‘disclosure quality’ in relation to the disclosures of CSR-related performance information and CSR-related governance information.

The main theoretical contribution of the thesis is that CSR expectations in developing-countries are distinct and may be more important to know how these empirical realities are taken into account when firms with their origin in developed-countries internationalize and enter markets in developing-countries. Second, an extended model is proposed which illustrates the roles of organizational fields, institutional pressures, legitimating environments, and legitimating strategies for MNC subsidiaries’ voluntary disclosure of CSR performance information. The overall contribution of the thesis is that it deepens our understanding of the CSR phenomenon, and of the role of host-communities and MNC subsidiaries’ managers from the context of developing-countries.

© Gideon Jojo Amos

This study explores how multinational enterprises (MNEs) should implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) to build external legitimacy, especially in subsidiaries operating in host-countries, where the effects of distance is felt most by MNE foreign subsidiaries. For long, international business (IB) research has analysed the effects of distance on MNEs’ expansion to host-countries, while a parallel strand of work in economic geography investigates the dimensions of proximity and how they influence firms’ knowledge development, especially in the varying host-countries they operate. Despite the noticeable relatedness and complementarities, these two bodies of literature have so far poorly interacted. Moreover, despite increased strategic motivation for corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, we still lack understanding of the effects of distance on MNEs’ CSR behaviour in host-countries. The present study addresses this limitation by analysing and integrating the extant literature on how MNEs can, through their CSR behaviour in host-countries, cope with and mitigate the effects of distance. It provides perspectives on what may constitute appropriate CSR strategies in varying host-countries’ institutional environments (i.e., what CSR strategies might be appropriate for MNEs to adopt in a more proximate/less distant and less proximate/more distant institutional contexts and their implications for the effects of distance). Based on an analysis of the extant literature, the present study discusses patterns of complementarities across distance and proximity, and draws attention to avenues for future research that, in a more effective way, interact the two strands of literature, thereby setting the ground for empirical testing of a conceptual framework proposed by this study.

Purpose: This paper aims to present a systematic review of scholarly articles focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing countries and published during the period 2004 to 2014 in international journals.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper applied a bibliometric analysis to 101 articles on CSR research focused on developing countries.

Findings: The study confirms that the most prevalent CSR themes addressed in journals have been social issues, followed by environmental issues in a distant second, with ethics-related issues receiving the least attention. Also, as CSR research in developing countries constitutes an emerging stream of literature, an overwhelming dominance of empirical (qualitative) papers aimed at exploring and/or seeking interpretations to CSR motivations have been confirmed.

Research limitations/implications: An important limitation of this study is in relation to the methods applied. In the first place, this review is based on two electronic databases: ABI/INFORM Global (ProQuest) and Web of Science Core Collection: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED). This means that research published in international journals that are not included in either of these databases will be omitted.

Practical implications: This review provides useful guidance for future CSR research focused on developing countries thereby providing a foundation for future research in this stream of CSR research.

Social implications: The findings of this study suggest that much CSR knowledge in developing countries reflects the unique social issues that call for companies to adopt different CSR interventions when operating in developing countries.

Originality/value: Although this paper is not the first to systematically review CSR research, but it is one of the initial attempts, to the best of the knowledge, to systematically review the state of CSR knowledge in the context of developing countries.

© 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: This paper seeks to explore perceptions of local employees regarding MNE subsidiaries’ attitudes in relation to local customs, values, and belief systems prevalent in the settings in which they operate. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative research design was used as the methodological grounding for the study. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted in Ghana with a total of 20 participants (16 males and 4 females). Interviews were audio-taped, with permission of the participants. A convenience sampling method was used, and all 20 participants were recruited via initial personal visits by the researcher and subsequent follow-up visits and phone call. Interviews were transcribed via thematic analysis. The views of participants were organized into four major themes: relevance of CSR (business ethics) to local employees; local employees’ attitude towards firms’ (un)ethical behaviour; educating managers and employees of foreign-owned companies; and attractiveness of company and ability to draw resources. Findings: Our interpretive research in the Ghanaian context suggests that most of the participants appreciate the salient role of cooperation between companies and traditional authorities in identifying and resolving potential tension that could evolve out of non-compliance with local socio-cultural values and belief systems. In respect to this, the findings from the present study reinforce the insights of Kjonstad and Willmott (1995) that reliance on rule-based approaches to business ethics is deficient, as it has been found to be ineffective or at best, less ‘empowering’ when it comes to influencing organizations in their ethical behaviour. The findings further suggest that inadequate information about local customs, values and belief systems, partly explains the seeming ‘irresponsible’ posture of foreign-owned companies towards aspects of local socio-cultural values and belief systems. Thus, as scanty information is available to the companies and their managers, few are able to either integrate them into their core CSR practices and/or encourage employees to uphold them in their processes. Research limitations/implications: Findings are based on a single-country investigation. This limitation, combined with a relatively small sample size (20 participants, across firms that belong to 6 industry-groupings), may have implications that the results might not be readily generalizable. Moreover, as the present study employed an interpretive methodological approach, the findings could have been impacted by self-evaluation (i.e., self-narratives from participants), resulting in socio-cultural preferences and response biases, on the part of the participants. Practical implications: Although results of this study is based on single-country (Ghana) study, given similarities in socio-cultural characteristics across developing-countries, this study is likely to have wider relevance and applicability in developing-countries, as a whole. Originality/value: The present study explored relatively unexplored ground by investigating the perceptions of local employees regarding MNE subsidiaries’ attitudes in relation to local customs, values, and belief systems, prevalent in the settings in which companies operate. Most importantly, these initial attempts at exploring the perceptions of local employees regarding MNE subsidiaries’ attitudes in relation to local customs, values, and belief systems, can hopefully be further explored and validated through future research directed at this topic. © www.iiste.org

Purpose – The objective of the present study is to investigate opportunities for integrating innovation and CSR in the context of firms’ activities. This is explored by investigating the extent to which innovation may complement CSR activities of MNE subsidiaries in developing-countries.

Method/approach – This paper employs literature study to describe how innovation complements CSR in the search for competitiveness at the level of the firm. In doing so, the competitiveness of firms, which is often driven by the demands for responsible behaviour and innovativeness, is derived from studying the extant literature. By drawing from multiple theoretical lenses (i.e., legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, CSR literature, firms’ reputation, and innovativeness), we aim at evaluating their collective impact on firms’ competitiveness.

Findings - The model suggests that firm’s contextual capabilities (e.g. legitimacy, innovation, and stakeholders) can define its CSR activities (e.g. CSR ethical, CSR social, and CSR environmental). The cumulative effects of these, define firm’s reputation, which eventually, produces firm’s own competitiveness. The study has argued that there is more to firms’ stakeholders than ordinary resources required in furtherance of firms’ economic objectives. It therefore follows that stakeholders’ potential to constitute a pool of resources and capabilities that the firm can blend with to realize its strategic objectives ought to be stressed. Consequently, markets and for that matter firms, are subject to CSR and innovation demands through, for example, more socially responsible productive behaviour. This requires that MNE subsidiaries in developing-countries connect different strategies towards improving their own competitiveness. This may be accomplished through, re-packaging CSR into bundles of interrelated activities, collaborating with stakeholders to jointly create and deliver social and economic values, and integrating CSR into productive activities that may lead to bundles of products to suit local market conditions.

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