Corporate social responsibility has been a densely researched area. Research paradigms have evolved significantly stamping from a sociological focus to a more business integrated framework and the currently growing emphasis on quantifying its performance. However, while much literatures champion the proponents of a proactive corporate social responsibility, the contributions of the more responsive version have been largely under studied. This is not an empirical paper. Far from it, this paper attempts to unveil the current literature gaps pertaining to responsive corporate social responsibility. This paper explores the intrinsic contributions of responsive corporate social responsibility on the moral discourse, organisational change and reputation management in an organisation. It theorises the concept of responsive corporate social responsibility as a moderator of external pressures, as a vector of a moral reboot in organisation change and a device for salvaging reputational damage in business organisations. This paper draws from the literature gaps between studies of normative morality and its interaction in principles of general management, organisational change concepts, branding and corporate reputation. It underwrites to examine the moral contents and discourse of business firms when faced with hostile externalities and studies the moral entrails in its organisational change processes and sequentially how this implicates the corporate reputation of a firm. This paper argues that the impacts of responsive corporate social responsibility and its ability to impact moral dispositions in business organisations deserve closer scrutiny. Study on the influence of responsive corporate social responsibility on organisation change and reputational salvage has similarly is also underscored. This article provides a theoretical review of the emerging gaps in corporate social responsibility and prompts that the concept of responsive social responsibility warrants closer attention.

This article attempts the perilous tasks of reviewing corporate social responsibility. Reviewing those literatures is a notorious challenge because corporate social responsibility has developed inconsistently. Authors that insist a precise definition are often disappointed because corporate social responsibility is a relative concept. It has never assumed a stagnated role. To encaptivate this review, this article peruses corporate social responsibility from a contextual approach. It reviews the development of corporate social responsibility at every stage of its evolution by addressing three contextual conundrums. Firstly, it peruses the motivational construct at every stage of development. This provides a critical insight on why corporate social responsibility was fashioned as such by analysing them contextually. Secondly, this review examines stakeholder inclusiveness at each epoch of development. This again critically exposes the category of beneficiaries included in each stage of progress categorising the evolution of their beneficiaries. Lastly, this work examines the extent of instutionalisation of corporate social responsibility illustrating the pattern in which the concept received legal and social acclamation. By addressing these three scopes, this article hopes to protrude categorically the contextual influence on corporate social responsibility so that reader(s) might understand at a deeper level the contextual reasoning and deduction on how the concept is shaped and reshaped.

Studies and writings on corporate social responsibility turned a full cycle with much ink spilled on this topic. From the inception of a divine origin, corporate social responsibility has now become a flamboyant display of numbers and statistics which corporations proudly present them to fulfil their legal obligations. It is ironic that a divine understanding of corporate social responsibility has now transpired to be a complex calculus of statistical tabulations, too often exhibited in annual and sustainability reports. Organisations become grossly mesmerised with the grandiosity of exceeding the prerequisites of ecological, environmental, social and economic performance supported by undisputable, verifiable and measurable data. Corporate social responsibility has become senseless and meaningless. This is not a research paper nor does it entail the rudiments of any research findings. Conversely, this paper alerts and perhaps cautions corporate social responsibility practitioners on the perils of their overarching emphasis on positivism. Corporate social responsibility cannot be quantified merely in numbers but on the contrary, it should involve truthful, honest and transparent dialectic communication with the stakeholders. Many corporations deceived and some still facing the remnants of their mistakes. The Volkswagen ‘diesel dupe’ crisis and Johnson & Johnson’s baby talc powder scandals are reminders of the same. This paper is a solemn reminder that corporations must be ‘awakened’ so that ethics is grounded to its core and not merely in the cosmetic forms of presentable statistics.

Job satisfaction has always been a prevalent area of interest around the globe. Generally, job satisfaction amongst academicians is inspired by several constructs which follow several theoretical assumptions. Many job satisfaction antecedents have been recommended based on the principles as stated by higher education institutions. This paper provides an extensive critical analysis whether the economic and environmental factors could influence the job satisfaction amongst academicians in a Malaysian private university. This antecedent is extensively investigated in literature and most of them are observed from the Western countries’ viewpoints. Despite the comprehensiveness of the empirical research on job satisfaction in the West, previous research investigating on job satisfaction antecedents in the Malaysian higher education institutions particularly in private universities remain scarce. As a result, this study provides empirical evidence from a Malaysian perspective on job satisfaction antecedents. The study surveys a sample of 198 respondents (99.0% usable response rate) which were duly completed and returned to the study. The findings showed relationships were significant among the constructs developed in assessing job satisfaction. The dimension of human resources policies is the most contributing factor. It could be concluded that the economic and environmental factors significantly influence the job satisfaction amongst academicians with several imperative constructs. The management of universities in Malaysia need to identify best practices that could provide maximum job satisfaction benefits to the academicians. This paper will contribute towards literature of job satisfaction, whereby lead to enhancing higher education institution performance in Malaysia, especially for private universities.

The world has witnessed corporate scandals of monstrosity magnitude. The Enron Scandal, the Nike Sweatshop scandal and the recent Johnson and Johnson baby talc in 2018 are some dishonors that reshaped the business world and reinvigorated the importance of business ethics. Indeed, supranational and national movements such as the Global Reporting Initiatives have responded to these scandals by imposing stricter corporate reporting to instill greater transparency and corporate responsibility. Ironically, despite unwavering efforts, corporations are still blatantly flouting regulations. The Volkswagen “diesel dupe” crisis is a stark reminder of the inherent weakness of current regulations. Despite Volkswagen’s staunch adherence to those stringent reporting guidelines, they breached ethics to the core, creating a tsunami of vehicle recalls, massive social, political and legal repercussions. Volkswagen’s cheat device is a ‘creative destruction’ that challenged the fundamental usefulness of corporate reporting. Corporate social responsibility has evolved tremendously, now taking the form of positivistic reporting patterns. Corporations are measured by their ecological, social and economic performance where they flamboyantly table those data and information to garner stakeholders’ support and legitimacy. However, a pragmatic approach towards corporate social responsibility is self-defeating. It erodes and dilutes a corporation’s ability to make sense, communicate and adapt to their externalities. Instead, corporations boast of their corporate prowess and triple bottom line. Using Volkswagen as a subject, this paper exposes the inherent weaknesses of a positivistic corporate reporting approach to social responsibility. A positivistic approach such as this cannot engender a truthful, honest and open posture in business corporations. Instead, this paper exemplifies that a meaningful sensemaking corporate social responsibility instills reflexive organisation change and moral transpose within corporations. This paper underlines this reflexive organisational change and moral transpose in Volkswagen as they encounter the diesel crisis. This study is novel and greatly enhances previous literatures in corporate social responsibility by instilling an appropriate model to underline these momentous reflexive organisational changes and moral transformations in Volkswagen.