Corporate Governance Meets Corporate Social Responsibility: Mapping the Interface

Abstract

Despite ample research on corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is a lack of consensus on the nature of the relationship between these two concepts and on how this relationship manifests across institutional contexts. Drawing on the national business systems approach, this article systematically reviews 218 research articles published over a 27-year period to map how CG–CSR research has evolved and progressed theoretically and methodologically across different institutional contexts. To shed light on the full gamut of the CG–CSR relationship, we categorize and explore the nature of this relationship along two strands: (a) CSR as a function of CG and (b) CG as a function of CSR. Through this review, we identify key themes where CG–CSR research has lagged and account for under-explored contexts in this domain. Finally, we put forth a comprehensive agenda for progressing future research in the field.

Do business ethics really matter?

“…But whatever the exact set of reasons for the slow uptake of classical business ethics research is, we are left with the curious situation that even though the need for business ethics has never been more pressing than today, traditional business ethics theorizing is more and more at risk of being marginalized. It is somewhat ironic that, in the age of private governance that relies on an unprecedented degree of business responsibility (Zaman et al., 2020), classical business ethics scholarship is increasingly struggling to make itself heard.…”

“…Historically, BEER has never been firmly positioned within one single discipline. However, the increasing pace of globalization and the emergence of global governance (Zaman et al., 2020), grand challenges (George et al., 2016), wicked problems (Reinecke & Ansari, 2016) or the SDG discourse (Kolk et al., 2017), have contributed to a much broader and increasingly interdisciplinary outlook of business ethics. This means that the role of business ethics vis‐à‐vis bordering disciplines is also changing.…”

Impeding corporate social responsibility: Revisiting the role of government in shaping business — Marginalized local community relations

“…There are some exceptions, notably Kourula and colleagues’ (2019) recent special issue on the role of government in the governance of business conduct, or Knudsen and Moon’s (2017) important contribution to a better understanding of national governments’ diverse roles in driving CSR on the international scene. Zaman and colleagues (2020) offer new insights into the role of government and state institutions at the interface of CSR and corporate governance in a variety of national business systems. Adopting a systemic perspective, Giamporcaro et al (2020) show how governmental regulation around CSR accumulates, changes and interacts with previous regulation in the context of French financial markets.…”

Grand challenges in developing countries: Context, relationships, and logics

“…They attribute the main reason for this dearth to what they term “business school/elite journal gridlock,” referring to the norms of performance measurement that steer the focus away from the most pressing challenges that research should in fact address. Fortunately, BEER is gearing up to push thinking about grand challenges further by exploring new facets of the complexity and uncertainty inherent in grand challenges (Ferraro et al, 2015); and by honing in on non‐Western contexts, providing an outlet for voicing grand‐challenge conceptualizations and solutions originating from there (Zaman et al, 2020).…”

“…Nowadays, researchers and practitioners, whether in developed or developing countries, are becoming more aware of the normative and instrumental reasons for businesses to pursue socially responsible activities and to contribute in positive ways to the environments and societies in which they operate (Jamali & Carroll, 2017). Yet, despite this growing awareness and greater engagement with the responsible management and sustainability discourse across the business community, grand challenges continue to constitute major global challenges that exhaust not only planetary boundaries but also human intelligence, and scholarship has only begun to investigate their antecedents and outcomes across both developed and developing economies (Zaman et al, 2020). As aptly noted by Brammer et al (2019), the lack of consistently applied conceptualizations of grand challenges is certainly problematic, and acknowledging the heterogeneity of grand challenges in terms of how they originate and play out in different contexts is an important first step to begin addressing them.…”