Distance Makes the (Committed) Heart Grow Colder: MNEs’ Responses to the State Logic in African Variants of CSR

Abstract

The question of how multinational enterprises (MNEs) respond to local corporate social responsibility (CSR) expectations remains salient, also in the context of many African governments’ attempts to define and regulate business responsibilities. What determines whether MNEs respond to such local, state-driven expectations as congruent with their global commitment to CSR? Adopting an institutional logics perspective, we argue that a higher global CSR commitment will lead to higher local responsiveness when regulatory distance is low, but it will lead to lower local responsiveness when regulatory distance is high. We find support for our hypothesis using data on 93 MNEs’ responses to the South African state’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policy. We thus contribute to the global–local CSR literature and show how MNEs’ local CSR responsiveness will be shaped by not only the local context but also their home country and firm-internal environments.

Institutional Antecedents of the Corporate Social Responsibility Narrative in the Developing World Context: Implications for Sustainable Development

“…Institutional theory considers firms to be deeply embedded in a web of formal and informal rules that play a fundamental role in the CSR narrative and agenda in any given context (Matten and Moon, ; Reddy and Hamann, ). Here we primarily review how historical factors such as colonial legacy and the post‐colonial development agenda account for the perceptions and manifestations of different forms of CSR in different settings.…”

Introduction au dossier thématique

“…C'est le cas, par exemple, de Liou et Rao-Nicholson (2017) qui étudient la performance post-acquisitions des entreprises sud-africaines dans les pays développés . Cette finalité peut aussi être sociale, sociétale et/ou environnementale, dans le cadre de politiques de responsabilité sociale des entreprises (Gruber et Schlegelmilch, 2015;Pestre, 2011;Kühn et al ., 2018;Reddy et Hamann, 2018), qui viennent ainsi en appui au développement du continent africain . Dans ce dossier thématique, un article investigue ces questions de RSE, à travers l'étude d'une firme multinationale ayant des filiales dans plusieurs pays africains (Apitsa, Ramboarison-Lalao et Gannouni, 2020) .…”

The State of Research on Africa in Business and Management: Insights From a Systematic Review of Key International Journals

“…In the fourth article, Colin Reddy and Ralph Hamann (2016) explore how multi-national enterprises (MNEs) respond to local CSR expectations, in the context of many African governments’ attempts to define and regulate business responsibilities. Grounding their reasoning in an institutional logics perspective, they argue that a higher global CSR commitment will lead to higher local responsiveness when regulatory distance is low, but it will lead to lower local responsiveness when regulatory distance is high.…”