Improving business resilience through organizational embeddedness in CSR

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of embeddedness, highlight its connection with corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, and argue for its importance in securing and strengthening organizational resiliency. Design/methodology/approach Embeddedness and CSR are both well-researched topics but have been typically addressed on separate literature streams. The paper draws upon this diverse literature to introduce a conceptual framework for embeddedness in CSR. Findings The paper illustrates the importance of embeddedness and how it can enhance existing CSR strategies. A strongly embedded organization becomes deeply rooted on its socio-economic and natural environments, thus setting a symbiotic relationship that extends beyond any narrowly defined business purposes. Strong embeddedness has the potential to increase and further expand any CSR-related benefits while shielding the firm from economic downturns and thus increasing its resilience. Originality/value The paper builds upon CSR literature by incorporating the concept of embeddedness and then proposing how such an approach can strengthen an organization and increase its resilience.

Internal Audit and Business Resilience in Power Sector. A Case of Geothermal Development Company

“…This is because, the organization will be able to forecast any risks that they may be exposed to and plan for them and to take mitigating measures to protect the organization from the said risks. These conclusions are in line with the findings of Lamprinakis (2018) who showed that governance in a strong embedded organization becomes deeply rooted to its natural and socio-economic environments, it is thus able to ably participate in high level CSR activities, that can yield CSR related privileges and hence improving the resilience of a business.…”

“…This means that when governance at GDC is improved, the company's business resilience also improves. This finding is consistent with the research conducted by Lamprinakis (2018), who found that strong governance in an organization that is closely integrated with its environment can lead to successful participation in high-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, which in turn can enhance the resilience of the business.…”

“…This suggests that a unit improvement in governance resulted in a corresponding improvement in business resilience by 0.205 units, indicating that governance significantly affects the business resilience of GDC. These findings align with those of Lamprinakis (2018), who found that effective governance enables an organization to integrate with its natural and socio-economic environments, participate in highlevel CSR activities, and reap associated benefits that can enhance business resilience.…”

“…The results back the findings of Sulasi (2021) who established that improved risk management resulted in the enhancement of business performance and consequently of business resilience. The results also back Lamprinakis (2018) who showed that governance in a strong embedded organization becomes deeply rooted to its natural and socio-economic environments, it is thus able to ably participate in high level CSR activities, that can yield CSR related privileges and hence improving the resilience of a business.…”

The discourse of organizational resilience before and after the global pandemic

“…The studies conducted before the pandemic deal with various topics related to the preparedness and organizational reliability theme, such as the significance of emergency planning for enhancing business resilience ( Crichton et al , 2009 ), employee stock ownership and employee governance involvement for boosting resilience ( Lampel et al , 2014 ), and building organizational resilience train through balancing organizational structures ( Andersson et al , 2019 ). We also found studies with an emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR) embeddedness ( Lamprinakis, 2019 ) and strategic human resource management ( Al-Ayed, 2019 ), which contribute to organizational resilience.…”