Playing on Two Chessboards: Reputation Effects between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA)

Abstract

It has recently been argued that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is 'political'. It has been neglected however, that firms also operate politically in a traditional sense, in seeking to secure favourable political conditions for their businesses. We argue that there are potential synergies between CSR and corporate political activity (CPA) that are often overlooked by firms and that recognition of these synergies will stimulate firms to align their CSR and CPA. We develop a conceptual model that specifies how various configurations of a firm's CSR and CPA -alignment, misalignment, and non-alignment -affect the firm's reputation beyond the separate reputation effects of CSR and CPA. This model has important implications for understanding how and why firms should pay attention to their CPA and CSR configurations, and thereby contributes to the broader issue of why firms should make sure that they are consistent in terms of responding to stakeholder concerns.

How to win the battle of ideas in corporate social responsibility: the International Pyramid Model of CSR

“…For instance, the Egyptian revolution of the Arab Spring, was widely lauded as the first wave of "Facebook revolutions" and one of its more prominent and influential decisionmakers was a Google executive (Smith, 2012). At the same time, studies have suggested that companies continue to exercise political pressure by affecting regulatory changes in relation to social and environmental issues (McWilliams et al, 2002;Child and Tsai, 2005;den Hond et al, 2014), as political issues and CSR are increasingly intertwined. A further study by Ungericht and Hirt (2010) argues that the political role of CSR has emerged due to globalisation and the 'responsibility vacuum' created, while Whelan (2012) argues that "political" CSR should be conceived as one potential form of globalisation, and not as a consequence of globalisation.…”

The corporation as a political actor – European and North American perspectives

“…A different, yet related, task is to study the ways in which CPA and political CSR are aligned, nonaligned, or misaligned within corporations (see also den Hond et al, 2014). Research in this direction should reach beyond the normative claim that CPA and political CSR should be aligned, e.g., firms should not publicly claim to protect certain rights while at the same time lobbying against stricter regulation in favor of these rights.…”

“…Although political CSR and CPA share a common interest in studying the link between firms and politics, surprisingly little reflection has gone into exploring the relationship between both concepts (for a recent exception see den Hond, Rehbein, de Bakker, & van Lankveld, 2014). While the political CSR literature frames CPA as a "purely instrumental view of corporate politics" (Scherer & Palazzo, 2011, p. 900), it has not looked into the details of CPA scholarship.…”

Cuatro funciones estratégicas de la diplomacia corporativa

“…Los atributos de los directivos y los empleados se vinculan a los productos y los servicios ofertados por las compañías y, en consecuencia, a los resultados económicos de las mismas. Para den Hond et al (2014) tanto en el caso de la actividad política de la compañía como en el desarrollo e implementación de la responsabilidad social se puede inferir un nuevo tipo de problema propio de la teoría de la agencia. Los comportamientos y los intereses de los directivos afectan de forma negativa en la reputación de la compañía.…”