The Institutionalization of Implicit and Explicit CSR in a Developing Country Context: The Case of Lebanon

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative study pertaining to the interface between business and society that primarily focuses on the prominent institutional factors that are influencing organizations to adopt explicit and implicit forms of corporate social responsibility in a developing country context. This is a pertinent subject because developing countries contain a large proportion of the world’s population and, subsequently, a large proportion of salient issues in the social, economic, and environmental arena. This study identifies that, in the country context chosen namely Lebanon, explicit social responsibility initiatives are driven by predominantly normative and mimetic institutional pressures emanating from both local and international institutions. This study also identifies that implicit social responsibility initiatives are driven by normative institutional pressures emanating from elements in the national business system. Contributions of this study include a conceptual model to aid future research, identifying the importance of the duality of corporate social responsibility, the importance of international institutions in facilitating explicit social responsibility proliferation, and the importance for managers to include explicit social responsibility initiatives in their organizational mandate. Future research can use a different sampling technique, conduct interviews with employees that are not directly involved with social responsibility initiatives, or use other perspectives, such as agency theory or theory of institutional logics, to gain more insight on the topic.

The Manager’s Vision of CSR in an Emerging Economy: From Implementation to Market Impact

“…Moreover, increased CSR prominence is impeded by the relative immaturity of the Peruvian market. The limited literature on emerging markets has advanced this idea (e.g., Germán-Cáceres et al 2023;Saenz 2023;Damoah et al 2019;Kobrossy et al 2022). This is further augmented by the deficient information many consumers receive-and near zero interest they perceive-regarding CSR, typical of highly segmented societies with deep rifts between social classes; what Hofstede (2023) defines as "high power distance".…”

“…That said, as noted earlier, most CSR research to date takes highly developed economies as its reference-only rarely placing the spotlight on emerging markets. The work by and Nair and Bhattacharyya (2019) on India, Damoah et al (2019) on Ghana and Kobrossy et al (2022) on Lebanon are notable exceptions. The extant literature (e.g., Arditto et al 2020;Herstein et al 2017) clearly indicates that developed Western economy business strategies in general, and marketing campaigns in particular, are not necessarily effective in other socio-economic contexts.…”

Institutionalisation of Sustainability Initiatives:

“…The importance of social interdependence within institutional theory: "institutionalisation is better understood as the social process by which individuals come to accept a shared definition of reality" (Scott, 1987, p.496). A deeper understanding of the process of institutionalisation of sustainability initiatives in a business is important to gain a clear insight into the ideal conditions or companies to integrate with society and have a positive impact on society (Kobrossy, Karaszewski, & AlChami, 2022). Therefore, it is important to point out that the focus is on the question of "How does a company institutionalise its sustainability initiatives?"…”