Towards sharing corporate responsibility: a conceptual paper

1. Towards sharing corporate responsibility: a conceptual paper Maarten van der Kamp Shima Barakat The University of Manchester 02 July 2006

2. Outline • Context • The gap • Concept 1: Corporate Identity • Concept 2: Personal values • Methodological considerations • Contribution

3. Context (1) • Corporate Responsibility (CR) contains C. Environmentalism and CSR, and is proactive (beyond firm’s legal obligations; Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002; Roome, 2006) • CR encompasses a strategy focus and an orientation aspect (underlying corporate values: internal ‘compass’ for a firm’s environmental and social actions; Banerjee, 2002; Bansal and Roth, 2000; van Marrewijk, 2004) • The orientation of an organisation has significant strategic power in terms of shaping the organisational direction (Keogh and Polonsky, 1998; Shrivastava, 1995)

4. Context (2) • Shared values are a key component in attaining a shared vision of the Corporate Responsibility of an organisation and to guide interactions with stakeholders, and are formed by rules, norms and ethical behaviour standards from both inside and outside of the organisation (Cormier et al, 2004; Hamel and Prahalad, 1989; Hoffman, 1997; Jonker and Forster, 2002; Meppem and Bourke, 1999; Starik and Rands, 1995)

5. The gap (1) • Integration of CR throughout hierarchies is marginal or absent (e.g. Barakat, 2006; Knox et al, 2005) • Many in the CR field (e.g. Banerjee et al, 2003; Juholin, 2004) argue or assume that the vision and commitment of senior management is communicated clearly, and understood and incorporated by all staff as initially intended (Preston, 2001; Ramus, 2001) • However, there is little evidence that this assumption is grounded in practice (Barakat, 2006; Knox et al, 1995)

6. The gap (2) • Employees question the level of pro-activity in CR (e.g. Barakat, 2006; Lingard et al, 2000) • Behaviour of management influences employees, especially when inconsistent (Ramus, 2001). This leads to compromised success (e.g. Preston, 2001) • Hence, it has become important to understand how Corporate Responsibility is interpreted by decision-makers (Banerjee, 2002) and decision implementers (Ramus and Steger, 2000)

7. Concept 1: Corporate Identity • Corporate identity indicates “the way in which an organization’s identity is revealed through behaviour, communications, as well as through symbolism to internal and external audiences” (Van Riel and Balmer, 1997: p. 341) • Higher level construct, based on employees’ shared values (Balmer, 2001) • CI contains the essence of a firm, sets a firm apart from others, and has continuity over time, i.e. every organisation has a corporate identity (Van Rekom, 1997), providing a reliable structure as reference

8. Concept 1: Research questions • To what extent are CR components part of CI? • Is integration of CR into CI required to create a responsible firm? If integration would be required, how could responsible practices become embedded? • How does the fragmentation of responsible values relate to the fragmentation of other values? • Could the sharedness of values be enhanced? How would this be achieved? • What are the interactions between the internal and external components of a firm’s identity in the context of responsible initiatives in an organisation?

9. Concept 2: Personal values “The potential for individual subjectivity within organisations … means that acceptance of an idea is contingent on the idea’s consistency with an individual’s belief system – not the ideology of the organisation as a whole” (Floyd and Wooldridge, 2000: p. 112) • I.e. personal values can influence a firm’s responses to environmental issues (Bansal and Roth, 2000), and the individual’s perceptions of and behaviour towards them (Dutton, 1997) • This constitutes a complex relationship between employees, their values and perceptions, and the organisation, its values and the success of its responsible initiatives (Cordano and Frieze, 2000)

10. Concept 2: Research questions • How and why do personal values relating to responsibility appear to be subordinated in an organisational context? Where do social and environmental values sit with respect to a person’s hierarchy of values? • What are the implications of misalignments between personal ‘responsibility’ values and organisational ones? • Could environmental and social personal values be harnessed to contribute to the responsible values of the firm? How does the degree of employment of these values impact the execution of responsible initiatives?

11. Methodological considerations • New perspectives (Starkey and Crane, 2003) • Many beliefs present: qualitative research; inductive epistemology and interpretivist ontology • Societies differ: ethnographic comparative research driven by multiple case studies • Action research to elicit methods for enhancing sharedness of values and meaning

12. Contribution • Concept 1 will • Contribute to the knowledge of the role of social and environmental values in the construct of CI. This could influence the management of CR initiatives within a firm as it could create an increased awareness of the issues across various levels and functions of the organisation. • Provide a better understanding of where CR fits within the organisation could have an impact on CI, and as such could develop the management of a firm’s identity. • Concept 2 will • Improve understanding of the role of individuals towards CR within their organisation. Identification of different positions within an organisation could provide a platform for shared meaning and experiences • Provide a direction in which to develop practices to promote or mitigate the available personal attributes towards a constructive asset of the firm.

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15. Contact details • Maarten van der Kamp • Project Manager • m.vanderkamp@manchester.ac.uk • +44 (0)161 306 8431 • Shima Barakat • Enterprise Fellow • shima.barakat@manchester.ac.uk • +44 (0)161 275 1932