Title:
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Making Sense of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Study of the Implementation Process
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This thesis focuses on the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) implementation process
with emphasis on how organisational actors (particularly, managers) make sense of-this
process in relation to their social context. It involves interdisciplinary research in businessin-
society and organisational theory.
Through literature review, the study concludes that existing business-in-society theory and
empirical work and specifically, the study of the CSR implementation is -with few
exceptions- 'ahistorical, acontextual, and aprocessual'l. This is because organisation
theory has not been sufficiently integrated in CSR studies and the research methodologies
employed do not allow contextually-rich data collection. Seeking to address these
weaknesses, this research rests in the epistemological domain of interpretivism (Burrell and
Morgan 1979). The social context-actor interaction in shaping the CSR implementation
process is explored, using the theoretical lens of Giddens' structuration theory (1977;1984)
and the research approach of contextualism (Pettigrew 1985a; 1985b; 1987).
Yin's (1994) case study methodology was employed for the scoping study (3 cases: two
publishing companies and a NGO) and the core research (4 cases: water utility, tobacco and
two mining companies). In total, 105 managers of large multinational organisations were
interviewed.
The data findings' first-order analysis contributes to the CSR field by exploring the
content, process and contextual aspects of CSR implementation and organisational actors'
role in it Furthermore, it is suggested that the CSR implementation is understood primarily
as a tangle ofrelationships (rather than responsibilities) among those involved.
The fmdings' second-order analysis contributes to the field of organisation theory and
particularly, organisational sensemaking. Sensemaking and social context enactment are
found to be the product of organisational actors' interaction, an aspect that structuration
theory and contextualism have so far underplayed. Organisational actors perceive their
social context in a more cluttered way than the literature assumes. Furthermore, they not
only make sense of this context but also make use of it. Building on sensemaking and
enactment theories and drawing knowledge from legitimacy theories, a 4-part enactment
model is proposed.
This is a phrase Pettigrew (1985a, p. IS) used with regards to organisational change literature.
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