Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important consideration in tourism and hospitality management, yet extensive empirical studies on how it is implemented in developing country’s context are lacking. Using qualitative methodology, this article addresses this knowledge gap by exploring CSR practices among hotels and accommodation providers in Malawi. Our findings demonstrate that a broad-based CSR agenda is slowly being pursued by certain firms although corporate philanthropy remains the major area of focus for most of the considered firms. The article further demonstrates differences in the choice of CSR agenda firms pursue can be influenced by the nature of firm’s ownership. Whereas locally owned and managed firms showed a strong orientation towards philanthropic-based CSR agenda, foreign owner/mangers favoured a broad-based CSR agenda.
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Philanthropy is on the rise in the Dutch visual arts. Fat cash prizes, big-name exhibitions, large-scale renovations, spectacular public artworks, and big scandals are changing the public display of art and undermining the democratic governance of art institutions. While some have critiqued the patron's rise to power, the majority of the art world remains silent, muted by a combination of ignorance and self-censorship. How can we overcome this deadlock and start cultivating a healthy public debate?
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Corporate reputation is becoming increasingly important for firms; social media platforms such as Twitter are used to convey their message. In this paper, corporate reputation will be assessed from a sustainability perspective. Using sentiment analysis, the top 100 brands of the Netherlands were scraped and analyzed. The companies were registered in the sustainable industry classification system (SICS) to perform the analysis on an industry level. A semantic search tool called Open Semantic Desktop Search was used to filter through the data to find keywords related to sustainability and corporate reputation. Findings show that companies that tweet more often about corporate reputation and sustainability receive overall a more positive sentiment from the public.
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Efforts to understand the background to perceptions and manifestation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the developing world need to focus on establishing their link with the challenges of socio-economic governance and societal expectations and cultural traditions. This signifies a departure from a western centric understanding of CSR but also an over-focus on CSR as philanthropy. This study considers the Malawian tourism industry and finds that its colonial legacy, post-colonialism development thinking and the national education system explain the prevalence of a ‘CSR as philanthropy’ agenda. When these factors interact with challenges of socio-economic governance and societal expectations, however, the universality thesis that has often been associated with the theory and implementation CSR can be challenged. These findings therefore suggest a shift from the western centric CSR thinking to a CSR perspective that is strongly grounded in local values and norms and which meets the expectations of the global society. This indicates a way forward if CSR is to be adequately institutionalized in the developing world.
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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Malawi is becoming a significant issue not only because of the complexity of the social, economic and political environment in which companies operate, but also because of the social and environmental impacts which business operations have on the wider Malawian society. In this chapter, it is shown that the CSR agenda currently pursued by companies in Malawi takes both the normative and instrumental forms, and is largely shaped by the political and socio-economical factors at national and global levels. The chapter is structured as follows: the first section addresses the historical development of CSR and perceptions various actors hold about the forms of responsibilities companies can assume in Malawi; a discussion of the various antecedents of CSR in Malawi. This is followed by an intermediate section which provides CSR themes and priority issues. The final two sections explore the different approaches companies pursue in the implementation of CSR agendas—but also examine the perceived barriers to CSR in Malawi. The chapter concludes by mapping out the future prospects of CSR in Malawi.
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The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the extent to which partnerships with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are a necessity for successful efforts of businesses in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The main findings are based on an analysis of existing literature on NGO typologies and strategies for CSR and illustrated with examples from the Dutch National Research Program on CSR. Based on three different strategies towards CSR, the suggestion is that NGOs tend to become involved in partnerships with companies that have an interest in postponing concrete results, while partnerships with companies that have the potential for the biggest contribution to the ambitions of NGOs have the highest risk of diminishing NGO-legitimacy.
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Corporate Social Entrepreneurship (CSE) is 'a way of doing business' so that all staff in any given organisation (public, private or third sector) are fully aware of their role, responsibility and contribution to the sustainable socioeconomic enhancement of their organisations and the communities in which they live and work. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), on the other hand, is often understood as “a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis. (…) It opens a way of managing change and of reconciling social development with improved competitiveness.” (CEC, 2001, p.7). Whereas there is an overlap between CSE and CSR and a similarity of concept, they are on very different trajectories. CSE is not just another form of CSR, it is a process for invigorating and advancing the development of CSR. CSE provides an approach that will accelerate the CSR journey. The fundamental purpose is therefore to accelerate companies’ organisational transformation into a more powerful generation of societal betterment (Austin and Reficco 2009, p.2). CSE includes: creating an enabling entrepreneurial environment, fostering corporate social intrapreneurship, amplifying corporate purpose and values as well as building strategic alliances in order to solve economic and social problems and to promote the success of emerging innovative business strategies. This paper presents the journey, the pathway, the process, tools and techniques that will enable organisations to successfully progress from CSR to CSE.
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This paper explores the relationship between Circular Economy (CE) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks—a connection that remains ambiguous in both academic literature and practical application. This lack of clarity hinders corporate accountability and progress toward sustainability goals. To address this, we examine how CE and ESG intersect by integrating relevant theories and practical approaches. We identify key strategic overlaps across diverse CE and ESG indicators and frameworks, demonstrating how each can inform and strengthen the other. We begin by outlining foundational theories and current practices in both CE and ESG, then explore how their integration can enhance organisational alignment and accountability, particularly in the environmental dimension of ESG. To support this synergy, we propose an updated 10-R framework for qualitative reporting, incorporating new dimensions such as Regeneration (e.g., Rewilding and Restoration) to reflect biodiversity considerations. Additionally, we introduce the Circularity Scoring Model (CSM) to assess organisational CE performance concerning ESG objectives quantitatively. Our findings suggest that embedding CE principles into accounting and investment practices can highlight opportunities for improvement, such as transitioning to renewable energy, sourcing alternative materials, extending product lifespans, enhancing repairability, minimising waste, and increasing use of recycled or regenerative resources.
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Many global challenges cannot be addressed by one single actor alone. Achieving sustainability requires governance by state and non-state market actors to jointly realise public values and corporate goals. As a form of public-private governance, voluntary standards involving governments, non-governmental organisations and companies have gained much traction in recent years and have been in the limelight of public authorities and policymakers. From a firm perspective, sustainability standards can be a way to demonstrate that they engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a credible way. To capitalise on their CSR activities, firms need to ensure their stakeholders are able to recognise and assess their CSR quality. However, because the relative observability of CSR is low and since CSR is a contested concept, information asymmetries in firm-stakeholder relationships arise. Adopting CSR standards and using these as signalling devices is a strategy for firms to reduce these information asymmetries, by revealing their true CSR quality. Against this background, this article investigates the voluntary ISO 26000 standard for social responsibility as a form of public-private governance and contends that, despite its objectives, this standard suffers from severe signalling problems. Applying signalling theory to the ISO 26000 standard, this article takes a critical stance towards this standard and argues that firms adhering to this standard may actually emit signals that compromise rather than enhance stakeholders' ability to identify and interpret firms' underlying CSR quality. Consequently, the article discusses the findings in the context of public-private governance, suggests a specification of signalling theory and identifies avenues for future research.
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Today, consumers expect companies to be socially responsible. However, the literature is undecided about the effects of communicating one's corporate social responsibility activities to consumers. This raises the question of how sustainability-driven companies can best advertise their products to stimulate ethical consumption: using self-benefit frames, where the main beneficiary is the consumer, or using other-benefit frames, where the main beneficiary is a third party. Using three experiments, this study examines the effect of other-benefit (vs. self-benefit) advertising frames on consumers' impulse purchases from sustainability-driven companies. Increasing impulse purchases can help such companies to strengthen their competitive positions. Additionally, it is studied to what extent two types of justification (moral versus deservingness) explain the proposed effect of advertising frames. The results show that only other-benefit frames affect impulse buying behavior, both directly, as mediated by moral justification. This study's insights may help sustainability-driven companies to decide on their advertising strategies by providing evidence that other-benefit-framed advertisements are more effective in enhancing impulse purchases than self-benefit-framed advertisements.
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