Arnaud Sales

This chapter recounts the long, difficult path of a firm faced with a major crisis triggered by a radical low-cost production model that impacted employees’ working conditions. External pressure from trade unions, social movements, a major institutional investor as well as CSR standardization organizations led the firm away from its initial purely defensive approach toward major reforms that involved organizational learning and the integration of CSR. This shift entailed a change in leadership, the organizational transformation of the firm, a major change in practices, a better connection with the environment and the development of a CSR network that promoted the institutionalization of CSR within the company.

Corporate social responsibility is not just a dimension of an ethical management system. It is now a major institutional field that has emerged over several decades. The CSR institutional field and movement are sustained by a very large international network of individuals and organizational actors. Business organizations face globalization processes and related economic competition, technological change as well as new cultural models, notably, those related to sustainable development, the dynamics of social networks and the knowledge society. They are not only at the forefront of numerous social transformations but are also compelled to change their own perspectives and to integrate, either voluntarily or under external pressure, new concerns, such as CSR and sustainable development, which are now widely recognized at the international level. The first section of this chapter identifies the main sources of CSR institutionalization since the beginning of the nineties, the individual and corporate actors involved, and, as a result of this dynamic process, the structural components of the CSR institutional field such as the cognitive and normative referents and procedural elements for CSR implementation. The second section provides an overview of the different chapters and their contributions to our understanding of several theoretical issues and debates; new forms of involvement by international and national public and private organizations; corporate strategies in the face of new issues; and finally, CSR implementation processes and the roles of a variety of social actors.

This wide-ranging book examines the new dynamics of corporate social responsibility and the impact they have had on the transformation of business corporations. Written by an international group of distinguished experts in management and organization studies, economics and sociology, the book leads one to theoretically and practically rethink CSR, a movement that has developed into a strong and rich institutional domain since the mid 1990s. Through 14 chapters, the book shows the complexity, diversity and progression of the institutional work performed by a large number of individual and organizational actors in specialized networks to develop this strategic field. Central to this book are: the core issues associated with the field of CSR; recent advances in the development, dissemination and implementation of public and private standards of social responsibility; the pressing challenges of developing sustainable strategies of value creation in the face of global warming and underdevelopment; and finally, examples of how CSR has been implemented and institutionalized within business organizations with special attention to the role played by a variety of social actors in organizational change. Conceived as a movement, corporate social responsibility spearheads a transformation project challenging traditional and outmoded forms of corporate governance that frequently pose troublesome ethical issues. From this standpoint, Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Change will serve as a reference point for academics, researchers, managers and practitioners.