Revisiting Politics in Political CSR: How coercive and deliberative dynamics operate through institutional work in a Colombian company
Abstract
This article analyses the political dynamics taking place within a Colombian supplier company during the implementation of a client’s global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme, which radically transformed the local understandings of the supplier’s social responsibilities. We distinguish two forms of politics in political CSR – coercive and deliberative politics – and examine how they unfold through lower-level managers’ institutional work. Our longitudinal case study identifies four types of institutional work, which combine into three political configurations – irreconcilable politics, complementary politics and aligned deliberative politics – resulting in the hybridization of explicit and implicit CSR. By analysing how local managers from emerging countries and at the bottom of the supply chain cope with the new political role of MNCs, we expand the political microfoundations of CSR and highlight the interactive and political nature of institutional work aimed at addressing major societal challenges.
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Appendices
| SugarCo | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Interviewee | Date of interview | Interviewee | Date of interview |
| Change management manager | 08/2012; 10/2013 | Logistics manager | 10/2012; 02/2013 |
| Communications manager | 07/2012 | Production manager | 05/2013 |
| Cutting operations manager | 08/2013 | Priest | 08/2012 |
| Doctor | 05/2013 | Quality manager 1 | 07/2012; 08/2012; 09/2012 |
| Environmental manager | 10/2012 | Quality manager 2 | 06/2012 |
| Employee union representative | 05/2013 | School teacher | 02/2013 |
| Field area manager | 07/2013 | Social worker | 07/2012; 10/2013; 06/2014 |
| Financial manager | 07/2013 | Supplier development coordinator 1 | 10/2012 |
| General manager | 10/2012 | Supplier development coordinator 2 | 05/2013 |
| Health and safety manager | 07/2012; 10/2013 | Training manager | 08/2013 |
| Human resources manager 1 | 07/2012 | Warehouse manager | 05/2013 |
| Human resources manager 2 | 06/2012 | Worker in the field area | 07/2014 |
| Internal audit manager | 07/2013 | Worker in the production area | 05/2013 |
| Other interviews | |||
| BeverageCo | 08/2013 | CSR and industry expert | 07/2012 |
| SugarCo supplier (3 suppliers) | 07/2013 | CSR expert academic | 08/2013 |
| Village 1 (group of 3 people) | 08/2014 | CSR expert local company | 08/2013 |
| Village 2 (2 people) | 08/2014 | CSR expert academic | 10/2014 |
| Village 3 (group of 7 people) | 12/2014 | CSR expert local company | 02/2013 |
| Large company in the industry (5 interviews) | 04/2012; 12/2012; 12/2012; 10/2013; 12/2013 | Large company in the industry (3 interviews) | 08/2013; 08/2013; 06/2014 |
| Large company in the industry (4 interviews) | 05/2013; 12/2013; 05/2014; 11/2014) | Large company in the industry (1 interview) | 12/2013 |
| Industry association | 10/2013 | ||
| Meetings | |||
| Meeting to define a strategy to work with communities and unions | 03/2012 | Meetings to analyse current CSR activities and reflect on new ones (3 meetings) | 05/2013 |
| Meeting to present the result of the work performed with the university during 2011 | 06/2012 | First working meeting with the consultant team developing the corporate governance code | 10/2012 |
| Meeting with consultants to define the corporate governance project | 09/2012 | Supplier development programme presentation | 10/2012 |
| Meeting between change manager and health and safety manager | 07/2012 | Workshop to define CSR | 02/2013 |
| Meeting between change manager and health and safety manager to have feedback from the interviews’ first researcher | 09/2012 | Workshop to define CSR | 03/2013 |
| Work (aggregate dimensions) | Practice (2nd-order themes) | Examples of activities in the data (1st-order concepts) | Illustrative data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Organizational identity work | Reconfiguring interactions with communities and the state | Downplaying charity-driven relationships | ‘Employees here are still very reluctant [to change] because they think that corporate responsibility is giving away bananas. The problem is that they still see it as gifts.’ (general manager, 10/12) |
| Rethinking relationships with communities and the state | ‘It is when we work with communities that we easily lose our way. We need to guarantee that the state fulfils its role and define how to monitor the municipality.’ (manager from the human resources team, field notes, 06/12) | ||
| Reconfiguring the role of the company | Defining SugarCo as a food company instead of a family | ‘I have an obsession: to turn this company into a food company.’ (production manager, 05/13) | |
| Theorization work | Referencing | Mapping current CSR activities | ‘We have developed a huge matrix with all CSR actions. We made the matrix in 2011. Those are all the actions we have done, but we still need to go further in measuring the impact of those actions.’ (social worker, 10/13) |
| Searching for information to overcome the lack of technical competence regarding global CSR | ‘BeverageCo told us: “You don’t know what a code of ethics is.” We started doing some research. We asked some suppliers for quotations and searched some bibliographic references.’ (health and safety manager, 07/12) | ||
| Benchmarking activities from other companies, the SDP and international standards | ‘We are not saying that we will get a full ISO 26000 certification, but what we want is to define which elements we will take from it to help us measure stuff.’ (social worker, 10/13) | ||
| Comparing current activities with the list offered by standards or international models | ‘So let’s say that the managerial standard tells you that everyone in our neighbouring communities should have shoes. My first question will be: do you have shoes? So the idea is to look at the guidelines and align our activities with that.’ (change manager, 10/13) | ||
| Constructing boundaries | Defining managerial responsibilities for CSR | ‘I feel that the company lacks a true department of CSR. I mean, there should be someone here who is in charge of a real CSR department.’ (communications manager, 08/12) | |
| Identifying which activities fall under the scope of CSR | ‘Social responsibility can be endless, everything fits inside. Think about it, you can call everything CSR.’ (general manager, 10/12) |
||
| Bureaucratizing work | Measuring | Developing a set of indicators to measure CSR | ‘We need to keep quantifying the company-run activity day in the community in terms of how many people participate, how much are we spending. . .’ (social worker, 10/13) |
| Imitating | Reproducing/replicating practices from the SDP | ‘Their environmental management is different from ours, but in some aspects [the SDP] has helped us develop things. For instance in the area of indicators, how they measure things.’ (change manager, 10/13) | |
| Adapting practices from international standards or the SDP | ‘The project [the supplier development programme created by SugarCo] wants you to speak the same language as us.’ (logistics manager, 03/13) | ||
| Strategifying work | Valorizing | Participating in CSR award contests by presenting social welfare initiatives | ‘We participated in a contest run by a magazine. They have several categories, and one of the categories has to do with corporate social responsibility. We sent some evidence, some photos of the things that we do with the company doctors, our community work in the environmental area, our pastoral mission.’ (quality manager, 06/12) |
| Labelling implicit CSR practices as strategic | ‘I want them to understand that social responsibility is not a marginal thing; it is a strategic lens for the company, and we all have to be aligned with the issue of social responsibility.’ (social worker, 10/13) | ||
| Demonstrating the impact of social welfare activities | ‘Now we are interested in understanding how we are perceived, if we are seen as a good company for the region. Is it because we give things or is it because of the impact of our actions on communities and stakeholders?’ (health and safety manager, 07/12) | ||
| Changing normative associations | Constructing an economic justification of traditional business responsibility activities | ‘You need to know to what extent all the activities you develop with the community generate benefits for the company. How do you measure that?’ (quality manager, 10/13) |
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Biographies
Pilar Acosta is Assistant Professor at the School of Business and Economic Sciences at Universidad Icesi, in Cali, Colombia. She earned her PhD at ESCP Europe and Université Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne. Her work has been published in international journals such as Journal of Business Ethics and Supply Chain Forum, in book chapters and in proceedings of international conferences. Her research focuses on the evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability-related practices in developing countries. She currently teaches corporate social responsibility and sustainability at both undergraduate and master’s levels. She holds an industrial engineering degree, a master’s degree in organizations from the University of Paris X and worked as an organizational consultant in France.
Aurélien Acquier is Professor of Management and Sustainability at ESCP Europe business school (Paris, France), and co-director of the ESCP Europe–Deloitte research chair in circular economy. Using organization theory, his research explores how historical and contemporary organizational transformations (global value chains, sharing economy, platform capitalism) affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability issues. His research has been published in Business and Society, Journal of Business Ethics, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Revue Française de Gestion, M@n@gement and Supply Chain Forum, among others.
Jean-Pascal Gond is Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility at Cass Business School, City, University of London (UK). His research mobilizes organization theory and economic sociology to investigate corporate social responsibility (CSR). His current agenda focuses on micro-CSR and the identity work of CSR professionals, the organization of the economies of worth, organizational studies of performativity, and the government of CSR through quantification and policy-making. He has published in academic journals such as Academy of Management Review, Business and Society, Business Ethics Quarterly, Economy and Society, Human Relations, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, Organization Science and Organization Studies and French journals such as Finance Contrôle Stratégie. He has recently co-edited two special issues in Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2017) and Long Range Planning (2018).
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Article first published online: September 5, 2019
Issue published: July 2021
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