CSR, A TRANSPLANT ON THE HEART OF TRADE OR PARASOL ON SCATTERED ACTIONS

Abstract

Companies, faced with the complexity of CSR and under pressure to respond to multiple stakeholders, try either to manage all dimensions of CSR or only make efforts in a limited number of them. However, the operational reality often remains misunderstood by the public. Through immersion in a multinational retail group, our research examines how CSR is integrated into this large company. Via in-depth case studies, we analyze how CSR is appropriated by the HR and purchasing departments and the efforts undertaken to formulate a global strategy for the group. We highlight the coexistence of several CSR approaches within the same company and show that their adoption by the company’s entities and activities remains differentiated. Although grafting CSR onto the core business is possible and sometimes already occurs, the heterogeneity of CSR approaches makes it difficult to coordinate them into an articulated global strategy. Instead, it amounts, at least temporarily, to deploying a discursive ‘umbrella’ with a view to covering an assortment of CSR actions mainly for communication purposes. In this respect, we enrich and provide nuance to the conventional debate in the literature which contrasts CSR as a transformation of the core business with CSR as primarily a form of ‘window dressing’. Our research highlights the socio political conditions that facilitate or hinder the implementation of a global CSR strategy.