Strategically leveraging corporate social responsibility

orporate social responsibility (CSR) is changing the rules of branding but it is unclear how. While the literature offers a range of approaches seeking insight to how to manage CSR-related issues, practitioners are left in a state of confusion when having to decide on how to tackle CSR in a way that benefits both the corporate brand and society at large. based on qualitative empirical research, this article offers a framework for companies to address CSR and their brands strategically, whether as entrepreneurs, performers, vocal converts, or quietly conscientious. We define these categories according to the level of involvement, integration, and the key initiator of the CSR focus. This article concludes with suggestions practitioners should keep in mind when aiming to balance stakeholder tensions and to achieve consistency in their corporate branding and CSR efforts

Integration and communication of CSR principles by IKEA. An analysis of the influence of and on external stakeholders

In spite of the rising influence of NGOs, the impact of CSR implementation and communication on NGOs’ perceptions and attitudes is rarely evoked. Moreover, empirical studies generally take into account one category of stakeholder at a time, preventing analysts from examining the likely differential impacts of CSR on distinct categories of stakeholders. In this context, this paper proposes (1) to analyze how different external and ubiquitous stakeholders can influence the development of CSR commitments and (2) to assess the impact of CSR commitments and communications on those stakeholders, by using an integrative framework aimed at providing an integrated stakeholder orientation for a step by step implementation of CSR (Maignan et al., 2005). Our analyses are based on an in-depth case study of IKEA and its main stakeholders: trade unions, customers, partner NGOs, organizations having blamed IKEA on CSR matters, local public authorities, organizations protecting small businesses, and specialized organizations dedicated to consultancy, promotion, and monitoring of CSR practices. Because of its continuous pressure on price and sub-contractors from developing countries, IKEA stands in a good position to run up against the sensitivity of alter globalization protesters. But in the same time, IKEA is seldom blamed on its CSR practices. Our results show how stakeholders can influence the development of CSR policies by conveying their societal expectations, by publicly blaming corporate behaviours considered as irresponsible or by entering in a collaborative and constructive relationship with the company. This case study also highlights the complexity of the corporate decisions related to CSR practices and communication, as well as the central role played by scepticism in the construction of CSRbased attitudes towards the company. By not involving stakeholders enough, IKEA’s CSR policy is gauged as too unilateral, what leads to a certain stakeholders’ scepticism about IKEA’s CSR practices. And IKEA is criticized for adopting a low profile in terms of CSR communication

Communicating corporate social responsibility in the digital era

Businesses are increasingly embracing the dynamics of new digital technologies, as they communicate their policies and responsible initiatives through corporate websites, social media platforms and other interactive channels. The Web2.0 is also considered as a vehicle for the marketing communications of laudable practices, including non-financial reporting. In this light, the methodology integrates measures from technological innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to understand the rationale for using digital media to communicate about environmental, social and governance issues. A quantitative study amongst 202 ownermanagers in the retail industry indicated that there is a positive and significant relationship between the perceived the ease of use and perceived usefulness of online media (for CSR disclosures) and stakeholder engagement. In addition, the findings revealed that the younger respondents were increasingly engaging in ubiquitous technologies. In conclusion, this contribution suggests that CSR communication is more effective when it is readily available online. It implies that there are opportunities for businesses to enhance their reputation and image as they engage with different stakeholders through digital media.peer-reviewe

Data-Oblivious Graph Algorithms in Outsourced External Memory

Motivated by privacy preservation for outsourced data, data-oblivious external memory is a computational framework where a client performs computations on data stored at a semi-trusted server in a way that does not reveal her data to the server. This approach facilitates collaboration and reliability over traditional frameworks, and it provides privacy protection, even though the server has full access to the data and he can monitor how it is accessed by the client. The challenge is that even if data is encrypted, the server can learn information based on the client data access pattern; hence, access patterns must also be obfuscated. We investigate privacy-preserving algorithms for outsourced external memory that are based on the use of data-oblivious algorithms, that is, algorithms where each possible sequence of data accesses is independent of the data values. We give new efficient data-oblivious algorithms in the outsourced external memory model for a number of fundamental graph problems. Our results include new data-oblivious external-memory methods for constructing minimum spanning trees, performing various traversals on rooted trees, answering least common ancestor queries on trees, computing biconnected components, and forming open ear decompositions. None of our algorithms make use of constant-time random oracles.Comment: 20 page

Theoretically Efficient Parallel Graph Algorithms Can Be Fast and Scalable

There has been significant recent interest in parallel graph processing due to the need to quickly analyze the large graphs available today. Many graph codes have been designed for distributed memory or external memory. However, today even the largest publicly-available real-world graph (the Hyperlink Web graph with over 3.5 billion vertices and 128 billion edges) can fit in the memory of a single commodity multicore server. Nevertheless, most experimental work in the literature report results on much smaller graphs, and the ones for the Hyperlink graph use distributed or external memory. Therefore, it is natural to ask whether we can efficiently solve a broad class of graph problems on this graph in memory. This paper shows that theoretically-efficient parallel graph algorithms can scale to the largest publicly-available graphs using a single machine with a terabyte of RAM, processing them in minutes. We give implementations of theoretically-efficient parallel algorithms for 20 important graph problems. We also present the optimizations and techniques that we used in our implementations, which were crucial in enabling us to process these large graphs quickly. We show that the running times of our implementations outperform existing state-of-the-art implementations on the largest real-world graphs. For many of the problems that we consider, this is the first time they have been solved on graphs at this scale. We have made the implementations developed in this work publicly-available as the Graph-Based Benchmark Suite (GBBS).Comment: This is the full version of the paper appearing in the ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), 201

Connecting the Micro to the Macro: An Exploration of Micro-Behaviors of Individuals Who Drive CSR Initiatives at the Macro-Level

Grounded on a case study on the formation of an inter-corporate CSR initiative in which four corporations from Chennai, India collaborate, this paper explores the micro-behaviors that individual actors engage in to create CSR solutions later adopted at the macro-organizational level. Based on the findings, the paper (1) identifies five categories of micro-behaviors, namely increasing stakeholder salience by turning attention to the ethical and social responsibilities to specific stakeholder groups, emerging as a self-appointed CSR champion by assuming personal responsibility for action, creating CSR initiative prototypes by leveraging personal skills, garnering support by leveraging personal networks and amassing operational resources by organizational resources; (2) explicates the characteristics of individual approach to CSR that makes it different from, but complementary to organizational approach to CSR

The Integration of Knowledge and Theory of Planned Behavior towards Purchase Intention among Consumers

Considering the rising cost of medicine in Malaysia, it is crucial to investigate the behavioral factors that influence the intent of consumers when selecting medicines. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to examine the influence of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and respondents’ knowledge on their intentions to purchase either generic or brand-name medicines.  A cross-sectional survey research design was used in this study, involving consumers in various community areas in Selangor. Using a convenience sampling approach, a total of 444 respondents participated in this study. More than half of the respondents were female (63%) and Malay (73%). In regression analysis, the results showed that knowledge (p <0.001) and perceived behavioral control (p <0.001) were statistically significant for purchase intention toward generic and brand medicine. Though statistically significant, only 19% and 29% (knowledge and perceived behavioral control) of the respondents showed intention to purchase the generic medicine while a higher percentage of the respondents showed agreement to their purchase intention with 27% and 45% of the same variables for the purchase intention to the brand medicine. Knowledge and perceived behavioral control were found to be predictors of respondents’ intentions to purchase either generic or brand-name medicines. Apart from that, the perceived capacity to purchase is one of the factors that determine consumers’ purchase intent.  The people’s awareness of the similarity between brand-name medicines needs to be increased, as well an individual’s ability to pay for the medicine should be explored in future researc

Sharing vocabularies: towards horizontal alignment of values-driven business functions

This paper highlights the emergence of different ‘vocabularies’ that describe various values-driven business functions within large organisations and argues for improved horizontal alignment between them. We investigate two established functions that have long-standing organisational histories: Ethics and Compliance (E&C) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). By drawing upon research on organisational alignment, we explain both the need for and the potential benefit of greater alignment between these values-driven functions. We then examine the structural and socio-cultural dimensions of organisational systems through which E&C and CSR horizontal alignment can be coordinated to improve synergies, address tensions, and generate insight to inform future research and practice in the field of Business and Society. The paper concludes with research questions that can inform future scholarly research and a practical model to guide organizations’ efforts towards inter-functional, horizontal alignment of values-driven organizational practice

Examining the contributing factors of virtual event quality toward event satisfaction among attendees

Due to the rising acceptance of virtual events, more empirical studies are needed to determine factors influencing attendees’ satisfaction.  It is crucial to comprehend the essential factors determining the quality of virtual events as the virtual world continues to define the future of event experiences. Given these considerations, event planners may create and deploy virtual experiences meeting the diverse needs and preferences of the attendees. Hence, the main purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of virtual event quality dimensions on the level of event satisfaction among the attendees. A cross-sectional study was undertaken by administering a survey instrument to collect response data from participants in virtual events. There were 124 valid responses obtained for data analysis. Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed using IBM SPSS version 28. The study findings revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between the quality of virtual event factors and event satisfaction among the attendees. The results of regression analysis indicated that vividness (p=0.016), functionality (p=0.003), entertainment (p=0.029), fulfillment (p=0.037), privacy (p=0.037), and social presence (p=0.001) were found to be significant predictors of event satisfaction. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of considering several factors of event quality, particularly in planning and implementing virtual events. Event organizers can enhance attendees’ satisfaction through the use of more immersive and substantial virtual experiences, by focusing on attributes such as vividness, functionality, entertainment, fulfillment, privacy and social presence